The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  It was far less daunting to think about the first day of school with a blade in her hand.

  Harper wiped her feet off and moved soundlessly through her house, stopping only to reluctantly slot the sword back into its place of honor above the mantel. Maybe waking up this early to practice was excessive, but there were eight members of her family. All were nosy, including the baby. And none of them knew she’d kept training after the accident.

  Harper was willing to take drastic measures to keep it that way. It wasn’t like she’d slept much since the day she’d lost her left hand.

  The day she’d slipped into the Gray.

  Three years later, and Harper still dreamed of the lake closing over her head. Of resurfacing somewhere new, where her breath couldn’t fill her lungs and her arm crumbled into stone on the riverbank. It was a forest, or at least it looked like one, but the trees were skeletal and twisted, bowed beneath an unmoving sky that shone like splintered steel.

  There was no color in the Gray. No color except the sharp crimson shine of her blood.

  Harper shook the memories away, shuddering, and went on with her morning.

  By the time her parents’ alarm went off at six, Harper had dressed, given up on her waist-length dark curls, and perfected her eyeliner. She spent the next half hour wrangling Brett and Nora out of bed and getting them ready for school, all while trying not to trip over the cord of Mitzi’s hair straightener.

  “A little help here?” She glanced toward the vanity table, where Mitzi was weaving her founders’ medallion into her auburn hair.

  “Go wake Seth up.” Mitzi tilted her head, admiring the way the glass shone. “I’m busy.”

  “Busy staring at yourself?” Harper couldn’t stop the bite of jealousy in her voice. She’d never earned her medallion, and so she had to content herself with her simple stone pendant.

  Mitzi’s reflection in the smudged mirror was an odd mixture of smugness and pity. “Can you blame me?”

  “It’s okay!” said Nora, who was busily pulling on two completely different shoes. “I can do it myself.”

  “You know those don’t match, right?” said Harper, grinning at her little sister. Nora’s boundless energy had driven many baby sitters to quit, but Harper loved it.

  Nora pouted at her. “I like how they look.”

  The door to their room swung open before Harper could respond. Silhouetted in the reinforced wooden frame was Harper’s father, Maurice Carlisle, baby Olly fussing in his arms.

  “Come to breakfast, kids,” he told Brett and Nora. “I’m making pancakes.”

  Brett and Nora bolted for the door, and as he stepped aside to let them by, a smile carved its way through his craggy features. “I can take it from here.”

  Harper’s father usually took charge in the mornings, since Harper’s mother, Laurel Carlisle, was often busy with her job as an attorney in the next town over. But Harper didn’t mind. Her parents did not treat their children equally—Laurel favored Mitzi, while Maurice had always favored her. She was glad he was the one who spent more time at home.

  The rest of the morning was a blur of walking Brett and Nora out to the bus, and Seth, Mitzi, and Harper piling into Seth’s broken-down car and sputtering off to Four Paths High School. Seth jolted the car to a stop in the middle of two parking spots, then made a beeline for the slackers who hung out behind the school every morning, smoking cigarettes and talking a big game about their joint-rolling skills. Mitzi vanished a moment later, her red hair whipping behind her.

  Harper was slower, her messenger bag heavy on her shoulder. Ahead of her, the crowd split in two, automatically moving away from the bench where the Hawthorne siblings were holding court. Justin’s broad shoulders rose easily above the crowd, straining at the thin blue fabric of his T-shirt as he turned to laugh at something May had said. The morning light turned his blond hair into ripples of molten gold, and the medallion at his wrist shone bloodred.

  Founder descendants were revered in Four Paths, but the town’s love for Justin far surpassed familial respect. He had a warm greeting for everyone, even clapping a chosen few on the shoulder. People looked dazed when they wandered away from him, like they’d been staring into the sun.

  But all his carefully arranged smile did was stoke Harper’s rage, like a whetstone sharpening the edge of a sword.

