The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  May felt the path lock into place. Felt the card in her hand vibrate—then shift, until the heat on her palms had faded.

  She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She could feel blood pooling beneath her nostrils and at the rims of her eyes, blurring her vision. When she blinked, crimson splatters appeared on her pajama pants.

  “What was that?” Augusta said sharply.

  May’s lie was quiet, easy. “The cards had more to tell me.”

  But it had been just the opposite. She’d had more to tell the cards—and they had changed. They’d listened to her.

  A Hawthorne shouldn’t have been able to do that. But she had.

  May flipped over the final card without another word, ready to see her path, ready to accept her future.

  And gasped.

  Her eyes took in the Crusader—a knight on a horse, reared back to charge, no part of him visible but two fiery eyes beneath his helmet.

  Her father’s card.

  May already knew that when she looked at her mother’s face, all she would see was crushing, inevitable disappointment. Augusta would insist it meant nothing, that it was a sign to be ignored.

  But May knew better.

  Because the Crusader in this context could only mean one thing: She would not be able to fix the hawthorn tree without her father. And if that meant going against Augusta’s wishes, so be it.

  After all, the Deck of Omens wasn’t her mother’s to command. It was hers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  One week later

  Harper Carlisle waited for her reckoning with a blade in her hand and a deep, impenetrable dread in her heart.

  “You can put that down,” Violet Saunders said, the calm in her voice belied by how aggressively she was gripping her cup of coffee. They stood side by side in the backyard of her friend’s imposing manor house, staring out at the woods. The treetops on the hill before them shone like a wildfire in the late-afternoon sunlight. “They aren’t going to hurt you.”

  Harper eyed the two figures standing at the bottom of the hill, perhaps twenty feet away, and opted not to lower her sword.

  “They’re my family,” she said. “Of course they’re going to hurt me.”

  This meeting hadn’t been her idea. But she had agreed to it when her siblings texted Violet, desperate to see her. Because after a week sequestered in the Saunders manor with nothing to do but stare at creepy taxidermied animals, Harper was sick of hiding.

  There were problems she needed to deal with if she ever wanted to leave the safety of Violet’s house again. And although she didn’t want to talk to them, Seth and Mitzi Carlisle were still the least awful of the conversations she had ahead of her.

  Nobody spoke beyond awkward greetings as Harper’s siblings shuffled through the back door. Violet shepherded them all to the living room, where Seth and Mitzi sat on the wide leather couch. Harper took a plushy armchair, her residual limb twinging with pain as she surveyed her brother and sister. Her left arm ended just after the elbow, the result of an accident that had happened right after her ritual. When she was particularly frightened or upset, she could still feel the pain in her phantom limb, an invisible left hand aching.

  They had both seen better days. Mitzi’s long red hair was piled in a messy bun atop her head, her eyeliner smudged at the corners and a zit budding on her chin. Seth was wearing a sweatshirt that read PUBLIC SAFETY HAZARD; it looked more like a statement of fact than a bad joke.

  “I brought this,” her sister said quietly, shoving a duffel bag onto the coffee table between them. “It’s your clothes and makeup and shit.”

  Harper raised an eyebrow. “You’re wearing my black sweater right now.”

  “I didn’t say all your clothes.” Mitzi was fourteen, and in that moment she sounded it, petulant and frustrated. “You know you don’t have to do this, right? You could just come home.”

  “Mitzi.” Seth’s voice was low and hoarse. He reached into his pocket, pulled out Harper’s phone, and tossed it onto the table beside the duffel bag. “She was so desperate to get away from us that she didn’t bring anything with her. She’s not coming home just because you ask.”

  Harper stared at the gauntlets her siblings had thrown on the table, her heart heavy. She wanted to give Mitzi skin-care advice and tell Seth to wash his hair. She lowered the sword onto her lap instead. It was the only thing she’d brought with her when she’d shown up here seven days ago—that and a muddy, soaking-wet nightgown that she’d been forced to throw away.

