Scarlett. Shit.
As usual, she looked absolutely flawless. Her golden-brown skin glowed. Her hair fell in waves around her face. Her blush-colored lace dress cinched perfectly at her waist. She held an actual cocktail glass in her hand, unlike the red Solo cups everyone else was sipping from.
“No, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Vivi said, backpedaling immediately. “I just wasn’t sure what I saw.”
“Hmm.” Scarlett cocked her head to the side. “Well, it’s best to keep matters of the sisterhood in the sisterhood unless you cast a distraction spell first. Which, of course, you don’t know how to do yet.”
Vivi’s cheeks began to burn. “Right, yes, I understand. It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” With that, she brushed past the pledges and went to join Dahlia and Tiffany, who were talking to a group of admiring guys.
Including Mason.
Vivi looked away before he had time to catch her eye. “Ugh,” she groaned as she turned back to the others. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Ariana said reassuringly.
Reagan laughed. “I’m sorry, but she just accused her Big of performing wicked magic. It was bad.”
Vivi put her face in her hands.
“Come on. You need a drink,” Bailey said, hooking her arm through Vivi’s. “And I need to talk to the Drake look-alike near the Ping-Pong table.”
Vivi let Bailey steer her toward the drinks area. She’d been expecting a battered wood card table with bottles of cheap vodka, but PiKa had an actual wet bar made of gleaming oak that wrapped around a corner of the room. It was fully stocked with taps, dozens of bottles of hard liquor, and colorful spirits that Vivi had never heard of before. The only indication that they were at a frat party and not at a bar in downtown Savannah were the red Solo cups. Three pledges manned the bar and, Vivi noticed, gave more generous pours to Hazel and Etta than they gave to two pretty girls from Theta.
“What can I get you?” A cute brown-skinned boy with hazel eyes leaned over the counter and smiled at Vivi.
Vivi had no idea. She’d never actually ordered a drink before.
“Five shots of tequila,” Reagan said with a wicked grin.
“Reagan, no,” Ariana groaned.
“We have to. It’s our first mixer. It’s basically a rite of passage.”
“What, getting drunk and puking?” Sonali said.
“Good thing I’ve already mastered the art of bathroom cleaning,” Vivi said grimly.
“We’ll have five mint juleps,” Ariana said, ignoring Reagan’s eye roll as she handed each girl a red Solo cup while the bartender mixed the drinks.
When she got hers, Vivi took a tentative sip and grimaced. “Okay, I’m sorry, but this tastes like paint thinner.”
“Hold on a sec,” Ariana said, and ushered them to the corner where a series of paddles lined the wall, each etched with a year, dating back to the early 1900s. “Boys cannot be trusted with flavor profiles. I’m going to try something Etta taught me.” She placed one hand over Vivi’s cup and whispered, “I call to the Queen of Wands and Ace of Cups. Show that your powers are true by perfecting this brew.”
“There’s no way that’s a real spell,” Bailey said.
Ariana raised an eyebrow as the cup began to tremble slightly, then nodded at Vivi. “Try it.”
Vivi braced for another burning swallow, but this time, the frothy concoction tasted refreshing and sweet. “Whoa,” she said, feeling her eyes widen as she looked from the cup to Ariana, who was smiling smugly.
“Just be careful,” Ariana said airily. “I’m pretty sure it still has the same alcohol content as the paint thinner.”
“Mine next!” Reagan said, holding out her drink. Ariana went to work on everyone’s cup.
“Do all the spells rhyme?” Bailey asked Sonali. She shrugged and took a big gulp of her drink.
New and improved drinks in hand, the pledges navigated through the party, drifting between clusters of other Ravens. They were easy to find—always surrounded by a gaggle of fans or being admired from a distance.
They wound up at the edges of the party beside Jess and her girlfriend, Juliet.
“Come on.” Jess tugged on Juliet’s hand. “Dance with me.”
“Someone needs to keep an eye out,” Juliet said, looking around the room warily.
