“Apparently she’s the one who stole it from Kappa in the first place,” Vivi said, wincing with shame. “I can explain more when I get to the house.”
“There’s no time for that.”
“No time for explanations?” Vivi risked a confused glance at the phone screen.
“No, I don’t have time to go back to the house. I’m collecting the ingredients we need for the replicator spell. I’m about to call the rest of the sisters now.”
Something about the way she said it made Vivi’s heart beat a little faster, and her mother’s words echoed in her ears: You have no idea how many lives you’ll be risking. “We’re not going to actually give it to the person who stole Tiffany, are we?”
“Of course not.” Dahlia sounded insulted at the very suggestion. “With the talisman, we’ll have more than enough power to find Tiffany on our own. Trust me.”
Vivi did trust her; she trusted all the Ravens. They’d given her the thing she’d craved her entire life, the thing she’d always been missing: a home, a place to belong, and a real family, one that hadn’t spent years lying to her. “Where do you need me to go?”
“I’ll text you the location now. Just please, hurry. We’re running out of time.”
* * *
This time, Vivi had no trouble navigating the highway. The magic she’d conjured to find the talisman still flowed through her veins, making her feel powerful and confident as she zoomed toward the location Dahlia had given her. Vivi checked and double-checked the pin on the map Dahlia had dropped for her. But no matter how many times she reloaded the page, it still looked the same. Right in the middle of a forest, which seemed strange. But maybe the spell needed to be done in a place like this?
She took the specified exit and turned onto a narrow, two-lane road bordered by tall trees. It looked like Dahlia was sending her the back way to Kappa House, except that the pin seemed to be in the middle of the woods behind the house. She kept going for another few miles, until the pavement turned to a gravel road and the trees grew so thick, they blocked the light of the faintly glowing stars.
The road dead-ended at a tiny dirt parking lot. There were no other cars, and for a moment, Vivi considered waiting there for Dahlia. But the pin she’d dropped for her was about a half a mile from the lot. For all Vivi knew, Dahlia could’ve parked somewhere else and was already waiting for Vivi in the woods. She looked down at her phone to see if Dahlia had texted, but there was no signal. And there was no time to waste.
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.