Chapter 15
Panic tears through the haunted house as everyone bolts for the exits at once, the screams sending the crowd into a stampede.
Bodies slam into me from all directions.
Someone’s shoulder catches mine hard enough to spin me sideways.
My fingers slip from Rowan’s, and I shout his name, but the darkness swallows the sound beneath a chorus of terrified screams. Someone else elbows me sharply in the stomach, and I stumble into a wall.
Seconds later, I get swept along by the crush of bodies surging forward.
Somehow, I find the front doors and burst out into the cold night air.
Police lights flash across buildings, and the authorities rush inside the haunted house as customers continue streaming outside.
Already most of the crying has turned to laughter as people start to dismiss it all as just another haunted house prank.
I don’t know what to believe. Whatever I saw in there didn’t feel like part of the show. It felt real.
I scan the crowd for my friends, but they’re nowhere to be found.
The haunted house has multiple exits spilling out onto different streets, so I don’t even know where to start looking for them.
Not to mention downtown is so packed with tourists that I can barely see ten feet in any direction, let alone pick out a familiar face.
I try to call Rowan and then Wren, but my phone refuses to connect. I can’t even get an Uber. There must be too many people in town tonight all trying to use their phones at the same time.
Just as I finally psyche myself up for the long walk back to the dorms, a black Mercedes town car glides to the curb. The dark-tinted rear window lowers, and Silas looks out at me.
“Get in.”
Almost instinctively, I take a step back from the car. Folding my arms against the cold, I shake my head.
“Absolutely not.”
“Suit yourself,” he says, and the window slides shut, the car driving ahead.
A cold raindrop lands on my cheek.
Then another.
Within seconds, the sky opens. I mutter a curse under my breath, instantly regretting my decision.
As much as I loathe Silas, I’m alone, it’s dark, and I’m in the creepiest town in all of New England.
As miserable as a ride back to the dorms with Silas would be, walking there by myself in the dark—and the damn rain—still seems like the worse choice.
I lift a hand in a sad little half-wave and hold my breath. Red brake lights flare against the wet pavement, and the town car reverses until the window is level with me again.
“Mercer.”
I glare at him.
“I’m not asking twice,” he says.
“Fine!”
The chauffeur opens the rear door for me, and I climb into the back, putting as much distance between Silas and me as the spacious cabin allows.
The seats are wrapped in buttery leather, and polished wood lines the doors.
The ride is so smooth, I can barely feel the car moving.
With the tinted windows, the built-in privacy partition, and the fact that there is an actual chauffeur driving us around, it’s one of the most extravagant things I’ve ever experienced.
For several blocks, neither of us speaks.
Silas doesn’t bother looking up from his phone. Passing streetlights wash over his handsome face, throwing it in and out of shadow. He seems utterly unaffected by my presence, as though I’m not even there, which only sharpens my anger.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore.
“You lied to me,” I hiss.
His thumb stills on his cell phone screen.
“Pardon?”
“I went through your phone. I saw your photos with Josh,” I blurt, too angry to stop myself. “You did know him.”
Well, shit.
So much for waiting until I knew more before confronting him. Apparently, all it takes is five minutes in Silas Blackhollow’s presence for me to lose my fucking patience and abandon every sensible plan I’d made.
He finally looks at me, his face devoid of emotion. He doesn’t even seem mad at me for invading his privacy.
“Yes,” he says, sounding resigned.
No denial.
No hesitation.
No apology either.
I wait for an explanation, but none comes. He returns his attention to his phone, icing me out again. I could keep pushing, but I already know he’s not going to tell me anything he doesn’t want to.
Fine.
To hell with him. I’ll find the answers myself.
A few minutes later, we arrive at our dorm. I don’t say thank you. I don’t even wait for him to unbuckle his seat belt. I’m halfway out the door when I hear him speak quietly behind me.
“If you’re smart,” he says, “you’ll stay home next weekend. Don’t come to the ball.”
His words stop me short.
“Wait—I’m invited?”
The question is barely out of my mouth before I’m appalled with myself. What the hell do I care if I’m invited? He just admitted he lied to me about my missing brother and refused to tell me why. Screw him and his stupid fucking party.
“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be,” he says, voice as cold as ever. “You don’t belong there. But regrettably, I don’t control the invitation list.”
Heat rushes to my face.
“Fuck off, Silas,” I seethe, my voice shaking with anger. “Just stay away from me. I mean it.”
His eyes linger on me for a long moment.
