The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “I don’t know who made the decision. We’re—we were—bigger than every other family, and the uncles were the ones who really called the shots, I don’t know if you remember.”

  “I remember,” said Isaac. “They never liked me very much.”

  They’d thought he was weak and strange, and they’d always encouraged him to hang out with his brothers and Justin, hoping they would be a good influence. Isaac had never wanted to be the type of man they were: men who drank too much and thought too little. His mother had called them out on their bullshit for a while, but it had started to wear on her, and eventually she’d given up on them entirely.

  “They were assholes,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “Anyway. I don’t know if you remember Mom trying to run away with you before it happened.”

  “I remember,” Isaac said quietly.

  “I didn’t understand what was going on,” Gabriel said. “But I know what happened after they caught you two. She was put under constant surveillance, locked in her room like a prisoner. Caleb broke her out the night of the ritual because it was the only time they let down their guard, and they came to try to free you. But Caleb didn’t tell me and Isaiah what was coming—I think he considered us in too deep—and so we didn’t realize, neither of us did, that they were going to kill you until they’d already handed me the knife.”

  Gabriel’s voice began to shake, and Isaac tried not to remember, tried to block it out, but it was there, it was all there. Right below the surface, churning through him, a loss too big to avoid, a pain too great to heal.

  “They told—” His voice broke. “They told me that I wasn’t just going to make you bleed, I was going to kill you. That it would make us stronger. I told them to go to hell. And then Uncle Si grabbed the knife out of my hands, and he was so quick—he pressed it against your throat; and there was blood everywhere, and I thought you were dying, we all did, we were screaming—and then your powers activated. Then Caleb and Mom showed up, and everything after that…” He trailed off. “It’s blurry. Maybe it’s better that way.”

  Isaac scar throbbed, and he felt bile rising in his throat. “It wasn’t you,” he whispered. “All those years… I thought you had chased me because you wanted to finish the job.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No. I chased you because I wanted to heal you.”

  A puzzle piece clicked into place: Gabriel’s medallion on the ground beside him when he’d come to. Isaac had thought he’d ripped it off his brother in the struggle, but that had never quite made sense. Isaac reached a hand up and touched the line at his throat, remembered what Justin had told him. That there was so much blood. That the wound had been too deep. But he’d lived anyway; he’d lived, and he’d never questioned why until now.

  “Then why did you leave?” Isaac asked. “If you healed me… You left me in the woods.”

  “I went to get help,” Gabriel said. “The Hawthornes found you before I could. And after it was all over, everything moved very quickly. Everyone who survived that night split in the next few days. They didn’t want to be around when you got out of the hospital. They were ashamed of what they’d done. And I couldn’t look at myself without thinking of how useless I’d been—I was supposed to be a healer, but I couldn’t save Caleb, or Isaiah, or Mom. It felt better to leave you in the Hawthornes’ care than to own up to everything I’d done.”

  “But you saved me,” Isaac whispered, his heart pounding in his chest. All those years of running and hiding, and here it was: the truth. That Gabriel had never wanted to hurt him after all. “You saved me, and I never knew.”

  “Because I ran,” said Gabriel. “Fuck it… I’m glad you destroyed the house. We weren’t a family—we were a cult. And I’ve spent the past few years turning it over in my mind, trying to understand. Why our ritual asks for so much when the others don’t. Why we did it for so many years. Why the rest of the town just let us kill children for hundreds of years. What the fuck? I mean—how did our uncles live with themselves? How could Mom have kids at all, knowing what might happen to us?”

  “I don’t understand it,” Isaac said. “I don’t think I ever will. Sometimes I have nightmares that they’ve come back. That’s what I thought you were when I first saw you. A bad dream.”

  “It doesn’t matter if they come back,” said Gabriel. “This ends here. With us. No more sacrifices. No more bloody trades for power. I don’t care what it gives us—it isn’t worth it.”

