The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  There was no name beneath the photos of the girl, only captions—first birthday, grade school graduation—as she grew into a grinning young teenager with her hair tied back in a kerchief and a jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled up. First day of work on the war effort, that one read.

  He hit the bottom of the page, and there it was: a formal portrait this time, where the girl stared straight into the camera, her mouth quirked into a small smile.

  Sarah Sullivan, it said. March 2, 1930—March 2, 1944.

  And then beneath it, a single letter in scarlet ink that had been blotched and blotted by the ink: S.

  S for sacrifice.

  Blood roared in Isaac’s ears. His hands began to shake as the room around him went out of focus. Suddenly he was struggling and screaming, his wrists chafing against the chains, everything red with panic in the firelight. There was the glint of a dagger and no mercy in Gabriel’s eyes, nothing but grim determination. And there was the thought that had echoed in Isaac’s mind, clear as a siren:

  You’re going to die here.

  A week and a half after Isaac’s ritual, Gabriel left town—the final Sullivan to go, save for one. That night, Isaac snuck out of the guest bedroom window and walked through the woods, retracing the steps he would’ve known with his eyes closed until he reached his family’s home. There were still bandages on his neck from his ritual. The wound throbbed as he walked, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

  He’d walked through the Sullivan mansion room by room—through the kitchen, up the stairs, down the hall, through his old bedroom. Until at last he had stood in the foyer once more, beneath the great stone archway. Gabriel’s medallion was tucked into his pocket. He’d come to after his ritual with it lying on the ground beside him, cracked in half. Isaac had ripped it off in the struggle. Now he looped it around his wrist. Because he had passed his ritual. Because he was a true Sullivan now.

  Because he needed a reminder of exactly what that meant.

  He still remembered how it had felt to press his hand against that great stone archway and call the power within him to life. The wall had quivered beneath him, and Isaac had reached deep inside himself, called on every ounce of pain and heartbreak. The way it had felt to watch his powers spiral out of control. The panic on his brothers’ faces, the way his family had turned on one another, his blood, dripping onto the leaves.

  The sound the archway made when it tumbled to the ground was the sweetest thing Isaac had ever heard, and as the house fell around him, disintegrating into ash, he wished that he could burn his memories away as easily as he’d destroyed his home.

  He wished for that again now, a thousand times over, but the memories would not retreat. Instead they swirled around him, begging for release, and it was all he could do to slam the photo album shut and shove it back in the box. He could not lose it in front of Gabriel and Violet. That would only prove he was just as out of control and irresponsible as he had been the night he destroyed his family.

  “Hey,” Violet said from beside him, and he realized that his hands were trembling. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” Isaac’s voice sounded strange even to him. “I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t, but he forced himself to flip through the rest of the archives, eyes blankly scanning over every page. The world swam around him, blood rushing in his ears. His heartbeat was too fast and his brain was stuffed with cotton, filtering everything around him through a muffled, blurry lens.

  He hadn’t hurt anyone, and that was what mattered.

  You’re hurting yourself, said a voice that sounded suspiciously like Violet’s. He pushed it aside.

  And so Isaac hovered just outside reality for hours, until the ruins were far away and he was back in his own apartment, staring blankly at the ceiling and wondering why he had forgotten how to breathe. Wondering if he would ever remember how to settle back into his own skin.

  Catching Augusta Hawthorne at the right moment was no small feat. May spent a full day biding her time. She had a lifetime of experience watching her mother’s temper ebb and flow, figuring out exactly when to ask Augusta for permission or forgiveness in order to maximize her reward and minimize her punishment. But the building tensions in Four Paths had made finding that kind of opening exponentially more difficult.

  She got her chance on the afternoon of Justin’s birthday party. Her mother arrived home from work early that day in a strangely good mood, something May realized could be attributed to Juniper Saunders’s new cooperation with their efforts to contain the spread of the corruption. May watched carefully as Augusta poured herself a whiskey on the rocks and situated herself on the front porch, the dogs napping at her feet. She was the most relaxed May had seen her in days.

  Part of May felt bad for what she was about to ask her. She knew it would stress her out again. But it was too important to avoid. She needed to know more about her new power if she had any real hope of changing the future to take the corruption away, and Ezra had made it clear that her mother was the only person in town who might actually be able to tell her something helpful. So she walked out onto the porch and gave Augusta her best impression of a carefree smile.

  “You’ve been working late so much these days,” she said. “It must be nice to have one normal day.”

  “I’m not finished,” Augusta said, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. “I’ll be back at the station tonight. I just wanted to take a few hours’ rest.”

  “Oh.” Already, they were off to a less than encouraging start. “Well, I was wondering if there was anything more I could do to be helping with the patrol efforts?”

  Augusta set her drink down on the porch railing and fixed her with a deeply annoyed stare. “Do you want to be assigned to more patrols?”

  “That’s not it,” May said hastily. “I mean, um, with my powers. Because you know, if I could look more closely into what’s causing the corruption—”

  “It’s an imprecise art.” Augusta waved her hand dismissively. “Just focus on completing your patrols and reporting back to me, all right?”