  “Seth’s right,” she said. “I’m not coming home. But it’s not because I’m trying to get away from either of you.”

  Mitzi leaned forward. “Is it…?” Mitzi’s voice was soft. “The reason you’re not coming back… is it because it’s true? What the Hawthornes are saying about you?”

  Harper’s heartbeat hammered in her throat. Violet, who’d remained perfectly silent until now, cleared her throat.

  “Careful,” Violet said. Orpheus, formerly a house cat and currently Violet’s undead companion, leaped into her lap. “You promised not to ask too many questions.” It wasn’t a threat, not exactly, but Harper’s siblings stiffened just the same.

  This was why Harper had asked Violet to sit in. Not for physical protection—Harper was more than capable of defending herself if necessary—but because there were things they both knew she was unwilling to talk about. Truths she wasn’t ready to tell. This one, though, Harper was okay with.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You want to see what I can do? You want proof?”

  Harper’s hand brushed the edge of the neglected fern sitting beside the table. She took a deep breath and pushed.

  She had not gone to the Hawthorne house the night she got her powers back with the conscious thought of destroying their tree. But when she saw the hawthorn’s great branches spreading behind the roof, waving in the wind, she had felt the cumulative rage about everything that had been done to her—her father’s hands closing around her neck, the Church of the Four Deities in their dark brown robes, Justin staring at her, a sword pressed against his neck, and, of course, the night that had just come back to her. The night Augusta Hawthorne had taken her powers away before she’d ever gotten the chance to use them.

  Violet was obviously the reason her memories were back. Violet had gotten them back herself, after all, and so had Violet’s mother; clearly she was the one who had figured out the secret to restoring herself, clearly she was the one who had left Harper that note.

  There was so much to sort through. So much to feel. Harper understood now why Justin Hawthorne had behaved strangely toward her these past few weeks—because his mother wasn’t the reason she’d lost everything.

  He was.

  He’d betrayed her the night of her ritual. Sold her out to his mother before she could have the chance to use her newfound powers.

  Pushed her into the lake, which had led to the accident that had cost her a hand—and led her straight into the Gray.

  Harper had lost sight of herself in that moment, dizzy with longing for everything Justin and his family had taken from her. She’d reached forward, her palm pressing tightly against the trunk, and pushed her anger into it. And when she pulled back and realized that the hawthorn had gone deathly still, she hadn’t wanted to reverse it.

  This time, the change was smaller, almost gentle. The leaves froze in place, their color fading to red-brown and spiraling down into the dirt, until there was no plant remaining, only stone. But then Harper felt something else: a push to keep going. The stone spread down the side of the fern pot, encroaching toward the floor, and Harper’s throat went dry with panic as she realized that she didn’t know if she could stop.

  Violet’s hand landed on her shoulder, wrenching her focus away. Harper exhaled with sharp relief as she realized that the spread of stone had stopped. When she looked up, Mitzi and Seth were both gaping at her.

  Her brother spoke first. “Shit.”

/>   Mitzi knelt on the floor, examining the plant. When she caught Harper’s gaze, her eyes were as round and wide as two full moons. “You have powers?”

  Harper’s laugh was slightly bitter, slightly manic. “Yeah.”

  “And you used them…”

  “On the family that deserved some retribution,” she said. “So, yeah, I left, because I didn’t want Augusta Hawthorne to punish any of you for me. Because you deserve to make your own choices instead of being forced to go along with mine.”

  “Choices?” Mitzi returned to the couch, tugged on her earring—a nervous tic.

  Harper sighed. This was the part of the conversation she’d been dreading the most.

  “Augusta Hawthorne took my memories of my powers away,” she said. “Do you still want to patrol for her, knowing that?”

  Mitzi hesitated. “Patrolling is what keeps the town safe.”

  “Does taking my powers away seem safe to you? Maybe if I’d had access to them, fewer people would have died.”

