Thirty

"We don't need six people for this," Jordan says. "I think only two or three of us should search the mausoleum. The rest of you can go back to Denfeld to keep an eye on things, watch to see if O'Connor turns up."

"I'm staying," Wren says. "WWG is my ghost."

"Wren, I think what we need this time is muscle, not spiritual connection," Jordan says gently.

"I'm stronger than I look," Wren says. "It takes a lot of upper body strength to play as much piano as I do."

"Wren's right; they should stay," I say. "And I'm staying too."

"You know, I've already dug up one corpse this semester, so I'll sit this one out," Neil says.

"Me too," Azar says, gazing to the east, where a band of light has appeared on the horizon.

"We'd better hurry," I say. "The sun is coming up."

"How about I find a vantage point from the woods where I can keep an eye on the cemetery gate?" Penny suggests. "I can text you if I see anyone coming."

"That's a good idea," Jordan says. "But guys, whatever you do, don't fall asleep. The ghosts will go straight to O'Connor with our plan."

After a little more discussion, we disperse.

When Wren, Jordan, and I step back through the gates of the cemetery, I want to laugh. Of course this is where the answers are buried. The only thing Magni Viri cares about are the ghosts whose original bodies decay under the ground. The heart of Magni Viri is death and rot, like so many institutions.

But as we approach Weymouth George's tomb, I wonder if that's entirely true. The beautiful Gothic building where WWG's body rests speaks of something higher, something truer. I hate that we are about to desecrate it.

As we walk up the steps of the mausoleum, all my hair stands on end. Even though I know Penny is watching over us, I feel exposed, vulnerable. I want to get inside as quickly as possible. To my relief, the doors to the mausoleum aren't locked like they always are in public cemeteries. I pull one side open, fumbling in my pocket for my flashlight to make sure there aren't wild animals or anything dangerous inside.

But I quickly realize I don't need it. Early-morning light pours down through a stained glass window very high up, illuminating a white marble angel, its face lifted in a rapturous expression, a goblet clutched to its chest.

"Tara, let us in," Jordan says from behind me, and I realize that I've been frozen in the doorway for I don't know how long. I step inside to let the others pass. Jordan closes the door behind us.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Wren whispers with a soft smile.

"You've been in here before?" I ask, looking around the space. Apart from the angel, there's nothing here but bare stone and echoes.

"Yeah, but I haven't come in a while. I used to visit twice a week at the start of the semester. It's peaceful in here," Wren says, sitting on the floor with their arms around their knees. "I really hate that we have to mess it up."

"You kind of love WWG, huh?" I ask.

"Yeah, I guess I do," Wren says.

"Why couldn't I get WWG?" I say. "Mine's such an asshole."

Jordan and Wren laugh.

"Yeah, but don't forget he's the reason we found Wren passed out on the floor of the practice room with a head injury," Jordan points out.

"At least he didn't dye anybody's hair," I grumble.

"You're more upset about that than Isabella almost causing you to die of exposure in the woods, aren't you?" Wren asks disbelievingly.

"It was mean-spirited and rude," I say with a shrug. "You shouldn't mess with someone's hair. It's, like, psychological torture or something. Like those parents who shave their daughters' heads for missing curfew and put it on social media for everyone to see."

"The worst YouTube trend of all time," Jordan agrees.

"What made her so awful, do you think?" Wren asks. "Isabella, I mean."

I pause, my eyes settling on the angel statue. "From the pieces I've put together, she was born to caretakers of this college, but her dad was a wealthy student. Her mom gave her up to his family, and I don't think they loved her. I don't think anyone loved her. So she had all this genius and resentment and pain, and this is what she decided to do with it."

Jordan scratches his chin. "If she's been in pain like that for all these years, maybe it will be a relief for her to be free of Magni Viri. She could finally let go."

"Maybe," I say, though it's hard to imagine Isabella willingly letting me and her chance at life go. "I'm not sure if a person like her is even capable of finding peace and rest."

"Well, I hope WWG will be at peace once this is all done. I hope we can give him that," Wren says.

Jordan glances at his phone. "Anything from Penny or the others?"

Wren and I both check ours. "Nope," we say in unison.

"Then let's find those journals."

We gaze around at the walls, trying to figure out how to begin. "This place is awfully big for one body," I say. "Do you think someone else could be buried in here too?"