“It would be better for us both if I did,” he says quietly. “No matter how many times I try to warn you, you keep chasing things that are going to get you killed. One day, you’re going to wish you’d listened.”
His words are almost gentle, but I understand them right away for what they really are.
Another threat.
The official word on campus is that the haunted house death was a suicide, even though it makes absolutely no sense.
No one mentions the symbols or the impossibility of cutting one’s own stomach open.
I can’t help but think about the librarian and the man she told me about—a Professor Hargrove—who died in a similar fashion.
For the first time since arriving in Salem’s Fall, I am no longer searching for proof that the Veil exists.
I have it.
Every evening, I return to my dorm room, lock the door, pull the curtains shut, and spread my books and sticky notes across every available surface like Josh used to do whenever he designed one of his elaborate puzzle games for Vanished.
He always started by separating information into pieces before fitting them together.
I find myself doing the same. Pages from Blood and Bone lie open beside Ceremonies of the Veil and The Book of Eternal Rites.
My notes cover everything from sketches of symbols to timelines of Veil leadership.
Colored tabs protrude from nearly every chapter.
The answers don’t arrive all at once. Instead, they come the way Josh’s puzzles always did—through persistence, one piece sliding into place, making another suddenly obvious, until the entire picture begins emerging from fragments that had seemed unrelated only hours earlier.
The breakthrough comes on the Wednesday night before Halloween.
I’m sitting on my bed with three books open around me and a mug of tea that has long since gone cold.
I suddenly realize I’d been trying to read The Book of Eternal Rites as though it were a complete text, growing increasingly frustrated by the number of references that seemed to begin in the middle of conversations and went nowhere.
Almost absentmindedly, I’d reached for Blood and Bone or Ceremonies of the Veil to verify a footnote and realized the authors were discussing the same ceremony from entirely different perspectives.
One assumes the reader is an outsider studying folklore.
The other assumes the reader already belongs to the Veil.
None of the books are complete on their own, but combined, they finally begin making sense.
I spend the next several hours cross-referencing passages, copying page numbers into my notebook, and drawing lines between chapters until my handwriting becomes almost illegible. Gradually, the mythology surrounding the Veil gives way to something truly unsettling.
What I had originally hoped had been metaphorical “sacrifices” are undeniably all-too-real human sacrifices Veil members believe necessary to gain and maintain power.
They are called the “Blood Rites,” different rituals performed whenever necessity demands.
Some seek protection. Others wealth. Influence.
Health. Revenge. The desired outcome changes, but the method remains constant.
They are most often single sacrifices whereby one innocent life is taken—offered willingly—and slain by a sacrificial ceremonial knife.
Most horrific is the requirement that the victim must be someone the Veil member loves.
Not political rivals. Not strangers.
Loved ones.
The accompanying commentary calls it a “Tethered” person and claims a person who willingly gives up someone they cherish proves the request to be worthy.
I close the book for a moment, suddenly unable to continue reading. What kind of people create a tradition like that? More importantly… what kind of people continue to willingly follow it?
But that isn’t even the worst of what I’ve discovered tonight.
No, that’s The Rites.
For some reason, many of the chapters on The Rites have been badly damaged beyond readability. Entire pages have been torn away, leaving only jagged stubs behind. Even so, what I can piece together is horrifying.
Unlike the other blood rituals, The Rites aren’t described as sacrificial murders but as a deadly competition held once every fifty years.
Whenever The Rites are called, any Veil family with a legitimate claim to leadership may challenge the current ruler by entering their offspring into the games.
The pages describing the rules are missing, but one fact remains unmistakably clear: most of the participants die agonizing deaths.
Finally, after painstakingly matching centuries-old occult calendars to their modern equivalents, I discover what Veil Night actually is.
According to the texts, Veil Night is the Veil’s most sacred observance—the night when the boundary between living and dead grows thinnest and their greatest ceremonies are performed.
Blood Rites may generally take place at any time throughout the year, though they become more frequent as Veil Night approaches.
The Rites, however, always occur on Veil Night.
The words Josh used in his game—the fourth level he never finished—weren’t referring to some made-up event after all.
Veil Night is Halloween.
To everyone else, the upcoming weekend promises music, dancing, and another Salem’s Fall holiday celebration. To me, it has become a deadline. If the books are right, another ritual may be coming.
Just then, something slides beneath my door with a soft scrape against the hardwood floor. I turn to find a heavy black envelope. Dark wax seals the flap. Across the front, written in elegant silver script, is my name.
Jacqueline Mercer.
It appears my invitation to the Blackhollow Halloween Ball has arrived.