The Ravens

by Danielle Paige

  Vivi headed up a steep slope, stepping carefully around the rocks and roots as she made her way toward the place marked by the little dot on her phone screen. Night had settled around her; at first, she could glimpse tiny patches of the star-strewn sky through the thick tree branches, but as she traveled deeper into the forest, the sky seemed to vanish.

  The Henosis talisman weighed heavily in Vivi’s pocket. Every step she took, she felt it tap against her thigh. A constant reminder of what she’d come here to do.

  Westerly isn’t a safe place, not for people like you.

  You don’t know what power does to people. You can’t trust any of those so-called sorority witches.

  Her brain felt like it was playing a constant loop of Daphne Devereaux’s greatest hits, all the things she said to drag Vivi down, to make her doubt herself, her sisters, her friends.

  Yet the whole time, it was Daphne who’d let everyone down, who’d betrayed her sisters and stolen from Kappa all those years ago.

  No more. Vivi would right the wrongs of her mother.

  The little blue dot was almost right on top of the red pin Dahlia had dropped for her.

  “Hello?” Vivi called, feeling slightly foolish as her voice echoed through the woods. “Dahlia? Are you here?”

  Now that she’d stopped moving, she realized how strangely quiet it was. There were no birds singing, no wind rustling the leaves.

  Vivi spun in a slow circle, peering through the trees. Her cell’s weak flashlight illuminated only so much. “Dahlia?” she called again, trying to keep the growing fear out of her voice. Her phone was going to run out of battery soon.

  On her second rotation, she glimpsed a large clearing in the distance. The ground was littered with red and brown leaves. Autumn had only just begun, but the leaves here looked dead already, like it was late winter. Vivi put her dying phone away and whispered, “I call to the Queen of Wands. Show me your might by giving us light.” A moment later, a small, quivering flame appeared above her palm. Keeping her arm outstretched, she made her way toward the clearing and shivered as the temperature seemed to drop. She’d been sweating her whole trek through the forest, but now the moisture clung uncomfortably to her clammy skin.

  As she got closer, she saw that the clearing had been set up for a ritual, like Dahlia had said. Only Vivi didn’t recognize most of the items here. There were candles, but instead of the shorter tapers the Ravens used for spellwork, tall cylindrical tapers ringed the blanket of dry leaves.

  There was a cauldron like the one Etta kept in the kitchen, except the carvings around it didn’t look like pentagrams—or any symbol she recognized. They were sharp and jagged, like letters from a foreign alphabet.

  She shivered again, suddenly overcome by the same strange chill she’d felt looking at the doll in the archives. “Dahlia?” Her voice was barely a whisper now. “Where are you?” She took another step, and leaves crunched underfoot. Leaves, and something harder, snapping like a branch. Vivi glanced down and felt her breath freeze in her chest. Bones. She was walking across piles and piles of white bones. Small bones, like from a rat or a rabbit, and larger ones too. Femurs from something too big to be a small animal. Far too big . . .

  Snap.

  Another bone shattered right behind her, and Vivi’s entire body went rigid except for her heart, which was beating like a wild animal trying to bash its way out of her chest.

  “Vivian,” Dahlia said from behind her. “So glad you could make it.”

  Vivi whipped around just in time to catch a glimpse of the older girl’s twisted smile.

  Then a spell hit her square in the chest, and the world went dark.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Scarlett

  Scarlett couldn’t take her eyes off the shadow-girl before her. She swayed, the dark tendrils of smoky shadow forming and re-forming, the ruby pendant glowing red at her throat.

  In the past, Scarlett had felt her magic crest like the water, but except for that one moment when she almost lost control while scrying for Gwen’s intentions, she had never felt anything so powerful before. And looking at what she and her sisters had done, looking at this creation of magic and will, she felt a sense of awe.

  She took a deep breath and let herself hope that the next step would work as well as the first.

  “I’m coming with you,” Mei said before Scarlett could say a word. When Scarlett opened her mouth to protest, Mei moved to her side. “Tiffany’s my sister too.”

