Scarlett forced down the memory of Gwen’s glazed eyes, her sagging mouth. All she could think about was Tiffany. She can’t be dead; she can’t. Scarlett couldn’t imagine finding her best friend in that same state, lifeless and empty.
Jackson touched Scarlett’s shoulder gently. She startled. She hadn’t noticed him coming around to her side of the car. “Why don’t I drive?” he asked, and she handed him the keys, too tired to argue. “You can stay at my place if you need to.” She shot him a look as she circled to the passenger side and got in the car. He misunderstood it. “Not like that. I mean, you can have the bed. I’ll take the couch,” he said, looking a little embarrassed.
She looked at him a beat. She hadn’t imagined it; he felt it too. In the middle of all this awfulness, something had shifted between them. Seeing Jackson Carter flustered by her was something Scarlett couldn’t have imagined before tonight. And even though she felt completely scraped raw inside, his sheepish smile broke her despair for a split second before it descended around her again.
“Jackson, I appreciate the offer . . . but I need to be with my sisters tonight.”
She needed to tell them what had happened. They needed to figure out a new plan. If Gwen was dead, then either she had been the kidnapper and she’d killed Tiffany before she . . . Before she what, Scarlett? Cursed herself to death?
There could be no mistaking the billowing clouds of smoke or the lack of marks anywhere on Gwen’s body despite the sea of blood around her. Someone had done that to her. Somebody cursed her.
Which meant Gwen likely wasn’t the kidnapper. Which left the Ravens back at square one.
Who is doing this?
Scarlett racked her brain for the answer. It was someone with power. Another witch. Maybe one of the girls they’d turned down for Kappa had somehow gotten her memories back. Maybe it was a witch who never even pledged. But why would anyone target the Ravens? Gwen had been the only person alive with a motive to hurt them, and now she was dead. Scarlett and Tiffany had joked about girls dying to get into Kappa, but she’d never imagined anyone killing for it. It just didn’t make any sense.
Scarlett needed the full force of the Ravens to help her. Together, maybe they could try another scrying spell, like they’d done the morning after Tiffany went missing. Something, anything.
She looked at the sky. Searched for the moon that, just like Tiffany, she knew was there but couldn’t see. She missed Tiffany so much, it physically hurt. She’d always felt so connected to her friend; sometimes they barely even needed words to communicate. But their connection had gone silent, as if severed by a magical wall. If only she could talk to her. If only Tiffany could tell her where she was.
She jolted straight up in her seat, an idea taking form in her mind. Maybe she could ask Tiffany . . .
“Are you sure you’ll be safe there?” Jackson asked, interrupting her thoughts. “I mean . . . if whoever did this is targeting witches . . .”
She cut him a sharp glare. She felt a flash of impatience even though she knew he meant well. Jackson had an irritating way of always pointing out the truth. “So I’m just supposed to slink off to safety and let them hurt another of my sisters instead of me—is that your suggestion?”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe you should all leave that house. Go somewhere safe, like your parents’ or—”
“Not until I find Tiffany.” Scarlett clenched her fists so hard her nails dug into her palms, although she didn’t notice until Jackson reached over to touch the back of her knuckles. She forced herself to relax.
One look at his face told her he wanted to argue. But after a few beats of silence, he nodded and started the car.
“Trust me, Jackson. I can handle myself. Whoever is doing this messed with the wrong witch.”
* * *
When they reached Kappa, the house had gone dark for the night. She felt a pang of guilt for leaving Jackson alone with the new knowledge of how big and strange the world was—not to mention what kinds of monsters it contained. But she had to be with her sisters right now.
And honestly? Jackson would be safer far away from her.
Scarlett unlocked the front door and held her breath as she crossed the threshold. It sounded quiet. Too quiet for a house of girls in full-blown crisis mode. Her heart started to hammer in her chest, and in her mind’s eye, she kept seeing Gwen again.
What if the killer had come here next?
Quietly, Scarlett eased the door shut behind her and started up the hallway, holding her breath. The creaky old floorboards sounded creakier than ever. Every step she took felt like she was announcing her presence, shouting, Come and get me.
