The Ravens

by Danielle Paige

  She flashed an ashen Vivi a smile and headed for the main entrance. They’d dimmed the hall lights and lit hurricane candles to add a certain mystique to the house for the pledges’ first night here. Scarlett trailed her fingertips along one wall while her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the sounds from the living room falling away to a muted hush. The candles cast flickering shadows against the walls, the shapes reminding her of a metal candle carousel Minnie had given her for her eighth birthday. It had delicate gold stars and moons that rotated slowly around a lit tea candle, a little bit of magic before Scarlett could fully wield her own.

  Bang.

  The knocker sounded again, louder this time. Before Scarlett could call out that she was coming, the knob began to twist. Then the door swung open and slammed against the wall. A wild, unnatural wind whipped into the hallway, extinguishing all but two of the candles.

  Scarlett gasped.

  A girl stood in the entryway. Her eyes were hard and black. Her hair hung loose and flowing to her waist, but it was snarled and tangled. She wore ratty black jeans and a baggy black hoodie that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. On her left hand, she had five silver rings, one on each finger: A skull. A serpent. A pentacle. A rose. And a sword. Her other hand was raised in a fist, as if she’d just punched the door open. Her mouth was twisted in an angry grimace.

  It was someone Scarlett had never expected to see again. But it wasn’t Harper, the girl who’d been haunting her dreams. It was Harper’s best friend.

  Gwen.

  For a second Scarlett wondered if this was a nightmare. Scarlett hadn’t seen Gwen since that long-ago night. Gwen had been hooked up to life support, her body battered and bruised, machines breathing for her and keeping her alive. When she was finally released from the hospital, she’d dropped out of school and gone home to Nashville. No one had heard from her since. She was never supposed to come back.

  Scarlett forced herself to inhale. Then exhale. Breathe.

  “Holy shit, Gwen,” Scarlett managed to say when she found her voice again. “What are you doing here?”

  Gwen just stared at her, the fire from the remaining candles flickering in her dark eyes.

  “Answer me,” Scarlett said.

  Gwen stayed silent, breathing heavily, as if it cost her something just to stand there.

  “You can’t be here. You need to leave,” Scarlett said. Scarlett took a step back. Then another. She heard voices. Then a gasp, then footsteps. She turned to see Tiffany flying up the hall toward her. Behind her, a handful of the older Ravens—Etta, Hazel, and Jess—had gathered, all peering at the front door curiously.

  Tiffany stepped up next to Scarlett and said, her voice steely, “What are you doing here?”

  “Say something, Gwen,” Scarlett said, emboldened by her sisters’ presence.

  Gwen opened her mouth as if to speak . . . and began to choke. It was a horrible guttural gagging sound deep in her throat. She clutched at her neck, then fell to her knees, gasping for breath.

  Shit.

  “Oh my God!” Jess cried.

  “We need to call 911. Sh-she’s choking,” Scarlett stammered, rushing forward to help Gwen. The girl’s face was turning red; spittle was flying from her open mouth, and her hands clawed at the ground.

  “She’s not,” came a cool voice. Dahlia pushed through the crowd. “It’s the magic.”

  “What?” Scarlett asked.

  “Girls, join hands,” Dahlia commanded, gesturing for everyone to join her on the front steps of the house.

  Scarlett joined hands with Tiffany and Jess, completing the circle with her sisters. Usually being hand in hand with the coven was when she felt most powerful, most whole. But now, as she watched Gwen writhe and gasp, her face contorting painfully, Scarlett didn’t feel powerful. She felt . . . scared. Scared of the ugly side of their power. Scared of what it had wrought.

  “Scar, focus,” Dahlia ordered as if she could sense Scarlett’s hesitance. As Scarlett exhaled her panic, Dahlia began to whisper a spell. Scarlett let her magic flow into her sisters, their powers merging as the spell found its target.

  Gwen’s rasping stopped, like a TV switching off. The angry light in her eyes was snuffed out. Her shoulders slumped, like a marionette with her strings cut. The anger was gone, but it was as if Gwen had disappeared with it. The fire had drained from her eyes, leaving in its place a dull, vacant stare.

