Eight

By ten o'clock, I'm exhausted. My first day as a member of Magni Viri was... incredible, overwhelming, bewildering, terrifying. I almost cry with relief when I realize I can go to bed early since I don't have a janitorial shift. My mind can't take in anything more.

I've already been asleep for several hours when I wake suddenly from a hazy, confusing dream. Meredith was there, her fingers tangled in my hair, nails sharp against my scalp, her heady perfume surrounding me. After a moment, the dream fades and I hear the thing that woke me: the sound of something scraping across my bedroom door. I startle, sitting up fast, my heart racing. I hold still, listening with my entire being. Wren sleeps on, oblivious.

I decide I must have imagined the sound or that it was part of my dream. I'm about to lie back down when a floorboard outside my door creaks, long and loud. Someone's definitely out there.

I shiver, imagining Meredith's ghost crouched outside the door, peering into the keyhole. Maybe she wants her pen back. Or maybe she wants me out of Denfeld Hall so she can be Magni Viri's sixth freshman forever. I squeeze my eyes tight, praying Wren locked the door when they came to bed.

There's a rustling sound, and then a whisper. All I can think about is how I felt Meredith's presence in her room earlier, surrounding me. The way those nearly inaudible whispers coming through my phone's tinny speaker sounded.

This time the whisper is clear. "Tara," the person says in an ethereal voice. "Tara, open your door."

I let out an involuntary whimper. But since the problem clearly isn't going to go away, I throw my legs over the side of the bed and pull a sweater on over my pajamas, shaking as I do it. The moon shines in through the open curtains, just past full, surprisingly bright. There's a strange, irregular knock at the door, followed by a low, muffled laugh that makes the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I think of Rochester's wife wandering the halls of Thornfield, setting people on fire in their beds, and then I remember the burned curtains in the dining room. What if it's the fire-obsessed Bernard out there?

"Wren," I whisper, shaking their shoulder. "Wren, wake up."

Wren opens their eyes groggily. "Wha?" they mumble.

"Someone's at the door," I whisper.

"So open it," Wren says, snuggling down into their blankets again.

I'm not sure what else to do, so I walk over to the door and, after a long moment of silence, open it a crack. I peer out into the gloom of the hallway, and a face peers back at me, inches from my own. I scream and stumble back. Behind me, there's a loud thump and a groan. When I turn, Wren is on the ground, struggling to free themself from the blankets.

The person at my door chuckles, and I finally recognize them. It's Quigg. And he's very drunk. He tumbles into the room, a few others on his heels.

"Oh, shit, did we scare you? It's initiationnnn night!" he sings.

"What?" I cross my arms over my chest, acutely aware that I'm not wearing a bra under my sweater. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Time to become one of us!" he trills.

"One of us! One of us!" the others chant, laughing. It's Penny and Azar, now joined by Wren, who has finally extricated themself from the bedcovers and is wearing their quilt like a cloak. The three of them grin at me.

"You missed initiation night, so we're hosting one just for you," Quigg says. "You've got five minutes to get dressed if you want to." With that, he and Penny and Azar go laughing out of the room.

Wren throws an oversize denim trucker jacket on over their pajamas and pulls on some bright yellow rain boots before leaving with the others, and I'm left standing in the middle of the room in a pool of moonlight, swaying with sleepiness and confusion. Initiation ceremony?

I go to the window and look down. Groups of people are walking away from Denfeld, heading in the direction of the cemetery. So the entirety of Magni Viri is apparently going to be present at my initiation. Shit. Now my heart is racing for a totally different reason.

I scramble to get dressed, nearly falling over as I pull on my jeans. I flip on the light right before I'm ready to leave and stare at myself in the mirror for a long moment. The stubborn freckles across the bridge of my nose are the same. My eyebrows have the same straight, serious set to them. My mouth is still a little smaller than I would like. Nothing about me has changed, yet I barely recognize the girl who stares back. She is bright-eyed and alive, as excited as she is afraid. I shake my head at her before dashing out of the room and toward the staircase. The others are waiting there for me.

"One of us! One of us!" they start chanting again as they hurry me down the stairs.

Penny takes a little longer, coming down carefully, though still chanting with the others. I laugh and cover my face as they sweep me along. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Once we're outside, Quigg puts a finger to his mouth. "Shhh! Let's not wake the entire campus."

Azar grabs my hand. "Come on!" she whispers, and takes off running, giggling maniacally.

Wren runs after us, and Quigg and Penny come more slowly from behind, their heads together in conversation.

"What—is—this?" I gasp as we run through the cold night air. "Some sort of... hazing?"

When we pass people, they call out to us or let out little whoops of encouragement.

I really hope they aren't going to try to make me drink beer through a funnel or something. But then I remember the rumors about Magni Viri's satanic rituals and decide a little binge drinking sounds pretty tame in comparison.

Azar laughs. "It's tradition," she says, not at all out of breath. "We all did it together, but you didn't get your chance. You're not a true member of Magni Viri without it. Don't worry, it's painless—well, mostly."

We burst through the gate of the cemetery, which someone has unlocked, passing under the dark archway and into the shelter of the pines. It's darker here, and colder, tucked up as it is against the side of a hill. Azar finally stops running. I slump forward, hands braced against my knees, dragging in ice-cold breaths. My lungs burn, and my skin tingles. But I feel alive, alive, alive.

In the dark, the cicadas rasp and the trees sway, moaning in their canopies. An owl hoots from somewhere very near. There are voices too, two dozen of them whispering and laughing beneath the cover of night. Azar puts her arm through mine and guides me down the cemetery path, which winds around trees, headstones, and statuary. Azar's flashlight catches here on a lichen-crusted obelisk, there on a mossy cross. The headstones look old, weathered and crumbling. Stone angels loom up out of the darkness, their faces covered in ivy.