She reached the main sitting room, which stood dark and silent, and squinted at the staircase. A single light burned at the top of the stairs.
“Scarlett?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin. She whipped around to find Mei behind her, frowning, arms crossed. “Where is everyone?” Scarlett asked, her voice overloud in the silence.
Mei’s frown deepened, as if Scarlett were the one acting weird. “Sleeping. Or trying to, anyway. Though I think Sonali and a couple other sisters are still up on the top floor digging through the old files.”
“What about Dahlia? I need to talk to her.”
“She’s preparing a new spell and had to run out to grab a final ingredient.”
Scarlett fought the urge to curse. Dahlia truly believed that if they gathered enough magical objects and held hands and chanted, they would survive this. Then she thought about her phone and the missed call from Vivi. “What about Vivi?”
“She took off earlier. Something about her mother.” Mei hesitated and then reached out to touch Scarlett’s forearm lightly. “Hey, for what it’s worth, I think Vivi was way out of line with Mason.”
“Thanks.” Scarlett nodded. While she felt a rush of pain at the mention of Mason and Vivi together, this time it was coupled with a surge of gratitude toward Mei for being on her side, especially since she knew how much Mei liked Vivi, if for no other reason than being an incredible Before in her inevitable makeover. But it should have been Tiffany who was offering to hex Vivi into oblivion, not Mei.
“Are you okay?” Mei asked. “Maybe you should get some rest. You look beat.”
“I can’t.” Scarlett took a deep breath and held it for a second, hoping it would steady her racing pulse. “Mei . . . Gwen is dead. I just found her body. It looked like she’d been cursed.”
Mei’s eyebrows shot so high they disappeared under her razor-straight bangs. Scarlett watched as her pretty face went through a strong cycle of emotions: Denial. Acceptance. What-the-effness. “Oh, man . . . she was evil, but still . . . that’s awful. But then she couldn’t have—”
“Kidnapped Tiffany? No. Doesn’t look like it.” Scarlett crossed her arms. “I have an idea for how we can find her. But I need everyone’s help.”
Mei hesitated, her gaze drifting past Scarlett toward the front door, but only for a moment. “Dahlia isn’t here.”
“If she were, though, I’m sure she’d agree with me. Wake the Kappas. Have every witch meet me in the greenhouse. Now.”
* * *
“What’s going on?” Juliet squinted blearily around the greenhouse, clutching Jess’s hand. In the dark, with only half the taper candles lit, the trees threw gloomy shadows across the girls’ sleep-deprived faces.
Scarlett had never led the sorority in a spell like this before. She felt the weight of it like a physical presence. Help me, Minnie, she thought, looking at her sisters. She hoped they were up to the task.
“Sisters, I need your help. Tiffany needs your help. But I can’t command it. I am asking for it. Anyone who’s not up to it can leave now.”
Scarlett looked at her sisters, all in various states of undress. None of them budged.
“All right, then. This is higher-level magic. I need all your focus. We’re casting a new spell to find Tiffany. Reagan, can you give us some light?” Scarlett gestured
toward the candle in the center of the floor. Reagan stepped over to touch the wax base. A few heartbeats later, a flame flickered to life on the tip of the wick. Scarlett flashed the girl a grateful look and left her to light the remaining tapers.
“Should we wait for Dahlia and Vivi?” Jess asked, reaching for her cell as Scarlett stepped back into the circle of Ravens. “Do we need their power too?”
“We don’t have time. Dahlia wants to find Tiffany just as much as we do.” Scarlett crossed her arms and studied the girls ringed around her, one by one.
“In Kappa,” Scarlett said, “we put our sisters first. And right now, one of our sisters is out there in grave danger. If we can help, we have a duty to try. Are you still with me?”
For a moment, her voice echoed in the greenhouse space. Then Mei stepped forward, eyes locked on Scarlett’s. “I trust you,” she said.
Etta bowed her head next. “Me too.”
