“Understood,” said Augusta. “Does it say if we’ll be able to fix that?”
“We might,” said May, frowning. “Whether we succeed or not depends on the Eight of Bones. Either they will be what helps us return to normal, or they will change everything. Permanently.”
Augusta tapped her chin. “So the Eight of Bones is what caused this. A Saunders card.”
“You’d think so,” said May. “But the last part of the reading is more troubling. You asked the question, so this”—she indicated the Six of Branches—“didn’t seem like such a shock at first, since it’s your card.”
The art on the card was a sapling struck by lightning, badly damaged. Two serpents twined around the trunk. Justin could never tell if they were trying to keep the tree together or pull it further apart.
“Readings often tell us the version of events that will directly impact whoever asks the question, so it’s normal for a person’s card to show up. But your card isn’t here because you asked the question. When paired with the Skeleton, it actually…” May hesitated, and Justin realized in a sudden moment of clarity that his sister hadn’t been stalling because of the Eight of Bones.
This was the part of his mother’s reading she didn’t want to talk about.
“You won’t like this,” May said.
Across the table, Augusta raised an eyebrow. “Enlighten me. And I’ll decide on my own if I like it or not.”
“All right, then,” said May. Justin heard the tremor in the back of her throat. He reached under the table and squeezed her free hand. She squeezed back, her palm coated in sweat. “The Skeleton signifies a big change. A reckoning, if you will. And when it’s paired with your card…well, Mother, it answers your second question. This danger to the town has something to do with you.”
Across the table, Augusta’s face drained of color. “That’s preposterous. All I’ve ever done is put this town first. My children should know that more than anyone.”
May’s fingernails dug into Justin’s hand. “The cards don’t lie.”
“Then you read them wrong.” Augusta slammed her hands on the table. May jolted backward, a slight whimper escaping her lips. “Do it again.”
“There is no other way to read them.” May was almost whispering now. “I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. But you asked two questions. This is how the cards have answered them.”
Augusta’s voice dropped into a coiled, vicious whisper. “A good man is dead, May. How can I possibly know that didn’t affect your ability to do the reading?”
Tears pooled in May’s eyes.
Justin felt a white-hot bolt of fury toward his mother. May had idolized Augusta her entire life. Punishing her for her honesty was cruel.
“I guess you’ll have to trust her,” he said. “Which I know is hard and all, since we’re the only people in Four Paths you can’t use your powers to manipulate.”
Augusta let out a snarl of frustration as she stood, her head nearly brushing the ceiling of the reading room. Justin braced himself for a verbal assault, but her words, when they came, were quiet. “The Saunders family used to run this town. We have done a better job of protecting it than they ever did. I intend to keep it that way.”
Her exit was accompanied by the howls of the mastiffs waiting for their mistress to return.
Justin stared at the Eight of Bones, realizing for the first time that there were bits of flesh still clinging to the cracked skull. He wondered what had driven Hetty Hawthorne to paint such gruesome, vivid images. Then he turned to May, who had wrapped her arms around her knees.
“We’ve known Deputy Anders our whole lives.” The vein in her forehead bulged out against her skin, like a root snaking across her skull. “Now he’s just…gone.”
“Yeah, and that’s why Mom’s angry. It’s not really about you.”
May ducked her head. “I know.”
“You did the right thing. Telling her the truth.” Justin wasn’t sure he meant that. But May needed to hear it.
“Did I?” The dim lights of the reading room enhanced May’s features until she looked the way she sounded: delicate and thin, like a crystal bowl balancing on the edge of a mantelpiece. “All I do is give bad news, Justin. People die or hurt each other or disappear.”
“You know there’s more to it than that,” said Justin. “The cards are tricky. They don’t always tell you everything.”
“They tell me enough.” May stared resolutely forward. “Sometimes I hate it. The knowing, the responsibility.” And then she spoke the words Justin knew she’d been holding in since her own ritual, three months earlier: “You wouldn’t understand.”
The second his sister touched the tree that day, its branches had sprung to life. The hawthorn’s gnarled trunk bent low. And Justin had watched, choking back tears, as the forest in front of them began to kneel as well, until he could see the lake behind the Carlisle cottage glittering through its bowed branches.
If Justin’s ritual had been the worst day of his life, May’s was a close second.
“Guess not,” Justin said dully. “Tell me again how hard it is to be powerful.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” said Justin, and then, because his lack of powers was the last thing he wanted to talk about, he added, “The Saunders family. May, if there’s any chance they could help us keep things from getting any worse—”
May’s face went solemn. “I know.” She paused. “But Mother said to stay away from them. And Mother always has her reasons.”
Justin thought of the fear on Augusta’s face. What she’d said. How she’d stared at the Eight of Bones with a mixture of dread and resignation, as if she’d known, all along, that the Saunders family was undeniably intertwined with their futures.
As if she would do anything to convince herself otherwise.
Which meant that, if there was any chance of Violet Saunders being a useful ally to the Hawthornes, Justin would have to seek her out himself.
