“We’re planning to hit the Promenade tomorrow after breakfast,” Nat says. “You should come with us.”
“Yeah?”
“Come for breakfast, too,” Isla says, sweeping her braids behind her shoulders to keep them out of her potatoes. “Meet us at Broken Yolks at nine—it’s over at the Breath and Blade dorms. Gotta start strong if you want to keep up with Nat on a shopping excursion.”
Jessa would totally laugh at me if she could see this. Ihateshopping—truly. Back home, my wardrobe consisted mostly of jeans and Kettle Black T-shirts, and I got all my groceries delivered from the café suppliers.
But then I think of the sleek black credit card sitting on top of my dresser upstairs, and suddenly the idea doesn’t sound so bad. I’ve got a feeling shopping is a lot more fun when you’re doing it with someone else’s money.
“Alright,” I say. “I’m in.”
“Stevie! Hey girl!” Across the café, Carly Kirkpatrick waves at me from the entrance, flanked again by her minions—the cute redhead, who’s now wearing a rather un-cute scowl, and the other woman I saw on the path earlier—a pretty Latina who looks like she could be Jessa’s taller, snobbier sister. There’s a fourth woman with them now, too, with pierced eyebrows and pale pink hair twisted into a messy bun.
“Oh no,” Nat whispers, rolling her eyes as the quad saunters our way. “It’s the Claires.”
“Claires? I thought her name was Carly?”
“It is,” Nat says, “but they’re all—”
She cuts off as the group descends upon us in a cloud of expensive perfume and a collective mojo that can only be described as peak superbitch.
“Stevie, I’m so glad I ran into you here!” Carly slides her ass onto the edge of our table, forcing Isla to move her plate out of the way or risk a butt-cheek imprint in her guacamole-infused mashed potatoes. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot before. I wassuperPMS-y, and Baz has a way of pushingallmy buttons, if you know what I mean.”
She laughs and tosses her glossy black hair over her shoulder, the ends of it dragging through Isla’s dinner.
“Carly, do you know Isla and Nat?” I ask with a pointed glare, hoping she’ll take the hint and get her perky little butt off the table.
Carly glances down at Isla and nods, but doesn’t move or even say hello or even crack a smile.
Turning her gaze back on me, she says, “The girls and I were wondering if you’d thought about pledging a coven this semester?”
“There’s no pledging here,” Nat says, grabbing Isla’s plate and moving it away.
“There is now,” Carly says. “We can’t just let anyone into the coven,Matt.”
“It’sNat,” Nat and I say at the same time.
“So anyway,” Carly says, “our coven has certainstandards, magickal and otherwise.” The way she says standards makes it clear she thinks this table is lacking in that department. “We expect each member to bring her own natural gifts to the sisterhood, and pledge complete loyalty.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, feigning interest. Call me cynical, but something tells me the more I can find out about these women, the better I can defend myself. “What are your natural gifts?”
Carly lights up as if I’ve just offered her her own reality show. “I’m clairsentient, so I basically know things before they happen. I’ve been that way since I was born. Literally—I predicted my own birthday in the womb.”
“Isn’t that something?” I ask Nat.
“It’s something, alright,” Nat grumbles. “Not sure what, but something.”
Plowing on, Carly nods at the redhead standing beside her and says, “Amelia is clairvoyant, so she sees things, like movies in her mind. Emory hears things.”
“I don’thearthings, Carly,” the one who reminds me of Jessa says, clearly annoyed. “It’s called clairaudience. Aural premonitions.”
“Right,” Carly says, then thumbs at the pink-haired woman with all the eyebrow rings—at least six on each side, as far as I can count. “And Blue here—”
“Your name is Blue?” I ask, blinking up at her pink hair.
“Is that a problem?” she replies, the challenge obvious. She’s definitely gunning for a fight, even though she looks like she’s about a hundred pounds at most, twenty of which is the hardware in her eyebrows.
I’m pretty sure I could crack her between my thighs like a walnut, but I’m not much for fighting. Besides, I’m not about to ruin my cheesy potatoes over this middle-school bullshit.