  Scarlett and Mei were the only juniors left in Kappa at the moment. Scarlett could understand why she wanted to come. Even if she didn’t like the idea of anyone else risking her skin.

  The other Ravens remained in a ring, eyes wide as they stared at the shadow-girl, who was still pointing at the doors. Pointing toward Tiffany.

  “I’ll come too,” Etta offered. But Scarlett shook her head.

  “We should all go. Ravens stick together; isn’t that what you just told us?” Reagan crossed her arms, scowling.

  “You need to stay here to keep performing the spell,” Scarlett said. “I don’t know how long the spell will last and I need to be able to follow her until I find Tiffany.”

  “Personally, I’m of the opinion nobody should go out there,” Sonali said. “Let’s at least wait until Dahlia gets back.”

  “I’m going to find Tiffany. Now.” Scarlett glanced at Reagan. “This is something I need to do for me, not just for Kappa.”

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Dahlia’s voice: You’re not acting very presidential right now. She wasn’t. Running off into the night, leaving her sisters here without guidance? But she didn’t care about the presidency or about doing what was proper.

  She cared about doing what was right.

  She and Mei traded looks. The other girl nodded, solemn.

  “Shadow, trust me. Take me to Tiffany,” Scarlett said.

  Mei repeated her words, and the other girls followed their lead until their voices filled the air.

  The doors swung open seemingly of their own accord and the shadow began to move toward them. The spell was working.

  “Stay here, lock the doors, and don’t let anyone but a Raven inside tonight,” Scarlett told Mei, feeling her urgency intensify. This had to work. The shadow-girl had to find Tiffany.

  Scarlett stepped out into the night, trailing the apparition into the backyard. She heard the door shut firmly behind her with a click.

  Storm clouds had begun to gather, low and thick overhead. The muggy air felt like soup. She practically swam through it, following the shadow across the backyard, past the carefully cultivated hedge maze, right up to the edge of the woods that surrounded Westerly’s campus.

  The Spanish oaks creaked in the wind. Branches scraped together with a sound like broken violins. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Not close enough to rain yet, though the muggy air begged for it.

  The shadow-girl beckoned Scarlett forward, pointing straight ahead, into the gloom beneath the trees. Fat tendrils of fog rolled through the woods underfoot. Scarlett could barely see the path well enough to keep her feet from tangling in underbrush and sprawling root systems. She picked her way behind the shadow-figure, who floated along in front of her, the ruby necklace glowing like a beacon.

  After she’d walked a few paces, she peered over her shoulder. Already the lights of Kappa House were gone, swallowed by the trees. She could hardly see a thing. She pulled out her cell, tapped on the flashlight, and swept the forest floor for . . . what?

  Tiffany’s body?

  Scarlett couldn’t even let herself think it. It felt like a betrayal. The scrying spell would have told us. It would have given us some sign if she was dead already. Unless the shadow-girl was only leading Scarlett toward her owner’s body.

  She’s fine. She has to be. In Scarlett’s mind’s eye, though, all she could see was Gwen. The horrible emptiness of her eyes. The smoke that poured from her lips.

  The fog had thickened to a grayish-
white mist now. Her shirt was soaked in sweat, sticking to her back, her chest.

  And still the apparition, her pendant glowing, kept moving, urging her deeper into the woods.

  She could hardly make out the figure in the swirling air, the shadow blending into the tendrils of mist. Her flashlight reflected weirdly off the clouds of fog, making it impossible to see through them, like high beams in a storm. Hell, she could barely even see her own hand.

  The only thing drawing her onward was the glowing pendant, moving steadily in one direction, deeper into the bowels of the forest. Her heart hammered in her ears.

  And then, without warning, the pendant vanished too. Scarlett cursed under her breath. Why had the spell stopped working?

  “Tiffany!” She raised her voice as loud as she dared. The forest didn’t answer.

  She reached out in her mind for Tiffany. Please, Tiff.

  When the shadow didn’t reappear, she called out in her mind for Minnie, not expecting an answer but wanting one, needing her mentor desperately. Please help me find her.

