The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  THE CRUSADER

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Since she’d arrived in Four Paths, Violet had felt as if she had been slowly trusting people to hold parts of her. Harper had seen her long-buried grief for her father; Justin had seen her loneliness; Juniper had seen her grief for Rosie.

  But Isaac had seen all three of them, and now at last she knew why he had understood it all so well. Violet had no illusions about the tragedy that had lurked around the edges of her life like some specter she could not name, even before she had come to Four Paths and realized it was a real monster, not just a run of bad luck—she knew it was not normal to have so little family left at seventeen. But Isaac’s loss was something else entirely. It was frighteningly large; grief not just for those who had died that night, but for everything he’d believed, everything he’d been.

  They were in a place beyond blame now, a place beyond words. So she had held him and waited until he was ready to leave the woods. They did not let go of each other the whole walk home, but their clasped hands didn’t feel like a promise. They felt like a necessity, like the forest would swallow them whole if either of them let go.

  The sun had risen by the time they reached the front door of his apartment in the town hall. Violet knew her mother would be furious that she hadn’t come home. She turned to go face her wrath, but Isaac made a soft, scared noise in the back of his throat and whispered, “Stay?”

  So she did.

  Isaac’s bedroom was cramped and cluttered. Books were strewn across the night table and the floor, mixed with clothes that spilled out of the small closet tucked into the corner. Isaac curled up on the twin mattress, eyes staring blankly across the room. Unsure of what else to do, Violet perched on the edge of his crumpled blue bedspread.

  She sat on something strange and shifted to the side, frowning as she pulled out a copy of The Hobbit from beneath her. “How can you sleep with these in your bed?”

  Isaac pulled his pillow aside, revealing a small library of paperbacks shoved beneath them. “I used to hide them here as a kid so I could read after lights-out. Now it’s just a habit, I guess. Like how you carry around your binder full of sheet music.”

  Violet gaped at him. “You noticed that?”

  “You spent the first few weeks of school staring at it instead of taking notes. There are, like, fifty people in our grade—it was tough not to notice.”

  Violet snorted. They fell silent for a moment, and she glanced around the rest of the room, trying to match up the pieces of Isaac that were here with the ones she’d already gathered. A few raggedy posters had been haphazardly tacked up on the walls, for the kind of indie bands Rosie had cheerfully called “sad-boy music,” and beside them was a blown-up cover of The Great Gatsby, the famous blue one with a face in the center, with the eyes crossed out and JUSTICE FOR ZELDA written at the bottom.

  Getting to know someone was something she was still adjusting to. Rosie had always been there—knowing her had been like breathing. But choosing to let someone into your life, letting them see the places where you were weak and the ones where you were strong—it was complicated. And exhausting. And rewarding, too. Because she and Rosie had never really had a choice. But here people did, and they had chosen her.

  Violet’s eyes fell on the photos taped just above the bed, next to the small nightstand lamp that was definitely a fire hazard. They looked like a photo-booth spread—Isaac was shoved between May’s feathery blond hair and Justin’s wide grin, looking progressively less miserable in every picture.

  The photo at the very end captured most of Violet’s attention, and made something drop in her stomach. Isaac was looking at Justin while Justin stared at the camera. The longing on Isaac’s face was so transparent, so raw, that Violet turned her gaze away.

  “Ugh,” Isaac said quietly. “I should take those down.”

  Violet turned back toward him. She knew Isaac had fought with Justin. She also knew that Isaac was extremely into him. She had found out from the Four Paths rumor mill that Isaac had come out as bi in homeroom last spring, very casually, with a confidence Violet wished she could convey when discussing her own sexuality.

  “We’ve already talked about enough tonight,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about you and Justin.”

  Isaac snorted. “There’s nothing to talk about, anyway. I’m just a big bisexual disaster.”

  “Oh, same,” Violet said, before she could think it all the way through.

  Isaac’s eyes widened, and Violet realized that she could walk this back or see it through. She thought about the conversation they had just had, about how good it had felt to tell Juniper the truth, and decided to commit. It was an exhausting feeling, to realize that she would have to come out to everyone in her life like this. She understood more now why Isaac had done it so publicly.

  “Yeah, I’m bi, too,” she said. “And I’ve totally had crushes on straight girls before. It sucks, liking someone who can’t like you back.”

  “It really does,” Isaac said. “But… hey. Thank you for telling me. I hope you know I would never out you or anything.”

  “I know,” Violet said. “Especially since you did just unload a lot of stuff on me. I’ve got dirt on you, Sullivan.”

  “My life’s a nightmare, I know.”

  “All of our lives are.”

  Isaac’s laugh sounded like a cough. “Justin always said it was dangerous to try to play ‘who’s more messed up’ with the founder kids. Everyone always loses.”

  “Is that game at least a little less dangerous than that drinking game we all played?”

  “Monster in the Gray isn’t dangerous,” Isaac said, grinning a little. “Sure, you have to handle a hammer—”

  “While chugging death juice!”

  “It’s a game of great skill, okay?” He paused. “You’re distracting me, aren’t you? That’s what this is?”

  “Depends,” Violet said. “Is it working?”

