The first time I spot the redhead, a flash of hair vanishing around a corner like sudden flame, I almost think she’s Alex.
She isn’t Alex.
If my mother were here, she would urge me up off this bed and force me into a common space. I’d be shepherded from girl to girl until I’d introduced myself to them all. I’d offer to make tea, a gesture calculated to endear myself to them. I wouldn’t be late for supper, a chance to congregate with the rest of the Godwin girls in the house dining room, to trade summer anecdotes and pass the salt.
I accomplish none of those things, and I do not go to supper at all.
I feel as if the next year has just opened up in front of me, a great and yawning void that consumes all light. What will emerge from that darkness? What ghosts will reach from the shadows to close their fingers around my neck?
A year ago, Alex and I let something evil into this house. What if it never left?
I shut myself in my room and pace from the window to the door and back again, twisting my hands in front of my stomach. Magic isn’t real, I tell myself once again. Ghosts aren’t real.
And if ghosts and magic aren’t real, curses aren’t real, either.
But the tap-tap of the oak tree branches against my window reminds me of bony fingertips on glass, and I can’t get Alex’s voice out of my head.
Tarot isn’t magic, I decide. It’s fortune-telling. It’s a historical practice. It’s…it’s essentially a card game. Therefore, there’s no risk courting old habits when I crouch in the closet and peel the baseboard away from the wall, reaching past herbs and candles and old stones to find the familiar metal tin that holds my Smith-Waite deck.
I shove the rest of those dark materials back in place and scuttle out of the closet on my hands, breath coming sharp and shallow.
Magic isn’t real. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
I carry the box to my bed, shuffle the cards, and ask my questions: Will I fit in with these girls? Will I make friends here?
Will Godwin House be anything like what I remember?
I lay out three cards: past, present, future.
Past: the Six of Cups, which represents freedom, happiness. It’s the card of childhood and innocence. Which, I suppose, is why it falls in my past.
Present: the Nine of Wands, reversed. Hesitation. Paranoia. That sounds about right.
And my future: the Devil.
I frown down at my cards, then sweep them back into the deck. I never know what to make of the major arcana. Besides, tarot doesn’t predict the future, or so said Dr. Ortega, anyway. Tarot only means as much as your interpretation tells you about yourself.
There’s no point in agonizing over the cards right now. Instead I check my reflection in the mirror, tying my hair back and applying a fresh coat of lipstick, then go downstairs to meet the rest of them.
I find the new students in the common room. They’re all gathered around the coffee table, seemingly fixated on a chess game being played between Ellis and the redhead. A rose-scented candle burns, classical music playing on vinyl.
Even though I know nothing about chess, I can tell Ellis is winning. The center of the board is controlled by her pawns, the other girl’s pieces pushed off to the flanks and battling to regain lost ground.
“Hi,” I say.
All eyes swing round to fix on me. It’s so abrupt—a single movement, as if synchronized—that I’m left feeling suddenly off balance. My smile is tentative on my mouth.
I’m never tentative. I’m Felicity Morrow.
But these girls don’t know that.
All their gazes turn to Ellis next, as if asking her for permission to speak to me. Ellis sweeps a white pawn off the board and sits back. Drapes a wrist over her knee, says: “That’s Felicity.”
As if I can’t introduce myself. And of course it’s too late now; what am I supposed to say? I can’t just say hi again. I’m certainly not going to agree with her: Yes indeed, my name is Felicity, you are quite correct.
Ellis met these girls a few hours ago, and already she’s established herself as their center of gravity.
One of them—a Black girl with a halo of tight coils, wearing a cardigan I recognize as this season’s Vivienne Westwood—takes pity on me. “Leonie Schuyler.”
It’s enough to prompt the others to speak, at least.
“Kajal Mehta,” says the thin, bored-looking girl from my floor.
“Clara Kennedy.” The red-haired girl, her attention already turned back to the chess game.
And it appears that concludes the conversation. Not that they return to whatever they’d been talking about before; now that I am here, the room has fallen silent, except for the click of Clara’s knight against the board and the sound of a match striking as Ellis lights a cigarette.