Chapter 10
Violet
“This is hopeless,” Jeremiah muttered, pulling another dusty volume from the shelf. “We've been at this for an hour, and I still have no idea what we're even looking for.”
“Historical documents about the university buildings,” I said for the third time, scanning the spines in front of me. “Anything that might mention the Dionysus Club, or—”
“Or literally anything useful,” Ginny finished from the next aisle over. “Which so far is a big fat nothing.”
We were tucked into the far corner of the Special Collections section, surrounded by boxes of archived materials and shelves of mostly-forgotten university history. The air smelled like old paper and dust, and the fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly.
I pulled down another leather-bound volume. Meeting minutes from 1847. Nothing.
“By the way,” Jeremiah said, slightly lowering his voice even though we were alone, “did you notice Julian Valcourt staring at us when we met up outside?”
My stomach tightened. For once, I actually hadn’t noticed his presence. “Was he?”
“Oh, yeah. Full-on death glare.” Jeremiah raised his eyebrows. “He’s probably still mad at me for confronting him about Daniel. I guess I should expect to wake up with a horse’s head in my bed soon, Godfather style.”
Or several gallons of blood and a creepy note on the wall, I thought bitterly.
Before I could say anything, Ginny poked her head around the corner. “Wait, are we talking about Julian Valcourt again?”
“Yup, pretty sure he’s mega-pissed at me,” Jeremiah said, rolling his eyes. “And before you say ‘I told you so’… trust me, I know. I never should’ve said anything to him.”
“Yeah.” She sighed dramatically. “It’s a real shame he’s such an ass, isn’t it?”
“Why?”
“Well, I mean… he's so hot, right? Which sucks.”
“I guess he’s decent-looking,” Jeremiah said, shrugging. “But obviously Dylan is more my type.”
Ginny turned her gaze to me. “Vee, you know what I mean, right? He’s like, the literal blueprint of hot guys. But it’s always those guys who are the biggest assholes on the planet. I guess it’s some sort of cosmic balancing thing.”
Something she’d just said was tugging at the edge of my mind, but Jeremiah was already responding, cutting off my train of thought.
“Even calling him the biggest asshole on the planet is putting it mildly. The guy's clearly a straight-up psychopathic—"
Ginny's phone buzzed, and she pulled it out, her expression immediately shifting. “Oh, shit,” she muttered. “Sorry, I have to go. My sister's calling.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, forehead wrinkling.
“Yeah, she just… sorry, I really need to take this now. Jer can tell you why.” She was already backing into the aisle as she spoke. “I'll catch up with you guys later!”
She hurried out, and the quiet settled back over the stacks.
“Is she okay?” I finally asked.
Jeremiah sighed. “Her little sister has cancer. Something with her blood. It's treatable, but...” He trailed off, shaking his head. “The whole family's still stressed to the max about it.”
My chest tightened. “God, that's awful.”
“Yeah. Ginny tries not to talk about it much, but I know she's scared.” He pulled another book down. “Just the thought of losing a sibling like that... I can't even imagine what she’s going through.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy,” I murmured.
He winced. “Shit, sorry, that was so insensitive of me,” he said. “You don’t need to imagine it. You’ve already lived it.”
“It’s okay,” I said, giving him a faint, reassuring half-smile. “Other people are allowed to have problems too.”
We fell back into our search, but my mind kept wandering. Poor Ginny, and her sister too. I hoped the treatment worked, and I hoped her family never had to feel what my mother and I felt when we got that awful phone call about Calista.
I pulled another box down from the shelf. More old meeting minutes, some correspondence between early deans and donors. Nothing about the Dionysus Club. Nothing about secret societies at all.
Whatever Piermont had been trying to tell me, I wasn't finding it.
The blueprint of hot guys.
Ginny's earlier words floated back to me all of a sudden, and I froze.
Blueprint. Not just a figure of speech. Architectural plans. Building schematics.
“Oh my god, my brain is not working today.” I turned to Jeremiah, pulse quickening. “Piermont specifically mentioned architecture as well as historical buildings. So what if he wasn’t talking about the structures themselves, but the plans? The blueprints. There could be something in those.”
Jeremiah was already moving toward the card catalog near the Special Collections desk. “Let me check where those are."
I followed him, hope sparking in my chest.
Jeremiah found the entry a few minutes later. “Okay, looks like that stuff is in the next aisle over from where we were just looking.”
We headed there together, and it took another ten minutes of rummaging through dusty folders before Jeremiah let out a sharp breath. “Got something.”
I joined him at the table, brushing dust off the cover of a rolled-up map labeled Blackthorne Harbor University Grounds, 1786.
