Pledge (Witches of Coventry House Book 1)

by Christina Garner

  “No way,” Sarah said as they padded down the hall. “First of all, how many of these girls do you think would give you an advantage? And second of all, they’d think you’re crazy. I’m not so sure I don’t think you’re crazy, because the only thing I hear right now is my own voice.”

  They made it to the common room and found that it, too, was empty.

  “Now what?” Sarah said.

  “I have no—” The sound intensified—not just in volume but in pitch.

  “Okay, I hear it now.” Sarah looked around.

  “Where is it coming from?” Eden said, rubbing her ears.

  “This way.” Sarah headed toward a far corridor.

  They passed the dining room and kept going until they reached a staircase. Eden’s pulse quickened at how dark it was.

  “It’s just a test,” Sarah said, and Eden wasn’t sure which one of them she was trying to convince.

  “So get on with it,” a voice said, and both girls jumped.

  Rebecca looked sultry even in flannel pajamas. Paige stood behind her, looking sleepy and like she wasn’t sure why she was awake.

  “Oh for God’s sake. If they want us to climb the creepy staircase, just go already.” Rebecca pushed past Eden and Sarah and started up the stairs. Paige hurried to catch up.

  Sarah shrugged and then followed, Eden bringing up the rear, not nearly as enthusiastic as Rebecca.

  They passed the second floor and kept climbing. With the exception of the whistle, the only sound was the steps that creaked and groaned beneath their feet.

  “Oh, good, you hear it too.”

  Eden spun and nearly lost her balance on the narrow stairs.

  “Sorry,” Jules whispered. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She and Hannah had caught up without Eden realizing.

  “No problem.” Eden’s heart was still pounding. “Welcome to the treasure hunt.”

  “Thanks.” Hannah’s smile was tight. “So very happy to be here.”

  By the time they reached the fourth floor, they’d amassed quite a group—all pledges.

  “I miss the hot and cold test,” Sarah muttered as they crowded around a door that looked about to fall off its hinges.

  “Open it,” Rebecca said to Paige.

  “You open it.” Paige stepped back.

  Rebecca tilted her head, dark eyes glittering. Paige wilted and reached for the knob.

  The door creaked open to reveal another staircase—rickety and covered in cobwebs.

  “Oh, screw this,” one girl said. Eden hadn’t caught her name. “I joined a sorority to party, not to star in Lifestyles of the Dilapidated and Haunted.”

  She turned on her heel and stormed off down the hall. A few of the others looked after her with envy but stayed put.

  Paige took a tentative step, the floorboards creaking in protest. Rebecca followed, pushing her forward. Eden went next. She stumbled and grabbed the railing, a thick layer of dust smearing her hand.

  Hazing or test, they were definitely upping their game.

  When they reached the top, the pledges found themselves in a dark attic, the only light from the moon filtering through a dirty window. This close, the sound wormed its way into Eden’s brain, making her flesh crawl.

  It emanated from a large chest in the corner, and the girls crowded around it. With a nervous glance back at Rebecca, Paige knelt down and reached for the lid.

  Rebecca tapped her foot. “If there are speakers in there, I swear to—”

  Shrieks pierced the air as bats erupted in a black storm from the chest.

  Eden screamed and hit the floor, shielding her face as their leathery wings beat down upon her. She swatted wildly with her hands, anything to keep them off. She swatted and writhed—

  “Eden, it’s okay. They’re gone.”

  She ceased her struggle and looked up to see Sarah, her brow beaded with sweat. Eden took a breath to steady her nerves. “What the fu—?”

  “What are you doing up here?”

  Heads swiveled to see Alex, standing at the top of the stairs, holding a candle.

  When no one answered, Eden brushed a lock of sweat-matted hair from her face. “We heard something.”

  As if you didn’t know that.

  “It’s an old house.” The flame cast eerie shadows on Alex’s face. “Lots of strange noises. Are you going to go looking for each one?”

  Rebecca pulled herself to her feet. When she squared off in front of Alex, she had a good six inches on her. “Any reason we shouldn’t?” she asked, her eyes glittering.

