The Devouring Gray

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “What if I don’t think I’m ready?” I asked.

  Maya has this way of smiling that makes her look like she’s about to laugh or cry, she just can’t decide which. I couldn’t look at it, so I just stared down at the scone.

  “No one ever does,” she told me, the scars on her shoulders tensing as she leaned back and stared up at the trees. “But we get through it.”

  I hope she’s right.

  April 12, 1984

  I can’t believe I was so nervous about my ritual! I’m not allowed to share the details here, because even though this journal is well hidden, Dad would disown me if he knew I’d written it down. Let’s just say that it was sort of awesome.

  I’m going on my first-ever patrol tonight! I don’t know if I’m like him or Daria or June yet, but I feel stronger. I can’t wait to find out what I can do.

  “Are you kidding me?” Violet resisted the urge to fling the book across the room. There were no details about the ritual at all. How obnoxious. “I was so close…”

  “You should keep reading,” said Isaac softly.

  So Violet sighed and flipped to the next page.

  It was dated a few months later.

  She could tell within a few sentences that things were changing. Stephen sounded older. He sounded tired.

  September 5, 1984

  It’s been a long summer. The Gray usually quiets down after the spring equinox, but this year it’s been stronger than usual. It seems like every few days, the border in our territory acts up, and Dad and Uncle Hiram go into the forest. Now I’m expected to go with them.

  I know what I am now. I raise the dead, like they do. But I don’t have a companion. Dad says not to rush it—it took him a month to find Agatha, who’d been hit by a car.

  Easy for him to say. Companions are supposed to be a focal point for our power. Like flexing a muscle, working with them makes us grow stronger.

  Except I can’t get stronger. And it’s all starting to get to me—Dad’s disappointment, the way the Gray tugs at my mind when I watch it unfurl at the edge of town.

  I’ve started sleepwalking; at least, I think that’s what it is. I’ve woken up in the woods twice now.

  Maybe that’s why things have gotten so mixed up in my mind.

  I’ve known since I was little that we’d bound ourselves to the Beast so we could lock it away. But sometimes, late at night, I feel something creeping up in the back of my mind. A strange sense that what we’re doing is wrong.

  Violet knew how that felt. Waking up in strange places, feeling strange things in the back of your skull.

  “He was blacking out,” she said hoarsely.

  Isaac leaned toward her, a single dark curl falling across his forehead. Violet felt a strange urge to brush it away. “Didn’t you say that was happening to you?”

  She nodded, cleared her throat. Tried not to remember that, in less than a year from this entry, Stephen Saunders would be dead. “It happened again. Since we talked.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that he mentions it here.”

  “I agree,” said Violet solemnly. “Let’s see what else he has to say.”

  September 19, 1984

  I feel it all the time now. Like there’s something that lives inside my brain, peering into my thoughts. Sometimes I feel emotions that I know aren’t mine—I’ll be sitting in the kitchen and be struck with this intense, burning rage. I don’t understand where it’s coming from. All I know is that it’s worse when I’m using my power, but Dad won’t let me stop.

  The woods are getting more dangerous. Last month, two men leaving the bar were lured into the Gray. We only found one of their bodies. It was awful—bloated, with bone-white eyes. I haven’t been sleeping well since Dad forced me to look at it.

  Uncle Hiram wants to take us kids out of the equinox patrol, but Sheriff Hawthorne insists that Four Paths needs all the help it can get.

  September 22, 1984

  The founding families weren’t meant to run this town. I see that now.

  Violet turned the page, her heart thudding in her throat, but the rest of the journal was missing. Every remaining page had been torn out, leaving behind nothing but bits of yellow loose-leaf residue in its wake.

  Violet couldn’t stop thinking about Stephen Saunders’s diary. She’d taken it home from the town archives and perused it constantly over the past few days, making notes and discussing potential theories with Harper.