Harper had been moving through the strength-building exercises she’d adapted for her training when she heard it—a snatch of song, a low, deep voice drifting through the trees.
She knew that voice, that tune. Her father hummed it in his workshop while he carved stone excavated from the lake into sentinels.
Once, every house in town had boasted protective guardians on their doorsteps: statues that moved at their master’s command. The Carlisles had been in charge of protecting the rest of Four Paths with these guardians every fall and spring equinox, the nights of the year when the Gray was strongest and the founders were the weakest. When the line between reality and nightmare blurred.
But Harper’s grandmother had been the last Carlisle who could control a guardian. So the sentinels Maurice Carlisle carved in his workshop hung above the town’s doorways instead. They were weak replacements—only able to sound an alarm when danger came, not come to life and stop it.
The family was a shade of what they could’ve been, what they once were.
“Little children, led astray, wandered through the woods one day…” Footsteps stomped across the nearby underbrush. Harper’s father was a Carlisle through and through, solid and steady, and he did nothing quietly, not even walking.
Harper’s first instinct was to panic. She’d hidden her training for a reason; she didn’t need her father’s pity. A burning sensation surged through her left arm, sharp and sudden—although she knew her left hand was gone, she still felt phantom pain in it sometimes, especially when she was stressed or frightened. Harper shuddered, grabbed her blade, and dove behind the nearest tree.
Her father’s voice was closer now. “Stumbled right into the Gray, never to return…”
Her pulse increased as he appeared at the edge of the clearing. She shifted closer to the tree, the burning in her arm growing more intense—and gasped as she lost her balance, her blade clattering to her feet.
The noise cut through the quiet of the night like a gunsh
ot, stopping her father’s song midline.
“Who’s there?” Maurice Carlisle slid a hand into his pocket. The sharp silver edge of a dagger winked in his fist when it emerged.
There was a hardness in his expression Harper had never seen before. She hurried out from behind the tree, unease swelling in her chest. “Dad. It’s just me.”
Maurice’s face softened into puzzlement. The knife returned to his pocket so fast she wondered if she’d imagined it. “Harper. Why are you out here in the middle of the night?”
Harper swallowed, hard. She was overly conscious of her mother’s nightdress, her bare feet, the blade lying in the grass behind her. Her father’s bemusement always made her feel like a little girl again. “I could ask you the same question.”
Maurice chuckled. “I’m just coming back from patrol. A little jumpy.”
But there was a calendar of patrol times propped up on the kitchen counter. Harper knew it by heart—it hadn’t changed in months. “You patrol on Wednesdays and Saturdays,” she said, folding her good arm across the residual limb below her left elbow. “And we don’t go on the equinox schedule for another week and a half.”
“I suppose we don’t.” A stripe of moonlight cut across the bridge of her father’s nose. “And you weren’t just coming out here for a witching-hour stroll with one of the family swords.”
“No.” Harper’s father had taught her never to back down from a fight where the stakes were equal. And it was clear they both had something to hide. “I wasn’t.”
There was something assessing in Maurice Carlisle’s gaze. He shifted back and forth for a moment, his jaw working to one side. “Have you been training?”
He didn’t sound pitying, like she’d feared. He sounded almost…impressed.
So Harper nodded.
And she was rewarded by a grin—a real grin. “I should’ve known you’d never stop. You always loved blade-work.”
Harper jutted out her chin. “I still do.”
Maurice looked at her thoughtfully. “Yet you don’t have anything to fight.”
Harper had a brief, unbidden vision of holding a blade to Justin Hawthorne’s throat. “Not yet.”
“Listen.” Her father stepped toward her until his graying curls blocked out the moon, leaving him little more than a silhouette. The assessing tone in his voice was gone—whatever decision he’d been contemplating had been made. “Do you really want to know where I was tonight?”
She merely hadn’t wanted to be caught. But now it was too late for that, and it felt as if her father was seeing her, truly seeing her, for the first time in years.
More than anything, Harper wanted him to trust her. “Yes.”
“You must keep it a secret.”
Maurice’s eyes were veiled in shadow. Harper tried to meet them anyway. “Even from Mom?” she asked, a terrible suspicion stealing over her. “You’re not going to leave us—”
“No!” The horror in his voice was so palpable, Harper believed him instantly. “Nothing like that. It’s simply that this is a dangerous thing. And I think you might understand it in a way the rest of our family can’t, after…after everything you’ve been through.”
Harper couldn’t stop the hurt welling up inside of her. “Everything I’ve been through?” she whispered. “Just say it. I lost my hand. I don’t have powers.”
“And yet you’re still fighting.” Her father gently, almost lovingly, took her hand in his. “You’re out in the woods in the middle of the night, training. But what if you had something to fight for? Somewhere to actually use your sword?”
“That’s impossible.” Harper tried to keep her voice steady. Tried not to feel even the smallest shred of hope. “I failed my ritual. You do that in this town and you’re nothing—you said so yourself.”
“I know. But there are other ways to be powerful.”
Harper snorted. “Are you talking about putting me on patrol again? The Hawthornes would never allow that.”
