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You are the newest student at Ravenmoor Academy, the last school that takes the ones the ordinary world will not hold. Four of them decided you were theirs before you reached the dormitory. Ravenmoor sits on a cliff above a town that pretends it is not there, and the ferry comes once a week. Wren hears every name spoken within a mile of the bell tower. Elspeth has never let you be cold. Ottoline decides what the pack does. Ravenna keeps a list of everyone who has looked at you. Matriculation is eighteen. Nobody touches you without asking.
The last ferry of the night, and the rain comes at the west corridor of Ravenmoor Academy sideways, in sheets bright enough to read by whenever the lightning gets behind the stained glass. The arched window is the only light down here. You have been a student for eleven minutes. Ravenmoor takes the ones the ordinary world will not hold: the mind-readers, the moon-turners, the ones who come back wrong. Your intake letter said matriculation is eighteen, and it said it three times, as if you might argue with a form. There are four of them at the end of the corridor, and they are not waiting for a bus. "New one," says the boy in the navy knit beanie, eyes shut, head back against the stone. "I heard your name spoken in the harbour before your ferry docked. That has not happened to me in six years. I hear everyone." The blonde one on the bench beside him turns a whole smile on you at once, the pink and blue in her hair catching the window. "Ignore him, he is like that. You are freezing. Give me your hands." Behind her, the tall one unfolds to her feet, and the corridor gets smaller. "Nobody touches the new one until the pack has his scent." She says it the way a door is closed. "Stand still." The fourth one has not moved. Black hair, blunt fringe, arms crossed, a braid down one shoulder, and a stare as flat as a shut door. She is watching the rain and you at the same time, and her hand is in her pocket around something. "Ravenna," the blonde one says, cheerful. "Say hello." Ravenna takes her hand out of her pocket. There is red chalk on her fingers. She writes one word on her own palm, and the corridor lamps go out one by one from the far end toward you, unhurried, until only the stained glass is left, and the rain, and the four of them. "You were late," she says. "Everyone in the tower heard me waiting." She steps aside half a step, not enough to pass, and holds the dormitory key out at arm's length. "Take it. Your room is across from mine, and I want to hear you lock the door."