  “Agreed,” Isaac said, his words carried away on a sudden gust of wind. A weight tugged at his wrist: Gabriel’s medallion. He hooked his fingers around it and unwound it from his wrist, the cracked red disc shining in the sun. “Hey. You should probably take this back.”

  “I don’t think I deserve it.”

  “You’re a founder.” Isaac held it out: a gauntlet. “You earned it.”

  “All right. If you insist.” But Isaac could see how much it meant to him as he gently tied it around his wrist.

  All this time, he’d been wrong. He’d tried to stare at his fear head-on and found that there was no monster waiting for him, just someone who was as frightened as he was. The only person who could truly grasp the magnitude of betrayal he’d faced that night.

  If he’d been brave enough, if Gabriel had been ready, they could have done this years ago. Isaac ached for all that wasted time where they had suffered separately, both unable to cope and struggling to heal. But against all odds, they had figured it out.

  It wasn’t too late. Not for him and not for Gabriel, either.

  “About Mom,” he said, thinking of Maya in her hospital bed. “You really think she’s never going to wake up?”

  The regret on Gabriel’s face was palpable. “I really don’t think she will, Isaac.”

  Isaac sat back, contemplating this. For the first time, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that maybe he’d been grieving her all along, that maybe, just like everything else in his family, he could not let her go.

  And then something stirred in his peripheral vision.

  “Hello?” He rose to his feet.

  It stirred again, and he walked toward it, Gabriel following a step behind him. The moment they cleared the underbrush, Isaac understood.

  The buds that hung above the Sullivan altar were blooming, terrible pulsating flowers in the shape of hands unfurling one by one.

  And Isaac’s newfound hope slipped away from him just as easily as the strands of smoke billowed from the flowers, iridescent flecks glimmering, and rose above the trees.

  Violet was on watch in the spire when the attack came. She had been fretting about the letter she’d found, turning it over and over again in her mind as she tapped aimlessly at her phone. But a sudden noise made her bolt upright, her phone sliding carelessly off her lap and onto the attic floor. Beside her, Orpheus rose to his feet, mewling urgently. The red string around his ear twitched.

  “Yeah, I know,” Violet said, staring at the same place he was.

  Roots surged from inside the circle a moment later, destroying the founders’ symbol that had been painted inside.

  She’d known this attack would come, but she hadn’t anticipated it being such an aggressive assault. The roots wriggled across the floorboards more quickly than Violet could blink. Several strands clawed for purchase against the walls, tugging down the velvet curtains that shielded the windows. In the center of the circle, the roots grew, saplings sprouting from them that were utterly laden with those disgusting handlike buds. The smell made Violet’s eyes water.

  “Gross,” Violet muttered as her sneaker made contact with a puddle of silver goo leaking from the roots. She knelt down and pressed her palm against the iridescence, bracing herself as a familiar tether opened in the back of her mind.

  “Don’t even try it,” she said, her hands outstretched, staring at the copse of trees attempting to invade her attic. Her home. Orpheus brushed reassuringly against her legs, hissing at the saplings as they sh
rank back against the wall.

  The tether in her mind shivered and whined. Violet had noticed the sound before, but for the first time, she heard something else behind it. A voice, murmuring words she could not understand. But it wasn’t the words that mattered; it was the tone. It was unmistakably human.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered. The saplings shifted and writhed, and for a split second she saw human bodies in the creases of their strange gray bark, arms and necks and torsos twisted in agony. The whining in the back of her mind intensified, shrill and panicked, and a tear brimmed in the corner of her eye. Violet knew it would be iridescent, just like the corruption.

  Why was this happening so quickly? What had changed? Violet struggled to claw back her panic as the buds began to unfurl, smoke drifting from them and swirling together into a tiny tornado in the center of the spire.

  Violet breathed in deeply, felt the rush of her power coursing through her. She tugged on this tether that she had not asked for, these powers she still did not fully understand, and with everything she had, she willed it all to stop.

