The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

“Something’s wrong,” Harper said. It wasn’t a question.

  To her credit, Violet didn’t treat it like one. “Yeah,” she said flatly, something like a laugh in her voice. “You could say that.”

  “And you texted me because…”

  “Because I think you might be able to help.” Violet fixed her with a careful, shrewd look. “The Carlisles are a founding family, right?”

  Harper nodded slowly, unsure where this was going. She’d assumed Violet knew something about her heritage. But news of the Saunders girl joining the patrol roster surely would’ve made its way through town by now, and it hadn’t, not yet.

  “So your family does rituals?”

  Again, Harper nodded.

  “Did you do one?”

  Harper’s eyes fell on the crumbled stone forms of ancient guardians on the other side of the lake, their bodies forever poised at the edge of the gently lapping tide. Behind them, she could just make out the walls and roof of her father’s workshop. “I…don’t have much experience with rituals.”

  “Because of your arm?” said Violet bluntly. “Because you’re clearly perfectly capable—”

  “Not my arm.” It was oddly good to say the truth aloud, even though the words felt like a blade dragged across her tongue. “My ritual. I failed.”

  Violet ripped off a strip of crimson polish so viciously, Harper was surprised she didn’t take the nail with it. “Wait. You can fail?”

  “It happens.” It only took two words to describe the worst day of Harper’s life.

  “Is that…?” Violet hesitated, but Harper could already see where her eyes were focused: on the residual limb of her left hand.

  “Yes,” said Harper. “It’s how I lost my hand.”

  Her family’s ritual was simple: Descend to the bottom of the lake and bring back a rock, the same way Thomas Carlisle had a hundred and fifty years ago. It had given Mitzi and Seth the power to turn their arms to stone. Given Maurice Carlisle his ability to craft the sentinels.

  But when Harper had emerged from the lake, she had been in the Gray, not Four Paths. And her left hand, which had been clutching her precious handful of pebbles, had turned to reddish-brown stone from the elbow down—and immediately disintegrated.

  In the months after she failed her ritual, she’d been terrified of the lake. Her dreams were filled with muddy water closing over her hand and feet, crushing her limbs to a pulp. But over the years, Harper’s fear had faded. Now she felt only the slightest twinge of unease at the end of her left arm as she gazed down at the water lapping a few feet below her legs, another echo of phantom pain. In fact, she’d chosen to meet Violet by the lake in order to remind herself that she had already faced the worst this town had to offer. And as she finished relaying her story to Violet, she was proud of the fact that her voice had hardly faltered at all.

  “Holy shit.” Violet’s eyes were wide not with pity, as Harper had feared, but rather with something that looked a lot like respect. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  Harper shrugged. “Not your fault.”

  “Still.” Violet paused. “I’m honored you told me all this, but why? You don’t know me.”

  “The whole town knows what happened,” said Harper, thinking of the rumors she’d heard. If she wanted Violet to trust her, she needed to make sure her head wasn’t filled with lies. “I’d rather you get the story from me. And besides, our families have traditionally been close.”

  Violet looked surprised to hear Harper bring it up. “So I’ve heard.”

  The traditional alliances had mattered a lot less since the Saunders family had faded out and the Sullivans had left. But the bones of them were still there. Harper’s father would be happy to know that Violet thought so, too.

  “If your family knew my family,” Violet continued, “maybe there’s something you can help me with. A question I don’t know how to answer.”

  Harper remembered the promise her father had made her. Befriend Violet and earn a chance to take the Hawthornes down. This was it—her chance to make herself indispensable to Violet. “Go ahead. Ask me.”

  But there was something guarded in Violet’s expression now. “What’s in this for you? Really?”

  Harper could tell Four Paths had already left its mark on Violet, had shown her that everyone in this town had an agenda of their own. That their help came with a cost. So Harper told her the only thing she had left in her arsenal: the truth. “It is the founding families’ job to keep this town safe,” she said. “A task I failed at the moment I didn’t come out of the lake. Which means that most of the people here act as if I’m invisible.”