  They were sitting on ancient lawn chairs in Violet’s backyard, the journal spread across Harper’s lap. The afternoon sun sent auburn highlights through her dark, wiry curls as she inspected the torn-out edges at the end of the notebook. Violet had reluctantly told her about Isaac’s role in finding the journal, expecting her to be upset, but she’d just smiled.

  “So even Justin’s best friend is turning on him,” she said. “Perfect.”

  “You really hate him, don’t you?” Orpheus stirred gently from his seat in Violet’s lap, butting his head against her hand until she scratched him between the ears.

  “I don’t hate him,” said Harper, lowering the notebook into her lap. “I just want him to realize that everything his family stands for is complete garbage, and suffer accordingly.”

  “You can’t judge someone by their family,” said Violet, thinking of how little she and Juniper had to say to each other.

  “You can when it’s Justin Hawthorne,” said Harper, sighing. “His family is everything to him. He genuinely thinks the Hawthornes are meant to be in charge, because that’s what he’s grown up hearing. And no matter how many people die, he’ll always put his mom and sister first. He’s always been like that. Even before the ritual.”

  The bitterness in Harper’s voice was palpable. There was pain there that she had carried for years. Pain that seemed to stretch far beyond her ritual.

  Violet understood pain. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  Harper’s dark eyes widened, and it was like a window opening—there was still misery in her gaze, but now there was hope there, too. “Are you sure you want to listen?”

  Violet remembered herself and Rosie lying side by side on her bed, talking about all their worries, both the petty ones and the deeper wounds, the ones they were scared would never quite heal. It had never failed to make her feel better. Maybe it would work for Harper, too.

  “Of course I don’t mind,” Violet told Harper. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Okay, then,” Harper said quietly. “Look, you’ll probably think this is pathetic. But Justin and I…What he did…it felt like a breakup. Even though we weren’t together.”

  “So you had a crush,” said Violet. “That’s not pathetic. Actually, it explains a lot.”

  It did. Violet was embarrassed that she hadn’t noticed anything romantic about Justin and Harper’s obvious baggage. She’d been too focused on her ritual and her blackouts to really care.

  She was starting to care now, though. Even though it meant that she could feel Four Paths starting to grow on her, like roots burrowing into her heart.

  Harper sighed. “Haven’t you ever had feelings for someone, even though you knew it was a bad idea?”

  There had been Gracie Coors, back in seventh grade, who Violet had thought was cute until Gracie said Violet was going to hell for having crushes on girls and boys. She’d cried to Rosie about that one for days. Connor something, who she’d met at the one Ossining party Rosie had managed to drag her to. They’d been making out in the basement when they were interrupted by his girlfriend. But neither of those seemed to qualify.

  “Sort of,” she said, stroking Orpheus’s back. “I don’t really date.”

  “Okay, well, have you ever had your heart broken?”

  That was easier. Rosie’s death had broken everything. “Yes.”

  “Then you know how badly it hurts,” said Harper, looking at her. “But the thing is, it hurts more because I never should’ve expected anything else. Founder kids aren’t supp
osed to date one another. And he never would’ve chosen me over his family. Even if my ritual had gone perfectly.”

  Violet stared down the slope of the hill, to the place where tangled weeds and uncut grass met the towering chestnut oaks of the forest. “Would you have chosen him?”

  Harper lowered her head. The sun was sinking behind her, turning her into a silhouette, framed in gold.

  “What do you think?” she whispered.

  And Violet knew this was it. The root of all her anger. That she had expected more from Justin than he’d been capable of giving her.

  “I think you shouldn’t feel foolish for caring,” she said softly, thinking about how much Harper had just poured out to her. How much worse she herself had felt since she’d stopped talking to Rosie about her problems. “My dad died when I was five. For a while, I thought, because I couldn’t really remember him, it hadn’t made that much of a difference. That I couldn’t grieve for someone I didn’t know. But when I lost him…I lost his family, too. I thought maybe coming here would help—but the Saunders family isn’t what I was expecting. And all I can think about is that I’m not feeling any of the things I’m supposed to. Like there’s just some part of me that’s always going to be missing.” A lump swelled in Violet’s throat, and she realized that she was dangerously close to talking about Rosie—something she wasn’t yet ready to do.

