The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  Justin nodded in agreement as the lights of the sheriff’s station cut through the darkness, drawing them both toward the squat, ugly building at the edge of town like moths to a flame.

  He was expecting the normal setup for patrol once they got inside—Augusta and a few deputies lined up, dividing routes, giving orders. But instead, their mother was waiting for them in the foyer, alone, her choppy blond hair glowing almost neon where it was silhouetted by the fluorescent lights.

  Justin’s first thought was that something terrible had happened, again.

  “Is everything all right?” said May sharply, who had clearly had the same thought.

  “Everything’s fine,” Augusta said quickly. “There’s just something I need to discuss with your brother. May, you can go ahead to the conference room, where the deputies are planning the routes.”

  May vanished down the hallway, shooting Justin a confused look.

  Justin had grown enough in the past few years that they were about the same height, but Augusta still felt taller than him as she led him down the corridor and into her poorly lit office. The mastiffs were curled up on the floor in a pile, napping. Brutus’s tail twitched as Justin sat down and patted his head.

  “What’s this about?” he asked. Augusta situated herself behind the desk as Justin racked his brain for what he could’ve done wrong. All he could think of was Violet—but if that were the case, she would’ve kept May around, too.

  “I felt it was best we discussed this in person.” Augusta fixed him with a look that made Justin feel like he’d been pinned to his seat. “I don’t think you should go on patrol tonight.”

  Justin frowned. “Why? Does Mitzi or Seth want to trade?”

  “No,” Augusta said. “But I’m worried about your capabilities. Especially now that we’re close to the equinox. It’s for your own good, really—I’m just trying to keep you safe.”

  Justin had spent enough time on various athletic teams to know what she was really saying. “You’re benching me?”

  “I’m protecting you.”

  The words hit him like a dull thud in the chest.

  “And what about the people who might die because I’m not patrolling?” he said. “Who’s going to protect them?”

  “I won’t let you risk your life like that,” Augusta said, almost gently. “Everything is under control. I promise.”

  “Mitzi, Seth, Isaac, and May can’t protect the town on their own. Maurice Carlisle doesn’t patrol and—” Justin cut himself off before he could mention Violet.

  Augusta narrowed her eyes. “And who? Please don’t tell me you’re about to bring up Harper Carlisle.”

  Justin swallowed, grateful for the easy lie. “You said her name. Not me.”

  Augusta Hawthorne did not appreciate anyone she couldn’t control. Anyone who might be dangerous to Four Paths.

  He’d learned that lesson when she’d forced him to betray Harper three years ago.

  If he told her about Violet’s blackouts, her powers, how she’d taken him into the Gray with her, Augusta would treat Violet as a threat instead of an ally. And another founder who could potentially keep the town in one piece would never even get the chance to help them.

  Justin couldn’t let that happen. Which meant he would need to lie to his mother, and so would May and Isaac.

  He thought of the people who’d died that year—Vanessa Burke, who’d disappeared from a party one chilly February night; Carl Falahee, who’d been discovered right behind the high school. Hap Whitley. Deputy Anders.

  Their bleach-white eyes. Their bloated, shiny skin. The bones protruding from their abdomens in a rippled, gruesome wave.

  He had enough on his conscience already. He refused to add Violet Saunders to the list of people he had failed.

  “I know what happened with Harper upset you,” said Augusta, folding her gloved hands across her desk. “But it wasn’t as if you would have been allowed to be with her long-term, anyway—and you’ve certainly had no trouble finding young women to replace her.”

  “Mom!” Justin could feel his cheeks flushing. He would rather be back in the Gray than spend another second on this topic of conversation. “Can we please not talk about this?”

  “Very well, then,” said Augusta primly. “I’m just saying, this patrol business isn’t nearly as bad as you’re making it seem. It’s only for a few weeks. You can use the time to work on your college applications.”

  “Yeah, great,” muttered Justin. “I can write my common app essay about how my mom won’t let me protect my town from an ancient evil.”

  His mother’s face contorted into an expression he hadn’t seen in ages. It took him a second to realize she was holding back a laugh. “Well, it would certainly stand out.”

  The hardest part about having a mother who could switch between unyielding and wryly self-deprecating at a moment’s notice was that he could never tell whether he had amused or upset her. Sometimes a single offhand sarcastic comment was enough to send Augusta into a cold, vicious rage. But other times, she was the one making the joke.

  Justin was tired of always having to brace himself before they talked. Tired of wondering which version of his mother he’d get when they butted heads.

  He had been lucky this time.

  Probably because she knew she’d won.

  “All right,” Justin said dully, rising from his chair, suddenly exhausted from the enormous difference between who he was and who he wanted to be. “I’ll go home.”

  Across the table, Augusta’s face split into a smile, like a crack forming in a slab of concrete.

  Violet barely slept that night. She spent hours going over everything she’d learned during the day, trying to separate the truths from the lies, trying to understand this new world she’d just been plunged into headfirst.

  She couldn’t shake the belief that there was more going on with the Hawthornes than what they’d told her. But they hadn’t been lying about the monster. They hadn’t been fazed by what she’d done to Orpheus.