  Violet frowned. “Being invisible in a place where an evil forest monster noticing you means an awful death doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.”

  Harper bristled. Only a newcomer would sound so naive. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d lived here your whole life. Being invisible when you used to be seen…it’s like being dead, but no one mourns you. And you have to watch it.” Harper didn’t realize how close she was to crying until her voice cracked. “Helping you will force people to see me.”

  Violet rested her hand on the branch between them. A thick silver bracelet shimmered on her wrist. “I understand. Well, in that case, I need to know what my ritual is. Badly. It seems like no one in my family can tell me, but I thought maybe someone in your family would know.”

  Harper’s heart sank.

  Most of the family rituals were open secrets. There was a reason the Carlisles had built their house on the lake bed. The Hawthornes tried to keep theirs carefully guarded, but Harper knew their ridiculous tree was somehow involved. The Sullivan ritual was shrouded in horrible rumors since Isaac’s had gone terribly wrong, driving his surviving family members out of town.

  But the Saunders family had been hiding too long for even the rumors to survive.

  “I don’t know what your ritual is,” Harper said. “But I’m still in. I’ll help you figure it out. There must be some record of this in our archives—or at least a clue that can help us.”

  Violet’s fingers curled around the bracelet. “Thank you.” Her face hadn’t moved, but her voice was hoarse enough to tell Harper that she was holding in whatever she was feeling. “The Hawthornes have promised to help me, too. I know you’re not exactly their biggest fan, but…I was wondering if you’d be willing to work with them?”

  There it was.

  This had all been too good to be true.

  Because if Violet trusted the Hawthornes, if she’d gone to them, if they’d offered to help her, then she was already a lost cause.

  But Harper had one thing on her side that they didn’t.

  “I warned you about the Hawthornes,” she said, meeting Violet’s eyes. “You can work with them if you want. But I won’t.”

  Violet’s gaze was solemn. “Why? What happened?”

  “Justin used to be my best friend.” Harper had never told the story out loud like this. She wasn’t sure she knew how to. “Until I failed my ritual, and then…”

  Her throat was burning now. The phantom pain in her arm surged again, stronger this time, as if someone had stabbed a dagger through the palm of her left hand and twisted it.

  Something had been waiting for her at the bottom of the lake. The Gray had opened for her, sucked her into its harsh, colorless embrace. Ripped her arm off below the elbow. Left her to wander among those trees for what had felt like mere minutes, but she would later learn had been days. She couldn’t remember much about the Gray itself—the few memories she did have were of the Beast’s voice hissing through her mind as she curled up on the ground and sobbed. She had no desire to reach deeper into those moments—she had gone through enough.

  But Harper’s suffering didn’t end after she had returned to Four Paths, when she’d come home from the hospital. The Hawthornes had ignored her. Her family hadn’t stood up for her.

  She had been left all alone.

  “I proved I was wea
k,” Harper finished, aware as she said it that she must sound incredibly vulnerable. “So they started acting like I didn’t exist. They still do.”

  Violet’s long, pale fingers were pressed against her kneecaps. When she spoke, her voice quivered. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Harper swallowed down a lump of relief that Violet hadn’t judged her, wasn’t looking at her like she was broken. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not. You said you were stuck in the Gray for days?”

  Harper nodded.

  Violet’s dark eyes filled with a quiet, burning fury. “I could barely stand the Gray for a few minutes. So if you could endure that for days, then you’re strong as hell, and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit.”

  The noise that emerged from Harper’s throat hit the exact midpoint between relief and disbelief. She usually felt weak unless she was wielding a blade. All she had ever been able to focus on was what she’d failed to do, not what she’d achieved.

  But now she saw a glimpse of what she might be—who she could’ve been, maybe, if things had gone differently.