  After her accident, she had been convinced she was a disappointment. But her father had told her to use the word survivor instead—and she’d listened. There was no point in being angry at herself for failing her ritual. That anger belonged somewhere else: with the Hawthornes, who had decided she was nothing after she returned from the Gray without her powers.

  And with Justin Hawthorne, who had cast aside a lifelong friendship when he sided with his mother instead of sticking up for her.

  “Coward,” she muttered as she cut through the crowd.

  Harper was the first to arrive in her senior homeroom. She took the same seat she’d had since ninth grade as her classmates drifted in, most deigning to enter the classroom only after the second bell had rung.

  There were only fifty-seven seniors at Four Paths High School. They had all known Harper her entire life, and although she felt their eyes on her, they didn’t say hello. Lia Raynes and Suzette Langham gossiped as they sat in front of her; they were best friends recently turned girlfriends, already shoo-ins to be voted class couple for the senior yearbook. Danny Moore took the seat on her right, while Seo-Jin Park and Cal Gonzales slid in beside him, talking animatedly about the track team.

  Harper was used to being avoided. After the accident, she’d learned quickly that no one knew how to talk to her anymore. At first, she’d thought it was because of her hand. She’d chosen not to wear a prosthetic on the bottom half of her left arm; her family couldn’t afford a myoelectric prosthesis, and she didn’t want a cosmetic one. Everyone knew what had happened to her; they would stare anyway.

  But by now, she knew the stares and the awkward conversations weren’t really about her arm at all.

  Nobody in Four Paths had ever survived the Gray for longer than a few hours. Harper had made it four days.

  She’d heard the rumors that the Gray had left her forever altered, that she’d only been released because she’d been allowed out by the Beast, that she was a founder turned spy, a monster lurking in a teenage girl’s skin.

  They were nothing more than stories. But Harper had learned by now that some people would always prefer a story to the truth.

  She was fiddling with her pencil case when Justin appeared in the doorway. Half the class called out greetings as he walked through the room, flanked, as always, by Isaac Sullivan—his flannel-clad shadow.

  Isaac had never warmed up to her, despite a lifetime of being shoved together in the way all founder kids were. But the dislike was mutual. After Harper had been forced away from Justin’s side, Isaac Sullivan had taken her place. And although Harper knew she shouldn’t resent Isaac for being living evidence of how easy it had been for Justin to replace her, she did it anyway.

  So it gave her a small rush of petty satisfaction to notice the way people grimaced when Isaac walked by. People watched Justin because he’d earned their respect. They watched Isaac because he’d earned their fear.

  Three years ago, she would’ve been with them, breezing in late, laughing at Justin’s bad jokes as they slid into the back row of the classroom. Harper wondered if it was hard for Justin to act like he’d never known her. It probably wasn’t. Not the way it was for her. After all, he was the one who’d acted like she didn’t exist as soon as she wasn’t useful anymore. Which meant they’d never been anything at all.

  Harper pushed down her fury as a wave of murmurs swept through the classroom. She followed her classmates’ stares to a white girl standing uncomfortably in the doorway, scanning the room for an empty seat. Harper didn’t have to look to know the only desk left was the one in front of Isaac Sullivan. Even the most oblivious kid at Four Paths High knew better
than to sit there. But the new girl didn’t have a choice.

  She walked across the classroom, her gaze raised above the students’ watching eyes. That kind of scrutiny would’ve made Harper’s skin crawl, but the girl didn’t flinch. A new student at Four Paths High was almost unheard of. The last person to move in had been Britta Morey, in second grade, and people still treated her like an outsider.

  Mrs. Langham—Suzette’s mother, and also their homeroom teacher—cleared her throat as the new girl found her seat.

  “Welcome back, everyone,” she said, with a pointed glance at the girl as she dropped her backpack on the floor. “I know you’re all excited to be returning for another year at Four Paths High.”

  The class stared back at her. Isaac’s desk began to vibrate at the back of the room, his foot tapping rapidly against the floor. Mrs. Langham ignored him.

