The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “But I don’t have the cards. How can I—”

  “Don’t worry.” Ezra’s voice was soothing. “We won’t need them.”

  The Sullivan ruins crested the horizon a moment later. May could barely see them through the haze of twilight and the smoke of the airborne corruption.

  “Be careful,” she told her father, handing him a cloth to wrap around his face. “I know you said you’re safe, but I don’t want you getting corrupted.”

  “Very thoughtful of you, May.” He tied it around the bottom of his face and led her forward, into the thickening mist.

  “Where are we going?” she said.

  Ezra’s gaze went solemn behind his glasses. Again, his words were muffled by the fabric. “In order to do this right, May, we must bind you more closely to the Beast. And we can only do that from inside the Gray.”

  Inside the Gray. May’s heartbeat sped up at the thought, but they were out of other options. She would have to go through with this, however risky it was.

  Whatever mist was pouring out of the corrupted flowers had thinned the walls between Four Paths and the Gray until it was as easily ripped apart as paper. Isaac had already warned them that it would be easy to stumble through at the founders’ ritual sites, but May supposed that right now stumbling through was the plan. She stared, horrified, at the way the world shifted and changed between the trees, flickering back and forth between her world and the Beast’s prison. All around her, flower petals twisted and twitched, a slight discoloration at their edges that reminded May of fingernails.

  “Stick with me,” she told Ezra, grasping for his arm in the darkness as they headed for the center of the churning fog. “Most humans don’t do too well in the Gray.”

  May did her best to keep up the pretense of bravery as the fog engulfed them a moment later, but it wavered when a familiar voice rang out inside her head.

  Fog rushed around them a moment later. Seven of Branches, it hissed, Seven of Branches—but May pushed it down. The fog thickened as they stumbled forward, and then May felt the world change around them in the matter of a single heartbeat. It was frightening to her, how easily they had stepped through a hole in the world. The fog cleared, and May blinked into the flat, surreal brightness of the Gray’s staticky sky.

  The first thing May noticed was that the corruption was even worse here than it was in Four Paths. They were near the Sullivan estate, which was still intact here, a small cabin that looked nothing like the mansion May had known before Isaac had destroyed it. May inspected the tree nearest to her, her stomach churning as she tracked the silvery veins running beneath the places where the bark had peeled back. The tree looked far too much like human skin, but skin leached of all color, gray and bloated as a corpse.

  Seven of Branches, the voice snarled in the back of her mind. Don’t—

  She pushed it down.

  “Where should we do the ritual?” she asked, turning to Ezra. Her voice rasped out a second later than her lips moved—it was disorienting. “Here?”

  “No.” To her surprise, he didn’t seem frightened of the Gray at all. She supposed he’d probably heard a lot about it before—maybe he knew what to expect. “There’s a place that’s more important to the founders than this. It’s a direct conduit to the Beast, and it will allow you to channel it more quickly.”

  May understood immediately. “The founders’ seal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why didn’t we just go into the Gray there?”

  “The walls aren’t thinned like they are here, in the places where the corruption has already eaten them away,” Ezra said, shrugging. “This was our gate. Now come on. Let’s get going.”

  A copse of trees grew around the founders’ seal. They were corrupted at a level May had not yet seen. Hanks of human hair grew from the branches in knotted, tangled clumps. Corrupted flowers bloomed across their branches, waving in a grotesque parody of human arms. And beneath their silver veins, pulsating gently inside each of the trees, was the thin, glowing outline of a human heart.

  “Holy shit,” May whispered, the words echoing a second too late as she watched the heart move.

  She remembered with a sickening rush how many times she had felt the hawthorn tree’s deep, steady heartbeat over the years. The dull thudding of these trees’ heartbeats coursed through her, sluggish and strange. All of it was wrong on a level May could barely conceptualize: a forest of flesh, as if the trees were doing their best to become human but did not know how to put all the pieces together.

  She needed to stop this now.

  In the center of the founders’ seal was a tree stump. Silvery veins radiated out from it, climbing over the seal. Inside the bark, spilling over the edges, was a boiling cauldron of iridescent gray liquid. Noxious smoke rose from it and wafted through the air. It was identical to the smoke pouring out of the flowers.

  “What is this?” May gasped, turning to look at her father.

  You know what it is, hissed the voice, so familiar, too familiar. You know, you know, you know—

  “It’s the center of town.” Ezra was standing beside her now. May felt a slight rush of wooziness as she turned to look at him. “This stump contains the closest thing Four Paths has to the glue that binds it together. It’s the place the founders did their ritual to create the Gray and bind the beast. It will allow you to strengthen your own bond.”

  “How?”

  “By drinking from it.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.” May’s stomach churned. “I am not drinking that.”

  “It will strengthen your bond,” Ezra said calmly. “Desperate times call for—”

  “No.” May stared at him. He looked far too natural here. The voice screamed in her mind again, louder this time, and she could not tell anymore if it was hers or something else’s. All she knew was that both her brain and the voice were saying the same thing: Run. “What do you want, Dad? What do you really want?”

