The Ravens

by Kass Morgan

  There was a couch with some pieces of stuffing falling out. A boxy TV that looked like it’d been salvaged from the year 1998. A threadbare rug and a shelf with nothing on it but a few Philip Pullman books.

  She headed farther into the apartment on tiptoe. She found a small bathroom with a tight shower and dollar-store shampoo. A bedroom with a twin bed, unmade, and an Ikea dresser with half the drawers open, black clothes hanging out of them.

  Nothing. Not only were there no signs of wicked magic; there were no signs of magic, period. No candles, herbs, incense. Not even any protective crystals.

  Scarlett spotted a book on the nightstand, the spine cracked from overreading: How to Combat Loneliness. Beside it stood a single photograph in a cheap frame: Gwen dressed in a graduation gown standing with an older couple, presumably her parents but possibly her grandparents. They had their arms around her, and all three were smiling for the camera.

  Scarlett hadn’t seen Gwen smile like that since before the incident.

  Feeling a pang of guilt, Scarlett turned and was about to leave the bedroom when her gaze fell on another photo. This one wasn’t in a frame, just tucked into the edge of a mirror, creased and wrinkled with time. But the faces were instantly recognizable. Gwen, laughing. And beside her, with an arm wrapped around her neck in a hug . . .

  Harper.

  Scarlett tore her gaze away and headed back into the living room. She dumped her purse on the floor and dug through it until she found the ingredients she needed. Her onyx bowl went in the center of Gwen’s shredded rug. Then, with a grimace, she took out the small zip-lock bag that held the item she’d acquired at Cauldron and Candlesticks. “I’m sorry, Minnie, I have to,” she whispered in the near dark.

  Bile surged in the back of her throat when she opened the bag. The smell of formaldehyde mixed with blood filled her nostrils. The smell alone made her eyes water and burn. But in magic, like called to like. To detect wicked magic, you needed to dabble in it yourself. Scarlett held her breath and upended the contents of the bag into her scrying bowl. It landed with a horrible squelch.

  She lowered her hands over the bowl, as close as she dared. Then she shut her eyes. Concentrated. Magic gathered and sparked in the air. The lights flickered on and off, over and over. Wind rattled the windows.

  “Heart of wickedness, heed my command,” Scarlett whispered, hardly daring to say the words any louder. She’d never done anything like this before. Her mother would flay her alive if she found out. She forced the anxious thoughts from her mind. She needed to concentrate. To focus on the spell. “Blood to blood, like to like, let any wicked magic be revealed to my sight.”

  Silence. A beat. And then, just as she started to wonder if she’d said the words wrong . . . thud. Thud, thud.

  She cracked open an eye, her own heart racing. In the scrying bowl, the preserved rabbit’s heart she’d purchased had begun to beat. Thud, thud. Thud, thud. She watched, horrified, as viscous blood leaked from it, filling her scrying bowl.

  Quickly, she extended her hand and let Gwen’s silver ring drop into the bowl. It landed on top of the thick liquid, then slowly sank beneath the surface, like it was being swallowed up. Her stomach roiling with nausea, Scarlett closed her eyes again, repeating the chant. “Let any wicked magic be revealed to my sight.” Her voice grew stronger with every repetition, steadier. The pulse of the heart in the bowl kept up, getting faster, faster. Thud-thud. Thud-thud-thud.

  Finally, when she felt the energy crackling, aching for release, her eyes snapped open once more. “Show me,” she commanded in a voice deeper and huskier than her own.

  The blood that now filled the bowl shimmered and shifted. While Scarlett watched, an image resolved in the muck. Gwen’s face—not as she’d looked in those smiling photos in her bedroom, but as she’d appeared when Scarlett last saw her. Thin and wan, her hair and skin a mess.

  The spell should reveal any ill intent, any proof Gwen had dabbled in the kind of wicked magic she’d shown an interest in as a freshman. But her face in the bowl remained unchanged. After a moment, a faint yellow glow suffused her image. It spread until the whole scrying bowl glowed with golden light, so bright Scarlett couldn’t even see the heart at its center anymore.