  “Let’s try that again, shall we?” she said. “Are you excited to be returning for your final year at Four Paths High?”

  This time, the room broke out into halfhearted clapping. Even Harper couldn’t suppress a grin. A year from now, she’d be done with this place forever, starting her freshman year at whatever state school gave the best financial aid—SUNY Binghamton or Geneseo, if she was lucky.

  Harper knew a significant chunk of her graduating class would stay in Four Paths forever. She couldn’t imagine a worse fate. All Harper wanted was an escape—from her ever-growing pack of siblings, from the Hawthorne family’s cold disdain, from a place where she would never be able to overcome her mistakes.

  “Seniors,” continued Mrs. Langham, “please be extra welcoming to our new student, Violet Saunders.”

  Saunders.

  Harper’s pulse quickened as the murmurs started up again, louder this time. The new girl stared resolutely at her desk as the few people who hadn’t been looking at her turned their focus toward her.

  Harper wondered why the Saunders family was back. Why anyone would ever return to this town, even someone with founder blood, was beyond her. It was surely making the Hawthornes uneasy, though, having all four families in play. Harper’s father had told her about when he was a kid, when Mayor Saunders had trusted each family to patrol their own territory. But that was before the Saunders family began to dwindle. Before the Sullivans fled. Now it was mostly just the Hawthornes and the Carlisles going on patrols, and Sheriff Hawthorne acting like everyone else mattered less than she did.

  Mrs. Langham sorted through schedules at the front of the room, calling up the students one by one. Her voice was undercut by the sound of Isaac’s desk banging into the floor. As always, he was blatantly inattentive, his book splayed across the desk as it vibrated in time with his breathing. It knocked against the back of Violet Saunders’s chair, until finally she turned, nostrils flaring, and gripped the edge of Isaac’s desk.

  “Hey, Brave New World.” Her voice was melodic but strong, a voice that made people pay attention. Harper would’ve killed for a voice like that. “Would you mind stopping before you put a permanent dent in my back?”

  Isaac’s deep voice rang with false innocence. “Stopping what?”

  “Banging your desk into my chair,” Violet said, perfectly deadpan. “Some of us are trying to pay attention, and it’s distracting as fuck.”

  Her words sucked the air out of the classroom. No one talked to founder kids like that, especially not to Isaac Sullivan. Not after the rumors about his ritual day, the whispers that he was the reason his whole family had left town.

  Isaac’s desk went still, and the air in front of his hands began to shimmer. Harper braced herself as the new girl’s eyes widened. Lia and Suzette were holding hands; Cal and Seo-Jin had already half risen from their seats.

  And then Justin Hawthorne leaned through the refracting light until his hand was resting on Isaac’s arm. Neither of them spoke, but Isaac’s head turned sharply to face him. Their gazes stayed locked together, solemn and impassive, as the world faded back to normal.

  “I guess I didn’t realize,” Isaac said.

  Justin’s head inclined in a sharp nod before he retreated to his seat. The tension in the room went with it.

  “Thanks,” said Violet, but she was looking at Justin when she said it.

  Harper could see it now. How Justin would ensnare Violet the same way he’d ensnared Harper, when they were kids, before she’d disappointed everyone.

  And the only thing Harper could do about that was something she should’ve done the second she realized he’d abandoned her.

  She could let Justin Hawthorne go.

  Harper turned back toward the front of her classroom. She wondered how long it would take before Violet was sitting in the back of the room on purpose, in the spot that should’ve been hers.

  She wondered if she would ever truly be able to stop herself from caring.

  Violet arrived home from her first day of school to unfamiliar cars parked in front of her new house. Her first day at Four Paths High School had been the complete opposite of her high school in Ossining—her classes were tiny to the point where Violet recognized most of her grade by the end of the day. Her muscles ached from the effort of biking, but taking the Porsche to school was out of the question. Rosie had been driving when her car was T-boned by a semitruck. Violet hadn’t touched a steering wheel since.