Jordan brandishes the pickax we found in the garden shed, the closest thing to a sledgehammer we could manage. "Only one way to find out."

"Here," I say, pointing at a place near the floor where the stone looks different, the surface uneven, as if it was broken and resealed. "He must have put them here."

Jordan kneels and inspects the place. "Yeah, it was definitely disturbed at some point," he says, running his hand over the stone. He clenches the handle of the pickax, then draws back his arm.

I close my eyes, not wanting to see the old stone crack and crumble.

"Wait!" Wren yells just before Jordan can bring the pickax down on the stone. He nearly drops it as he tries to avoid the wall.

He cocks an eyebrow at Wren. "Are you kidding me right now?"

"Sorry," Wren says, a little breathlessly, "but look." They try to dig their fingernail into a small crack at the base of the angel statue. It's not solid as I suspected. There's clearly a front panel that is wiggling. "I can't quite get it though," Wren says with a frustrated grunt. "Tara, are your nails any longer than mine?" They hold up their hands to show me how their fingernails are bitten down to the quick.

I laugh and show mine, which aren't much better.

"Here," Jordan says, handing Wren his student ID. "Try to wedge that in."

Wren fiddles with the card, angling the corner of it into the loose corner of the statue's base. There's a small grinding of stone on stone, and then the panel falls open, landing on the hard floor of the mausoleum with a satisfying crack.

I shine my flashlight into the space. There's a silver box inside.

"Oh my God," Wren whispers, a hand over their mouth. They seem frozen, unable to touch the box.

I crawl forward and hand Wren my flashlight. Then I reach into the dark space and pull out the box. It's made completely of silver, engraved all around with ivy leaves, a bit tarnished from the damp. It's heavy.

"Open it," Wren says, angling the flashlight to search for clasps.

On the front, two hands grasp each other, forming the clasp. I lift them separately, and the mechanism clicks, opening the box. A faded, water-stained envelope lies on top of the contents, the name Walt inscribed there in Bauer's now-familiar, spiky handwriting.

My hand shakes as I reach for it. The envelope is unsealed, and I pull out a single-page letter. Walt, my love, my life, it begins. My eyes speed down the page, landing on the signature at the bottom.

"It's from Bauer," I say.

"Oh my God," Wren says again.

"Read it, Tara," Jordan says.

"Okay," I say, my voice shaking, tears already pricking my eyes. I clear my throat and read.

Walt, my love, my life,

I had to keep you, my love, I had to keep you. I could not let you pass beyond the veil, beyond my reach. I could not let you go where I was unable to follow. I thought it was love, perfect love. I thought I could hold your beautiful soul within mine, let you nest there, little bird. I thought I could keep you with me.

But like all men, I erred. You are closer than breath, yet as far from me as heaven is from earth. I cannot reach you, cannot commune with you. It is maddening, as if my every arrival coincides with your departure. I go to sleep and you are not here. I wake and you are gone, only your music left behind.

Pure music, your soul's essence, the only thing that has kept me tethered to my own body all these years, the only thing to make my fading life worth living.

But now I grow old and weak. Soon, I will leave this earthly existence and join my Maker. And because I have no genius worth passing on to a new generation, and no desire to continue this shadowed life where I cannot truly be with you, I will share the fate of regular men and die. I will leave you behind. You will have a new body, young and bright and, I hope, worthy of you.

Yet I fear that I have done you a wrong, my love. I fear what might grow from our blood twined together in the earth. I wish I could believe my legacy will remain pure, but already I sense how darkness will bloom. Men care only for money and ego and power. I might have acted once and put an end to all of this, but I was afraid and selfish, and now it is far too late. I do not have the power, and the others would never allow it. I am sorry, my love. I am sorry for all the ways I have failed you.

Forgive me for asking too much of you, for clinging too tightly to that which belongs rightly to God. Forgive me for failing to set things right, though I had the means. When you are released, if ever that day should dawn, find me. Come and find me. I wait for you through decades and centuries, through all the ages of mankind, with unending devotion, with constant hope. But for now, I leave all my knowledge, all my workings, to rest here with you. Because whatever Magni Viri becomes, it was all... all of it, every act and every word, for you alone.

Always,

Your adoring servant,

John Bauer

When I finish, silence falls and settles in the mausoleum. Tears run down my cheeks, and when I look at Wren, I see theirs are wet too.

