The next morning, the group sat silently in the living room, coffee untouched, the mood heavy. News of DeShawn’s death had barely made the local paper—a three-sentence blurb buried between traffic reports and barbecue festival updates. No leads. No suspects. No real investigation.


Zariah tapped the edge of the photo Keenan had shown them. “Why would someone come back now, after all these years?”


“Because the city’s celebrating freedom,” Marcus said. “And we’re all descendants of people who were silenced. What if this killer—or whoever’s behind this—thinks it’s time to finish what was started?”


Tamika sat up straighter, arms folded. “Hold up. Y’all talking like we in a horror movie. Like this is some kind of legacy curse. That’s cute until somebody starts chasing us with a knife. This is real life.”


“Exactly,” Zariah said. “Which is why we need answers.”


Keenan stood. “Then we start where it all began.”


They arrived at Club Euphoria around noon. Once a hub for revolutionary jazz, now it was a decaying husk on the edge of South Beale. Windows boarded. Doors chained. A “FOR SALE” sign hung askew. Keenan’s father had once owned a piece of it before mysteriously signing it away in 1980.


Marcus climbed in through a broken side window. “Come on. I’ll cover the entrance.”


Inside, the air was thick with dust and memory. Old vinyl records still lined the back wall. A collapsed piano lay in one corner, its keys yellowed and cracked. And above the stage hung a brass horn—darkened by time, but unmistakably a trumpet.


Tamika pointed. “Is that… blood?”


Near the stage, Zariah knelt beside a strange stain on the floorboards. Dried, dark, and too old to be recent. But there was something else—etched into the floor in shallow carvings: a spiral symbol, wrapped in music notes.


Marcus took a picture. “This was a ritual.”


“Or a warning,” Keenan muttered. “My father told me this place was used for more than just music. Meetings, plans, movements. When they started getting targeted, some of the musicians believed music could protect them.”


Zariah turned to him. “Like a spell?”


Keenan nodded. “They thought the right combination of notes could mask people, confuse enemies—even trap evil.”


“Trap it?” Tamika asked. “Like here?”


Suddenly, a loud clang echoed from above.


They froze.


“Something’s upstairs,” Marcus whispered.


Zariah moved toward the stairwell, her breath tight. Each creak beneath her feet felt like a countdown. At the top, the door to the manager’s office hung open. She pushed it gently.


Inside, the room was empty—except for one thing: a single photo pinned to the corkboard.


It was of them.


Zariah. Marcus. Tamika. Keenan.


Taken the day before, during the block party.


The caption scrawled beneath in red ink: “Next Verse.”