“Oh, relax. We don’t need a bodyguard tonight. But I need someone to dance with me before I’m forced to go waste my evening with a PiKa guy with wandering hands.”
Juliet reluctantly followed Jess to the middle of the room, though by the time she placed her arms around Jess and began to sway, the stiffness in her shoulders had melted away. It didn’t take long before the crowd parted and re-formed around them, creating a makeshift dance floor as other couples joined in. Despite the boost Mei’s glamours had given her, Vivi couldn’t imagine feeling confident enough to be the first person to dance at a party. Juliet’s serious expression morphed into a smile as she swayed in perfect rhythm with Jess, and Vivi’s admiration turned to envy as she felt a pang of longing she’d never felt before. What would it be like to have someone look at her like she was the only person in the world? She turned away, not wanting to intrude on what was starting to feel like a private moment, and suddenly found herself looking at Mason.
He was talking to a couple of guys who appeared to be two of his frat brothers, a handsome, confident-looking guy with warm brown skin and a lanky white kid with the telltale straw-gray hair of a competitive swimmer. Instead of the tuxes that all the other guys were wearing, Mason had on jeans and a perfectly fitted white button-down that was open at the neck, revealing a hint of summer-tanned chest.
As if feeling her gaze on him, Mason looked over. He caught her eye and smiled, sending an electric thrill through her body, not dissimilar to the sensation she’d felt when she was working magic.
Before Vivi could decide whether to smile, wave, or pretend she hadn’t seen him, Scarlett materialized at Mason’s side. Heart pounding, Vivi spun around and took a few chugs of her drink, then winced. Ariana might have improved the flavor, but the alcohol was strong enough to burn her throat. As she stood with the other pledges, half listening to Reagan tell a story about a witch she knew who’d been a finalist on The Bachelor, the crowded room began to go fuzzy around the edges, and a comforting sense of warmth settled in her chest. Suddenly, the dance floor looked far less frightening—almost inviting.
Vivi gazed around until her eyes landed on the cute bartender. She waited a moment to see if he’d look up, but he was focused on drink-mixing, and even tipsy Vivi wasn’t bold enough to cross a room and strike up a conversation with a stranger. Then she remembered a spell she’d read in the grimoire about catching the attention of someone who was otherwise engaged. It’d been one of the many non-English spells, but Vivi’s French was just good enough to get the gist. “J’en appelle à la Reine d’Épées et invoque la Force. Que ma volonté soit exaucée,” she whispered under her breath. She felt pressure building as the warmth in her chest began to spread through her whole body, pressing against her skin as if trying to escape. A second later, the boy looked up and locked eyes with her across the crowd.
Vivi inclined her head toward the dance floor and raised one eyebrow quizzically, a gesture she hadn’t even known she could perform, then felt a thrill as he grinned and nodded. They met in the middle of the room, and he wordlessly wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. It was the most physical contact she’d had with a boy since middle school, when she’d had a boyfriend for exactly one week, during which time they spoke three times and kissed once. Yet while the sensation of the boy’s touch was unfamiliar, it certainly wasn’t unwelcome.
The weight of his hands made her skin tingle as he guided her side to side in time to the music. But although he was, hands down, the hottest guy who’d ever shown any interest in her, she couldn’t help imagining he was someone else. Someone she absolutely, positively coul
d not want.
Someone she wanted anyway.
* * *
An hour later, Ariana grabbed Vivi’s hand and pulled her off the dance floor, where she’d been dancing with a second boy—one who’d approached her without the influence of a spell. The party had thinned out a little but the couples and groups of friends on the dance floor were still going strong, singing along to the Lizzo song blaring from the speakers.
“What’s up?” Vivi asked, slightly out of breath. She was sweaty from dancing, and although she hadn’t had anything else to drink, the world was spinning slightly at the edges of her vision.
“Nico wants to show us the pool room,” Ariana said with a giggle, leading her toward a staircase at the back of the house, where Reagan, Bailey, and Sonali were standing.
“Who’s Nico?” Vivi asked.
