Chapter Thirteen
Vivi
PiKa House looked exactly how Vivi had always imagined a frat house would look. The exterior was a stately red brick with thick white columns and Greek letters stamped prominently above the portico. There was a green, spray-painted bench on the lawn, a half-crushed Ping-Pong ball in the grass, and what looked like a pair of boxers tangled in the bushes that lined the front of the house. The air wafting through the open door smelled faintly of stale beer and boy, and music pulsed through the windows.
Vivi took a deep breath and steeled herself. She had now officially been to one party, but this was the first one with actual college boys. The mixer was for four of the most prominent frats and sororities: Psi Delta Lambda, Kappa Rho Nu, Theta Omega Xi, and PiKa, which Vivi had learned was Mason’s fraternity. The thought of seeing him again made her stomach twist with a combination of excitement and lingering shame. Had he been able to tell that she’d been doing her pathetic best to flirt with him? Was that why he’d acted so strange and hurried off once Scarlett arrived? For a moment, the thought of crossing the threshold of PiKa House felt more daunting than performing magic for the first time—if she couldn’t manage a conversation with one boy without embarrassing herself, what would she do with a whole houseful of them?
Yet, while this was her first coed party, it was also her first time walking into a room with all of Kappa at her back. The second Vivi stepped inside with her new sisters, she understood what real power felt like. The whole party went quiet and every pair of eyes in the room swiveled to them. But it wasn’t the angry, mistrustful stares Vivi was used to receiving as the perpetual new girl. People looked at them with desire. Like they’d give anything to be them.
Scarlett had gone MIA during the party prep, so before leaving Kappa House, Mei had pulled Vivi into her room and surveyed her critically. “Is it hopeless?” Vivi asked nervously, glancing down at the outfit she’d chosen after consulting with Ariana. “Work your magic—give me whatever I need.”
Mei smiled. “It’s not that dire. Trust me.”
Vivi gave her a skeptical look. “Sure, as long as I don’t stand next to you at any point tonight.”
Mei closed her eyes and her elaborate makeup and hairstyle melted away, leaving her still beautiful but barefaced and unglamoured. “This is the skin I was born in,” she said, then reached out to touch Vivi’s arm. “This is the skin you were born in. Embrace it. Wield it. Change it at will. It is your instrument, but you are not defined by it—you define it, you can choose. That’s what it means to be a Raven.”
In the end, Mei had given her a quick “polish,” as she called it, using simple glamours to lengthen Vivi’s lashes, add extra shine to her hair, and alter her jeans so they clung more closely to her hips and legs. It was nothing that Vivi couldn’t have conceivably achieved on her own through expensive trips to the salon and the tailor, but she’d never had the money or inclination to do anything like that. To say nothing of anyone to go with. But these simple changes were enough to make Vivi feel like a completely different person. Instead of shuffling with her eyes down, trying to avoid attention, Vivi entered the party with her head held high.
Two Theta pledges Vivi recognized from her biology class smiled and waved, bright-eyed with hope. When Vivi smiled and raised a hand to them, they giggled and whispered to each other, like they’d just been greeted by a celebrity. Next to her, Reagan was pretending to ignore the PiKa brothers ogling her from the couch as she made a show of tossing her long red curls over her shoulder.
Bailey’s eyes were bright behind her glasses, and even the normally reserved Sonali seemed to relax as the girls moved through the front room. “I could get used to this,” she whispered to Vivi as she began to move her hips in time to the thrumming music.
“Me too,” Vivi said, trying to ignore a prickle of uncertainty. “If I flunk out of Kappa, I hope I still remember how cool I felt for this one week.”
“Oh, come on,” Reagan said with an exasperated smile. “You’re not going to flunk out.”
“I don’t know. Scarlett is on a one-woman mission to get me to de-pledge.”
“It’s not personal. It’s just Hell Week. Tiffany made me hallucinate blood,” Ariana said, shivering slightly.
“I wonder how she did that,” Bailey said curiously. The reveal that magic was real had short-circuited her scientist brain and she seemed to be treating the whole rush process like one big experiment.
“How are things going for you, Reagan?” Vivi asked. Of her four fellow pledges, Reagan was the hardest for Vivi to get a read on. She was from a prominent family of Southern witches who hadn’t attended Westerly but who wielded substantial power.
“Fine,” she said with a shrug as she surveyed the room, clearly more interested in the frat boys than in talking about her training. “I’ve been doing these sorts of spells since I could walk.”
“Lucky. Scarlett sicced her bathroom mold on me.” Vivi hesitated as she recalled what had happened in Scarlett’s room. She hadn’t been able to banish the image of Scarlett’s terrified face as the strange stain spread up her arms. Just thinking about it made the back of her neck prickle like it used to when Daphne left her alone in the rambling Victorian house they once rented in Baton Rouge, and Vivi heard strange noises coming from the attic. “I saw something a little . . . weird. Scarlett was working on this spell and I think it backfired or something. It almost looked like blood was creeping up her arms?”
Sonali’s eyes widened. “Are you sure? That sounds like wicked magic.”
Wicked magic. The words perfectly described what Vivi had felt in Scarlett’s room, the strange combination of menace and power, as if the air were full of thousands of invisible snakes waiting to strike. “I don’t know. Would Scarlett really perform wicked magic?” Vivi asked. Her Big certainly had a mean-girl streak, but the fact that she was a bully who put more effort into her hair than training her Little didn’t mean she was evil.
“Only if it got me a discount at Lilly Pulitzer,” a falsely cheery voice said.
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.”