  “Good night, Gwen,” Dahlia pronounced.

  Without another sound, Gwen stood up and began to march down the front walk, away from the house.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Scarlett rounded on Dahlia. “What the hell was that?”

  “The binding spell,” Dahlia said. “The magic is very specific for this exact reason.”

  “What do you mean?” Scarlett asked, her stomach sinking even further.

  “We didn’t just strip her powers; we forbade her to talk about magic ever again. This is the consequence if she tries.”

  “Why is she back? More important, how is she back? We banished her,” Mei said, glancing around at her sisters.

  “We banished her from the coven, not the house,” Scarlett said quietly.

  “But what does she want from us?” Mei asked.

  Scarlett gazed down, careful not to look at Tiffany. She concentrated on catching her breath. The way Gwen had looked at her . . . it was like she’d wanted to kill her.

  “Full moon tonight,” said Vivi softly. Scarlett jumped. She hadn’t heard the younger girl approach. She realized with a sinking feeling that her new Little had witnessed the tail end of this mess. “My mom always said that made people do strange things.”

  Scarlett knew better than anyone that Gwen didn’t need a full moon to act out. She had reason enough on her own. Not that that was any of Vivi’s business. She felt a new wave of annoyance at her Little’s intrusion into her house, into her life. “Being my Little doesn’t mean you have to be my shadow, Vivi,” Scarlett snapped. “Who said you could leave the party?”

  “Go back inside, Vivi, and bond with your new sisters. We’ll be right in,” Dahlia said. Her voice was gentler than Scarlett’s, but there was steel behind her words.

  Vivi looked from one girl to the other, a frown tugging her mouth downward, looking like she wanted to say more. But after a moment, she heeded Dahlia’s words, stepped inside, and made her way back to the living room.

  “We should all go in. This is an important night for welcoming the new girls into the fold. Not another word about this until the pledges leave,” Dahlia ordered with a clap. The older sisters nodded curtly, then slipped back inside, whispering among themselves. Scarlett grabbed Dahlia before the older girl could step back into the foyer.

  “Dahlia,” she said quietly. “The tarot cards on the door . . . it was Gwen, wasn’t it?”

  Before the bid ceremony, Scarlett had shown Dahlia the tarot cards she and Tiffany had found nailed to the front door. Scarlett had wanted to cast a spell to figure out who had left them—and why. Scarlett thought they were a message—a threat—but Dahlia had waved it off as a stupid prank and insisted that Scarlett get rid of the cards before the pledges arrived. “We don’t want to scare them off before they’ve even pledged,” she said. “Don’t make this into something bigger than it is.” After all, Dahlia pointed out, they had done a tarot-themed recruitment party last year; someone was probably still pissed that she hadn’t gotten a bid. People were always jealous of the Ravens. Dahlia had promised her that their secret was safe.

  Now Scarlett wasn’t so sure.

  Dahlia didn’t look worried, though. Just irritated. She always hated when sisters challenged her authority. “We’ll cast a protection seal on the house once the pledges leave. Let everyone know. We’ll need all hands for the rite.”

  Scarlett nodded, not trusting her voice quite yet. She let go of Dahlia’s arm and swung the large front door shut.

  She had just gotten to the living room when she heard another heavy thud. St
eeling herself, Scarlett stalked down the hall and wrenched the door open again. “Gwen, we told you, you can’t—”

  She froze. There was no one there. Rap music floated from Psi Delta Lambda House down the street. Cicadas chirped, unseen, in the grass. But the street was completely empty. Just a few parked cars and a tattered red communal campus bike propped up against an oak tree.

  Then she saw it. Something small and silver glimmering in the walkway. It was one of Gwen’s rings, the silver skull. It must have fallen off while she scrabbled at the ground. Scarlett moved forward to pick it up and her foot hit something soft. She glanced down and let out a shriek. At her feet was an enormous jet-black raven, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. She recognized it from the aviary on the roof. Scarlett’s heart beat wildly. This was an unequivocal sign. It meant only one thing.

  Death.