  She glanced around the room. Nothing. No smoky clouds, no apparitions lurking in the corners. No signs of any magic at all. Just that steady yellow shine.

  Gwen hadn’t used wicked magic. She hadn’t cursed anybody. If the contents of her apartment were any indication, she didn’t have any powers whatsoever.

  Scarlett sat back on her heels, unsure whether to be relieved or upset. That was when she heard the distant bang of the screen door out front. “Shit.” Scarlett scrambled to her feet and grabbed the plastic bag she’d brought the heart in. She dumped the entire scrying bowl straight into it, nose wrinkled. She’d have to dispose of the contents somewhere along the walk home. No time to do it now.

  Holding the bag of spent magic and her purse, Scarlett hurried to the apartment door and paused, one ear pressed to the wood, listening. No footsteps or sounds from the other side. It must have been a neighbor. Taking a deep breath, she eased the door open, turned the lock, and pulled the door shut behind her. She stepped lightly down the stairs and slipped out the screen door, careful to slow down the door so it wouldn’t bang shut.

  Someone right behind her said, “What are you doing here?”

  Scarlett nearly leaped out of her skin. She whirled to find Jackson leaning against the brick wall beside the entryway. Shit. Why was he everywhere all of a sudden? It took her speeding pulse a moment to settle. When it did, she narrowed her eyes. “Me? What are you doing here? Following me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I know this may come as a shock, but not everything is about you, Scarlett.”

  “Do you live here?” Scarlett forced as much derision into her voice as possible.

  He grinned. “Why, were you looking for me?”

  She made a point of eyeing him up and down, maintaining her best poker face all the while. He wore ripped jeans and a faded blue T-shirt. She paused a second too long on the rich brown skin that peeked through the purposeful tear above his knee. When she looked up, Jackson ran a hand over his close-cropped fade, and she found herself staring into his brown eyes, which popped with mischief above his enviable cheekbones. She had to admit he wasn’t bad-looking—not that she was remotely interested. She had Mason. “Hardly,” she said, head held high. “I was trying to find Gwen.”

  “She’s not home right now.”

  “You seeing her or something?” Scarlett lifted her eyebrows.

  Jackson tilted his head, that infuriating smirk growing wider. “Jealous?” Her glare must have been answer enough. Jackson’s smile faded a little. “Gwen and I have someone we care about in common. Maybe you’d remember.” Jackson moved closer, and Scarlett caught the faint scent of his cologne. Something woodsy and sharp.

  She took a step backwards. “Who, some other jilted lover?”

  Jackson’s eyes narrowed; any trace of amusement was gone from his expression now. “My stepsister, actually. Harper Wilson.”

  Scarlett’s breath caught in her throat. Oh, shit.

  Jackson must have read the thought on her face. “Yeah. That’s right.” He crossed his arms, jaw set hard. “She was a Kappa. And two years ago, you and your sisters killed her.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vivi

  Vivi was enjoying all her classes so far, but to her surprise, her favorite was art history. Growing up, she hadn’t felt a particular affinity for art. It had been years since she’d lived in a city with major museums or galleries, and people gushing over the hidden symbols in wobbly blobs of smeared paint reminded her of Daphne’s clients grasping for meaning amid the cruelty and randomness of the world.

  But sitting in the art history hall on the ground floor of a converted nineteenth-century church, Vivi couldn’t help but feel a sense of wonder as she watched Professor Barnum flip through sli
des that demonstrated Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro. Studying magic had changed the way she thought about pretty much everything. The world was much less random than she’d believed; there were invisible forces at work and hidden meanings everywhere if you looked, and art was a reflection of that.

  Yet despite Vivi’s newfound appreciation, her assignments for Kappa took priority over her reading for class, and she knew she was woefully unprepared for today’s art history lecture, which was an especially big problem, given Professor Barnum’s slightly sadistic tendency to call on freshmen. Tiffany had asked for her help with a glamour for the Homecoming Ball that weekend, and last night she’d stayed up until almost four a.m. to finish an assignment from Scarlett: writing out spells to make a heavy object light as a feather, to summon a rainstorm, and one to make someone’s toenails fall out. She fantasized about using that one on Zoe the next time her roommate invited friends over for a nightcap at two in the morning.

