The Ravens (The Ravens #1) - Kass Morgan Page 0,123

we’d vote in after all of this.”

With Dahlia gone, Kappa couldn’t wait until next year to choose her successor. They needed someone to step up and fill her shoes now. Preferably before the full-moon ritual tonight, where they’d need an experienced witch to guide them, to lead the rite and channel the sisters’ magic properly.

Once, Scarlett would’ve leaped at the chance. Now . . .

“I wasn’t even president and I already messed things up horribly. I failed to notice my best friend going bad; I ignored you over petty crap with my ex when I should’ve been focused on Kappa problems.” Scarlett had already gone down the “What if I’d picked up the phone when Vivi called me that night” path about a hundred times. “Not to mention I told an outsider about us,” she added.

“You said you fixed that.”

Scarlett hadn’t admitted it to anyone else, not even Mei. But a few nights after she altered Jackson’s memory (and after several mugs of Etta’s infamous mulled wine), she’d admitted it to Vivi. In fact, she’d admitted a lot of things to Vivi. More than she ever would’ve pictured herself doing in the past.

“Yes, but it never should have happened in the first place,” Scarlett replied, her stomach doing an unpleasant lurch when she thought about the moment she’d seen Jackson in the philosophy class they were both in this year. His eyes had stayed on hers for a second too long, and she wondered if somehow the spell had been broken. But then his gaze moved on and he’d said something snarky about social contract theory. As relieved as Scarlett was that the spell had held, the moment had been bittersweet. In spite of everything, she’d wanted him to remember their connection on some primordial level beyond memory. But that was silly and ran counter to her very actions. You did the right thing, she reminded herself. There was no other way.

“But you did the right thing in the end,” Vivi said now, making Scarlett wonder if her Little might have a touch of affinity for Swords mind-reading magic after all. “That’s what matters. But doing the right thing doesn’t mean being a nun, Scarlett. Why can’t you start again with Jackson? He doesn’t ever have to know about before.”

As Scarlett considered Vivi’s words, she realized something. Even though it was Mason who had broken her heart, it was Jackson’s kiss she couldn’t forget, not Mason’s. It was Jackson’s lips that she could still feel on hers, not Mason’s. But she’d had to give Jackson up, and unlike his, her memory was very much intact. She couldn’t forget how he’d made her feel. But she was still a witch. And he was still a human. And she couldn’t imagine being with him without telling him the truth all over again.

Scarlett shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the same,” she said firmly.

Vivi smiled sadly but nodded as if she understood. The two girls fell silent again as Vivi went back to work. Finally, Vivi tapped her shoulder. “Okay, take a look.”

Scarlett cracked an eye open. Then both her eyes widened. The girl in the mirror looked both familiar and not. She had Scarlett’s same brown eyes and deep brown skin. But her cheekbones seemed just a touch higher and sharper, her eyelashes longer, her lips a shade fuller—or maybe that was just an illusion thanks to the bright red color Vivi had given them.

Her curls were held up with dozens of glittering pins shaped like little fall leaves, burnt orange and garnet and peridot. Her hair fell in a cascade of perfect ringlets down her back to her black cocktail dress.

Normally the harvest-moon ritual was a time to celebrate the fruits of their labor before they buckled down for the winter. But tonight it’d be a more somber affair, honoring the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

It seemed fitting, since Tiffany’s and Dahlia’s funerals had been held earlier in the week.

It also reminded Scarlett exactly how unfit she was to lead anybody, let alone Kappa House. Even if she looked the part, she didn’t feel it, not inside.

“You don’t like it?” Over her shoulder, Vivi bit her lip.

Scarlett shook her head. “No, the glamour is perfect, Vivi, thank you.”

She rose and crossed her room to the balcony doors. Outside, she could already see their sisters in the backyard. Juliet stoked the bonfire, Jess at her side adding bundles of herbs to the wood at intervals. Those two hadn’t spent more than