“The guy I was just dancing with. Didn’t you see him? They don’t make ’em like that where I come from. These Savannah boys can really rock a tux. Now come on.” Ariana tugged on Vivi’s arm. “He and his friends are waiting for us downstairs.”
Vivi was buzzed, but not so buzzed that she didn’t hear the alarm bells sounding in her mind. “I don’t think we should. Scarlett told us not to leave the main party under any circumstances.”
“Oh, come on,” Reagan said, sounding both amused and slightly irritated. “It’s not like they’re strangers. This is our brother frat.”
“She’s not saying it’s dangerous.” Sonali looked nervously from Vivi to the others. “She’s saying we shouldn’t disobey Scarlett.”
“Trust me, you do not want to make her angry,” Vivi said with a shudder.
“Whatever. I saw Dahlia, Tiffany, and Mei disappear upstairs thirty minutes ago,” Ariana said. “They’re not even following their own rules.”
“Are you girls coming?” a cute boy with messy blond hair asked. He brushed past them and disappeared down the steps.
“Yes!” Ariana said firmly; she grabbed Sonali’s hand and pulled her after Reagan, who’d already started down the stairs.
“What do you think?” Vivi whispered to Bailey.
“I don’t know,” she said uneasily. “I don’t like letting Scarlett tell me what to do, and playing a few minutes of pool doesn’t sound like a big deal. But then again, I’ve never pissed off a witch before.”
The stairs led down to a windowless room with a dingy tiled floor where a handful of PiKa boys were playing beer pong. Vivi’s stomach lurched when she realized that one of them was Mason.
He caught her eye for a moment and smirked, then returned his focus to the game.
Vivi frowned. Something about his expression felt off. The smirk didn’t seem to belong to the sweet, playful boy who’d carried her bags and helped her make waffles. His eyes seemed harder, and the laugh she heard from across the room had an almost cruel edge to it. Then his mouth opened wider and twisted into a strange, unnatural shape, as if his jaw had become unhinged. Vivi watched in horror as his skin began to droop like melting wax—just like the faces of the other boys.
“What the hell?” Bailey muttered, her words drowned out by Ariana’s scream.
The boys’ faces and bodies continued to melt and re-form until, a few moments later, Tiffany, Scarlett, Dahlia, and Mei stood in their place. Dahlia was looking at them sternly, her arms crossed, while Mei had a mischievous smile on her face as she pretended to inspect her nails. The whole thing must have been one of Mei’s glamours, Vivi realized, although she hadn’t known Pentacles magic was strong enough to change elegant Ravens into frat boys.
“As you’ve probably realized by now,” Scarlett said, “this was a test. And you failed it.”
“I told you,” Sonali muttered under her breath.
“You’re witches,” Scarlett continued. “You’re more powerful than most of you realize. With that power comes a responsibility to protect yourselves and your sisters. If we tell you to stick together, to stay with the group, then that’s what you do. It doesn’t matter who’s trying to persuade you—a group of charming frat boys or an ancient demon you accidentally summoned through sloppy spellwork.”
“Wait. Demons are real too?” Bailey asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Tiffany said with a bordering-on-evil grin. “Y’all have earned yourselves cemetery duty.”
“What does that mean?” Ariana asked, still trembling from the sight of the gruesome transformation.
The four older girls exchanged knowing looks. “Oh, you’ll see,” Mei singsonged.
Scarlett wiggled her fingers at the pledges, then headed upstairs with the older girls. “I just hope you’re not scared of the dark,” she called. “Or the dead.”
Chapter Fourteen
Scarlett
The morning after the mixer, Scarlett lay sprawled on the main green with her head pillowed on Mason’s chest. Students wove all around them, rushing off to classes or to meet friends. A clump of boys tossed a Frisbee back and forth. A group of women were hanging a banner for an upcoming student-gallery opening. Scarlett took comfort in the bright normalness of it all. Lying here with the steady, soothing thud of Mason’s heartbeat pulsing in her ear was exactly what she needed right now.
