Thirty-Two

We resume the chant, drawing WWG to the surface and laying him bare, holding him captive with his own music. It sounds beautiful inside the mausoleum, eerie and echoing, like we've weaved a spell to hide inside. The banging and shouting from outside seems to fade. But I know those doors won't hold them off forever.

I let go of the others' hands and move to the center of the circle, positioning myself in front of Wren. With a trembling hand, I raise the silver knife to the level of their heart. They open their eyes when the tip of the blade presses into their sweater, fear dilating their pupils until they are black, an endless black like an open, yawning grave.

But is it Wren's fear, or Walter's? Because I see more than fear there. There's longing too. A longing for release.

The words I have to speak now weren't in Bauer's journals. But I can imagine him saying them. I can imagine how he might address the man he loved, formal and tender both. "Walter Weymouth George, beloved founder of Magni Viri, by your blood you created us. With your life, you wove ours together," I whisper. "We honor you and we thank you." I grip the knife more tightly, letting it press harder into Wren's chest, just enough for them to feel it. "This knife once separated your spirit from your body. Remember that it offered you peace, an end to suffering. Remember that it offered you rest. Let it do so again."

A horrible keening wail goes up from the mouths of the hosts outside, and the frenzy outside the mausoleum doors increases. Multiple students must hurl their bodies at the doors at once because there's an enormous thud that shakes the foundations of the mausoleum.

"Keep going," Wren whispers. Or is it Walter?

I raise my voice louder. "We want to dissolve the bonds of Magni Viri—of dead to living, of dead to dead, of living to living. We want to unbind what you have bound, Walter. We want to release what your blood has bound."

Boom. Boom. Boom.The doors creak and groan.

"Go faster, Tara!" Neil yells. He, Azar, and Jordan are doing double duty. They're part of our protective circle but have to keep their backs to the doors too, their feet braced against the floor, helping the pickax hold back the crowd.

"We offer you release, Walter. We offer you rest," I say. "Your work is at an end. Follow this blade into the arms of your beloved."

Tears stream down Wren's cheeks, but I know it's not them crying. It's Walt. I can see the man behind the brilliant music, the man who inspired a love so extreme that his lover could not let him go into the dark. And after so many years of living on in students, Walt has learned to fear nothing except that darkness.

In an echo of the vision WWG showed us during the séance, I cup Wren's cheek and press my lips against theirs, a final kiss from John Bauer to Walter Weymouth George. "Find me, beloved," I whisper, quoting Bauer's letter, "come and find me."

"John," Walt whispers, his eyes filled with longing.

Wren's body goes limp beneath mine, and they slump to the ground, emptied of their ghost.

Walter Weymouth George has passed on.

From outside the doors, O'Connor starts to scream. It's not the angry bellowing of before, but a high-pitched scream of pure terror, the sound of a man about to die.

"Let me in, please let me in!" he weeps. "They're going to kill me!"

In the silence that falls, I can hear his clothes being torn from his body, punches landing on his back. There's a sound like someone slamming his head into the door. O'Connor groans.

I automatically get to my feet, drawn toward his distress.

"No way," Neil says, putting a hand out to stop me. "He deserves this. He's to blame for all of this. He's the reason we have to do this."

"He'll die if we don't let him in!" Penny shouts.

I hesitate.

"Tara, let him in!" Penny says when she sees my indecision.

I run to the doors and push past Neil, wrenching the pickax free. I open one door, grab O'Connor by the front of his suit jacket, and yank him inside. Jordan slams the door closed and returns the ax to its place before the ghosts have even realized what's happened.

But once O'Connor is gone, they start screaming in rage. Inside me, Isabella screams along with them.

Neil and Jordan go back to bracing the door, ready for another onslaught.

O'Connor sinks to the floor, shaking and weeping, his nose bleeding. He curls up into a ball in the corner and glares at us. "What have you done? What have you done?" he yells.

"Don't interrupt us again or we'll throw you back out there," Azar says angrily, pushing at him with her foot before she goes back to guarding the door.