  “Be my guest.” Alex took a step toward her. “But I should remind you, being a legacy doesn’t guarantee you anything at Coventry House. Watch your tone when you speak to a sister.”

  Rebecca gave her a tight smile and saluted then brushed past her, descending the stairs. Paige darted after her.

  As Hannah passed Alex, she said, “Nice touch with the bats.” But Alex remained stone-faced.

  “What bats?” whispered a girl named Amber. “Is that what they were freaking out about?”

  The girl she spoke to just shrugged and trotted down the stairs.

  Eden was the last of the pledges to leave, stealing a glance inside the open chest.

  No speakers—it was empty.

  She descended the stairs, pausing at the bottom to look back. At the top of the stairs Alex grinned, her eyes full of menace.

  Then she snapped her fingers, and the flame went out.

  Chapter 3

  Eden and the others were silent as they made their way back downstairs.

  “So that was testing our...what, exactly?” Sarah said when they reached the first floor.

  “Ability not to wet ourselves?” Hannah sounded like she was over this whole thing already.

  Not that Eden could blame her. This place felt off. It wasn’t just the tests; it was something palpable that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Also, bats. They had very much put their clawed fingers on her.

  Back in the common room Jules tried in vain to rid herself of dust and cobwebs.

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t bother,” Rebecca said. “Dumpster chic is an improvement over what you had going on before.”

  Jules shrank back, and Hannah stepped forward.

  “Hey, Rebecca,” she said. “I know we’re being tested on lots of stuff, but you’ve already got the bitch thing down. No need to be an overachiever.”

  Rebecca’s eyes flashed dangerously, but their standoff was interrupted by the sound of sniffling. Lexi, almost unrecognizable without her dark eye makeup, was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Eden took seat next to her.

  “I didn’t tell my roommate.” She wiped away a tear. “Talia. I didn’t know if it was a test or not, and I didn’t want to wake her up until I was sure. But then everyone was already upstairs, and I was afraid to go back and get her.”

  “It’s okay,” Eden said. “Maybe it’s a three strikes kind of thing. Besides, you aren’t the only one who didn’t tell their roommate.”

  “Yes, she is.” Rebecca looked at Lexi and added, “Way to be loyal.”

  “There are three girls missing.” Hannah stepped between Rebecca and Lexi. “Not just her roommate.”

  “Yeah, but the other two got booted last night,” Rebecca said. “I watched them get loaded into a van.”

  “It’s true,” an auburn-haired girl named Skyler said. “They came for Heather about an hour after dinner. She was really upset.”

  “Same with Tori.” Stephanie didn’t sound all that broken up about it.

  The news made Lexi cry harder.

  “Shh...” Eden said. “You didn’t know. Don’t feel bad.”

  But Lexi clearly did feel bad, and Eden couldn’t blame her. She was so glad she’d woken Sarah. She’d feel awful if she played a part in her friend getting kicked out.

  “Come on,” Hannah said to her. “The sun will be up soon. Let’s get some breakfast. Everything feels better after coffee and
carbs.”

  Lexi wiped her eyes and followed Hannah and Jules to the kitchen.

  “What?” Rebecca glared at Eden. “You’re gonna pretend I’m the bad guy in this scenario? I told my roommate.”

  Paige cringed and followed when Rebecca turned on her heel and walked away.

  “Besides Talia, do you notice who the missing girls are?” Sarah said, her voice low.

  Eden nodded. “They didn’t feel the cold last night.”

  “Exactly,” Sarah replied.

  “So what does that mean?”

  Sarah looked baffled. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  Once in the kitchen, Sarah opted for cold cereal and a steaming mug of coffee. The room was quiet, as if they were all on hyper alert, not wanting to miss the next test.

  Quiet too, because half the girls had gone back to bed. Eden had. Sarah had almost joined her, but her mind was too full of thoughts—most of them questions.

  What was this place? she wondered for the hundredth time. She’d had this feeling—ever since she’d first spoken to Carolyn on the phone months ago—that something at Coventry House was going to change her life.