  It was all wonderfully weird and fascinating, of course, but part of Vivi wished the sisters could spend a little less time on toenails and a little more time on the strange things that’d been happening at Kappa House lately. Vivi was only a freshman, but even she could tell that something wasn’t right. Her encounter with Gwen on the quad the other day had left her almost as shaken as when she heard about the burning scarecrows, but Scarlett seemed unwilling to discuss any of it.

  “Vivian, would you care to answer?”

  Startled, she sat up in her seat to find Professor Barnum standing in front of her, looking characteristically antagonistic. He was a brilliant lecturer but not known for being sympathetic. Rumor had it that he’d once failed a student who’d missed a midterm because of emergency surgery.

  Next to her, Sonali stared at Vivi wide-eyed, as if trying to communicate something.

  “I’m sorry.” Vivi looked at the slide on the screen. It was a dramatic oil painting of a boy wearing only a sheet and holding out a glass of wine. “Can you repeat the question?” she asked, stalling for time.

  “I asked why Bacchus was such a popular figure among sixteenth-century patrons. Perhaps, though, the question shouldn’t be relegated to such a historical context, given your own wan appearance and lack of interest in my lecture. I might recommend laying off the late-night Greek life activities and focusing on the real reason you’re here: academics.”

  Vivi felt her face turn bright red. A few people in the back of the class snickered until the professor turned a narrowed glare on them, too.

  Then, like a lifeline, Sonali’s voice sounded in her mind. Patrons often commissioned portraits of Bacchus to reflect their own wealth and success.

  Without stopping to wonder what spell Sonali had just used, Vivi shot her a grateful look, then turned back to Professor Barnum. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you at first,” she said, then repeated Sonali’s answer. She was about to sit back in her seat when Sonali sent her another thought, so she continued speaking. “This particular portrait, which was commissioned by Cardinal del Monte, also alluded to both Caravaggio’s and the patron’s surmised sexuality. It contains pagan undertones recast in Christian symbolism.”

  The professor stared at Vivi for a moment, then nodded. “Very good. Now, as a counterpoint, let’s talk about Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne . . .” He moved on.

  Thanks, Vivi mouthed to Sonali with a grin, making a mental note to ask her to teach her that spell.

  Anytime.

  Warmth flooded Vivi’s chest, but for once, the heat had nothing to do with embarrassment. Sonali hadn’t hesitated a second before coming to Vivi’s rescue. For most of her life, Vivi had been hard-pressed to find people she thought of as real friends, and now she had a whole house of them. Better than friends, in fact. Sisters.

  He needs a bacchanalia of his own, Sonali thought at her. Maybe then he’d relax a little.

  A mischievous, un-Vivi-like idea took shape in her head. She opened a new Word document on her laptop and typed: Maybe we should help him with that, then tilted her screen toward Sonali.

  Sonali’s lips curled into a smirk. Hell yes.

  Vivi glanced at the other people in their row to make sure no one was looking, then closed her eyes and whispered the illusion spell she’d been practicing, keeping her words hidden beneath Professor Barnum’s booming voice.

  A moment later, the slide on the wall glamoured into a nude portrait of none other than Professor Barnum himself, sipping wine on the edge of a hot tub with a strategically placed towel over his lap. A couple of people gasped. Barnum whirled around to look at the screen and turned a fiery red. He cursed and grabbed his laptop, frantically clicking through slides, but the glamoured photograph stayed stubbornly on the screen.

  Vivi and Sonali traded delighted grins as muffled, shocked laughter filled the room.

  “We’re clearly having some technical difficulties. Class is dismissed for today,” Barnum said, then muttered about IT tampering with his computer and about filing a complaint with the administration.

  Vivi managed to contain herself until they’d fled the classroom, then she and Sonali fell into each other, laughing so hard, they both began to cry.

  “That was amazing,” Sonali said, wiping her eyes.

  “You were amazing,” Vivi told her. Her phone buzzed in her bag. She pulled it out, and her giddiness evaporated at the sight of the text on her screen. I need to talk to you immediately. Meet me in the woods in back of Kappa House. Leave now.