Around the circle it went, some people just nodding, others assuring her in words that they were on board. By the end, even Juliet, after flicking a glance at Jess, offered a gruff nod of her own. Jess twined her fingers through Juliet’s and squeezed once.
“Earlier, I was looking at the sky,” Scarlett said, “and I was thinking that even though we can’t see the moon tonight, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It still exists; it’s just a shadow of itself.” A few girls nodded. A slow smile spread over Etta’s face; she clearly understood where Scarlett was going with this. “When something disappears, it doesn’t just fall off the face of the earth. It has a history. It leaves a trace. A shadow.”
When Scarlett was younger, Minnie had spoken often of old magic, of the ways things were before witchcraft was formalized into grimoires and covens and written spells. Spells helped focus the magic, but that narrowed focus meant you lost something—the feeling behind it, the desires that couldn’t be put into words. Everything in this world had an energy, an essential essence, and people left behind a little bit of themselves in everything they touched. Whoever had taken Tiffany had blocked every one of the Ravens’ commonly used spells to locate her physical body, but maybe the kidnapper hadn’t thought to block spells searching for her energy, that metaphysical, unnameable thing that made Tiffany Tiffany. In fact, Scarlett was betting on it.
She opened the bag in her hand and spread the items out on the floor. A pair of leather ankle boots. A tweed skirt. A cream silk shirt. And an emerald-cut ruby pendant she’d taken from Tiffany’s nightstand. It had been one of her favorite necklaces. It is one of her favorite necklaces, Scarlett corrected herself.
She arranged everything into the shape of a girl on the floor, the way Minnie used to lay out her outfits for her when she was a child, and then poured smoky black salt around the perimeter for protection and strength.
“Tonight, we seek our lost sister,” she said, her voice lifting. She felt a chill along her arms, the whisper of wind, despite the enclosed greenhouse. “By Cups, we call her.” The Cups witches echoed Scarlett’s cry. “By Wands, we call her.” The Wands witches followed, the freshmen looking to the older girls for guidance. “By Pentacles, we call her.” And finally, Tiffany’s suit. “By Swords, we call her.” Scarlett felt the rush of magic around her as her sisters called upon their power.
“Ravens, lend me your strength,” Scarlett commanded. It hit her with the force of a lightning bolt, power from all sides, of every suit, flowing through her. She had to grit her teeth just to stay grounded enough to speak again. “Reveal the shadow, show the path,” Scarlett recited. “Show us what is missing at last.”
The others joined in. At least, she thought they did. With the magic rushing through her veins, Scarlett could hardly focus on anything except the feel of Juliet’s and Etta’s hands in her own. She willed the magic to show her. Willed it to lead her to Tiffany.
“Reveal the shadow, show the path. Show us what is missing at last.”
The clothes on the floor rustled, moving as if in that same eerie wind. They started to sway back and forth, then expand, almost as if they were making room for a body. What looked like black smoke began pouring into the room, tendrils filtering in from the cracks in the floor, seeping in through the windows, whispering through the plants. It swirled around the sisters, licking at their ankles, curling up their legs.
“Reveal the shadow, show the path,” Scarlett whispered. “Show us what is missing at last.” The necklace shuddered on the floor. The smoke started whipping, suddenly becoming so dense that Scarlett couldn’t see the clothes on the ground, couldn’t see the faces of her sisters across the circle. It turned acrid, choking her, just like it had at Gwen’s apartment. That was when the magic started to burn in her veins. Scarlett could feel another will underneath hers, something vying against her. Something—or someone—did not want them to complete this spell.
Too bad. It was one individual’s willpower against the combined force of all of Kappa. Scarlett narrowed her eyes and pushed back.
Show me my sister, she commanded, and the smoke roiled, swirling together, spinning like cotton candy into a funnel in the center of the room. Suddenly, it shot to the ceiling like a geyser and then careened down toward the floor.