  Chapter Eleven

  Vivi

  It’d been nearly twenty-four hours since the ceremony, but Vivi’s heart hadn’t stopped racing. She felt almost hypnotized by a combination of power and vertigo, as if she’d launched herself off a diving board and was now falling through the air, unsure what would happen when she hit the water. Or if she’d hit it at all. Everything she thought she’d known about the world had been wrong. Magic was real. She was a witch. And she wasn’t the only one.

  On the short walk from her dorm to Kappa House, Vivi pulled out her phone and called her mom for the third time that day. Once again, it went straight to voicemail. She’d never minded when her mother went off the grid in the past, but this was an emergency. She had to find out how much Daphne knew about this. Was she also a witch? Were her tarot readings actually legitimate? Or was she as naïve as Vivi, unaware that magic was very, very real?

  Magic. She kept remembering the pentacle blooming out of her candle flame. The buzz in her fingertips. She wanted to feel it again. To understand it. To know what she’d been missing all these years. To discover how it was going to change the rest of her life.

  She used her newly issued key to let herself into Kappa House, then paused on the threshold, marveling at the fact that the interior looked completely different than it had during her previous two visits. Today, it was filled with modern, light wood furniture and cozy, blush-colored cushions that made the rooms look airy and inviting.

  Vivi began walking toward the living room to wait for the others, but she’d barely made it two steps before a hand pressed against her shoulder, holding her in place. “Watch out.”

  It was Mei. She was standing in front of Vivi, pointing at a straight line of pinkish-gray salt on the floor that Vivi had almost walked into. In Mei’s hand was a jar of what looked like crushed-up herbs floating in oil. It reminded Vivi of the rosemary olive oil her mother liked to cook with.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see that,” Vivi said, glancing at the salt before turning her attention back to Mei. Instead of the purple tips she’d sported last night, her hair was now jet-black and cut in an angular bob that emphasized her high cheekbones. “I like your hair. Did you . . . I mean, is it . . .” She trailed off, realizing that she didn’t even have the vocabulary to ask the question.

  Mei smiled and tucked her hair behind her ears. “It’s called a glamour. It’s a spell that comes pretty easily to Pentacles like us.”

  The words like us made Vivi shiver with anticipation. “So what does that mean, exactly?” She knew the tarot suits, of course. It was impossible to grow up with Daphne Devereaux and not have a working knowledge of the major and minor arcana, but she wanted to know exactly what that meant for her—for her magic.

  “Our powers fall under the Earth sign. That means it’s a bit easier for us to influence or manipulate nature, whether that’s trees, animals, or”—she shook her hair and struck an exaggerated modeling pose—“our natural beauty.” Mei pulled her phone out of her pocket and tilted her head as if preparing to take a selfie, but as she pursed her lips, her straight bob turned into beachy waves, and her nude lipstick deepened into maroon.

  “Can you teach me to do that?” Vivi asked, awestruck.

  “Sure,” Mei said, staring at her phone as she uploaded the photo to a verified Instagram account. Vivi had Googled all the Ravens she could remember that morning and knew that Mei was an incredibly popular beauty blogger originally from the Bay Area with nearly a million followers. “Though you should probably start out by focusing on whatever Scarlett wants to teach you.”

  Vivi suppressed a grimace as she imagined Scarlett’s fake, condescending smile. “Shouldn’t you be my Big, since we’re the same suit?”

  “What makes Ravens special is how our magic plays off one another. It’s not what we have in common but the ways that we’re different—each of our unique strengths—that make us powerful. It sounds cheesy but it’s true. You have more to learn from someone different from you. Does that make sense?”

  “Got it. So what’s the jar for?” Vivi asked.

  Mei gestured to the front door. “I’m anointing the entry points of the house. A little extra protection against those who wish us ill.”

  Vivi nodded, her mind flashing back to last night. She’d been on such a high after the ceremony that she’d barely processed the commotion with the dark-haired girl. But the more she thought about it, the more disturbing the incident seemed. Vivi thought she might’ve been the girl who’d stopped her on the quad to warn her about the Ravens, but her features had been so twisted by pain and anger, it was hard to know for sure. “Who was that girl?”