"They really were in love," Jordan says wonderingly. "All of this was because they loved each other, because they couldn't let go."

"So if we end Magni Viri, if we set WWG free, maybe they'll be together again," Wren says.

"Do they deserve it?" Jordan asks quietly. "After all the harm they've caused?"

"Of course they do," Wren says simply.

"Let's see what else is in here," I say, wiping the tears off my face. I pull the box toward me, half expecting to find a shriveled, blackened human heart inside. Keeping your lover's heart in a box, Mary Shelley style? I would not put it past Bauer. Not for one second.

There is no heart, but there is a knife, wrapped in a piece of leather. It is silver like the box, engraved with ivy leaves. The initials J.B. are on the hilt. I hold it up, letting the golden light fall across it.

"This is the knife that Bauer drove into his lover's heart," I say, caught up in the drama of the moment.

"Jesus," Jordan breathes.

"Are the journals in there?" Wren asks, recalling me to the reason for our quest.

I put the knife back and pull out a stack of six leather journals. I open the one on top and breathe a sigh of relief when I recognize Bauer's handwriting. "They're here. This is what we need. This is everything we need."

Just then, my phone starts to ring. I yank it out, my heart racing. It's Neil. I quickly put him on speaker so the others can hear.

"He's here," Neil says without preamble. "O'Connor's here at Denfeld, and he is pissed. He got here like twenty minutes ago, and he came in screaming for Quigg. Like, roaring through the fucking house, waking everyone up. That was who he suspected first since Quigg had a key to his office. But then Quigg denied everything, and so O'Connor started banging through the house, yelling and knocking on everybody's doors. Laini tried to get him to calm down, to leave the house, but he gathered us all in the sitting room. He said he would expel us all if we didn't say who broke into his office. I've never, ever seen him lose his cool like this."

"Is he still there?" I ask, my heart rate exploding.

"No, but he's looking for you."

"For me?"

"Yeah, you are the obvious next suspect, Tara. You dug up Isabella's grave, for God's sake."

"We dug up Isabella's grave," I remind him.

"Whatever, but it's you he's gunning for. You can't let him find you. Actually, you can't let anybody find you. He set all of Magni Viri on you."

"Well, we got the journals," I say. "They were here. So we just need to read them and find the answers to ending Magni Viri. We can do it tonight if we're able to figure it out."

"That's a big if. And there are a lot of hours until dark. What if O'Connor finds you first?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're worried about me," I say.

"Oh, go fuck yourself," Neil says, but this time, there's something like fondness in his voice.

It's damp and cold in the mausoleum, but we can't go back to Denfeld. We can't even go to the campus library because if a single member of Magni Viri spots me, we're screwed. So instead, we hunker down in Walter Weymouth George's tomb and make ourselves as comfortable as we can—at least, as comfortable as we can without the danger of falling asleep. We can't risk even one of us giving control to their ghost, which means another sleepless day. After a few hours, Penny joins us, and not long after, Neil slips in too, carrying a backpack full of food and bottled water and Penny's meds.

But there's someone missing.

"Where's Azar?" I ask.

"She's out," Neil says, handing me the last bottle of water. "I kept texting her and she wouldn't answer, so I finally called her. She said she didn't want to be a part of this anymore, that it was too much."

"We shouldn't have pushed her to do the séance," Wren says.

Neil shrugs. "This is textbook Azar. She gets overwhelmed and she disappears."

"She did seem really freaked after the séance," I admit.

Neil scowls and doesn't say anything. There's a ball of anxiety in my chest, but I ignore it. Whatever is going on with Azar right now, we can't fix it.

"It's okay. We can do it without her," Penny says. "At least we know she's safe, right?"

I wish Azar were here, but even with just the five of us together, I feel more secure. Penny stretches out on the floor, her head in my lap, to try to rest a little. Sitting watch in the woods for hours took its toll.

If it weren't for Isabella roaring inside my head and my worry for Azar, I'd almost feel peaceful here in WWG's tomb, surrounded by my friends, poring over Bauer's journals. But Isabella is still loud and angry in my mind, surging against my defenses like an invading army. I rub my temple and grimace at the pain she's causing. I'll be lucky if we figure this all out before Isabella kills me like she did Meredith.

Penny blinks up at me. "You okay?"