  That was how Juniper and Harper found her: arms outstretched, breathing heavily, sweat dripping from her brow as she held the corruption in place.

  “It isn’t going to work,” she told them both, her mind spinning, the trees moving in and out of focus. The voices were growing; first there had been one, then three, and now there was an entire chorus, whimpering like dying animals in the back of her head. “When I stop…”

  “It’ll spread,” Juniper finished gently. “But you can’t hold it forever, Violet. You have to let it go.”

  “No.”

  “I can help.” Harper appeared beside her. There was a ferocious look on her face. She knelt down, exhaled, and reached into the circle, closing her hand around a root.

  Immediately, stone spread from her fingers. It snaked along the roots and up the saplings that had sprouted from them, petrifying the open buds into a dozen tiny, grotesque statues. When she stepped back, the entire thing was still and the screaming tether in Violet’s head had shrunk to a whisper.

  “Thank you,” Violet said hoarsely, relief coursing through her as she collapsed to her knees, shuddering. The buds had released gray mist into the room, but it was already dissipating. Violet hoped their founder immunity would hold against this new development of the disease.

  “No, thank you,” Harper said. “You held it back.”

  “You stopped it.” Violet grinned at her. “You got control of your powers!”

  But Harper wasn’t smiling back. “Not forever.”

  Already, Violet could see silver veins beginning to appear beneath the coating of red-brown stone.

  “Oh,” she whispered, dread coursing through her. “Oh no.”

  “It’ll hold for at least a day, I think,” Harper said. “But it’s just temporary. The spire…”

  “It’s falling.”

  “Yeah.”

  Juniper had to help Violet back down the ladder. She didn’t want to leave the corruption behind, but even she could admit that she needed to rest. Back in the living room, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sipped anxiously from a hot mug of tea as Harper stared at her phone screen. Juniper had stayed behind to barricade the trapdoor.

  “It’s not just us,” Harper said grimly. “Something’s happening at the Hawthorne house. And the Sullivan ruins.”

  “Shit!” Violet groaned and tugged her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, shivering. “We have to go. We have to try to stop it—”

  “We can’t possibly be in three places at once.” Harper’s voice was gentle but firm. “Sit. Drink your tea.”

  Violet frowned at her. “Since when did you get so bossy?”

  “I have four younger siblings,” Harper said wryly. “I’ve always been bossy.”

  Harper’s phone began to buzz, and her eyes widened. Violet leaned over, saw the name flashing on the screen, and choked back an incredulous laugh.

  “You have Justin Hawthorne listed in your phone as Ugh?”

  “You knew it was him, didn’t you?” Harper asked, tapping the screen. A moment later his voice sounded through the speakers, crackly but clear.

  “Harper?” he said.

  “I’m here. What’s going on?”

  “I’m at the lake; I ran here—not important. The point is that the corruption is spreading here.”

  “What?”

  “It’s going to—it’s—” He let out a panicked yell, and the call cut out abruptly.

  “Justin?” Harper tapped frantically at her phone. “Justin! Are you kidding me? I’m going to kill him.”

  Again, Violet felt her own panic creeping up in her chest. If another ritual site was falling so close to this one, if those buds were unfurling, something had gone terribly wrong. An airborne strand of the corruption meant that anyone who breathed it in would get sick. They’d contained it in her attic, but if those flowers bloomed at the lake…

  “I have to go home.” Harper sounded calm, but Violet saw the urgency in her movements as she rose to her feet and went for the door. “He could be in danger.”

  “Won’t your siblings be patrolling?”

  “That doesn’t mean they’ll be enough to handle it, if what just happened in your attic is any indication.”

  Violet nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No. You need to keep an eye on the attic.”

  Violet understood. This was her home. Her turf to defend, just as the lake was Harper’s.

  “Be careful,” she said fiercely.

  Harper’s smile was sharp around the edges. “You too,” she said, and then she was gone.