  “But people are still getting sick.” Two more cases had been reported that morning, bringing the total number to five. May had assumed this would make her mother furious, but instead she seemed calm about the entire thing. Too calm, maybe.

  Augusta looked sharply at her. Brutus, the larger of the mastiffs, raised his head, his black eyes blinking open. “You think I’m not aware of that?”

  “I’m just saying,” May said, eyeing Brutus nervously. She loved the dogs, but they were unquestionably her mother’s. And they might not have been companions like Orpheus, but they knew when their master was upset. “I want to stop it. And I think I could.”

  “How?” Augusta sounded utterly uninterested. It was worse than if she’d yelled.

  “Um.” May shifted uncomfortably back and forth. She wasn’t usually at a loss for words, but she had no idea how to say this correctly. Most likely her mother would dismiss her outright, and she would prove to Ezra that this had been a useless endeavor. “I guess I was just wondering. There are Hawthornes who have had the power to read the cards for generations. But has there ever been anyone who could alter a reading?”

  Augusta’s face, apathetic a moment before, changed instantly. Her jaw hardened; her gloves braced themselves on the arms of the chair as she leaned forward.

  “Alter a reading?” she repeated. “You mean, change what will come to pass?”

  May nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Then, yes,” Augusta said quietly. “There was a Hawthorne who could do that. Our founder.”

  “Hetty Hawthorne could change the future?”

  “Supposedly.” Augusta pursed her lips. “May, don’t tell me this is your grand idea.”

  “I’m just saying.” Hurt welled up in her chest. “It could work.”

  “Hetty created the cards. No one else has ever been able to wield them the way she could.”

  “
Have they tried?” May asked.

  “As a matter of fact, they have.” Augusta had a particular way of looking at her daughter that made May feel as if she was being measured for adequacy and had been found wanting. “The Gray swallowed them whole. Do you understand?”

  Well, that made it clear. Even if May told her what she’d done, Augusta would never believe her. She could tell Augusta saw her as nothing more than a child full of silly ideas.

  “I understand,” May whispered.

  “Your father was inordinately interested in her,” Augusta continued, reaching for the whiskey. The ice cubes clinked together as she took a swig, seemingly unbothered by the chilly October air. “He was endless with his questions.”

  May’s heart caught in her throat. This she had not been expecting. Augusta never spoke about her father. Perhaps this wasn’t her first glass of liquor after all.

  “Dad wanted to know… about Hetty?” She tried to ask the question as carefully as possible. She did not know if this chance would come again.

  “He wanted to know about all of us.” Augusta’s smile was rueful. “You know, we only got together because of his research on occultism. I should’ve known then that all he cared about was studying us. Trying to figure out how I worked like I was some goddamn machine.”

  May had never heard this side of things before. “Why was he so curious?”

  “I’m not sure.” Augusta paused. “I don’t know what he was looking for, I just know he never found it. No matter how many interviews he did. But that’s all done now, anyway. Can’t ask any questions when there’s no one willing to answer them.”

  She looked at May, a little glassy-eyed, and shook her head, as if trying to dislodge something between her ears. “So. Do you still have a plan for how to fix the corruption?”

  “No,” May lied softly, stepping away from the porch. “Not anymore.”

  She’d come here for answers. Instead she’d found doubt and more questions. She let the door shut behind her and walked back up to her room, her mind racing.

  How could she possibly have the same power as Hetty Hawthorne? And what, exactly, had her father been looking for that had upset Augusta so much?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Violet had come here for Justin Hawthorne’s eighteenth birthday party, but so far it felt a lot more like a funeral. She and Harper stood at the edge of a clearing in the woods behind the Hawthorne house, deserted but for the logs set down in front of a tiny, crackling firepit and the birds chirping in the branches. Lanterns were strung through the trees, and staticky pop music blared from a portable speaker.

  “Hey,” she said, turning to Harper. “I thought you said this thing would be packed.”

  “It should be.” Harper, standing beside her, looked absolutely unnerved. “I don’t understand—where is everyone?”

  “This is everyone.” May stepped out from the trees. She was wearing a cropped pink sweatshirt, high-waisted jeans, and shiny platform sneakers the color of cotton candy. The look on her face suggested she would rather be anywhere but here, but then, May always looked like that.

  “That’s not possible,” Harper said flatly. “Did he forget to send out invites or something?”

  “The town knows he doesn’t have powers.” May tapped her phone and the song on the speakers changed, another upbeat tune that belonged at a crowded dance party instead of a nearly empty clearing. “Hence, consequences.”

  “But they aren’t mad at us,” Violet protested.

  “No, not us,” Harper agreed softly. “Just him.”

  Violet’s stomach churned. She’d only agreed to go to this party because she knew Harper wanted to attend, even if she would never admit it. Violet had a lot on her mind lately—the evolving corruption sweeping through the forest, her own changing powers, and now Isaac. Something had been off with him earlier that day during their investigations, but she hadn’t wanted to push him, as always. Maybe it was just his brother making him upset.

