After the last of the items has been positioned, I dust off my hands and back up.

Sybil skips over to me, her butterfly wings fluttering behind her.

“So remind me again what’s going to happen later?” I say as she links her arm through mine.

She shakes her head. “No way am I going to ruin the surprise tonight. You’re just going to have to see it firsthand.” Sybil glances at the growing shadows. “C’mon,” she says, tugging my arm in the direction of our house. “We should eat and get you changed.”

“Get me changed?” I say uncertainly.

“Babe,” she says, pulling on my skeleton suit, “you’re not going to want to wear this.”

“What’s wrong with my costume?” I say, somewhat defensively.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s going to be constricting as fuck when you start drinking witch’s brew later. I would know. Last year, I literally ripped mine apart to get out of it.”

I look at her askance. “What’s in the witch’s brew?” I cannot imagine anything would cause me to rip my own clothes apart.

She flashes me a secretive smile. “I can’t tell you, but you just have to trust me that it’s all a part of the celebration.”

Cutting loose does sound fun…

I run a hand over my spandex catsuit. “This is the only costume I have,” I say.

She gives my arm a squeeze. “Luckily, you have me for a best friend.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 16

“What am I supposed to be?” I ask, staring at my reflection. I look exactly the same, except for some shimmery makeup and a white satin slip dress that leaves me feeling more exposed than covered.

“You’re a sexy ghost—or a dead bride. Whichever you prefer.”

I want to laugh a little. The whole point of dressing up on Samhain is to mask your true identity so that malicious spirits won’t recognize you. But in this outfit, I look like me, only in white.

“Wow, you truly do work wonders,” I say sarcastically.

The joke goes entirely over her head; Sybil looks thrilled.

My eyes linger on my chest.

“You can see my nipples,” I state.

“Babe, we’re going to be seeing everyone’s nipples by the end of the night. But if it’s a big deal to you, I have pasties. We can also use magic.” She wiggles her fingers dramatically to emphasize her point.

I tilt my head back and forth, trying to decide if I want to just wear a white dress—for the ease of stripping later, apparently—or put back on my skeleton costume and get an earful from Sybil.

“Do you think ghosts get offended when we dress like them?” I ask. “Seeing as how it’s the day the spirits cross over?”

“You were going to dress as a skeleton,” Sybil points out.

Yeah, but my point still stands.

Sybil lifts a shoulder. “I don’t think the spirits care, but if you want to play it safe, you could always be a living bride.”

At her suggestion, my mind moves to Memnon and his plans to marry me.

I look in the mirror again, my heart beating fast at the thought.

“I could be a bride.” That seems like a more respectful option.

Sybil claps her hands. “Yay! Then let’s find you a veil!”

We do end up finding an old, moth-eaten veil in some forgotten chest downstairs, though the long train of it that trails on the ground was clearly beautiful back when it was new. I put it on after dousing it in a few sanitizing spells.

Just before sunset, I leave Nero in my room with instructions to stay inside tonight since in a few hours the woods will be crawling with drunk witches. Sybil and I head downstairs, where the rest of our housemates have gathered. Dozens of my coven sisters are taking off their socks and shoes and making their way to the front door in all manner of costume. Goblins, leopards, fairies, mummies, vampires—the already magical company looks even more unearthly in costume.

“Shoes off!” one of my sisters calls out to the room. “We’ll need to ground ourselves during the spell circle.”

“Spell circle?” I glance at Sybil as unease blooms in me.

She smiles secretively. “Don’t look so nervous, Bowers. This is the fun part.”

It probably is. I’ve just been burned by the last spell circle, so I now assume the worst.

Begrudgingly, I remove my shoes and tuck them into a corner, the floor feeling chilly against my bare feet.

One of the witches throws open the door, and another cries out, “Let’s party, bitches!”

Then there’s clapping and laughter, and all of us begin to funnel out of the residence hall. In the process, several witches step on my veil, making my head jerk back and nearly ripping gossamer thin material. Eventually, I have to murmur a spell to make the thing float like fog behind me.

We make our way across the grass behind our house then we plunge into the Everwoods. Here, under the thick shadows of trees, it feels as though night has already fallen. There’s an electric heaviness to the air like a storm cloud about to break.

We reach the pumpkin-lined path, the unlit lanterns above us bobbing in the evening breeze. An owl hoots in the distance, but besides that, a solemn sort of silence has descended over the forest.

We walk along the path until it opens up onto Slain Maiden’s Meadow. Only days ago, Memnon pledged himself to me here. Now, the field is filled with countless costumed witches. In the center of the clearing, there’s a massive pile of wood and kindling.

The moment the sun dips beneath the horizon, a strong wind cuts through the clearing, stirring our hair and costumes.

“In a circle!” an older voice calls out. “Witches, grasp one another’s hands, and take position. It is time!”

Time for what is still unclear, but I follow orders anyway, grasping the hands of a witch with long, wavy black braids and another with cropped blond hair.

Once we’ve arranged ourselves, that grave silence takes over again. I can hear the soft snap of our outfits blowing in the wind, but everyone is so quiet and so still. Even our magic seems subdued, the air almost entirely clear of it.

“Welcome, honored sisters, to our one hundred and eighty-seventh annual Samhain ceremony!” an older feminine voice shouts. I can’t tell who it belongs to, only that magic has amplified it. “Samhain is the holy night when the veil between worlds thins. Tonight, we have gathered to welcome guests from these other lands who wish to visit Earth for an evening. We will invite them through the doorway here, but in order to do so, we must call on our communal power to help open it for the evening.”

So there it is, the reason for the spell circle. We’re pooling our magic to help widen the rift between worlds. Sounds totally safe.

“Then,” the witch continues, “we will make our way down the path to Last Rites Cemetery, where a feast awaits us and our honored guests.

“Beware,” she warns. “Not all spirits are benevolent, and not all guests are dead⁠—”

What in the seven hells does all that mean?

“—so use caution even while enjoying the revelry tonight. Other than that, dance, drink, sing, mingle with our honored guests, and give in to your own innate wildness.”

In the distance, wolves begin to howl, as though acknowledging our wildness with their own.

Another witch now speaks. “Let’s commence the celebrations by incanting the following: Air above and earth beneath, here at last our worlds meet,” she says. “Goodfellows and the dearly deceased, come and join our hallowed feast.”

Down the line of our hands, I feel the current of her power run up my right arm and down my left, and I remember absently that magic moves in a clockwise direction for creation and counterclockwise for destruction.

She begins the incantation again, only this time, the rest of us join in. “Air above and earth beneath, here at last our worlds meet. Goodfellows and the dearly deceased, come and join our hallowed feast.”