  And, most crucially, they had promised to help her find a way out.

  She just wasn’t sure what other strings were attached to it.

  Juniper was fiddling with the coffeemaker when Violet came down the stairs for breakfast. Her ears were Bluetooth-free, but her phone sat on the kitchen island. Orpheus wound around the legs of the kitchen table, his yellow eyes glimmering in the shadows.

  Violet tried not to think about what he’d looked like the day before, the blood glimmering on his neck, his body sprawled beneath the trees.

  He was okay now. That was what mattered.

  “The local coffee stock is terrible here,” Juniper said by way of greeting. Violet grunted in assent. “And do you know how much trouble I’ve had with ordering anything online? No one wants to deliver to this town.”

  Violet studied her mother, who was dressed like she was about to head off to her New York City office instead of spending six hours taking conference calls in her bedroom.

  There was something else the Hawthornes had told her about the night before—something about Juniper.

  “Mom,” she said. “You lived in Four Paths for eighteen years, right?”

  “We’ve covered this.” Juniper fluffed her hair. It looked sleek and straight today, which meant she’d blow-dried it to within an inch of its life. “What is it? Are you going to ask more questions about…you know?”

  So much had happened over the past day, Violet had legitimately forgotten about Stephen Saunders.

  But now she thought about him again. Was the pain of losing her brother enough to make Juniper stay silent about Four Paths for all these years? Violet knew by now that Juniper had hidden a lot.

  She’d hidden Stephen’s entire existence, Daria’s illness, her family’s reputation. She hadn’t let Violet and Rosie see their Caulfield cousins and grandparents for all those years, even when they’d asked. Violet hadn’t even known how to invite them to the funeral; there were a million Ca
ulfields on social media, and it had been a long time since they’d been in contact beyond occasional holiday cards. So Violet wouldn’t put concealing a strange magical heritage past her. It was hardly the worst thing her mother had done.

  “Not about your brother,” Violet said, not missing the way Juniper’s shoulders relaxed. “About Four Paths. Haven’t you noticed how weird things can get here?”

  “I dearly wish weird things happened in this town. It would be an improvement over all the nothing.”

  Violet could tell her mother wasn’t lying by the way she’d deflated after Violet mentioned Stephen, like the worst thing she could’ve talked about had already been taken off the table.

  But she still had to know for certain.

  “It’s okay,” said Violet. “You can tell me the truth.”

  “The truth?” said Juniper. “Violet, what are you talking about?”

  Her mother’s phone blinked, and as Juniper reached toward it, frustration swelled in Violet’s chest.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Violet said.

  Juniper tapped absently at the phone, her focus changing to the brightly lit screen. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Her clear lack of understanding loosed the anger in Violet’s chest. “About the founding families,” she said. “About the Gray, about powers, about rituals. I mean, it’s not like they had phones back when you were a kid, so you probably had to pay attention, right?”

  But there was no recognition in her mother’s gaze at all—only concern.

  “I know you’re suffering,” Juniper said calmly, the phone still hovering beside her head. “But accusing me of hiding nonsensical things won’t help. Maybe we can talk about finding a therapist here. Your grief counselor recommended we find someone new anyway.”

  The lump in Violet’s throat swelled to bursting as she realized that for once, Juniper didn’t sound disinterested. She sounded worried.

  She darted out of the kitchen, her hunger gone. When she heard Juniper answer her phone, she sank down against the wall of the foyer, choking back tears as she gazed into the eyes of a stuffed falcon pinned to a wooden frame.

  The Hawthornes had been right. Her mother was genuinely clueless.

  A familiar flash of turquoise hair flickered in her peripheral vision. She whipped her head around, but the hallway was completely empty.

  Something twinged in the back of her skull, a sensation that reminded her of the way May’s power had felt when it had slid inside her head.

  And before Violet could take another breath, move another muscle, her world went black.

  Violet woke to something soft and cold nuzzling against her cheek. When her eyes fluttered open and met a pair of slitted yellow ones, she immediately thought of the cruel, intelligent eyes she’d seen on that card in the Hawthornes’ reading room.

  But then she saw Orpheus’s ears twitch as he brushed his tail against her arm, and she let out a panicked breath that had yet to fully balloon inside her chest.

  “Oh,” she said hoarsely, reaching out to stroke Orpheus’s neck. “It’s you.”

  Violet knew the wooden ceiling stretching above her head. The row of boxes along the wall marked ROSIE.

  She’d blacked out again. But at least this time, she’d woken up in her bedroom.

  Orpheus let out a reproachful meow as she ran a finger down the divot in his neck where his spine had snapped. Although his body had stitched itself back together, a gap between his vertebrae still remained.

  “I hope that doesn’t hurt,” she said softly.

  He nuzzled against her palm, as if to reassure her, and she felt that tether between them again, a rush of energy that tied them together.

  He looked like a cat. He felt like a cat.

  But his body was far too cold. And when she cautiously petted his stomach, she felt no sign of a heartbeat. The fact that he let her touch his belly without scratching her proved that he was no longer an ordinary cat.

