Something began to flow out of Vivi. At first, she thought it was more blood, but it was coming from places the birds hadn’t touched. She tried to wrench her head around for a better look, but she was too weak to move.
She was dying, and Dahlia was taking her magic.
“I call to Death and to the Tower. Call home this witch and give me—” Dahlia went silent as the orange glow began to fade from her fingertips. She lowered her arms and turned, searching the dark woods for something to explain what’d gone wrong.
Another bolt of lightning flared above, and Scarlett stepped into the circle. Her dark eyes burned with fury and surging magic, and her skin seemed to glow from within. She strode forward to face Dahlia, unfazed by the grim accoutrements of wicked magic. “I can’t believe it was you all along.”
For the first time that evening, something akin to fear flashed across Dahlia’s face. “Scarlett, hold on—”
Scarlett cut her off by raising her hands. The wind immediately picked up. Trees snapped and creaked as they rubbed against one another, and rain began to fall, softly at first and then suddenly much harder, coming down in sheets that doused the candles.
A moment later, the birds vanished, and Vivi exhaled in relief.
“What did you do to Tiffany?” Scarlett demanded.
Dahlia extended her hands, and the candles flared back to life, the flames leaping to double, triple their original height. In the firelight, her face took on a strange cast, as if it were bending and snapping out of shape. “You don’t understand.” Dahlia was shouting to be heard over the rain and the wind, but there was a desperate plea in her voice. “You have to let me explain.”
“Explain?” Scarlett spat, her mouth twisted with disgust. “There’s no way you can explain killing my best friend.” She flexed her outstretched hands and Dahlia flew backwards.
The next moment, Vivi’s rigid limbs went limp and the invisible cords binding her wrists and ankles vanished. By the time she rose unsteadily to her feet, she could feel power beginning to surge into her body, like water being sucked into a growing tsunami.
She felt the earth respond to the return of her magic. The ground trembled under her feet and the leaves began to shudder, as if quivering in anticipation of her call. But Vivi couldn’t focus on anything except Dahlia’s face, which seemed to be transforming.
Her nose shrank her eye and hair color shifted, her glamour was losing its form, her concentration pulled in too many other directions to maintain the mask.
Vivi gasped and Scarlett staggered backwards. Far above, one particularly ominous storm cloud reached a finger down, almost like a tornado. But neither girl noticed—they were too horrified by the sight right in front of them.
The sister staring back at them wasn’t Dahlia.
It was Tiffany.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Scarlett
If Scarlett hadn’t been witnessing this with her own eyes, she never would have believed it. But there was no mistaking who the blond, narrow-faced girl standing across from her was. Her best friend.
“What the hell’s going on? I thought you were dead.” Scarlett’s eyes stung, though she wasn’t sure if it was from the rain, her tears, or both.
“I know, and I’m sorry.” Tiffany’s voice sounded thin and almost contrite as it carried over the howling wind and the whipping of the tree branches. Wet leaves rained down on their heads, followed by loose sticks and branches. A tornado-like funnel swirled above them, roiling the debris in a whirling circle. “I had to make it look like I was the one missing so nobody would find her.”
Her? Scarlett’s confusion curdled into disgust as she remembered all the blood in Tiffany’s room. If Tiffany herself was fine and had been walking around wearing Dahlia’s face for days, then that meant . . .
“You killed Dahlia,” Vivi said, apparently reaching the conclusion at the same moment.
“I needed her power,” Tiffany said, still facing Scarlett. “If you’d just let me explain, you’d understand.”
“Understand?” Scarlett’s voice rose to a nearly hysterical pitch as she realized her best friend was trying to justify murdering their friend. Beautiful, brilliant, fierce Dahlia, who put her sisters before everything. Who’d stay up all night helping you brew a potion to calm midterm anxiety or drive four hours to get you if you got stranded in a freak snowstorm—even if said snowstorm was a product of your own foolish making. Dahlia, one of the most talented, committed witches in a generation, gone. Snuffed out as carelessly as a candle at the end of a ritual and with as little remorse. “There is nothing you could say that would make this okay.”
“Oh, really? Okay, try this: I spent years listening to all those speeches about Ravens putting each other first, but when I really needed you all, no one was there for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“All I wanted was to help her.” Tiffany’s voice cracked slightly. “The doctors couldn’t do anything more, so I found a spell in the grimoire. It was major arcana, something I couldn’t do on my own, so I went to ask Dahlia if we could perform the ritual as a house.”
Her mother. Of course. Scarlett’s stomach sank as she remembered how thin Veronica Beckett had been at Homecoming. Tiffany had tried to put on a brave face, but Scarlett knew Veronica had been given a terminal diagnosis and had just a few more months to live.
“But Dahlia wouldn’t even think about it,” Tiffany continued. “She said it was an outdated spell created before we really knew how diseases worked and that it would ‘mess with the natural order of things.’ As if that’s a good enough reason to let my mother die.”
The pain in Tiffany’s voice made Scarlett’s heart cramp. She could only begin to imagine how her friend—and her friend’s family—had suffered. But there were certain forces that even witches couldn’t change, and death was one of them. “Would she want you to do this for her? Would she want you to become this?” Scarlett asked quietly.
Tiffany was drenched, her limp hair plastered to her face, but she radiated power. Scarlett could feel it emanating from her, filling the air with the pungent scent of rot. That was what happened when you contaminated your magic. Tiffany might’ve accumulated an unnatural amount of power, but it had come at great cost.
Another bolt of lightning tore through the sky, and for a moment all Scarlett could see was blinding white. When her eyes adjusted to the dark again, she saw Tiffany looking at her with a sad smile that made Scarlett’s blood run cold.
“It’s too late now,” Tiffany said, stroking the talisman around her neck. “I’ve already collected the power of three suits. Mine. Dahlia’s. And a Cups witch I met over the summer. All I need to collect is a Pentacles, and I’ll be able to do whatever the hell I want.” She turned to look at Vivi hungrily.
Scarlett stepped between Tiffany and her Little. “You’re not going to hurt anyone else. Especially not her.”
Tiffany raised a mocking eyebrow, then threw her arms to her sides and shouted into the rain, “I call to Death and to the Tower. Call home this witch and give me her power.”
Scarlett started at the words of the spell, one she knew well but had never heard spoken aloud. It was the deadliest major arcana spell—one that required an entire coven to perform. Surely even the stolen power of two witches wouldn’t be enough for Tiffany to do it on her own. But then the talisman around Tiffany’s neck began to glow and a strange smell filled the air. The rain running down Scarlett’s skin turned thick and sticky. She looked at her arm and gasped, then shielded her face and turned to the sky.