Chapter 14
Salem’s Fall University transforms as Halloween quickly approaches.
Pumpkins appear on every stairwell and windowsill, their carved faces glowing after dark.
Students drape paper ghosts from dormitory ceilings, weave orange and purple lights through the common rooms, and inflate enormous monsters that loom over the courtyards.
Hay bales and cornstalks line the brick walkways, while the scent of cinnamon, bonfires, and apple cider is all over campus.
Every evening, another student organization hosts a haunted house, pumpkin-carving contest, or horror movie marathon.
I spend my days in class and most of my nights poring over the books I took from Ashcroft Library and Blackthorn Manor, trying to make sense of them.
The problem is they don’t read like any books I’ve ever encountered.
The passages are dense and frustratingly vague, some written in ancient ciphers and codes I can’t crack.
It also doesn’t help that some volumes have pages torn out or entire paragraphs slashed through with thick black marker.
The Book of Eternal Rites is the worst of them all—a labyrinth of nonsense that defeats me every time I open it.
I’ve started it three separate times, only to give up in frustration, but I know I’ll have to come back to it.
Somewhere within these pages lies the truth about what happened to my brother. Of that, I’m certain.
Every time the books threaten to swallow me whole, Rowan or Wren appears and drags me back into the world. Rowan and Wren have fallen into an inelegant friendship where they both appear to tolerate each other so the three of us can hang out together, along with Micah, Lena, and Jonah.
One Friday night, we all take the midnight ghost tour at the Old Town Cemetery, where our guide whispers about witchy women buried beneath hidden underground tunnels.
Then we spend Saturday watching old scary movies like Halloween and The Silence of the Lambs projected against a stone wall near the harbor, bundled beneath cozy blankets, while Micah complains about the quality of the popcorn.
The next weekend, we stumble through a corn maze after dark, drink cider around a harvest bonfire, and spend a Sunday afternoon at a pumpkin patch where Rowan insists the pumpkin I picked out looks deformed and I tell him his looks pretentious.
My crooked pumpkin now sits on my dorm room windowsill. I’ve carved it into a jack-o’-lantern with an uneven grin to match its lopsided shape. Every now and then, I catch myself smiling back at it.
Somehow, I have managed to make friends here at Salem’s Fall University.
Rowan has become impossible to avoid and easier to trust. He flirts with me shamelessly, but he also listens whenever I talk about Josh and never tells me I’m wasting my time or that I need to move on. When the grief settles too heavily against my ribs, he always knows how to make me laugh.
Wren has become the first person I text when I want company for dinner at Winthrop Commons, and I no longer care who her family is or that she’s related to Van.
Lena is gloriously dramatic but always good for an adventure.
Micah has made it his personal mission to protect us from mediocre food wherever we go, and Jonah remains quiet but unexpectedly thoughtful—always taking the street side of the sidewalk and somehow remembering everyone’s drink order without ever writing it down.
I realize I like it here in Salem’s Fall. I begin to wonder if maybe I’ve found a place where I actually belong. Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t notice how strange campus becomes the closer Halloween gets.
Groups gather behind locked doors. Students disappear into private “invite-only” dinners.
I see strange lights in the forest behind campus and hear the words “Veil Night” in hushed whispers in hallways, at parties, and once in the library stacks until the two women realized I was standing behind them and left abruptly without finishing the sentence.
Invitations to the Blackhollow Halloween Ball begin arriving in thick black envelopes sealed with black wax. Students display them like trophies. Rowan receives one. Lena receives one. Even Jonah, who treats most social affairs with contempt, slips his into his coat pocket without comment.
I assume mine will never come, and I couldn’t care less.
I haven’t spoken to Silas since that day at Blackthorn Manor.
I still see him around campus—in classes, at Winthrop Commons, occasionally crossing the lobby of our shared dorm.
Sometimes I catch him watching me like he wants to say something.
Once, he even started walking toward me in the quad before I turned and left.
Whatever he has to say, I’m not interested in hearing it.
I’d almost believed there was something decent beneath all that cruelty, but the photographs of him with Josh proved I’d been right all along.
I know I need to confront him about them eventually, but I’m not ready yet.
What good would it do to admit I’d gone snooping through his phone and then demand answers about what I found?
He’s already lied to my face about Josh more than once.
He’ll probably just lie again. Next time, I want to be prepared. I want to know what questions to ask.
For now, Silas Blackhollow is the enemy. I don’t care how devastatingly handsome he is or that my traitorous pulse still forgets that every time he walks into a room.
The weekend before Halloween, Rowan convinces me to join him at Salem’s Fall’s annual Autumn Night Market, a sprawling festival of food stalls, artisans, musicians, and thousands of visitors.
Everyone is already there when I arrive at the Witch’s Brew just after eight.
Rowan, Wren, Lena, Micah, and Jonah wait beneath the bar’s striped awning as music spills outside, a band playing an old Halloween ballad while couples stumble around the dance floor.