  Not alive, not exactly. Yet he could still glare judgmentally at her as she sat up, bracing her hands against her comforter, a wave of nausea running through her.

  Justin, May, and Isaac had told her that, until she did her ritual, her powers wouldn’t be under her control. Were these blackouts a symptom of that? Or were they something else?

  She could ask them. They had promised to help her.

  But as the red yarn on Orpheus’s ear shone in the light streaming through the window, Violet realized there was still someone in this house who could possibly answer her questions.

  So Violet swung her feet from the bed and padded down the hallway, to Daria’s room.

  “Hello?” she called, knocking. “Aunt Daria? Are you in there?”

  Violet’s aunt often sequestered herself in strange corners of the Saunders manor, but her room seemed as good a place as any to start looking. When the door creaked open a few seconds later to reveal Daria, clad in another hand-knitted dress, Violet felt rather gratified that she had guessed correctly.

  “I have a few questions,” she said. “About our family. If you’re in the mood to answer them.”

  Daria scratched absently at her graying hair. She was only a few years older than Juniper, but time had not been kind to her. Her face looked as if it had been crumpled into a ball and smoothed out again.

  “Maybe,” she said, sounding hesitant. But she opened the door wider and gestured for Violet to come in.

  Violet had never been in Daria’s room before, but it was more or less what she’d expected. Yarn, cat toys, and stacks of strange curios covered every surface. Dried flowers adorned the walls, and a large window looked out on the garden. Violet felt as if she were standing in the lair of a washed-up witch.

  After what she’d learned these past few days, maybe she really was.

  Violet perched uncomfortably on a purple velvet ottoman as Daria bustled about the room, grabbing strange objects, turning them over, and tossing them onto the floor.

  “I’ve been talking to the Hawthornes,” she said, trying to steer Daria back to earth. “They say we’ve got powers, but we don’t get them until we do a ritual.”

  “The Hawthornes love to act like they’re better than us.” Daria lifted a block of amber containing a spider to her nose, sniffed it, and tossed it on the bed. “Their roots grow everywhere, twining around everyone’s lives. They should let us grow on our own. That’s what we always did.”

  “We? Do you mean the Saunders family?”

  But Daria didn’t even seem to hear her. “That Hawthorne boy. You should warn him. Tell him the Crusader’s coming back here to die, at long last. He always does, you know. Everyone always comes back.”

  “Sure,” said Violet slowly, trying to push back to when the conversation had made sense. “Do you know anything about us? What our ritual is?”

  Daria stopped rifling through her items. “I used to know. I should know that.” Her face went distant and frightened, almost childlike.

  Violet’s frustration turned immediately to concern. She had pushed her aunt too far. She could see that now.

  “It’s okay that you don’t remember,” she said quickly. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Daria pinched a strand of the yarn woven into her dress and tugged, hard. “No, it’s not,” she said. “You should talk to the Carlisles.”

  Violet remembered their name on the map. Harper’s warning. And risked another question. “Why?”

  “Because we trusted one another,” said Daria. “Go. And take the cat with you—the ungrateful little creature. He likes you better now, since you brought him back to life. Since you made him your companion.”

  Violet gaped at Daria. Orpheus mewled reproachfully from his seat beside the ottoman.

  “You can tell he’s…different?”

  “I haven’t forgotten everything,” said Daria acridly. “We’re the family of bones for a reason. Now let me knit in peace.”

  Daria shooed Violet out of the room and shut the door b
efore she had the chance to get out any more questions.

  Violet stood in the hallway for a moment, her mind whirling. And then her hand tightened around the phone in her pocket.

  Harper met Violet at the edge of the lake.

  She was embarrassed by the way their last conversation had ended, certain she’d looked strange for rushing off like that. It was still hard for Harper to talk about Justin. That night, she’d avoided her father, unwilling to tell Maurice Carlisle that she had let him down, again.

  But Violet had texted her the very next day, asking to hang out. Which meant she hadn’t ruined things after all. She’d left Brett and Nora with Seth in order to meet Violet solo—a risk, considering how irresponsible her little brother was, but one she was willing to take for this.

  Harper waved Violet over when she caught sight of her dark hair through the trees. Although the forest was thick and fairly impassable along large stretches of the water, no branches extended more than a few feet across it—in fact, they twisted backward, some dramatically so, in order to avoid it.

  The Beast had come from the lake when the founders settled in Four Paths. The forest remembered that.

  So did the Carlisles.

  “I didn’t realize the lake was this big,” said Violet, when she reached Harper at last. A long-ago thunderstorm had felled a tree at the edge of the lake, creating a natural bench of scarred, knotted wood. “Do people swim here?”

  “Never.”

  “Let me guess—there’s a creepy reason why?”

  “You really are learning about Four Paths,” said Harper dryly.

  Violet snorted and sat beside her on the log. She looked far more in control than the day before—and yet there was something hollow behind her perfectly applied makeup.

  Harper noticed how she tapped her barely scuffed booties against the dirt.

  How she picked at her crimson nail polish.

  How she watched the trees around her, as if a threat lurked behind every branch.

  She was trying so hard to keep herself together. But that only made it easier for Harper to see she was broken.