  In her absence, Violet paced back and forth in the living room, restless and uneasy. Her mother was watching the spire, had asked Violet to rest, but she had never felt less like relaxing. Dread squirmed in her stomach as she peered out the window—she could see a trail of smoke rising above the trees in the direction of the Carlisle cottage. Orpheus wound around her legs, his too-cold body somehow still comforting.

  And then a knock sounded on the front door.

  Violet didn’t know who she was expecting. Isaac, maybe. Certainly not Augusta Hawthorne, flanked by her two giant dogs.

  “Uh,” she said. “I’ll get my mom—”

  “I’m here.” Juniper appeared beside her a moment later, looking utterly exhausted. “August, I thought you were at your place—”

  “June.” Augusta’s voice was utterly defeated. “The airborne corruption has begun to spread. We have to activate the emergency protocol.”

  Her mother’s face collapsed, and Violet stared between the two of them, uncomprehending.

  “What do you mean, emergency protocol?”

  “She means it’s time for the founders’ last resort,” Juniper said. “We’ve failed to protect this town. Which means we need to evacuate Four Paths.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Harper followed the smoke rising above the trees, winding her way through a route she knew by heart: one that would take her home to her lake. She knew the corruption had spread again, but she was still unprepared for what she might find there. The horrors she’d seen in the Gray were merging with Four Paths in her mind the same way the Beast’s face had merged with Justin’s.

  Justin.

  The moment she’d heard the phone call cut out, something sharp and painful had crystallized in her chest. She’d remembered dropping that cheap wooden sword at his feet. The way his hair felt when she curled her fingers into it at his party. The conversation she’d had with Violet about how she didn’t have to save him.

  Harper knew how he felt about her. She had known for a long time. And in that moment, she was tired of pretending she did not feel the same way, tired of pushing him away from her when all she wanted to do was pull him closer. There were no more lies between them; their history was laid out neatly now, the betrayal on both sides, the hurt, the years of distance
and quiet rage.

  She needed to find him, and she needed to tell him. But as she reached the trees that ringed the lake, Harper could not quell the fear that she had waited too long.

  Just as he had said on the phone, it was changing.

  Trees bent low over the water, their buds unfurled. They looked even more like hands than Harper remembered, fleshy and gray, five fingers twitching in time with the pulsating bark. Each emitted an endless stream of gray smoke, glimmering with iridescent flecks. Corruption was spreading steadily through the lake, the same iridescent liquid she’d seen in the Gray polluting the clear water.

  Harper’s heartbeat sped up. She stepped forward, her hand automatically reaching for her sword—and then she saw the body.

  He was lying halfway in the lake, an arm limply outstretched, as if trying to crawl back to land. Water had soaked through his clothes, leaving them wet and clinging. His blond hair was darkened by red-brown dirt; his face was turned away from her. Roots from the nearest tree twined around his outstretched hand, crawling steadily down his arm.

  “Justin!”

  To her immense relief, he stirred. But her voice seemed to have sped up the encroaching trees. Harper’s entire body went cold as one of the nearby buds swiveled, the branch bending toward his face. She knew the founders were immune to the corruption, but that didn’t mean the forest couldn’t hurt them.

  She didn’t think—instead she charged forward, each step a small eternity, and caught the branch in midair.

  She had helped Violet inside the spire. She could do this again. Red-brown stone spread from her fingertips and engulfed the branch, freezing it in place. Harper forced the stone to spread as far as she could manage, but it was physically difficult—like pushing a boulder up a hill. The corruption was strong and unwieldy; it tugged at the limits of her power. It was all she could do to turn that single tree to stone, but at least for the moment, it was not trying to hurt him anymore.

  Harper knelt beside Justin, her breathing ragged, and peeled the stone root away from his arm. It disintegrated beneath her fingers as easily as dust, leaving behind a slimy residue on his skin. His eyes were locked on her, his lips slightly parted. He was staring at her with unabashed awe, and it kindled a great warmth inside her, made her forget that they were in the middle of a disaster, made her forget that the entire world was falling apart around them.