  She’d gotten feelings like that ever since she was a kid. She’d made the mistake of sharing them with her mother once when she was six, telling her that they couldn’t take Miller Road home from the store.

  “Why not, honey?” she’d asked in her southern drawl.

  “Because, Mamma, something bad will happen if we do.”

  “That’s just superstitious nonsense,” her mother said, annoyed. “And God accepts neither superstition nor nonsense, so get those thoughts right out of your head.”

  To prove her point, her mother took Miller Road home, which ended in them getting into an accident when a deer bounded across the road.

  “You see?” Her mother grabbed Sarah by the arm and gave her a shake. “You claimed false prophecy, and God punished you. Punished me, too, because of your sin. He made that deer jump out to teach you a lesson. What’s the lesson, Sarah?”

  “D-don’t claim false prophecy,” Sarah had stammered.

  But it wasn’t false prophecy. Even at six, Sarah had known that for sure. But she feared her mother’s wrath more than God’s, so she’d tried to ignore it when she got similar feelings. They were never about anything all that important, and she knew it would have made others in her neighborhood—even the kids—upset had she told them.

  If she’d told Joey Patterson not to try a wheelie that day he’d broken his arm, he’d have done it just to spite her, the way her mother had. And then it would have been her fault it happened. So she’d kept quiet, and soon she stopped having the feelings all together.

  Except here she was, at Coventry House, absolutely certain that her life was about to change in a huge way.

  What she didn’t know was whether it would be for the better.

  Hannah and the others were finishing breakfast when Alex walked in with a clipboard.

  She handed Hannah a slip of paper and a pen. “Write down what you see and give it to me. Don’t say it out loud.”

  Alex turned the clipboard around, and Hannah was looking at a swirl of colored dots. She squinted, thinking she was missing something, when a faint number appeared. She scribbled thirteen on the piece of paper and handed it to Alex, whose expression didn’t change; she just gave a nod and moved on to the next girl. One by one they wrote down what they saw.

  “These tests keep getting weirder,” Jules whispered, and Hannah nodded in agreement. “That was for colorblindness, right?”

  “What does being colorblind have to do with being in a sorority?” Hannah wondered aloud.

  Jules shrugged. “Outfit coordination?”

  Eden woke to an unwelcome sound for the second time that morning. She opened her eyes to see Alex looming above her, fingers snapping.

  “Rise and shine. I don’t have all day.” Alex laid a pen and paper on the bedside table and held up a clipboard. “Write what you see.”

  Eden blinked. Was this some kind of joke? Or a trick? There was only one thing on the clipboard. She wrote her answer and handed the paper to Alex.

  Sarah stepped in as Alex left, holding a cup of coffee.

  “Sorry.” She handed Eden the mug. “I asked her to let you sleep longer.”

  “And she said no? Shocking.” Eden took a sip of coffee. It was sweeter than she liked, but the bedside service more than made up for it. “So, what did you see?”

  “My dignity disappearing.” Sarah pulled a pair of jeans from a drawer. “Also, the number thirteen.”

  “Me too—on both counts.”

  Sarah chose a sweater from her side of the closet. “We lost two more at breakfast.”

  “You’re kidding. Who?”

  “One girl’s name was Amber. No clue on the other one. I’m starting to see why the sisters aren’t bothering to get to know us.”

  Eden shook her head. “This place is so weird.”

  Full ride scholarship. Chance at a new life.

  Sarah gave her a look of agreement. “We’ve got the day off, if that helps.”

  “Actually, it does.” Eden pulled herself out of bed. “But I’m a little alarmed at how low we’re setting the bar.”

  An hour later, a van dropped the pledges off in the center of Somerland, and Brianne told them she’d be back at four o’clock to pick them up.

  “You miss it, you walk,” she said then drove off.

  As girls often do, the pledges split off into separate cliques, even though the town was small and they’d probably all end up in the same places.

  Hannah said she needed a new coat—even though hers looked perfectly fine to Eden—so she and Jules set off in the direction of some boutiques.