  Vivi felt her stomach drop into the rich brown ankle boots she’d glamoured that morning to mask her Converse. Whatever this was about, it didn’t sound good. She glanced over to see Sonali staring perplexedly at her own phone. “Did you get one too?” Vivi showed her the message.

  Sonali nodded. “Just now, from Mei.” Her forehead pinched with worry. “You don’t think they know about . . .” She glanced pointedly over her shoulder at the classroom.

  “I don’t know . . .” Vivi trailed off as a new wave of panic rose up within her. Using their magic out in the open like that had been risky, especially since they weren’t full-fledged sisters yet. Maybe their Bigs had some way to monitor them to ensure they didn’t use their magic inappropriately.

  Vivi wasn’t actually sure how the process of failing a pledge worked. Was there an official ceremony where everyone gathered? Or could Scarlett summon Vivi at any time to tell her she hadn’t made the cut? What else could I need to talk to you immediately mean besides “I have bad news for you”? And then what would happen? Would Scarlett wipe her memory so that the best weeks of Vivi’s life became nothing more than a strange twinge in the back of her mind? For the first time, she had friends; she had purpose. Was she about to lose it all?

  “We’d better go,” Vivi said with a sigh. “Whatever they want, we’ll only make it worse if we’re late.”

  * * *

  The sun was setting by the time Vivi and Sonali reached Kappa House. Instead of going inside, they walked around and headed for the thick glade of trees that grew beyond the back garden. The temperature had dropped suddenly, and Vivi rubbed her arms, wishing she could grab a sweater before stepping into the shadowy gloom.

  “Do you think we should wait here?” Sonali asked. They’d spent most of the walk from campus in silence, too preoccupied by their own worries to speak.

  “They told us to meet them in the woods, so I guess we should keep walking?”

  Wordlessly, they stepped into the forest. It was like entering another world—the tangle of thick tree branches blocked most of the setting sun, though every now and then, they’d pass a pool of light on the mossy ground.

  “I think we should go that way,” Sonali said, pointing to the right.

  “How do you know?”

  Sonali laughed and nodded at a flowering vine with pink blossoms growing in a peculiar pattern that formed the words Initiates, this way. The end of the vine had been transformed into an arrow. Despite her nerves, Vivi laughed too. The Ravens could be infuriatingly cryptic,
but they certainly did everything with style.

  She and Sonali walked on until the trees began to thin out, revealing patches of indigo sky above them. Up ahead, they could hear the murmur of quiet voices; they followed the sound until they stepped into a small clearing. The entire sorority was there, all of them dressed in black robes except for Dahlia, who was in blood red. They were standing in a large circle, and as Vivi and Sonali approached, the circle opened to let them inside, where the other pledges were waiting. Ariana was looking around with wide eyes, while Bailey had gone still and rigid, though her darting eyes betrayed her anxiety. Even Reagan, who usually maintained an air of ironic detachment, was fidgeting nervously.

  Without saying a word, the pledges’ Bigs stepped forward and approached their Littles. Scarlett’s face was unreadable as she came up to Vivi and draped a black robe around her shoulders, then placed a garland of white flowers on her head. The other Bigs did the same, although with different colored garlands, then returned to their spots in the circle.

  Dahlia, who’d been standing next to a large pile of wood, stepped into the center of the gathering. “It’s time, witches. Welcome, Vivi, Bailey, Reagan, Ariana, and Sonali. You’ve entered the woods as pledges, but you’ll leave it as sisters. This is your initiation to Kappa. Now, please, take your rightful places in the circle.”

  Despite the solemnity of the setting, Vivi couldn’t keep an enormous grin from spreading across her face. Next to her, Sonali let out a long sigh and muttered, “Thank God,” while Ariana squealed and clapped her hands.

  “So, just to confirm,” Bailey said slowly. “This means . . .”

  Dahlia laughed. “Yes, you made it. All of you did. You’re here to become full sisters.”

  It took all of Vivi’s self-control not to skip as she joined the circle, which had widened to make room for the new sisters. She’d done it. For the first time in her life, something she’d dreamed about had actually come true. Nothing would ever be the same again. She was a witch with magical powers, and, even better, she was a Raven.