  “Would you truly like to know?”

  May nodded, unease coursing through her. Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong.

  Ezra reached forward and grabbed her hand in his, and suddenly, violently, they were somewhere else.

  May knew immediately that it was a memory. She was inside Ezra’s head somehow, the same way Augusta could sort through people’s memories and pluck out the ones that displeased her. But how could he have founder powers? It simply wasn’t possible.

  Ezra’s head turned, and May’s heart stopped.

  She was sitting in the center of Four Paths, but it was not the Four Paths she lived in now. Nor was it the one she’d seen in the Gray—not exactly, anyway. The buildings were old and barely buildings at all, the same dirt road branching out where Main Street was now, the same trees covering the lot where there would one day be a mausoleum. But everything was in color, from the green, verdant leaves on the chestnut oaks to the deep blue sky above her head. She lowered her chin—Ezra’s chin—and saw that he was sitting on the founders’ seal, still made of stone. It was the only piece of all of this that remained unchanged.

  “It is time,” said a voice beside her, high and oddly familiar. “The power doesn’t belong to us—we have to give it back.”

  She turned and saw a woman. The face was sharp and clever, angular and wild, with blond hair parted in the center and pulled back in elaborate, looping braids. May knew immediately that this memory was far older than humanly possible. There was the dress the woman wore, with closely fitted sleeves and a row of buttons that traced from the high neckline down to the gathered waist—something out of a history textbook. And there was also the matter of that face, because May recognized it.

  It was Hetty Hawthorne’s face.

  She was staring at a founder.

  May’s shock only multiplied as she turned her head and realized that Hetty was not alone.

  She had spent her entire life trying to live up to these people’s legacy, and here were Het
ty, Thomas Carlisle, and Lydia Saunders, all of them sitting on the town seal, in the same places the founder descendants now sat during the Founders’ Day ceremony every year.

  It didn’t make sense that Ezra could show her this. It didn’t make any sense at all.

  “You’re right that we have to end this,” Ezra’s voice said in the memory. May felt him pull the blade from his coat pocket. “But not the way you think we do.”

  He lunged ahead, a woman screamed, and suddenly time skipped forward. The founders’ bodies lay at her feet—Ezra’s feet—sprawled limply on the ground. There was blood, so much blood, dripping down the four lines that crossed toward the center of the seal. May had never seen so much in one place. And she had never seen blood change like this, foaming and steaming, slowly fading to gray.

  Silvery veins began to spread from the center of the seal, cutting across the ground. And then the founders’ bodies began to change, too. May watched them twist and writhe, their eyes turning bleach-white, their skin bloating and graying. Their bodies began to disintegrate into iridescent liquid, and then gray spread across the whole world, draining it of all color.

  This will never be yours, hissed a voice, tinny and furious.

  “No,” Ezra’s voice snarled. He reached out a bloodstained hand. “Where are you? Where have you gone?”

  The scene faded out, then, and she was back in the Gray.

  May stared at her father, her stomach churning, and said the last three words she ever would have dreamed of.

  “You’re Richard Sullivan.”

  Her father flourished his arm and bent down into a mock bow. “In the flesh.”

  “But…” she whispered. “How?”

  “I took their powers as they died,” he said, shrugging. “That Saunders immortality looks good on me, don’t you think?”

  It explained a lot. It explained too much. May knew that if she lived through this, it would take her a long, long time to sort through all of it, through the impossibility and ugliness of her very existence. But right now she had to think. She had to keep him talking, because he was telling her things that were actually useful. She could fall apart later.

  “So then you have power,” May said, frowning. “You have… everything. Why would you bring me here? Why would you tell me this?”

  “Stop!” The voice rang out through the Gray, through the trees. May whirled around, her mind struggling to process the sight before her. Justin, bedraggled and sweaty, staring at them both with abject horror. May wanted to believe it was the Beast playing tricks on her, but she knew better. Her brother had followed them into the forest, into the Gray.

  “Justin,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m taking you home.” Justin stared at her, determination written across his face.

  “Well.” Ezra—no, Richard—smiled slowly. “This is unexpected.”

  “Get out of here,” May gasped. “He isn’t who he says he is. Justin, I don’t know how much of that you heard—”

  “I heard enough,” Justin said grimly. “Richard.”

  “You poor boy.” Her father’s voice was so soft, May barely heard the words. “You should not have followed us.”

  “Justin,” May said again. “Run—”

  But it was too late.

  The roots around her moved, whipping into action. They bound Justin’s arms and legs and forced him to his knees, his eyes wide with panic. He didn’t even have time to scream before they slid across his mouth.

  May rounded on her father. “Let him go!”

  “No,” Richard said hoarsely. “Not unless you drink.”

  May could not think, could not breathe. Her brother was here. Her brother was in terrible danger—they both were—and it was all her fault.

  All she could think to do was keep Richard talking.

  “Please,” she said, extending a shaking hand. “Just explain why you even need me at all. Don’t you have all the power you ever could have wanted?”