  “Maybe a little bit.” Isaac was curled up on his side, his hair flopping across his forehead. The shaved part of the back of his head was growing back in, a messy, endearing thatch of dark brown hair. He looked vulnerable like this, younger, not like a boy who could disintegrate half the forest if he wanted to.

  “I think the part I hate the most about the Justin thing,” he said finally, “is that Justin understood when I told him. It hurt him, but like—he’s not a homophobic jackass. He respected the boundary I set. He’s listening to me.”

  Violet raised an eyebrow. “You’re mad the guy you have a crush on treated you with respect?”

  “Had a crush on,” he said.

  Her eyes met his, and she said, too carefully, “Had? As in past tense?”

  “I mean, I’ll always care about him,” Isaac said. “But… it feels different now that I’ve taken a step back. I can see things I couldn’t before. He found me right after everything happened, and I felt for so long like I was always trying to catch up to that moment. Like if I saved him enough times, we’d be even.”

  “I’m not exactly a relationship expert,” said Violet, “but I don’t think that’s how it works. It doesn’t have to be life and death all the time. And it doesn’t have to be about keeping score.”

  “You’re right,” Isaac said. “Shit, Violet, I don’t want you to feel like I’m putting too much on you. I feel like I’ve already asked you for too much.”

  “We’re friends.” Violet remembered in a rush just how recently Harper had said those same words to her. “Friends ask each other for help. Don’t apologize for that.”

  His mouth quirked up at the corners. “Fine.”

  She could feel a tether stretching between the two of them. Not like the one that connected her to the Beast—something different. Something far more complex. A friendship was its own type of ritual, she realized, one where people bound themselves to one another not with blood but with words. And it had a power all its own, that belonging, that incalculable inter
nal chemistry of choosing to let someone in.

  So she stayed with him until his eyes fluttered shut and sleep claimed him, until she could tiptoe out the doorway and make her way home.

  When May came to, she was faced with a corrupted hawthorn tree, a killer hangover, and an irate mother.

  “You felt it, too,” Augusta said. Not a question. May nodded, exhausted.

  “Did you pass out?” she asked.

  Augusta shook her head, curiosity lighting her eyes. “It affected you very… severely. I wonder why.”

  May thought about mentioning the fog, the voice, the blood seeping from her lifelines. But her mother had made it very clear that she did not care to think about the possibility that May might be stronger than her, so she kept her mouth shut.

  Augusta coped with the damaged hawthorn tree by increasing patrols and spending even longer hours at the station. May coped by scheduling another meeting with her father as soon as possible. She wanted to talk through what she’d seen and ask about what Harper had told her—that she didn’t think the corruption was the Beast’s fault. That the Gray had seemed infected, too. May found Harper’s theory almost impossible to believe. Whenever something went wrong in Four Paths, it could be traced back to the Beast.

  Ezra was back in Syracuse again, trawling through the university’s special collections library in person for more information that might help. But he’d traveled back at May’s request. He wanted to see the tree in person, which proved difficult, but after a few days May found a morning when Justin was at a cross-country meet and her mother was tied up at the station.

  The late-October air was harsh and blustery when May met Ezra outside the Hawthorne house. She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets as she led him around the side of the house, wishing she’d brought gloves. Ezra looked unbothered by the weather, professorial and unruffled in a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. He adjusted his glasses and peered at the hawthorn tree from the edge of the woods, as close as May could justify bringing him to the site of the corruption. She didn’t want him to get sick.

  “The pictures you sent didn’t do it justice,” he said quietly. “The hawthorn is changing.”

  Her palms itched as she stared miserably at the silver veins snaking along the back of the tree, cutting sharply into its broad trunk. “It’s not changing, it’s dying. I watched it happen and I still couldn’t stop it.”

  “You mentioned seeing something odd as the tree fell, some type of vision,” Ezra said, the curiosity in his voice evident. “Tell me more about that.”

  May launched into what she could remember of the voice in her head, the fog, her bleeding palms. Since the initial outbreak, the veins had settled somewhat, the same buds she’d seen on the trees at the Sullivan ritual site, unopened but also refusing to go away.

  “Interesting,” Ezra said. “Do you think it’s a vision brought on by your connection to the Deck of Omens?”

  May hesitated. “I guess I didn’t think about it like that.”

  “Perhaps you should. You’re strong, May—your ritual has allowed you a level of connection beyond that of the other founders.”

  “Yeah, about that.” May had been thinking a lot about the conversation she’d had with Augusta right before the party. “I talked to my mom about my powers, like you asked me to. And she said nobody’s been able to change the future since Hetty Hawthorne.”

  Ezra’s eyes lit up with interest. “So that truly is a power that only the original Hawthorne ever possessed—until you.”

  “I’m not sure I do have that power, though,” May said doubtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe I imagined things when I changed the cards.”

  “No, you didn’t. Don’t sell yourself short.” Ezra looked as if he could barely contain himself. “When I bound you to the Beast, I had hopes that it would re-create the process of the original founders’ bindings. I was unsure what the effects of it would be, but if what your mother said is true about your ability, then it gave you the original founders’ powers. Which means that perhaps you can succeed where the other founders have failed to make a difference in this fight.”