  “Or maybe you would’ve turned more than the hawthorn tree to stone.” Seth’s voice was the most somber Harper had ever heard it.

  Her stomach churned with nausea. She’d known it would go this way—but she’d still hoped otherwise.

  “Well,” she said. “I’m here if you change your minds.”

  After Harper’s siblings had left—Mitzi stomping hastily out the door, Seth moving a little more slowly, eyeing a taxidermied bear head in the corner suspiciously—Violet helped her carry her things up to the room she’d claimed.

  “You could have told them the rest of the truth, you know,” Violet said as Harper shoved her clothes into a musty old dresser and grabbed her phone. “That might have changed their minds.”

  Harper looked up from her phone screen. She’d been trying to turn it back on, but the battery was dead. Phantom pain twinged at the end of her residual limb again.

  She wasn’t just staying with Violet and her mother because she’d turned the hawthorn tree to stone. The real reason she couldn’t go home was because her dad had tried to kill her. He couldn’t remember it, thanks to Augusta Hawthorne, but she would never forget.

  “You saw how it was with them,” she said, plugging her phone in to charge. “They wouldn’t have believed me anyway. They don’t even need Augusta to use her powers on them to be in the Hawthornes’ pockets.”

  Violet’s mouth thinned into a sharp line, and Harper could tell she disagreed with her, but to her relief, the other girl didn’t push it. Maybe she figured Harper had been through enough for the time being.

  “All right,” she said. “Hey—I’m meeting Isaac to do some research into the founders this afternoon. Do you want to come? We could use the extra pair of eyes.”

  “I do not want to talk to Isaac Sullivan right now.” Harper knew she sounded irritable and petty. She didn’t care. She was worn thin enough as it was. “And I can’t even leave the house, remember? I’m stuck waiting around until the Hawthornes decide they don’t want to kill me.”

  “You don’t usually wait around for someone to give you permission,” Violet said, fixing her with a pointed stare. “Why now?”

  Harper hesitated.

  The truth was that for so long, she’d been ignored. It had felt a lot easier to be bold when she knew no one was watching her. The town’s eyes had made her cautious, because she knew that in many ways what happened next would be a kind of first impression. And the Hawthornes’ attention had made her most cautious of all.

  “You’re right. I just don’t know how to make the Hawthornes see me as anything but a threat. And we both know what they do to threats.”

  Violet paused. “I’m not entirely sure it’s true that the Hawthornes do see you as a threat. Not all of them, anyway.”

  “Sure they don’t.”

  “No, seriously.” Violet hesitated, as if considering something, then exhaled and continued. “You remember when I had my memories taken away by Augusta?”

  Harper nodded, unease stirring in her gut. “Of course.”

  “Well, May’s the reason I got them back.”

  Harper gaped at her. “That’s not possible.”

  May Hawthorne was a perfect blond automaton, an extension of Augusta with shiny teeth and an endless supply of pastel bomber jackets. She was the last person Harper would expect to defy her mother.

  But if what Violet was saying was true, then she had, in a major way.

  “I know how impossible it sounds,” Violet said. “But it’s true. There’s… more going on there than you might think.”

  On the nightstand, Harper’s phone had finally come back to life. Blinking on the screen were dozens of unread texts. She didn’t have to look at the number to know who most of them were from.

  “Maybe you’re right.” She turned away from Violet to stare at it more closely. If her friend was telling the truth about May, surely it stood to reason that Justin couldn’t be as mad at her as she’d imagined. Surely there was some way to work all of this out. “I… I need to make a call.”

  * * *

  Violet met Isaac Sullivan in the foyer of the town hall that evening, as planned. The familiar echo of her feet on the marble floors agitated her. This was the third time they’d met in the past week, all with the same goal in mind, and she had no reason to believe this excursion would be any more successful than the others.

  Unfortunately, the only other idea she’d brought up had just gone to shit.

