Chapter Thirty-Five Then, I confess
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Then, I confess
JOJO ARRIVED NOT LONG AFTER Kasem had left. He looked distraught, like he’d raced straight to the medical ward from wherever he’d been.
“She’ll be fine. Go see for yourself.”
Angelica retreated to grinding herbs for her tea in the front.
The moment he was at my side, Jojo reached for me, brushing my cheek, checking my forehead, concern drawn through his expression.
“What happened?” he said. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed. Part of me was afraid to hear his response if I told him what I’d seen. The other part of me, the part that had been so angry for so long, was shell-shocked, defeated.
“Sianna, talk to me. I’m listening.”
I pressed my eyes shut, playing with the frills of the lace gloves as I composed myself.
“You lied to me,” I said. “About the bracelet. About the night of the stabbing. You lied, Jojo.”
He was silent for a moment, searching my eyes for answers.
“I’m guessing your powers are back to normal,” he said finally. “That’s a relief.”
I closed my eyes, nervous energy pulsing through me, gathering like an ember before a fire broke.
“I didn’t think you were capable of it. But I was wrong. Wasn’t I?”
“We’re all capable of things we don’t want to admit.”
This whole time, I’d been holding on to hope that Jojo wasn’t connected to that night. But what I’d seen in the vision, I couldn’t handle it. Not without uprooting every truth I’d come to know about him as a lie.
“That night in the alleyway, Kasem was supposed to be meeting me.”
His words were a gut punch, brutal and aching. And yet, it was the truth.
“You tried to kill him.”
“It’s not like that. I know it seems like it is, but it’s not.”
“Then what’s the truth, Jojo?” I said, raising my voice now, unraveling at every unspoken word between us. “Why did you have the bracelet?”
He pressed his eyes shut, looking away from me, memories churning in his mind.
“Did Kasem ever tell you how the ritual of disinheritance works?” he asked.
“It doesn’t just pass the curse and the Westfield estate to another person.
It steals the future of the original heir and gives their fate, whatever good or bad that comes of it, to the next in line who does the ritual with them.
I never wanted to give up Westfield. I never wanted him to be the one who was cursed.
And now we’re both paying for what we did.
All of us. Even you. You just don’t see it.
Because he’s lying to you. He’s protecting himself like he always does. ”
There was a deeper meaning in the look in his eyes, one that seemed to speak of more than just that night in the alleyway and the curse.
Tears burned against my lashes. In a way, it was like the version of him I’d always thought I’d known was dying in front of me.
“But you helped them. Pete and Jay, and whoever stabbed Kasem, they were only able to do it with your help, right? Because you told Kasem you’d be in the meeting spot that night.”
“I told Kasem what they were planning. I told him everything. But he was arrogant. He always was. Why do you think Pete and Jay got expelled? How do you think the police found them so quickly? I was there searching for Kasem when he wasn’t answering his phone and Honey couldn’t reach him.
And when Pete and Jay found me after the attack, when I was putting his beads of protection in the glove box of my car for safekeeping, it was so I could return them to Kasem.
They thought I wanted the inheritance enough to betray him.
But I’ve never loved anything besides my family.
Not my inheritance, not our family heirlooms. Not even myself.
Nothing and no one meant as much to me besides him and our parents. Not until you, Sianna.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Jojo held out his hand, a question in his eyes. It was the most vulnerable I’d seen him in the years since we’d known each other.
“Are you sure?” I asked, nervous.
He nodded and I pulled off the gloves. Tentatively, he laced his fingers through mine, and for the first time since we’d met, Jojo let me see into his past.
I couldn’t see everything—my powers weren’t strong enough for it.
But the fragments I saw jumped from when he’d arrived in the ward just moments ago, all the way to that night in the alley.
It was just as I’d seen before, except now I could glimpse further, to earlier that night when he’d left the mall with Kasem’s bodyguard, to when he’d called Kasem to warn him.
“So now you answer,” Kasem said. “I’ve been trying to call you for weeks. Did you get my letters?”
“I’m not changing my mind, Kasem. I’m taking the job at Westfield. I think the odds of us figuring out how to break the curse are better if we’re both on campus. Besides, Alaster trusts me. I can get closer to the Board this way.”
“I’m not a child anymore. I can take care of myself.”
“Can you? Is that why your so-called friends got in touch with me about finding a way to separate you from the beads of protection?”
On the other side of the line, Kasem was silent for a beat.
“Pete and Jay are marked by the curse. I know that already.”
“And you know they’re planning on killing you.”
Kasem laughed. “Like everyone else. But it’s not like they can help it. The curse’s power is all-encompassing. Even with the disinheritance ritual—”
“A ritual I wouldn’t have done if I’d had a choice in the matter,” Jojo said, interrupting.
“Well, you already made your choice, didn’t you?
You’ve been gone these last five years. You got out.
So why come back? Why take the job? Why accept the Board’s offer?
” On the other side of the line, Kasem’s voice hardened.
“Just don’t come back, brother. I can handle the curse.
And I already have a medium in mind for it—”
“Don’t involve others in this. Let alone Sianna. Don’t you dare.”
The vision jumped in time, to a hazy view of Pete and Jay cornering Jojo at his car, demanding he help them remove the marks that the curse had wrought on them. All of it played in my mind until I yanked myself out of the vision and my view of the present returned.
“You see now,” Jojo said.
Guilt tore at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You were right. It was all Pete and Jay.”
But there had been a third figure, the one who had stabbed Kasem. And then there was the other fact, that I’d seen Pete’s and Jay’s futures and their untimely deaths. One, drowning. The other, burned alive.
“Do you understand why I didn’t want you to come to Westfield?” Jojo said. “Not only is it dangerous, but so is Kasem. He’s reckless, careless with his own life, and he’ll be careless with yours.”
“He’s not who you think he is,” I found myself saying. “Kasem is…” My heart stirred at the thought of him. “I would have come to Westfield anyway. But now that we’re all in this, you both don’t have to do this on your own.”
Jojo stood, not meeting my gaze.
“Kasem and I will never see eye to eye on this,” he said.
“But he was right about one thing. We Saint Jameses, we’re not to be trusted.
You’ve learned that about me. And you’ll learn eventually that Kasem’s no different.
That’s why I renounced my claim to the inheritance a long time ago. And now, the curse is his to bear.”
Jojo stood at the curtain, his back facing me.
“Just ask yourself this, Sianna—and you’re too smart not to know the answer—but…
why you? Even with me out of the picture, Theta and Sigma are here.
And so are Vivian and Angelica. So why would he go to you to help him break the curse? Why you, if not to punish me?”
“Arrogance doesn’t suit you, Jojo.”
“Neither does ignorance,” he said. “But you wear it well, Sianna. It’s why neither my brother nor I can bear to lift that veil from you.”