  “Anyway,” she said hastily, “what I’m trying to say is that I have the right to feel whatever I want. And so do you.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” said Harper quietly. “But…thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For listening,” said Harper, clearing her throat and gesturing toward the journal. “And now…don’t we have some work to do?”

  Violet and Harper had yet to make any progress on the connection between the blackouts and her ritual, or the location of the rest of the journal. But she felt better anyway after their conversation, even though everything was still a mess.

  After Harper left, Violet walked automatically to the piano, the composition book clutched in her hand. Orpheus trailed behind her as she entered the music room. One thing Stephen’s diary had made her feel better about was growing attached to the cat—getting closer to her companion could only mean that she was getting closer to understanding her magic. And she had to admit, undead or not, having Orpheus around made her feel a little calmer. A little safer.

  She studied the piano from a distance at first, then approached it, laid a finger on the keys. Let a single note ring out through the air.

  Violet had been on edge the past few days, but there had been no signs of turquoise hair. No waking up in strange places.

  But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again.

  “You haven’t been practicing lately.” It was Juniper, fixing the clip at the back of her bun. Today she was more dressed down than usual—jeans and a blazer instead of a pantsuit. Violet figured that meant she didn’t have any video conference calls.

  “I didn’t realize you paid that much attention to when I played,” said Violet, sliding the notebook onto the piano bench—out of Juniper’s line of sight. She didn’t want to answer questions.

  Juniper’s smile was sad. “I was going to ask if you’d play for Daria. She requested it. But if you don’t want to, it’s all right.”

  Daria slid out from behind her, as if on cue. “Your mother says you’re very good.”

  Violet eyed them both suspiciously. When she had seen them hanging out before, on the porch, she had assumed it was a fluke. Now she wondered if maybe it wasn’t. If they were actually learning how to be sisters again.

  The thought made her chest hurt.

  But she missed the piano. And at least, if she blacked out while there were people watching her, they’d be able to stop her before she did anything dangerous.

  “Fine,” she said, sitting down and flipping her sheet music open to Chopin’s Ballade no. 1 in G Minor, op. 23, her favorite piece of her old audition program. “But I’m going to make mistakes.”

  As promised, it was far from a perfect performance. She hadn’t warmed up, and it had been weeks since she’d properly played. Once, auditioning for music school had felt like the biggest challenge she would ever face. Before Rosie’s death, before all of this, she’d even put together a list: the Eastman School of Music, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, Curtis, Oberlin. But none of that would ever happen now.

  Violet channeled that frustration into her playing. It flowed into every incorrect chord and fumbled fingering, and when she was done, she felt lighter somehow, as if she had exorcised some part of herself through the music.

  When she lifted her hands from the keys, Daria clapped enthusiastically. But it was Juniper who made Violet pause.

  Over the years, Rosie had made sure Violet went to her lessons, had kept her practicing, had held her hand and yanked her up the stairs at her first-ever recital, when she’d been scared she was going to throw up.

  Juniper had barely seemed to notice any of it.

  But today she was looking. And smiling. Like she was actually proud.

  Violet remembered what Daria had said, about her parents being the ones who’d started her on the piano because Stephen had played it, too.

  “Well done,” Juniper said softly. But before she could say anything else, her phone began to buzz. She looked down at it, frowning, and hurried out of the room.

  Violet swallowed down a twist of hurt.

  “Anyway,” Violet said, standing up and grabbing the notebook. “That’s…yeah. That’s it.”

  But Daria blocked her exit.

  “That notebook,” she said hoarsely, clutching Violet’s hand. “Where did you find it?”

  Violet swallowed, disarmed. “The town archives. It was Stephen’s.”

  Daria’s head inclined. “I know.”

  “Do you…do you know where the rest of it is?”