  “The hair’s new,” Isaac said, detaching himself from the shadowy corners of the foyer like a lanky wraith. He was fond of making dramatic entrances, although he’d been careful to avoid startling Violet after she’d cursed him out the first time he emerged unexpectedly from a dark hallway. “Is it part of an early Halloween costume or something? Because you know Four Paths doesn’t celebrate that.”

  The hair was indeed new. It had taken Violet all afternoon to get from her natural color—a brown so dark it was almost black—to this new one. Bleach, toner, box dye, and one blow-dry later, though, she was finally done.

  The result was a bob the bright crimson of a founders’ medallion. Of an open wound. Of a rose.

  “I’m going to kill a monster,” Violet had whispered at her new reflection, letting the words echo through the bathroom, and in that moment, she could almost believe they were true.

  Now, staring at Isaac, she felt a little foolish.

  “I know,” Violet said tersely. The Halloween thing was another Church of the Four Deities holdover—nobody dressed up or trick-or-treated, since it wasn’t considered safe. “I just… wanted a change, okay?”

  “Fair enough.” Isaac frowned into the darkness behind her. “Did you invite Harper?”

  “I tried,” Violet said, the words sour in her mouth. “She’s not interested. The Hawthornes are a bigger problem than the Beast right now, as far as she’s concerned.”

  Violet knew firsthand how dangerous the Beast was. Fighting it was bigger than all their petty disagreements—but she couldn’t force Harper to see that. Her friend had already been through enough.

  “We could’ve used another founder’s help,” Isaac said. Violet nodded. She followed him up the stairs at the back of the foyer and to the locked door in the hallway behind it, one Isaac had somehow managed to get a key to. It led to the founders’ archives—the best store of information either of them had been able to find on the history of Four Paths. They’d been meeting here regularly since Isaac had agreed to help her try to kill the Beast.

  Violet was grateful that she didn’t have to search for answers alone. But it was hard to keep her emotions toward Isaac contained at grateful. She hated that she’d wanted some kind of reaction from him—about the hair, about anything. When she’d first moved to Four Paths almost two months ago, Violet had mistaken Isaac’s basic human decency for romantic affection. She’d been too starved for human connection to know the difference between friendship and a crush. But she
knew better now.

  Isaac had a crush, all right, but it was a crush reserved entirely for Justin Hawthorne. And it didn’t matter that Violet could tell Justin didn’t feel the same way—that Justin and Harper were locked in their own messed-up story. It still hurt. Which made her feel pathetic and grumpy and annoyed with herself.

  She flipped on the row of harsh fluorescent lights in the founders’ archives, blinking at the sudden brightness, and sighed at the familiar piles of papers that loomed in front of them. The portraits of the four founders on the wall across from her watched them intently, something like judgment in their gazes.

  “Well, then,” she said. “Let’s go look at some more useless newspapers.”

  “Wait.” Isaac gestured to the desks in the middle of the room where they’d centralized their research efforts. Violet looked over and saw a stack of materials she didn’t recognize—notebooks kind of like the one that had held Stephen Saunders’s journals, clearly well-worn and referenced. “I found something new I think you might be interested in.”

  “What are those?” Violet asked, stepping toward the stack.

  “They belonged to the other members of the Church of the Four Deities,” Isaac said. “Augusta confiscated them when she took their memories—it’s everything she could find about their resurrection of the cult. Meeting times, rituals, goings-on, et cetera.”

  “And she gave them to you?”

  “Nah. I stole them from the evidence lockers at the station.”

  Violet’s heartbeat sped up. “Holy shit. These could actually be helpful.”

  “Wow,” Isaac drawled. “That was, like, eighty percent of a compliment.”

  Violet raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’ll be a hundred percent of a compliment if the Church actually knew how to attack the Beast.”

  “I break the law for you, and this is the thanks I get?”

  “You work for Augusta,” Violet said, flipping the first notebook open. The symbol etched into the inside of the cover was all too familiar: a circle with four lines cut into it, extending nearly to the center. “You basically are the law.”