  She whipped around and around. She didn’t even know which way she’d entered. And now she had no way forward.

  Where was the shadow? Where was her friend? She held still, listening. But Scarlett couldn’t hear anything. No crash of footsteps, no whispered voices. The longer she stood and listened, the more forest sounds came rushing in. The creak of the trees, and another hungry, long rumble of thunder.

  For a split second, a bright flash lit the woods. Lightning. From the moment she’d stepped outside into the mist, Scarlett had wondered if she was the one causing it. Was the lightning an answer to her call for help? Or was it her losing control? Suddenly, Scarlett caught a glimpse of lights in the distance, far ahead.

  Another flash illuminated a path through the woods toward the distant lights. A fire, she guessed, based on the way it flickered and danced, the red-gold flames cutting through the gloom of the forest.

  Someone else was out here. Someone healthy enough to build a fire. Tiffany. Her heart practically exploded with hope.

  I’m coming, Tiffany, she vowed, hoping her friend could sense her presence. She focused on that instead of on the fear that had begun to creep up on her. The nagging sense that something was very, very wrong here.

  She kept pressing forward through the trees toward that dancing flame. Deeper into the unknown but closer to her friend.

  Or what remained of her.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Vivi

  The first thing Vivi became aware of was something sharp digging into her side, like she’d fallen asleep on top of her phone. Then came the cold. She started to shiver, but the movement caused her head to rattle painfully.

  A bolt of electric fear shot through Vivi as she jerked her head up, suddenly alert and frantic, but something stopped her from getting to her feet. It felt like invisible weights were attached to her arms and legs.

  Vivi wrenched her head to the side and felt the scratch of stiff grass. She was still in the clearing, but the sky was pitch-black. The only illumination came from the flickering candles that’d been arranged in a circle around her. It should’ve been a comforting sight, but unlike the small tapers she’d grown accustomed to, these candles were thick and tall, scattered in an uneven pattern like bloody teeth. And the white bones she’d seen earlier were now carefully arranged around the circle, creating the effect of a ghastly crown.

  Dahlia was kneeling a few yards away, smearing something in the grass. In the faint light, Vivi managed to catch a flash of red-stained palms. Her shallow breath caught in her chest when she realized what Dahlia was doing. She was painting a pentagram. In blood.

  With Vivi at the dead center.

  Heart pounding, she strained to sit up, but her wrists and ankles were bound together by an invisible force. She muttered an escape spell Scarlett had taught her, but when she tried to reach for her magic, the familiar buzz wouldn’t rise to her fingers. She tried again, but the gesture felt empty and futile, like swiping at a phone that’d run out of battery.

  “Oh, you’re up,” Dahlia said pleasantly, as if Vivi had just come downstairs for breakfast at Kappa House instead of regaining consciousness in the middle of the woods.

  “Dahlia? What’s going on?” It was foolish but there was still a tiny part of her that believed there could be a logical explanation for this. A hazing ritual that had gone just slightly too far. But then her eyes settled on Dahlia’s throat, and a rush of fear swept through her.

  The Henosis talisman dangled from Dahlia’s neck.

  “You wanted it for yourself,” Vivi said faintly as Scarlett’s description of the talisman came back to her. To take another witch’s power, you have to kill her.

  Dahlia shrugged. “I hope you know it’s nothing personal. Not like it was with Gwen. The scarecrows . . . the tarot . . . she just wouldn’t stop. She kept finding ways to make noise even with her mouth sewn shut. I had to get rid of her before she destroyed Kappa House and everyone in it.”

  “You killed Gwen?” In that moment, Vivi knew it was true, but she still couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. Dahlia, the Kappa president, had murdered another witch.

  Dahlia reached for something on the ground, then held up a rusty dagger with dead leaves clinging to the edge. “Yup, and I enjoyed it too. But it’s different with you, trust me. I don’t actually want to kill you.”

  “So don’t. You don’t have to do this.” Vivi did her best to sound rational, even though she sensed that a desperate plea wouldn’t have much effect on a girl who’d already killed before.