  “No!” The word burst through his careful mask, and then Richard breathed, reeling his fury back in. It disturbed her to see how he could put his anger on and take it off again. “Their powers—our powers—are weak reflections of the true magic here. But the other founders were frightened of that power. It caused the corruption, and they wanted to stop it, even if it meant all of us losing our abilities. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So you killed them.” May’s voice was hollow.

  “I did what I had to do,” Richard said. “But I didn’t realize that their deaths meant I would be locked away from the source of our power. It took many years before I figured out that I would not be able to override their sacrifice in order to get my full powers back on my own. Someone else would have to do it.”

  “Someone else. You mean me.”

  Ezra—Richard—nodded. “You are the bridge between the Gray and Four Paths, May. You’re a conduit, a mediator, and instead of keeping them apart”—he smiled—“you will bring them together, and you will give me the reward I’ve been chasing for a hundred and fifty years.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” May said, hot tears gathering in her throat. “I’m not capable of any of the things you just said.”

  “Yes, you are,” Richard said, steepling his fingers thoughtfully beneath his chin. “When you use the Deck of Omens, May, you’re asking a question. Who do you think is answering it?”

  The voice. It had whispered at the edge of her consciousness for the past year, and she had tried to drown it out, push it back. But it had only grown stronger. May thought of all the words she had used for what she was communicating with when she used her powers. The roots. The tree. The town. None of them had ever been right. But they had all been so much safer than what she’d feared in the back of her mind, a truth that she could only face now that so many more terrifying truths had come to light.

  “The Beast.” May could barely choke the words out. And he nodded, and her world crumbled.

  Her power wasn’t seeing the future at all—it was talking to a monster.

  “But it doesn’t just answer you,” Richard continued. “It listens, as it did when you changed the cards. It calls to you, even as you destroy it.”

  He raised a hand.

  May hit the ground with a yell as roots twined around her legs and feet, anchoring her to the soft, loamy earth. Something slithered from the corner of her eye and down her cheek—a root, spiraling down her face like a wandering vein. It hooked on the inside of her lip. May snarled and bit it, spitting out bits of bark before they could make it down her throat. The sap inside it tasted rotten.

  She struggled to no avail as the roots grabbed her wrists and yanked her forward, slamming her palm onto the nearest tree.

  Dread surged through May’s stomach. She snatched her hand away from the tree—the roots let her do that, at least—and gaped wordlessly. Her handprint was burned into the trunk. Spreading out from it were writhing silver roots, infecting the corrupted tree even further.

  With a sudden, sickening lurch, May put it all together. She’d been trying to figure out what had changed in the town to start this, when she had been the one to change things. Which meant…

  “It’s me.” She could barely get the words out. “You said our powers are weak reflections of the founder powers, but the founder powers are what cause the corruption, aren’t they? And if I have Hetty’s power… I started the corruption when I decided to mess with the future.”

  In front of her, Justin let out a horrified sound. She locked eyes with him and realized that he was no longer looking at her like she was something to save, but like something he would have to defeat.

  It was a look that broke her heart, because she knew she deserved it.

  “You did.” Richard’s voice was far too gentle, a feather when it should have been a razor’s edge. “And you should be very proud. But you must grow stronger before you can use that corruption to
destroy the Beast. Before you”—he gestured to the cauldron—“is the essence of the forest, the power of Four Paths itself, the power that runs through your veins. I wasn’t lying. It will help you master your abilities.”

  “And it will help you hurt everyone I love.”

  “They don’t love you.” His voice broke on the last word, descending into a vicious growl. For a moment, the expression on his face flickered, and May saw the deep, unending fury beneath the mask he’d shown her.

  “That’s not true—”

  “Look at how your brother fears you already.” His voice was soft again. “Why are you resisting when you know there’s nowhere for you to go home to, now that they know you’re the one behind the corruption? That there’s blood on your hands?”

  He knelt beside her then, tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. Wiped a smudge of grime off her face as if she were a child who’d fallen.

  “You have talent, May. Talent that none of them can appreciate. Talent I gave you. So use it.”

  May had grown up with the weight of the world on her shoulders—her father’s strange expectations, her mother’s eternal disappointment, and the town’s perpetual disdain, no matter how well she performed the job she’d been born to do.

  Maybe her father was right. Maybe it was too late for her to do anything but accept the fate she had so willingly led herself to.

  “I’m losing patience,” her father said above her.

  He waved a hand in the air, and a tree root snaked across Justin’s exposed throat. Justin let out a muffled noise of pain as it began to tighten.

  It took everything May had—but she did not flinch. Did not shudder. The only way to make him stop this would be to pretend it didn’t bother her.

  “Is that what you think will do it?” she asked coolly. “Threatening Justin? You wouldn’t kill your own son.”

  His grin in the light of the cauldron was ghoulish. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  “That’s not true,” May said softly, as, behind them, the sounds of Justin choking began to echo through the clearing. “You killed your friends. You had children because you thought we were tools. But you taught me to be just as cruel, just as ruthless, as you.”