  Mei pressed her lips together and glanced over her shoulder, though Vivi couldn’t tell if she was looking for backup or checking to see who was in earshot. “She used to be a Raven. We removed her a couple years ago after she broke our most important rule.”

  “Which one?” Vivi asked, suddenly worried about what unnamed rules she might’ve broken already.

  But Mei just smiled vaguely. “Don’t worry. Scarlett’s your pledge master; she’ll explain everything you need to know at your lesson. She’s waiting for you out in the greenhouse.”

  “Okay, thanks.” Vivi could tell Mei didn’t want to discuss the incident further, but Vivi couldn’t quite banish it from her mind, couldn’t shake the image of the girl’s frantic expression or the image of her writhing on the front steps, trying to claw her way into the house.

  All she knew was that she didn’t want to end up like her, on the outside looking in.

  * * *

  Vivi hadn’t spent much time in greenhouses, but even she could tell that this one was extraordinary. Despite the glass walls, it was surprisingly dark; everywhere she looked, enormous plants stretched out of large clay pots, their ample leaves casting myriad shadows. She inhaled, noting the unusual combination of scents: lavender, pepper, mint, ripe fruit, sage, and a hint of rot.

  Four other pledges were already seated at a round table in the center of the greenhouse—Ariana, Bailey, Sonali, and Reagan. It took Vivi a minute to reach them since there was no clear path through the plants; she had to duck under a number of climbing vines, their dew-covered leaves brushing against the back of her neck.

  She slid into the open seat between Sonali and Bailey just as Scarlett appeared carrying a woven basket covered with a gauzy purple scarf. “Welcome, ladies,” Scarlett said briskly as she reached into the basket and began setting items on the table. A few squat red candles. An engraved silver dish. A midnight-black feather. Across from Vivi, Ariana shuddered as Scarlett placed a final item on the table—a human skull—but Vivi nearly lurched forward with anticipation. This was it. After a lifetime on the periphery, she was going to learn the most powerful, closely guarded secret in the world—how to do real magic.

  “The five of you have been invited to pledge Kappa because we sense promise in you.” Scarlett’s gaze drifted to each of them, lingering on Vivi the longest. For some reason, Vivi didn’t find this comforting. “But natural ability isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to witchcraft. Magic requires discipline. Magic
can be your best friend. It can open doors for you—literally. Or it can make you a danger to yourself and everyone around you.” As if to illustrate her point, all the plants in the greenhouse began to sway and whisper, moving in an invisible wind. Vivi gasped as something brushed the top of her foot. She glanced down and then leaped to the side as something long and dark green slithered past her.

  “It’s just a vine,” Bailey whispered, watching it with wide eyes.

  Scarlett snapped her fingers and all the plants froze. “But before we go further, it’s essential that you understand and commit to our laws. The first is no infringing on anyone else’s free will . . . too much.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Bailey asked, blinking behind her black glasses.

  “That means distraction spells and influencing spells are okay, within reason. But we don’t use mind-control spells or spell people to make them behave in ways that could change the course of their lives or bring harm to them in any way,” Scarlett said. “The next law is that we don’t physically harm anyone unless it’s in self-defense. And of course, the third and most important law—”

  “Never betray your fellow Ravens,” Sonali said quickly.

  Scarlett nodded. “That rule isn’t just about magic. We have each other’s backs, no matter what. These girls are your sisters. When they need you, you help them. You walk in pairs at night, and you check in at parties. Never let a sister wander off alone at night after they’ve been drinking, and never, under any circumstances, go to a private room during a frat party. Remember that alcohol clouds judgment and magical abilities, and your safety is paramount.”

  Scarlett paused as if to let her words sink in, then continued. “Most of the magic we perform is spell-based. You’ll start by learning your own minor arcana spells—those are the simple, everyday spells. We’ll save your major arcana—big, complex spells—for later in your training. The first thing you need is your own tarot deck.” Scarlett reached into the basket and placed eight different decks on the table. “Pick the one that calls to you.”