  “I don’t need the Hawthornes and Isaac for this,” said Violet, although she sounded a little uneasy about it. “I’m done. I can’t support anyone who treated you that way.”

  She whipped her phone out of her pocket and began to type furiously.

  Panic welled up in Harper’s throat. “What are you doing?”

  Violet tapped her phone, then looked up, a grim smile on her face. “Telling the Hawthornes their services are no longer needed.”

  Harper gulped.

  She hadn’t even been sure if Violet would believe her. She never would’ve dreamed that she would react like this.

  “So, where do we start?” said Violet. “How can we find some potential leads?”

  Harper thought about it. One clear answer came to mind. “The town hall is the easiest place to find information about the founders. It’s basically a museum. All the interesting stuff about the powers isn’t on public display, but there are still hints, I bet. It’s worth looking.”

  “We could go today?”

  Harper thought of Brett and Nora, and frowned. “I’ve got some babysitting to do. Tomorrow?”

  “Fine with me.” That grim smile was still fixed on her face, her expression frozen in place like a body in rigor mortis.

  Harper tried to look strong and reassuring as Violet walked away. But even as her victory began to dawn on her, she knew it would not come without a cost.

  She wasn’t sure how yet, but she would pay for crossing the Hawthornes.

  Violet walked down Main Street, her heeled boots clicking briskly across the cobblestones. The air felt soothing and balmy against her skin. Red-tinged trees bent across the quaint stone buildings, their chestnut trunks shining in the sunlight.

  Four Paths had its charms, if you could ignore the fact that it was also a monster prison she apparently had some ancestral obligation to deal with.

  “Worst magical destiny ever,” she muttered as she stomped over the founders’ symbol embedded in the square at the center of Main Street and climbed the steps to the town hall. Red-brown columns soared up on either side of her, stopping just beneath two stained-glass picture windows that depicted—what else?—a forest. The roof narrowed into a spire with a giant bell hanging in the center that reminded Violet of the spires at the top of the Saunders manor.

  But she wasn’t here to admire the architecture.

  She was here for clues.

  Violet had planned to do this with Harper after school, but something had come up on Harper’s end. She didn’t really mind, though—she could handle a museum on her own.

  She pushed open the door and stepped into an echoing stone hall. Dim light spilled in through the stained-glass windows above her head, casting everything in shifting browns and greens. Violet turned in a circle, her stomach tightening as she realized she was facing down a dozen portraits of stern-looking men and women with frizzy hair and clever eyes.

  She knew, even before she peered at the first placard, that most of them shared her last name.

  It was incredibly disarming to be faced with such unavoidable, permanent evidence of a heritage Violet had never known. A strange familiarity rose in her as she recognized the animals featured in a few portraits. The garter snake that was coiled around Helene Saunders’s ghostly pale neck hung above the living room mantel, while the speckled falcon perched on Cal Saunders’s dark brown hand graced the front hallway.

  Companions. Like Orpheus.

  They were mayoral portraits, as it turned out. The dates of their terms started in 1848, and they didn’t stray from the Saunders family name until 1985, when Hiram Saunders was replaced by Geoff Sullivan.

  The names traded off to different founders after that—a Carlisle, another Sullivan—until four years ago, when Mayor Storey had been sworn in.

  “You’re not going to find your ritual here.” It wasn’t Harper’s voice. “Just a lot of pictures of dead people. And people who wish they were dead.”

  “You’re cheerful,” Violet said as, behind her, the door to the town hall swung shut. “Did Justin ask you to follow me here?”

  “I don’t stalk people,” said Isaac, joining her beside the portraits. His backpack hung carelessly off one shoulder. There was a beat-up book stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. “Even if I’m asked nicely.”

  “So then what are you doing here?”

  “Coming home.”

  Violet frowned at him. “You live in the town hall?”

  Isaac tugged at his backpack strap. “It’s a nice apartment.”