  “I’m sorry, Vivi,” Dahlia said sadly. “But you’re the strongest Pentacles witch I’ve ever met.” She ran her finger along the knife, flicking off the dead leaves, then took a step forward and placed the tip of the blade on Vivi’s throat. “I need your magic. But I promise, I’ll make this as fast and painless as possible.” Dahlia paused and frowned. “Well, I’ll make it fast anyway. I don’t think it’s possible to remove someone’s beating heart without a little bit of pain.”

  The panic Vivi had been struggling to hold at bay shot through her, and she screamed, her voice echoing through the empty woods until it was drowned out by a peal of thunder.

  Dahlia sighed and removed the knife. “Shout all you like. Nobody’s going to hear you all the way out here.”

  Just keep her talking, Vivi thought desperately. The longer she stalled, the longer the Ravens would have to find her. “What do you need my powers for?”

  “I need the magic of all four suits to perform certain spells. No more waiting for any pesky full-moon rituals. No need to borrow or beg my strength from others.”

  “So everything you said about sisterhood is bullshit, then? You don’t believe that we’re stronger together?”

  “Sisterhood?” Dahlia’s mouth curled into a sneer. “When I needed my so-called sisters most, no one was there for me. When I begged for their magic, they turned away. They left me no choice.”

  “The Kappas worship you. And even if we didn’t . . . that would be no excuse to do this to anyone. What about Tiffany?” Vivi asked, bracing for the horrible truth. “Did you kill her? Did you take her powers?” The thought of dead witches’ magic running through Dahlia’s veins made Vivi’s stomach turn; it was like imagining someone pluck out a person’s eyeball and place it in their own socket.

  “You know what? I think I’ve had about as much chitchat as I can handle.” She snapped her fingers and Vivi’s lips clamped together. Vivi tried to scream, but the attempt resulted in agonizing pain. She raised her arms as much as possible and awkwardly ran the backs of her bound hands along her mouth. Her lips had been sewn together with thick string.

  “Now, just relax,” Dahlia said in an almost singsong voice as she held the dagger over one of the candles. “It’ll all be over in a minute. I just need to hold your heart long enough to complete the transfer. Then I’ll kill you as quickly as possible. I have no interest in prolonging yo
ur suffering, I promise.”

  A wave of terror and nausea crashed over Vivi as she pictured herself splayed in the center of the pentagram, watching helplessly as Dahlia plunged the knife into her chest and removed her still-beating heart. Would she pass out from the pain? Or would she remain lucid as she bled to death, alone in the forest, abandoned by the sisters she’d let down?

  She saw her mother getting the call from Westerly, an official saying he was sorry to inform her that there’d been an accident. A sob tore through Vivi’s throat as she saw Daphne’s face crumple, her mother whispering, “No, no, no,” as she slumped against the wall. Spending the night crying on the couch, clutching one of the stuffed animals Vivi had left behind, the only piece of her daughter that remained.

  She thought of her sisters, with whom she would never have the chance to make things right. And despite herself, she imagined Mason’s face when he heard whatever version of the news Kappa decided to give. His mixture of anguish and regret about losing the girl who hadn’t allowed him to love her.

  Dahlia extended her arms as she tilted her head to the sky and began to chant in a language Vivi didn’t recognize.

  As her voice rose, the flames grew higher until the candles looked like torches releasing smoke into the air. Vivi watched with fascinated horror as the streams of smoke began to join and condense, forming the shape of three large birds with dark eyes and sharp beaks.

  Ravens.

  The birds rose into the air, then turned and swooped toward Vivi, smoke trailing from their wingtips as they descended.

  She tried to scream, but again, no sound came out. She couldn’t yell. Couldn’t use her magic. She was helpless . . . and she was about to die.

  The first raven landed on her stomach with surprising, chilling weight. It’s just an illusion, Vivi tried to tell herself. It can’t actually hurt you. But then the bird thrust its head forward, plunging its beak into her chest and piercing her skin. Another bird landed on her shoulder and began to peck at her chest from another angle.