I shiver and shiver and shiver, my sweat cooling on my skin, my temperature plummeting the longer we walk.

Someone starts up a song, an eerie tenor floating out of the dark, the words in Latin. Others catch it and harmonize, and soon I'm surrounded by voices I can't see. Lights begin to bloom in the darkness, candle flame spreading. Azar puts a candle into my hands and lights it. Her face leaps out at me from the black night: enormous, glinting eyes and white teeth.

Then I feel Wren on my other side. They have a candle too, which flickers over their features, rendering them in shadows. Wren puts their arm in mine.

"Don't be scared," they whisper.

But suddenly, strangely, I'm not scared. I'm exhilarated. My heart beats loud and fast, and my skin tingles. The song the others sing finds its way inside me, the same way Wren's composition did. I feel it running through me like a current of electricity.

Without realizing it, I've started singing too, my mouth shaping Latin words whose meaning I don't know. But I feel the song, as if it comes from some wordless place inside me. It feels cosmic, charged, containing me and them and something bigger than us too, something like God or spirit or existence itself.

For the first time since arriving at Corbin, or maybe for the first time ever, I don't feel alone. I feel tethered to these people, these strangers, as if they were my own kin—closer even than my own mother.

We sway and sing through the cemetery, our candle flames flickering and bobbing in the darkness as our voices rise and fall, surrounding us. The flames start to move all over instead of in a straight line, until they form a large circle. We stand singing amid the gravestones, beneath the trees. The clouds overhead move aside, and the moon shines down bright and pearlescent. I see Quigg and all the first-years, even Neil, whose face is blank and serene.

Next to me, Wren's usually abstracted expression is instead fixed and rapt, almost ecstatic, as they sing. This ought to feel weird, silly, outlandish—standing out here in a cemetery singing Latin chants—but it doesn't. There's no room for self-consciousness here. We sing and sing, and the candles flicker, and the cicadas scream, our own Greek chorus. It must go on a long time because the moon slowly changes position in the sky, so that the cemetery grows darker, the air chillier. Soon, I can't see any faces except the ones nearest me, cast in strange, flickering shadow.

Goose bumps break out on my skin, spreading from the nape of my neck down to my legs. Something is changing; something is going to happen.

Every candle in the circle goes out at once, blown dark in one fell swoop. At the same moment, our song stops, as if the breath in our lungs has been snatched away like the candle flames. The smell of smoke drifts on the air.

Darkness and silence descend. Even the cicadas are quiet. The only sound now is the wind in the treetops.

I wait, trembling and swaying, an ache opening up inside me.

Somewhere far across the circle, light blooms. A candle relit. The flame is handed off on one side and then another until it spreads toward me through the circle. Wren relights my candle, their expression still awed and rapt. The purple smudges beneath their eyes seem deeper and darker than ever.

Someone steps out of the circle and walks toward me, their candle flame bobbing and weaving through the gravestones. I'm surprised to realize that it's Laini. I didn't expect our resident director to be out on this excursion. The candle reflects off her glasses, giving her two flames for eyes.

"Tara," she says, once she's standing in front of me. "We, the body of Magni Viri, welcome you. We wish to accept you as one of our own." Her face is as solemn as a priest's performing last rites.

"Thank you," I say, unsure whether I'm meant to respond.

"Since our founding in 1900, we have carried on the traditions of our great visionaries, Walter Weymouth George and John Bauer, seeking to expand the limits of the human mind and to make immortal contributions to human knowledge and human flourishing." Laini speaks in the cadence of ritual, tradition, words well honed, passed like heirlooms through the decades. "If you will accept your place as a link in a strong and unbreakable chain, let us hear your promise, here in the heart of Magni Viri, where every soul listens and waits to receive you."

She hands me a small slip of paper, printed in a clear, strong hand. "These are your vows," she whispers. "When you're ready, please read them aloud."

The flame illuminates the words, which seem to each spring forth from the darkness, like bread crumbs leading to another world, another life. I clear my throat and read. "I, Tara Boone, accept my place in the distinguished ranks of Magni Viri. I come to you able, deserving, and willing. I promise to be a vessel for genius, for the profundity of the human mind, for the sacred act of creation. To Magni Viri I lend four years of my life, my faculties, my spirit. I will not waver; I will not fail. I belong to you, and you belong to me. Let my body, my heart, and my mind nourish you. Accept this offering and make us one."

"Hold out your hand," Laini says quietly. Quickly, without warning, she stabs a sewing needle into the pad of my first finger. A bead of blood wells and rolls. She turns my hand over and presses my skin to make the blood fall to the earth.

Before I can react, Laini wraps me in a hug, the heady jasmine scent of her shampoo enveloping me. "Good job," she whispers, and then raises her voice for the others to hear. "Tara, we, the body of Magni Viri, receive you. We accept you as one of our own. With blood and spirit, we are bound—past and present and future, now and always."

An enormous, raucous cheer goes up around the circle, breaking the strange, solemn mood of the initiation. The vows had bewildered and unsettled me for a moment, but now I laugh, relieved and happy. Everyone surges toward me to welcome and congratulate me. I am hugged and patted and smiled at, both by those I've met and those who are still strangers.

But they don't feel like strangers. They feel like a part of me. They feel like home.

We go arm in arm back to Denfeld, laughing and talking and singing ordinary songs. I am warm and safe and happy, among friends. I feel like I'll never be alone again.