He unrolled it carefully, pinning the corners flat with a few old books. The blueprint showed the campus as it had been over two centuries ago—fewer buildings, more forest—but the strangest thing wasn’t what was there. It was what wasn’t there. At least not anymore.
“Look,” I said slowly, tracing my finger over a faint dotted line that snaked westward from the Chapel of Saints. “This pathway… it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all gardens and lawn there now. I saw it on that campus tour I did last week.”
Jeremiah leaned closer. “Yeah, you’re right.
And look at this… the path runs all the way off campus, through the woods and—” He stopped abruptly.
“Well, obviously it’s not on the map, because it’s not university land, but if you keep heading that exact way through the woods, you’ll eventually end up at the Dionysus estate. ”
A chill crawled over my skin.
“What if this isn’t actually an old path that no longer exists?” I whispered, pointing to the dotted line again. “What if it’s still there? Underground?”
Jeremiah looked up at me, eyes wide. “You think the ossuary secretly connects to the estate?”
“Maybe, yeah. I mean, Piermont definitely wanted me to find something here, and this feels like it could be it.”
We both stared down at the line on the blueprint, the ink barely visible after so many years.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Jeremiah finally said, raising a brow.
I nodded. “Let’s go to the ossuary.”
By the time Jeremiah and I reached the Chapel of Saints, the late afternoon sun hung low behind the trees, casting long bars of light through the stained-glass windows.
When Jeremiah pushed one of the doors open, the hinges groaned in protest, the sound echoing through the empty interior.
“This place is so creepy,” Jeremiah muttered, his voice too loud in the stillness. “That bone chandelier has always freaked me out.”
We moved toward the back of the chapel, where a sign reading ‘Ossuary This Way’ with an arrow directed us to a narrow staircase leading downward.
The stairs descended steeply into darkness, the air growing colder with every step. My phone’s flashlight beam trembled as we reached the bottom.
The ossuary was bigger than I expected. Three of the lengthy walls were made entirely of stacked skulls and bones, sealed behind iron grates. Each recess held neat, symmetrical arrangements, like the dead had been cataloged rather than mourned.
The fourth wall held multiple sealed niches with names and dates engraved on them, like a mausoleum wall. Those must’ve been the burial slots that the sorority girl mentioned to me on my first day here; the places where the university’s founders and other important figures were interred.
“God, I’ve always thought this place was so fucked up,” Jeremiah whispered, his breath fogging the air. “I mean, bodies on a campus? Seriously?”
I barely heard him. My attention had caught on something else; a section of the mausoleum wall on the edge that didn’t quite match the rest. The stone there looked a little newer and smoother than the others, and there were no inscriptions or nameplates on it, even though there was clearly space for more.
“Jer,” I said quietly, moving closer. “Look at this.”
He joined me, frowning as I ran my hand over the block. It jutted out just slightly from the others, like it wasn’t quite seated properly.
“What if—” I pressed my palm against it, but nothing happened. “Never mind,” I muttered, shoulders slumping.
“Wait. Let me try.” Jeremiah pressed his own hand against it, much harder than I could manage.
The stone shifted beneath his hand with a dull click. Then a low rumble echoed through the chamber as the wall cracked open along a hidden seam, revealing a narrow space behind it; black and cold and impossibly deep.
Jeremiah swore under his breath. “No fucking way.”
My flashlight beam barely pierced the darkness beyond the opening. It wasn’t just a hollow. It was a tunnel.
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. “It’s here,” I whispered. “I can’t believe we actually found it.”
“Violet…” Jeremiah’s voice was tight. “We shouldn’t go in there. Not yet.”
He was right. Every rational part of me was screaming to close the wall and walk away.
“Yeah,” I finally said, forcing a breath. “We need a plan first. And we should tell the others.”
Jeremiah nodded, visibly relieved as we both stepped back. “Good call.”
We resealed the entrance and climbed the stairs in silence. When we stepped back out into the cold air, the chapel door creaked shut behind us, the sound echoing like a warning.
But weirdly enough, I didn’t feel warned. I felt inspired. Even a little excited, in the most morbid possible way.
For the first time since Calista’s death, I had real leads; threads I could tug on and follow.
The tunnel beneath the chapel. Jennifer Albright.
Maybe even Kane Sutherland, who was in a different friend group than the others I’d met so far, and therefore might know things about Calista that they didn’t.
I set my jaw and sucked in a deep breath as I braced myself against the chilly air. No matter how much certain people wanted me to, I wasn’t going to stop. No way.
Not until I knew exactly how and why my sister died.