  Daria’s brow furrowed. Then she reached into a pocket of her dress and extracted a dark brown cylinder.

  “I might be able to help,” she said, her eyes shining, while Violet swallowed her disappointment. She’d been hoping for more pages. “After my brother died, my father wanted to get rid of the journal. But Mother hid it first. Half of it in the town archives. And the other half…she gave me this. Said it was the clue to finding it. Said to keep it safe. I keep it on me, mostly. But here.” She pushed it into Violet’s hands. “It’s yours now.”

  Violet gaped at her, the weight of this gift settling in her chest. “Thank you,” she said.

  Daria smiled. “You’re welcome, little bone.”

  “Daria? Violet?” called Juniper’s voice from the other side of the house. Whatever had caught her attention before, it was clearly over with. “What are you two doing?”

  “Better go,” said Daria hoarsely. “She won’t understand.”

  Violet nodded. She clutched the cylinder and Stephen’s journal close to her chest and hurried back to her room.

  When the door was safely shut and locked, she let herself inspect her aunt’s strange present.

  It was almost a foot long, and hollow, if the weight of it was any indication. There was a gap in the wood grain, close to the top. She twisted the edge of the cylinder, and it came off in her hands, revealing the roll of paper inside.

  The lines and dots inked on the pages were incomprehensible. It took Violet a few seconds to realize what she was looking at, and when she did, she was even more confused.

  It was the blueprints to the Saunders manor, hand-drawn in faded ink on yellowing paper. She spread the pages out on the floor of her room, weighted them with books, and looked them over, but as far as she could tell there was nothing interesting about them aside from how old they had to be.

  She rolled them up again and sighed. She didn’t understand why Daria had wanted her to have these.

  Beside her, Orpheus mewled. He was batting around a yellowing piece of paper that sat beside the blueprint case. It
must’ve been in there as well—she just hadn’t noticed it before.

  Violet snatched it away from his claws.

  And then she gasped, because it wasn’t a piece of paper at all—it was a photograph.

  Three teenagers sat on the front porch of the Saunders house. The girl in the center had perfect posture and a poised, careful smile on her face, dark eyes fixed on the camera lens. On her right sat another girl with her head turned to the side, mouth wide open in a raucous laugh as her hands reached up to clutch the edges of her oversize windbreaker. Her dark, frizzy hair fell almost to her waist.

  But it was the boy on their left that held her attention. Dark curls, a thin, handsome face, an easy grin.

  She turned the picture over and read the caption:

  The Saunders siblings (from left to right): Stephen, Daria, Juniper. 1984.

  Violet flipped the picture over again.

  The girl in the windbreaker was Juniper.

  Laughing, wild, free. A version of Juniper unburdened by a dead brother, a dead husband, a dead daughter.

  She was completely unrecognizable from the woman Violet had always known.

  For the first time, Violet considered how much Juniper had been shaped by the people she loved being taken away from her. Losing Rosie had demolished Violet’s world. To endure that three times was more than any one person should have to bear.

  Were the past few months just the first step to her becoming as jaded and cynical as her mother?

  Violet shuddered, wondering if, years from now, her own daughter would be thinking the same thing about her.

  “That’s not who I’m supposed to be,” she whispered to the photo.

  But maybe that wasn’t true.

  Maybe the thing no one had told her about growing up was that nobody ever really became the person they’d wanted to be.

  Violet slid the picture carefully into the bottom compartment of her jewelry box, then crawled into bed, her fingers curled around Rosie’s bracelet, Orpheus at her side.

  Her heart was so heavy in her chest, she was surprised it could still beat.

  Parties in Four Paths were small by necessity, because although inviting anyone meant inviting everyone, there weren’t many kids to go around. But tonight, the shadowy interior of Suzette Langham’s barn was packed, everyone yelling over the blasting music and posing for pictures under the out-of-season holiday lights strung up on the walls. A cloud of cigarette smoke drifted above Justin’s head.