  She didn’t know what to make of this new Sullivan. Isaac had told her he was the one responsible for the scar on his neck, and it was clear that he believed it. Yet Gabriel’s tattoos and muscles seemed like just as much of a defense mechanism to her as Isaac’s high-necked shirts and his insistence on carrying around books like a security blanket. No matter how tough Gabriel looked, he didn’t seem capable of attacking his younger brother. But that didn’t mean anything either. Four Paths was full of good liars.

  She’d found something in the Sullivan archives earlier that day. Part of a letter, ripped down the middle. She’d wanted to talk to Isaac about it, but it hadn’t been the right time. The original was sitting on her desk at home right now, but she had a picture of it on her phone. She pulled it out now, frowning down at the screen as she read the words for the tenth time.

  we must decline.

  secret from the children,

  the one they already carry as founders.

  a secret that needs to die with us.

  it would be the end of us all. If you tell them

  there was nothing,

  to keep.

  another sunrise. But you will make

  She’d searched and searched, but the other half of the letter was nowhere to be found. And the fragment she possessed was tantalizingly confusing.

  In a place full of secrets, what was so terrible about this one?

  Violet shook her thoughts away as Justin appeared at the edge of the clearing, toting a giant cooler with a spigot on the front.

  “Hey.” Justin’s smile was plastered on a shade too tightly. He set the cooler down on a nearby stump and hurried over to them, looking so grateful that it made Violet’s heart ache. She’d never expected to pity Justin Hawthorne. “So glad you two could make it.”

  “How could we miss it after such a riveting invitation?” Violet pulled out her phone and read the text aloud. “‘Birthday party behind my house this Friday. The theme is “all my friends don’t want to murder one another anymore.” My mother won’t be there, I promise.’”

  Justin smiled, and Violet knew he’d seen what she was trying to do: pretend everything was normal and she could still make fun of him. Pretend the town hadn’t turned on him even as it turned desperately to the other founders for the heroics he couldn’t give them.

  “Did you really send her that?” May asked, shaking her head. “You’re ridiculous.”

  Justin shrugged. “I was just telling the truth.”

  “What’s in there?” Harper asked softly, pointing to the cooler.

  May’s nose wrinkled. “You don’t want to know.”

  “The Justin Shot,” Justin said proudly. “My new signature drink.”

  Violet did not quite succeed in choking down an incredulous laugh. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes.” May shook her head. “He spent an hour raiding Augusta’s liquor cabinet while she was at a meeting and put most of it in a cooler. She actually pretended to believe him when he told her it was just punch.”

  “Wanna try it?” Justin asked, gesturing at the cooler.

  Violet looked at Harper. Harper looked at Violet.

  “Fine,” Violet said, already knowing in her gut that she would regret it.

  A moment later, she and Harper were holding matching red Solo cups full of strangely murky liquid. Violet raised hers slowly to her lips, sipped it, and tried not to gag. It tasted like an electric shock.

  Beside her, Harper let out an unpleasant cough. “Are you trying to murder us?” she gasped, glaring at Justin. “What the hell is in this?”

  “Vodka and an energy drink… and a secret ingredient.” Justin grinned at her. “Makes it impossible to get tired.”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Is the secret ingredient rat poison?”

  “Quite possibly,” May said. Violet raised an eyebrow as the girl downed an entire cup, then stuck it under the spigot for a refill.

  “Uh… rough day?”

  May’s smile was completely free of mirth. “Yo
u don’t know the half of it.”

  A noise rustled in the underbrush behind the logs, a sharp bang and a crash.

  “Who’s there?” Justin called out, but there was no reply, just another loud cracking of branches. The mood in the clearing changed instantly. Solo cups were hastily set down on logs; Harper unsheathed a giant blade from the scabbard at her waist and brandished it at the woods.

  “Show yourself!” she called out.

  “You brought a sword?” Justin said, staring at her in obvious awe and a tiny bit of fear. Violet was pretty sure Harper liked it that way. She was also pretty sure Justin had consumed a significant amount of the cooler’s contents already, considering he clearly hadn’t noticed the giant scabbard Harper was wearing. “To my birthday party?”

  “You’re welcome!” Harper snapped.

  “Are you seriously surprised?” Violet asked. “I’m pretty sure she sleeps with it. Like a stuffed animal.”

  Harper glared at both of them. “I’ll stop arming myself for our social gatherings when you give me a good reason to believe I won’t need a weapon.”

  “Calm down, everyone,” May said tersely, gesturing at the woods. “It’s just Isaac.”

  At the sight of his familiar dark curls emerging from the trees, Violet relaxed. But then the lantern light caught his face, and Violet’s stomach sank. His eyes were glazed over, his cheeks slightly flushed. Violet understood why he’d been making so much noise: He was already drunk.

  “What?” he asked, staring distantly at all of them. “I’m here—Hey, where is everybody?”

  Justin flinched, while Harper looked deeply uncomfortable.

  “I see you got a head start,” May said, stepping forward and steering him into the clearing. “Maybe you should sit down.”