  “Yeah, but…” Violet remembered the blacked-out part of the map marked Sullivan Territory. The outline of a house she’d seen underneath it. “You live there by yourself?”

  “Why do you care?” He shot her a grin. “Trying to get invited upstairs?”

  Violet flushed. “I’m trying to do research. And you’re getting in my way.”

  “There’s much more to Four Paths than some old paintings of town mayors,” Isaac said disdainfully. “Do you really think all the answers are just sitting out in the open? Our help means something. And you turned it down.”

  Violet stepped away from him, her fingers curling around the bracelet at her wrist. She didn’t regret telling the Hawthornes to leave her alone. Harper’s story had told her all she needed to know about them. There was no room in her life for disloyal, cowardly snakes—or anyone who chose to follow them.

  “You didn’t help me at all,” she said.

  “I got you out of the Gray, didn’t I?”

  “No, you got Justin out of the Gray.” Violet had seen the bond between them. There was nobody left alive who cared about her like that. There was nobody left to save her. “I just happened to be there, too.”

  “You’re alive, though, aren’t you?”

  “Is that your definition of helped?” Violet snapped. “Alive?”

  Isaac’s mouth twitched, and for a moment she felt uncomfortably seen. He was watching her like he’d watched her in the Diner, in homeroom, like he was waiting for her to lash out at him. Like he’d enjoy every moment of it if she did.

  “Maybe I didn’t help you, then.” His voice bounced off the stone walls, echoing like the first roll of thunder before a storm. “But there are parts of the town hall that might actually have answers in them. They’re just not accessible to the general public.”

  “Great,” Violet drawled. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not done.” He fumbled in his backpack for a moment and held up a ring of keys. “I am not the general public.”

  It was tempting. She had to admit it. But still, she hesitated.

  Isaac huffed and shot her a look that Violet tried to pretend was not pity. “Listen, if you run into trouble, and you don’t come out, Justin will be inconsolable.” He paused. “He’s annoying when he’s sad.”

  He was trying to be kind to her. Violet decided that if he could do
that, she could try to let him help her.

  So she nodded.

  Isaac led Violet up a flight of stairs to a significantly less fancy door, protected by a brass dead bolt. Isaac unlocked it with his ring of keys.

  “This floor is where the Four Paths archives are stored,” he said, guiding her down a dingy, dimly lit hallway. “All the records of our town history are here. This is where Justin and May would’ve taken you if you didn’t, you know, grievously insult them.”

  Violet would’ve been more concerned if he hadn’t said it like he was amused instead of wounded. Although maybe those were the same thing with Isaac. “You don’t seem that mad about it.”

  “It was kind of funny.” Isaac shrugged. “People don’t really say no to the Hawthornes. It’s good for them to remember they’re not invincible.”

  There were no pictures in this hallway, just wallpaper that smelled slightly of mildew and floorboards that creaked beneath Violet’s boots. Violet couldn’t quite believe they were still in the same building. She followed Isaac through another sagging wooden door, wincing as the mildew smell intensified.

  Violet made out several dented metal filing cabinets and shelves piled high with books and papers, silhouetted by the light streaming in through the windows on the far wall. A strip of fluorescent lights flickered to life, casting the archive room in a sickly green glow.

  Violet’s eyes landed on a familiar face.

  “Aunt Daria?” she whispered, then flushed, embarrassed, as she realized she was staring at a portrait on the wall, not a person. Although there was a distinct resemblance in the jut of their chins and the set of their eyes, this woman was not her aunt. She wore a high-necked dress that clearly wasn’t from this century, a red medallion at her breast, and a live ermine draped around her shoulders.

  Something about the painting looked a shade too alive—Violet almost expected her dark, heavy-lidded eyes to blink.

  “These are the original founders,” said Isaac dryly, from beside her. “They used to be downstairs, but people complained. Said they felt watched.”

  “Has anyone ever had a power that could do that?”

  “No,” said Isaac. “But the rest of the town doesn’t know that.”