  A shock wave coursed through May as this sank in. The thought that she could be as powerful as the woman who had locked away the Beast itself was almost unfathomable. “Does that mean I might actually be able to change the future in a way that ensures we defeat the corruption?”

  “Potentially.” Ezra sighed thoughtfully. “It’s risky. What you’ve described seeing when the hawthorn was corrupted distresses me. It means that, bound as you are, you could be killed if your efforts backfired. We can’t mindlessly risk your life—we must find a way to proceed safely. I’ll need to return to the university library, see if there’s anything more there I can use to help you.”

  “They don’t have a digital archive you can check?” May didn’t like the idea of him leaving her again, alone with all of this worry to sort through.

  “I’m afraid not,” Ezra said. “But I will be back, May, I promise. In the meantime, I urge you not to do anything rash.”

  “All right,” May said, although she itched to do something, anything. She hadn’t known how to bring it up on the phone, but now that she was face-to-face with her father, there was something else she wanted to talk about. “Um. I also wanted to mention that when I talked to Mom… she said some things. About you.”

  “Ah.” Ezra adjusted his glasses. “Allow me to guess—they were less than kind.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, I suppose I should have expected it.” Ezra rapped his knuckles absently against the nearest tree trunk, as if contemplating what to say next. “Your mother is… quite set in her opinions of what happened between us.”

  “She said you studied us. Is that true?”

  “Certainly.” His lips pursed. “It’s an old argument of ours. She felt that my interest in the founder mythology and customs was prying. I merely wished to find ways to help my family. It took me longer than I’m proud of to realize that her resistance came from the worry I would uncover the truth about her abilities.”

  May’s stomach churned. “You mean about how she takes the town’s memories?”

  “Yes. I did not approve, and I made my concerns known. Which meant she no longer approved of me.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  “That’s part of it. But those are dark times, May, ones I don’t particularly wish to relive.”

  “I understand.” May paused. “I’m surprised she never tried to take your memories away.”

  “As am I. I suppose there are some lines she’s still unwilling to cross.”

  “I just don’t understand,” May said quietly. “She seemed completely unwilling to even accept that I might be able to help her.”

  “That’s because she’s threatened by you.” Ezra gestured at the back of the house, the gabled roofs, the hawthorn’s dying branches. “She claims to want strong founders, but what she really wants is no one strong enough to challenge her. And because you can invert her powers, because you are capable of things she’s only dreamed of, she has tried to stifle you instead of allowing you to grow.”

  “Just like what she did to Harper and Violet.”

  “Exactly.” Ezra placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think we need to look at this anymore. I’ll be back in town soon. Meanwhile, you keep an eye on the corruption, all right?”

  “Thanks,” May said, exhausted. They parted ways, and she passed her dying tree, looking toward the home that did not feel like a home at all.

  Usually, people met beneath the bleachers behind Four Paths High School to hook up or smoke up. Harper had something very different in mind. She cleared out the space in seconds, couples scattering and kids hastily putting out their joints before they realized that she was not in fact a teacher.

  “You don’t have to frighten them,” Justin said from beside her, watching with concern as a group of freshmen scrambled back like startled mice. “T
hey’re just trying to enjoy their lunch period.”

  “Would you rather do this in front of half the school?” Harper asked dryly.

  Justin’s mouth twisted. “No.”

  “I figured.” To be fair, this wasn’t exactly Harper’s first choice either, but the band practice rooms were taken. Slatted sunlight illuminated the graffiti scrawled beneath the bleachers, hearts and other body parts that Harper felt were an optimistic interpretation of reality. It smelled like gym socks and mold, but it was the only place they’d get a modicum of privacy during the school day to discuss what the hell was going on with the hawthorn tree. The meeting had been Justin’s idea—he’d wanted to talk through the damage with her—but Harper wondered if he’d regretted asking her to do it as soon as possible as he gazed around at their classmates, his brow furrowed with dismay.

  “Hey!” Harper said, frowning at the few brazen stragglers who remained. “Everybody out. We need this space for founder business.”

  “Dude,” murmured some sophomore Harper knew hung around with her brother. “We should listen to her. You know what she did to that tree.”

  His friends nodded, their eyes wide as they crept out.

  “Enjoying your newfound power, I see,” Justin said once they had finally been left alone. Harper was sure somebody was still eavesdropping, so she kept her voice down, glancing around for nosy classmates and their phones. Harper could hear a twinge of jealousy in his voice, and she didn’t blame him. A few months ago, he’d been the one who could empty a room just by clearing his throat.

  “They don’t know I can’t control it,” she said quietly.

  “No, they don’t,” Justin said. “I’m sure they would have moved a lot more quickly if they did.”

  He paused for a moment, and an uncomfortable silence crept between them. Harper knew that it was more important for them to focus on the corruption than what had happened—or rather what hadn’t happened—between them at his birthday party. But it had been a few days, and it still wouldn’t leave her mind. How close he’d been, how sad he’d looked. How much the truth about what she’d seen in the Gray had hurt them both.