She’d barely slept last night. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the spell that had exploded in her room before the mixer. She’d never seen magic react that way before. Magic had an energy to it, an effervescence. It might exhaust you, but you didn’t feel like it was devouring you from the inside out. When her spell had exploded, it was like a hungry, angry force was trying to invade her body. She’d spent all night worrying about what the spell meant, but here, in the bright light of day with the sun shining and Mason’s fingers threaded through hers, it was hard to believe anything ominous was afoot at Westerly College.
And last night hadn’t been all bad. She’d managed to enjoy shocking the pledges when she and the others had glamoured into the PiKa boys. The horrified look on Vivi’s face was enough to make Scarlett smile even now.
“What’s so funny?” Mason asked, his chest rumbling beneath her head.
“Just thinking about the mixer last night. It was fun, right?”
“I guess,” he said. She felt him shrug.
“Not entertaining enough for you, Mr. Gregory?”
“I mean, it’s a mixer. It’s the same shit as always. Jotham spent half the night trying to win Molly back and then the rest of the night making out with one of her best friends. Benjamin threw up in the pool after everyone left. And the pledges, I swear, are clones of our class. Same bros, different color polo shirts. It’s boring.”
“Nice way to talk about your house’s party.” Scarlett frowned. She’d made a point to pull Mason onto the dance floor so that they would have some time together. He had looked like he was having fun, but had she misread it? Had she misread him? Sure, he hadn’t worn a tux like he was supposed to, but he’d told her he’d forgotten to pack it after his vacation, and she’d taken him at his word. Now, though, she saw something else. Maybe he’d just chosen not to wear it. And, yes, maybe there were a few too many PiKas ordering their Solo cups “shaken, not stirred.” But that was just part of Greek life, laughing at dumb expected jokes with your friends. With Gwen back, Scarlett wished the worst problem the Kappas faced was getting bored.
“Honestly, I don’t know if they’re going to be my house that much longer,” Mason said.
Scarlett furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”
“When was the last time you read a book for fun?”
Scarlett tensed. This felt like a test. And she and Mason were supposed to be long past the stage of “Are we right for each other?” questions. “Why?”
He sighed, his look faraway. “Jotham ragged on me for half an hour for reading something that wasn’t on the syllabus.”
“That’s just Jotham being Jotham.”
“That’s PiKa being PiKa,” he corrected.
“I don’t think you’re being fair to your
brothers.”
“That’s the thing—they aren’t my brothers. They’re not even necessarily my friends. I asked myself if I would choose them if they weren’t already in PiKa, and honestly, I’m not so sure.”
Scarlett squinted against the sun. “Where is this coming from? You adore Jotham.”
“And he’ll be my friend with or without PiKa.”
“Without PiKa?” she asked, on red alert now.
She felt his chest rise and fall in a sigh. “I’m thinking about quitting PiKa.”
“What?” Scarlett sat bolt upright and spun to stare down at her boyfriend. He stretched and sat up too, running a hand through his messy dark curls.
“What? It’s not that big a deal.”
“Mason, what about your brothers? What about your dad? Every male Gregory has been a PiKa for the past three generations.”
Mason laughed and reached over to take her hand. “Scar, I admire your loyalty, but you take all this Greek stuff way more seriously than I ever have. I know Kappa is really special for you, and I respect that. But . . . ‘brothers,’ ‘pledging.’” He shrugged. “PiKa is just a social club. It’s a nice way to network, I guess, get to know people. But I only joined in the first place because my dad wanted me to, and last night, as we stood there talking to the same old people about the same old shit, I just felt . . . bored. Like, is this how I want to spend my nights for the rest of college?”
“You mean with your best friends and your girlfriend?” Scarlett said pointedly. She flashed back to the first time she met him. The Pikiki party. The plumeria. PiKa was part of their story. And now he was shitting on it.
“Scar, our relationship doesn’t depend on my membership in a fraternity.” His expression sobered. “Or at least, it shouldn’t.”
“Of course it doesn’t. I just don’t understand. Did something happen—did you get into it with another PiKa?”
Mason shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
“So what’s the problem, then?”
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