We head south into the heart of the market, joining the crowds packed shoulder to shoulder along the cobblestone streets.
Vendors fill every corner, selling everything from hand-dipped candles and carved masks to antique jewelry and handmade charms woven from bone, copper, and colored thread.
Micah immediately assumes command of dinner with the seriousness of a military general planning a campaign, inspecting every food stall before allowing the rest of us anywhere near a menu.
“Not that one,” he says, catching Lena by the elbow and steering her away from the first caramel apple vendor we see. “Their apples are waxy and the caramel tastes like roofing tar.”
“You’ve eaten roofing tar?” she asks, raising a brow.
“It’s a figure of speech, Lena,” he says before leading us two streets over to another vendor, insisting we try the pumpkin ravioli and something called a witch’s hand pie, a flaky pastry shaped like a severed hand with strawberry jam filling spilling from between the fingers like blood.
“Look—a haunted house!” Lena exclaims, stopping suddenly and pointing across the square. “Let’s go!”
A three-story haunted house looms before us, built inside an abandoned hotel.
Fog curls around its crumbling foundation while spotlights rake across the brick, catching broken windows and peeling shutters.
Every few seconds, an ear-splitting scream erupts from somewhere inside, followed by nervous laughter from the crowd waiting to enter.
A painted sign promises LIVE ACTORS, EXTREME TERROR, and NO REFUNDS FOR EMOTIONAL TRAUMA.
“I don’t know, Lena.” I hesitate. “Aren’t haunted houses kind of… stupid?”
“What do you mean?” she asks. “They’re awesome!”
I groan. “Only if you forget none of it’s real.”
Unfortunately, I’m outvoted, and after waiting in line for twenty minutes, we make it inside.
The air smells heavily of dust and artificial fog-machine chemicals.
Strobe lights flash and dim lanterns cast long shadows across peeling wallpaper while hidden speakers fill the halls with distorted whispers and screams. Overhead, chains rattle and floorboards tilt beneath our feet.
Actors lunge at us from concealed panels while I try not to laugh.
Somewhere in the darkness, a man in a bloody mask revs up a chainsaw, and I roll my eyes in Rowan’s direction.
“You know you’re supposed to scream, right?” he asks me. “Most women find this scary.”
“But he’s wearing combat boots.”
He smirks. “And that matters why?”
“Because it’s obviously fake,” I say. “A real ax murderer would pick quieter shoes.”
Rowan laughs. “Well, I happen to think it’s terrifying. You can protect me, then,” he says and slips his hand into mine. Somewhere along the way, holding my hand has become second nature to him. The surprising part is that I don’t mind nearly as much as I thought I would.
He surprises me then by leaning down and kissing me. It’s our first kiss. Quick and sweet. His lips are soft, and his mouth is warm. He definitely knows all the right moves. The world doesn’t tilt on its axis like in romance movies, perhaps, but it’s nice.
Maybe more than nice.
If he wants to go further tonight, I won’t say no.
I like sex, and I’m good at getting what I want out of it.
I’ve never been in love, never let anyone close enough to matter.
Love means strings, and strings mean leverage, and I’ve spent my whole life making sure no one has that kind of hold on me.
But sleeping with a man like Rowan Ashcroft, and walking away with zero attachments in the morning, sounds like the perfect way to end the night.
When he pulls back, his expression is unexpectedly serious. “Do you trust me now?”
It’s an odd thing to ask, but then again, our friendship started under unusual circumstances. I’d once told him I didn’t trust him—maybe never would—but so much has changed since then.
“Yeah,” I say after a moment. “I do.”
He holds my gaze. “Would you still trust me if someone told you not to?”
“Someone like who?”
“Anyone. Your friends,” he says. “Silas.”
“That’s a weird question, Rowan.” I let out a small laugh. “I barely know Silas. Why would I care what he thinks about you?”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He smiles again, as though the moment never happened. “Forget it.”
We enter the next room beneath a wooden beam dressed to resemble gallows.
This one is the creepiest yet, some kind of witch torture dungeon.
Figures hang from scaffolds, necks broken, dressed in torn black gowns and pointy witch hats.
Along the walls, similarly dressed actors are chained to tables, writhing in manufactured pain, their bodies painted with cuts and burns. The room is filled with screams.
In the corner, a woman lies so unnaturally still, I can’t tell if she’s a mannequin or just a really good actor.
Her eyes stare blankly ahead, her face devoid of expression.
No fear. No nothing. Her throat is slashed, and her stomach has been cut open and rearranged with deliberate care.
Dark blood pools beneath her body, thick and uneven, and a bloody symbol has been carved into her forehead.
I recognize it immediately from the Blood and Bone book.
The Mark of the Veil.
“Oh my God!” someone shrieks. “She’s real! That’s a real body!”
Suddenly, the lights go out.