"Yeah, it's just Isabella," I say. "But don't worry. I'm still in control." I run my fingers over Penny's long soft hair, grounding myself with the touch. "Rest."

Penny smiles and nuzzles her face against my leg. I gaze down at her, and I realize that this is what Isabella was missing. This is what makes me different from her. Isabella had so much talent and genius and drive. But she didn't have the things that make a person feel whole: love and friendship and belonging. Maybe that's why she clings so hard to her writing.

I hope that if we figure out how to break the spell that binds Magni Viri, I won't lose the best thing I've gained from that bond: Penny, Wren, Jordan, Azar, and even Neil. I hope I don't lose my friends. I hope I don't end up on my own again.

Slowly, over the course of the day, we pool together information from Bauer's notes and descriptions of Magni Viri's rituals. The way the candles ought to be arranged, the kind of language to use. Precautions to take for safety.

I have to skim a lot of Bauer's self-recriminating thoughts, trying to weed out his personal angst from the useful information. Despite his growing distaste for everything concerned with Magni Viri, he cannot bring himself to put an end to it because that would mean letting go of WWG. He can't stand the thought of Walter's spirit ceasing to be, yet he is filled with so much self-loathing that he looks forward to his own death. Even the thought of inhabiting a new body as a ghost of Magni Viri repulses him. He considers the possibility of his spirit joining with WWG in new bodies, and it makes him physically ill. Yet he never stops longing for Walter.

Once, on a particularly bleak night, Bauer considers using the knife that ended his beloved's life to end his own. I cover my mouth as I sink into his dark thoughts.

"So we need to use the song from initiation night, right?" Penny asks, interrupting my reading. "If we want to get the ghosts all in one place?"

"Yeah, we guessed correctly about that. In this journal I've got, Bauer talks about how music is the only thing that can truly pierce the veil," Jordan says, tapping the pages. "It can draw the spirits to the living."

"So you were right to hum that song at the séance, Wren," I say. "How did you know to do that?"

Wren shrugs. "I don't know. It just came to me. I think it's one that Walter's mom used to sing to him when he was little. It has the feel of something deeply buried and comforting, you know? You can hear strains of it in several of his compositions."

"So we arrange the candles, we sing the initiation night song. And then what?" Jordan asks. "How do we break the connection? Do we need to use a different song for that?"

Everyone shakes their heads, unsure.

"WWG said that the answers to ending Magni Viri were in these journals. Bauer must have written down how to do it, even if he never intended to follow through," Penny says.

"Let's just keep reading," I say. I skim through my journal faster, and then pick up the final one that no one has looked at yet.

It's the last journal that Bauer wrote. We saved it for last because we didn't want to rush into anything like we did with the séance. But if the answer exists, this is probably where we'll find it. I take a deep breath and start to read.

Halfway through, Bauer stops complaining about his loneliness and disappointment, his disgust at the money-minded benefactors of Magni Viri. Instead, he starts thinking, speculating, weaving new ideas together. I realize he's making a plan, building a new ritual.

He suspects that spirits who have become used to being embodied will fight with every tool at their disposal to avoid losing their hosts. Judging by the way that Isabella still rages inside me, I know he's right. And we'll be up against more than her: two dozen ghosts, many of whom are probably as ruthless as Isabella. We can't afford to get anything wrong if this is going to work—and if we're all going to make it out alive.

I could assault the walls of Magni Viri all day long and the structure would not fall, Bauer writes. But with my silver knife, I could pry up the foundation stone, and with a single breath, crumble the house into ash. If I were a braver, better man, I would.

"Hey, y'all, what do you think this means?" I ask. I read the puzzling sentences aloud. "What is the foundation stone?"

"He means Walter," Jordan says. "He's the heart of Magni Viri, the thing that started it all."

"So that means he's the way to end it too," Penny says. "But how do we ‘pry up the foundation stone'?"

We are quiet again, thinking. "With his silver knife, he could pry up the foundation stone," I murmur to myself. Bauer doesn't say he would smash it. He would pry it up and remove it, letting the house crumble around it.

And he'd use his silver knife, the same one that killed Walter. So maybe it's not about saying the right words or performing things a certain way. Maybe it's about the emotional connection between the two of them. There's a reason he held on to that knife, a reason he left it behind with his letter and journals.

"I think I've got it," I say, the truth landing in my belly with the weight of lead. "I know how to put an end to Magni Viri."