Hazel let out a shout. Scarlett braced for impact. But just before it hit the ground, the smoke stopped, hovering an inch off the tiles like morning burn-off. Then it gently dropped down and seeped into the clothes, filling them, a filmy body sculpted in the shape of a person. And that was when Scarlett realized it wasn’t smoke at all: it was a shadow.
The shadow-girl sat up, a wisp of a thing, a shaky afterimage of the sister who’d left them two nights ago.
Scarlett gasped. Juliet squeezed her hand so hard, she thought she felt something pop. Reagan’s eyes gleamed in awe.
“Tiffany?” Scarlett whispered.
The shadow-girl raised her hand. Then she pointed straight at the doors of the greenhouse, toward the back patio of Kappa House.
Toward the forest beyond. Scarlett glanced up, met Mei’s and Etta’s confused gazes. Trembling, she realized what this meant.
Tiffany was here. Somewhere right outside those doors.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vivi
For the first time in her life, Vivi broke her rule about not using her phone while driving. Because, for the first time in her life, there literally wasn’t a moment to waste. Taking care to keep her eyes on the road, she called Scarlett. They might not be on good terms, but she was still Vivi’s Big and Tiffany’s best friend. The phone rang a few times and then went to voicemail. “Shit.”
Vivi hung up and banged her head on the seat back, then flicked on her turn signal and took the exit toward Savannah.
Of course Scarlett wasn’t answering. Vivi hadn’t just hurt her—she’d betrayed her. After all this talk about how much she valued the Ravens and sisterhood, Vivi had gone right ahead and stabbed her Big in the back. She would have to figure out the best way to apologize and make things right later. At this moment, all that mattered was returning the talisman and rescuing Tiffany.
Vivi tapped her phone again, one eye on the road, and hit a different number.
Unlike Scarlett, Dahlia answered on the first ring. “How did it go?”
“I got the talisman,” she said, getting straight to the point.
On the other end of the line, the normally unflappable Dahlia inhaled sharply. “So your mother had it?”
“Apparently she’s the one who stole it from Kappa in the first place,” Vivi said, wincing with shame. “I can explain more when I get to the house.”
“There’s no time for that.”
“No time for explanations?” Vivi risked a confused glance at the phone screen.
“No, I don’t have time to go back to the house. I’m collecting the ingredients we need for the replicator spell. I’m about to call the rest of the sisters now.”
Something about the way she said it made Vivi’s heart beat a little faster, and her mother’s words echoed in he
r ears: You have no idea how many lives you’ll be risking. “We’re not going to actually give it to the person who stole Tiffany, are we?”
“Of course not.” Dahlia sounded insulted at the very suggestion. “With the talisman, we’ll have more than enough power to find Tiffany on our own. Trust me.”
Vivi did trust her; she trusted all the Ravens. They’d given her the thing she’d craved her entire life, the thing she’d always been missing: a home, a place to belong, and a real family, one that hadn’t spent years lying to her. “Where do you need me to go?”
“I’ll text you the location now. Just please, hurry. We’re running out of time.”
* * *
This time, Vivi had no trouble navigating the highway. The magic she’d conjured to find the talisman still flowed through her veins, making her feel powerful and confident as she zoomed toward the location Dahlia had given her. Vivi checked and double-checked the pin on the map Dahlia had dropped for her. But no matter how many times she reloaded the page, it still looked the same. Right in the middle of a forest, which seemed strange. But maybe the spell needed to be done in a place like this?
She took the specified exit and turned onto a narrow, two-lane road bordered by tall trees. It looked like Dahlia was sending her the back way to Kappa House, except that the pin seemed to be in the middle of the woods behind the house. She kept going for another few miles, until the pavement turned to a gravel road and the trees grew so thick, they blocked the light of the faintly glowing stars.
The road dead-ended at a tiny dirt parking lot. There were no other cars, and for a moment, Vivi considered waiting there for Dahlia. But the pin she’d dropped for her was about a half a mile from the lot. For all Vivi knew, Dahlia could’ve parked somewhere else and was already waiting for Vivi in the woods. She looked down at her phone to see if Dahlia had texted, but there was no signal. And there was no time to waste.
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