  She yanked her bike over the rough gravel of the driveway, frowning at the vehicles. A flurry of exterminators and cleaners had swept through the mansion since they’d moved in, but this many at one time seemed excessive.

  As she dragged the bike through the garden, a series of deep, throaty barks rang out from behind the porch. Two gigantic mastiffs, one black, one mottled brown, padded forward. They were chained to the rotting wood of the railing.

  The look in their eyes reminded her of the boy who’d been reading in the Diner, who’d been so hostile to her in homeroom—a quiet, menacing confidence that could only come from creatures too dangerous to be frightened. Violet had seen the boy and his friend—Isaac and Justin, those were their names—engaged in some kind of intense meeting in the courtyard after school, along with a blond girl who looked so much like Justin that she had to be his sister.

  There was something eerie about the way everyone automatically deferred to them; how the other students had practically lunged out of their seats to say hello when the boys had walked into her homeroom. In Westchester, the popular kids had been standard-issue athletes and student body presidents who were headed straight for the Ivy League. This trio was something different.

  They weren’t the kings and queens of Four Paths High School—they were its gods.

  “Good boys.” Violet leaned her bike against the opposite side of the porch. “Nice giant, possibly people-eating dogs.”

  She pushed through the front door, wondering who would want to own an animal that could probably bite off a limb if you made it angry.

  Inside was sloppy, chortling laughter and faint, twangy music. Violet followed the noise to the living room, where maybe twenty adults stood in small clumps, drinks in their hands, heads bobbing to the country music playing on Juniper’s high-end speakers.

  The scene was bizarre. Her mother hated parties. And besides, they hadn’t even been in Four Paths a week. How had she possibly rounded up this many old friends?

  Violet made the executive decision to hide in her room until the party was over. But before she could flee, her name was squealed at a pitch only the mastiffs outside should’ve been able to hear.

  “Violet Saunders!” A Black woman Violet recognized from homeroom tugged her into the room, her dark braids twisted atop her head. “So good to see you again.”

  Violet resisted the powerful urge to run. “Thanks,” she said. “Good to see you too, Mrs., uh…”

  “Mrs. Langham, honey.”

  Another woman sidled up to them, this one pale-skinned and freckled. Two chunky stone bracelets adorned her wrists. “And I’m Ma Burnham. Or at least, Ma to everyone under twenty-five.”<
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  Violet shook Ma Burnham’s hand. The woman’s beady gaze was narrow, assessing. “You’re Juniper’s daughter?”

  Violet nodded. “Yes.”

  “You look like her.”

  It was the first time Violet had ever heard that. Rosie and Juniper were the ones who looked alike—frizzy hair, round faces, wide smiles with slightly crooked incisors. Violet had her father’s thick, straight hair and an inability to step outdoors without getting sunburned—something Rosie, who loved to tan in the backyard while sketching, had never worried about.

  But Rosie was gone now. She and Juniper were the only ones left.

  “I guess,” she said hoarsely. “So, you were friends of my mom’s?”

  Mrs. Langham chuckled and nodded. “As friendly as someone like her would be with the likes of us, sure.”

  “What do you mean?” Violet asked.

  The women exchanged quiet, knowing glances as they sipped from their wineglasses.

  “None of you founders were ever really friends with us.” There was a bitterness in Mrs. Langham’s voice that Violet hadn’t noticed before. Now it was all she could hear. “You’ve always had other things to worry about.”

  “Founders?” Violet echoed.

  “Now, Clara.” Ma Burnham placed a warning hand on Mrs. Langham’s arm. “You have to understand, Violet, she doesn’t intend to speak badly of your mama. You can’t blame her for leaving us, really, especially after all that nasty business with Stephen….”

  Another name Violet didn’t recognize. But before she could ask about that, too, a low, cool voice cut both women off.

  “Gossiping, I see.” The white woman who’d joined them was a behemoth of a person, muscular but regal, a queen and a bodyguard all wrapped up into one. “Don’t you ladies think you’ve told her enough nonsense for one evening?”