O'Connor raises his hands in surrender.

"WWG is gone. The rest should go easily now," I say. "Let's keep going."

We reshape our circle, leaving O'Connor to cower in his corner. The others sing, but I speak directly to the ghosts now.

"Ghosts of Magni Viri, those who were bound by the spilled blood of Walter Weymouth George, those who were given refuge by willing vessels: That time is no more. Your foundation stone has crumbled. You have no claim. Let go of your hosts. Return to your own element," I intone. "You are barred from our bodies, from our minds, from our spirits. You are no longer welcome to share in our being. Magni Viri is at an end. Release us! Release us!" I yell. "Release us and be free!"

Outside, the ghosts scream in agony and fear. Inside me, Isabella writhes and reaches for my mind, clawing for a handhold. "Release me!" I whisper fiercely to her alone. "There's no more Magni Viri to bind us together. There's nothing here for you."

A final memory floods me, not of Isabella fighting with her grandfather, not of Isabella dying in a circle of candles. Instead, it's Isabella walking the grounds of Denfeld, gazing down into the cemetery, knowing it's where her remains will lie forever, knowing that she will never be moved from this place. Finally, she is home.

She screams and claws at the edges of my mind as her power fades. Even now at the end, she clings to the dream of Magni Viri. But she's growing weaker, diminishing. Sheer force of will can't stand against the undoing of Magni Viri, not when its bonds dissolve around us like dust.

I feel the moment she finally lets go. It's like a ten-pound pack is removed from my shoulders, and I slump forward without the weight, hands pressed to the cold stone floor. She's gone. She's gone. My body is my own again.

And then the cries outside trickle into silence. The fists that beat on the doors go quiet. Soon, our classmates' voices can be heard, asking each other what is happening. A few people weep, overwhelmed by the force of the ritual, by the way their ghosts have been torn away.

I look around at my friends, and I can see they've been released too. Everyone looks lighter, their faces clearer.

"No!" O'Connor screams into the quiet, leaping to his feet. "No! We cannot lose these minds! We cannot lose them!"

"Spirits, come to me!" he bellows, a fanatic desperation in his eyes. "I offer you my body, my blood. I will be your vessel, not these ungrateful children. Bind yourself to me!"

"No!" I yell, horrified. I try to grab his arm. If a single ghost can do to me what Isabella did, I don't want to imagine what an entire graveyard of them could do to one person.

O'Connor pushes me away as if I'm an irritating pet. He grabs Bauer's silver knife from the ground. With a cry of pain or triumph, he drags the blade across the soft skin of his inner arm. A line of blood opens up and wells, dripping down his arm onto the floor as we look on, frozen in horror. He switches hands and draws a line down his other arm too. Blood pools on the floor beneath him.

"Spirits, I welcome you!" O'Connor cries, lifting his open hands to the heavens. "I welcome you! I, Theodore O'Connor, offer myself to you. Come in, come in!" He laughs, the sound high and wild, echoing through the close confines of the mausoleum. "Come in and—"

His words are cut short by a choking sound. We all have our flashlights on now, watching him. His eyes widen, pupils growing huge. His expression turns confused, and then bewildered. He puts his hands to his head as if it hurts. He grips his hair and squeezes, his expression contorted with pain, fear, and—unmistakably—wonder.

I feel a single, strange moment of jealousy, that he would get to experience all those minds, see the world from two dozen different perspectives, how the entire universe must have come alive to him, glowing and full of possibility.

But then he starts to scream. His body is thrown to the floor and begins to roll and thrash and twitch. All the while he grips his head, screaming in agony.

"What's going on in there?" someone yells from outside. I think it's Quigg. He sounds like himself again. And he must be—his ghost is gone, same as everyone else's. Gone into O'Connor.

I rush to open the mausoleum doors, and the students surge inside. "What's wrong with him?" Quigg demands, going to O'Connor, staring down at him, though not with any warmth. The other students crowd in, trying to see.