A strange smile stole over her father’s face. “The sheriff and her family would never allow that, no,” he said. “But what if the Hawthornes didn’t have control of the town anymore?”
For Harper’s entire life, her father had bent to the Hawthornes’ will—Augusta’s grandmother, her father, and now Augusta herself. He made their sentinels. He patrolled. He trained his children to serve them.
And when the Hawthornes had decided Harper was useless to them, he had followed their lead.
But in that moment, in her father’s face, Harper saw that he was disillusioned with the Hawthornes, too. Just like her, Maurice Carlisle had a quiet, steady core of anger festering inside him.
“Are you talking about a rebellion?” she whispered.
“Rebellion’s such a messy word,” said Maurice, his smile widening. “I much prefer the term coup.”
The thought sent a thrill down Harper’s spine. There was just one problem. “Four Paths loves the Hawthornes.”
A grim look stole over her father’s face. “Not anymore. There was an incident last night. Deputy Anders was lost in the Gray.”
She remembered Anders. He’d been a good man—one of the few people in the sheriff’s office to even acknowledge her after her failed ritual.
And Harper had spent enough time wandering through that skeletal forest to know it was a horrible place to die.
She shuddered. “Not him, too.”
Her father nodded solemnly. “I’m afraid so. And there will be more, soon. Things are getting more and more dangerous in Four Paths, and the Hawthornes have done nothing to stop it. So I’m taking matters into my own hands. That’s where I’ve been tonight.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
The moonlight shifted to the side of Maurice Carlisle’s face. Yet again, Harper watched him deliberate.
“Dad,” she said. “You promised to tell me.”
“Isn’t it enough to know that things are about to change?”
But it wasn’t enough.
Harper had spent the last three years waiting, quietly, for things to change.
She no longer trusted anyone else to slay her demons for her. And more importantly, if someone was going to take down the people who’d made her life a living hell, she wanted it to be her.
She had been ignored too many times.
“No,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing, I want in.”
“Harper. You don’t know what you’re asking—”
“I know enough.” Harper snatched her sword up and swung it in a fluid, perfect arc across her shoulder. Her father’s eyes widened. “What more can this town really do to me?”
Maurice Carlisle sighed, shaking his head, and Harper felt a surge of triumph. “Very well. I suppose…it would be useful if you’d get close to the new Saunders girl. She could be a valuable ally to our cause.”
Harper thought of the way Violet had looked at Justin back in the classroom. “The Hawthornes are already talking to her.”
“I know,” said Maurice. “But she knows nothing about her heritage. The Carlisles and the Saunderses were allies when I was a boy. She’ll need help soon. She should get that help from you.”
Warmth rushed through Harper’s chest as she realized that he’d called her a Carlisle. But that made her think of her siblings—the ones with actual power. “Wouldn’t Mitzi or Seth make a better ally?”
“Mitzi and Seth don’t know what the Hawthornes are capable of the way you do. Show the girl that there’s more to this town than that family.”
There was such visceral hatred in the way he finished his sentence, Harper didn’t doubt it for a moment. She wondered how he had hidden it for so long.
She wasn’t sure if she really could befriend Violet. But if it would help take the Hawthornes down, she was willing to try. “I’ll do it.”
Maurice nodded. “Consider this a test. If you pass, you can meet the others.”
“Others?” said Harper. “How many of you are there?”
Her fat
her’s hand folded around the hilt of his knife. “Enough to change things.”
Violet had been missing all night, but Juniper hadn’t even noticed she was gone. She’d greeted her with nothing but a nod when Violet got out of a much-needed shower that morning, then shuffled off to her room.
Violet tried not to let that hurt sink in as she biked to school, her sore legs screaming with pain.
She didn’t want to explain to her mother where she’d been, anyway. There was no way to talk about what she’d just seen without sounding like she was losing it. And she didn’t trust Juniper not to treat her just like Daria if she told the truth.
Besides, there was a chance, even if it was a slim one, that it hadn’t been real at all.
But that delusion was scuttled within seconds of her arrival in homeroom. Things seemed off from the moment she stepped through the doorway. Everyone was silent except for an occasional murmur, and Justin Hawthorne was missing. Isaac looked completely lost without him. He wasn’t even reading a book, just staring blankly at his desk.
“Class, if I might have a moment.” Mrs. Langham’s nose and cheeks were slightly reddened, her voice hoarse. “As many of you already know, Deputy Frank Anders was taken from us last night in a tragic accident.”
More murmurs, more nods. Violet fought down the urge to vomit again.
That body had to have been Frank Anders. She’d seen the badge on its chest.
Which meant she’d been in those woods with him—and with whoever, or whatever, had killed him.
“I must remind you all that the forest can be a dangerous place,” continued Mrs. Langham, but Violet was no longer listening.
She lurched from her seat, her chair clattering to the floor behind her as she rushed out of homeroom. Her frantic footsteps reverberated through the empty hallways of Four Paths High School as she beelined for the front door. She’d never cut class in her life, had barely taken a sick day, but she could not sit in that room for one more second.
The Devouring Gray Page 6