  Eden was broke, and Sarah didn’t care much about shopping, so the two of them struck off alone.

  “Where to first?” Sarah glanced around.

  They were near the heart of the Whitland campus, bustling with students moving into dorms and waiting in various lines. Across the street, the shops had the bold, clean lines indicative of the Greek Revival era, and Eden felt as if she’d been dropped into a Norman Rockwell painting. She’d never seen a town so quaint.

  “Your choice,” she said.

  What she really needed was a clinic so she could get an effective prescription, but she wasn’t about to tell Sarah that.

  Eden turned, and something caught her eye—a poster taped to a lamppost with the word missing in large block letters. Below was a picture of a little girl with curly hair and the biggest dimples she had ever seen.

  “What is it?” Sarah said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Nothing,” Eden said, forcing a smile. “Where to?”

  “Well, in my opinion, the first order of business should always be to find the best latte.” Sarah held up her phone. “And I just happen to have a list of contenders.”

  “Lead the way.” Eden followed, but her mind was on the poster and the little girl who could have been her.

  The walk helped ease the knot in Eden’s stomach caused by the poster. By the time they made it to the coffee house, she was back to feeling herself.

  Inside The Grind was bustling. They got in line, and when it was Eden’s turn to order, she found herself looking into the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. They were brown with little gold flecks and were attached to a cute guy with brown hair and broad shoulders.

  “Hey.” His smile made tiny creases near his eyes. “What can I get you?”

  Eden ordered, doing so with what she hoped was a mix of coyness and casual disinterest, but there was only so much she could do with “soy latte.”

  She handed him her debit card, and he swiped it.

  “Can I get you to sign here?” Cute Guy asked, spinning the tablet. She opted to leave a thirty percent tip because she knew how hard waiting on the public was, not because she wanted to impress him.

  It was Sarah’s turn to order, and once she did, they too
k their number and grabbed a table.

  Much to Eden’s disappointment, Cute Guy was not who brought their coffee. He remained at the counter helping a steady stream of guests. Though her back was to him, Eden could steal glances at him via a well-placed mirror.

  “Mmm,” Sarah said after her first sip. “The reviews are right—this is good coffee. Although,” she said, a knowing smile on her lips, “I suspect that’s not why this place is going to be your favorite.”

  “What do you mean?” Eden’s eyes drew back to the mirror.

  “What am I, blind?” Sarah laughed.

  Eden’s cheeks warmed. “Okay, okay. But he’s crazy cute, right?”

  “He’s a well-put-together man,” Sarah agreed. “You should go talk to him.”

  “He’s working.”

  As if on cue, an older woman called, “Break time, Quinn,” and Cute Guy slid a Next Register Please sign in front of his register and made his way outside.

  “He’s not working now.” Sarah smiled into her cup.

  Quinn, Eden thought, rolling the name around in her mind. Quinn with the brown-and-gold eyes.

  “I can’t.” Eden shook her head. “Making the first move is totally not me.”

  But even as she said it, she realized it wasn’t what high school Eden would do. But she was college Eden now, and she could do whatever she wanted.

  “You know what?” she said. “I am going to talk to him.”

  Eden stood up before she lost her nerve and walked outside. She spotted Quinn leaning against the wall, checking his phone. Her mouth went dry when she realized she had no idea what to say. She felt like an idiot just standing there, so she fumbled for her phone and pretended to be texting.

  Apparently new Eden was just as awkward as old Eden.

  Sarah watched through the window as Eden messed around on her phone and failed to interact with Quinn. She didn’t understand what the big deal was. Guys were easy to talk to. It was the other stuff Sarah had trouble with.

  The Grind looked out onto the campus lawn, and with Eden doing absolutely nothing interesting, Sarah’s gaze drifted to a small group of people doing tai chi. She found herself mesmerized by their fluid movements. One person especially caught Sarah’s eye. She had long, dark hair and tanned skin. She moved with such grace; it was as if she was made of water, flowing from one posture to the next.