"Ruptured brain aneurysm, I'd bet," Neil says without a trace of pity in his voice. He crosses his arms over his chest.

I feel a pang for Meredith, that she died before this could happen, that she had to die for this to happen at all. But maybe knowing Magni Viri is gone, that Isabella can't hurt anyone else—maybe that will give her soul peace.

O'Connor's screams cut off abruptly, and his hands fall to the floor. His open eyes stare at the black ceiling of the mausoleum. He's dead. Devoured by the ghosts.

The ghosts pour out of him. I can feel their cold breath all around us. The other students must too because they start trying to get out. They push and shove to make a way through. Besides my friends and me, Quigg is the only one who stays. He seems puzzled and tired and like he's itching for a drink. He looks between the six of us, a question in his eyes.

"It's... over?" he asks.

I nod.

Quigg puts his hands over his eyes and his shoulders tremble like he's struck with grief, but then he lets out a loud, disbelieving laugh. "Jesus Christ," he says. "I'm finally free of the bastard."

As he leaves the mausoleum, I realize I'm not sure whether he means his ghost or O'Connor. Either way, he doesn't look back.

"It's over, everybody!" he yells into the night. "It's finally fucking over!"

The ghosts reach for the remaining six of us, trying to find a porous place they can slip inside. But there's nowhere for them to go. Magni Viri doesn't exist. The bridges between their world and ours have been burned. They're on their own.

And so are we.

For the first time in weeks, my body belongs only to me. My mind doesn't have to share space with Isabella. I'm just Tara Boone again.

Underneath the exhaustion and the horror, I feel a flare of pride. A growing sense of my own power. I survived her. I defeated her.

I step out of the mausoleum and into the cold, biting night air, the others following slowly behind me. The older members of Magni Viri mill around, talking in low voices. Many of them shoot looks at me I can't read. Maybe they're angry I took their ghosts from them. Or maybe they're relieved. Maybe they haven't even realized the enormity of what we've done.

I look up at the sky, and though it's still covered in clouds, a few stars shine in between them. They are bright and sharp, and I shiver looking at them.

I'm alive.

My life is my own, and for the first time in a long, long time, I feel worthy of it. I don't need Isabella's genius. I don't want it. I have my own thoughts, my own words, my own self.

My friends come outside too and gather around me. Jordan throws an arm over my shoulder, and Penny puts her hand in mine. We all look at each other.

Wren shakes their head, looking a little lost. "It was a beautiful idea, wasn't it?" they say, tears in their eyes. "Magni Viri?"

Azar wraps an arm around their waist. "Yeah, it was," she says.

Neil stares off into the distance, and I see him wipe tears from his face too. I wonder if they're for Meredith or for himself.

"What's going to happen now?" Penny asks. "Will the board try to replace O'Connor? Will they try to fix what we broke? Will they end the program?"

We all shake our heads. It's too soon for questions like this. No one knows what happens next.

"We can fight to keep it together," I say. "It won't be the same as before, without... I mean, it'll be different. No ghosts. No cosmic pact. But we'll still be friends. We'll still be together."

"Of course we will," Jordan says. "We don't need Magni Viri for that."

As I huddle close to my friends in the cold air, waiting for whatever comes next, I realize that they're the reason I survived Isabella. I could never be smarter or stronger than her. But I was wiser in one way. And it's the reason I'm standing here. It's the reason I'm free.

She and I both got a shitty deal, family wise. That's one thing we have in common. Isabella built an entire life out of resentment of her roots. She spent her entire life trying to be worthy of the family that rejected her, trying to prove they were wrong not to love her. She spent her afterlife on it too.

But me? I'm going to spend every moment I have creating a life that's worthy of me. And that means finding a new family, one that will love me and sacrifice for me, that will always have my back.

As I look around at my friends, I know it doesn't matter that we're no longer bound by vows and blood and spirits. We're still together, we're still here, and that means we can take the dark and beautiful ruins of Magni Viri and build something new.