The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “Harper,” he breathed.

  “Yeah,” she whispered. “I found you.”

  His hand cupped her cheek, and he grinned. “It’s really you. Not the Gray.”

  “Of course it’s me.”

  “I wasn’t sure.” He hesitated. “I didn’t know if you would care enough to come help me.”

  The words hurt her more than she could say, because she understood exactly why he’d think them.

  “Yes, I care enough,” she said. “I care about you too much, Justin. That’s always been my problem. Because I spent years trying to let you go, and I just… couldn’t.”

  Something in his gaze changed, and for a moment Harper tensed with panic. But then he spoke.

  “I couldn’t let you go, either,” he said softly. “I wanted you even when I wanted to forget you. I know I fucked it up. I know I didn’t deserve all the chances I got. And maybe we’ve both been hurt too many times for this to ever work, you and me. But that hasn’t made my feelings go away.”

  The moment after this seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Everything around them faded out—the smoke clouding the air around them, the corrupted trees at the edge of the lake, even the gentle sound of the lapping waves. All Harper could hear was her heartbeat ratcheting up in her chest, and all she saw was the look on Justin’s face—fear and determination and desire all at once.

  “It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,” Justin said, and Harper realized that she had waited too long to speak. “Seriously, Harper, I just needed to tell you—”

  “I know,” Harper said.

  And then she kissed him.

  It was a rough, impatient kiss that had been a long time in the making, and Justin’s surprise only lasted for a moment before he wrapped an arm around her waist and brought her closer to him. His shirt was wet and cold. She slid her hand beneath the clinging fabric, heat flooding through her as he braced one hand against her back and used the other to carefully brush her curls away from her neck. His lips moved down her jawline, lingering at the edges of her collarbone, and when he reached her shoulder, she gasped and dragged her nails down his spine.

  He shuddered and pulled away for a moment, and she hesitated, locking eyes with him.

  “Is that okay?” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you—”

  He gasped out a laugh. “Fuck. Yes. Do it again.”

  Harper grinned and traced her nails down his back, a deep satisfaction stirring in her as he made a soft, eager noise and pulled her even closer to him.

  The waves lapped around Harper, soaking her through, but she didn’t notice. She was lost in the curve of Justin’s shoulder, in his lips on the hollows of her throat, a different kind of drowning, where it felt as if any moment she spent coming up for air was wasted time.

  And if this really was the beginning of the end, she thought, for Four Paths, for all of them, at least they had come together before it all broke apart.

  It had taken less than twelve hours for the evacuation to be implemented throughout Four Paths. Technically it was optional, but Isaac had yet to see anybody protest. Although the founding families had quarantined the sites of the airborne corruption immediately, and no new buds had yet to open beyond the ritual sites, the clear and present danger could not be ignored.

  The school had been shut down, houses shuttered and locked, stores temporarily closed. Isaac had woken up to a steady line of cars crawling down Main Street, all filled with people he’d known his entire life. It was surreal to watch them go. Surreal to think that after all these years of fighting back, Augusta had finally admitted that there was a problem the founders could not solve.

  Or at least, a problem she wasn’t sure the founders could solve. Because they weren’t leaving. Not without a fight.

  Which was how he found himself in the foyer of the Saunders manor, staring awkwardly around at the massive staircase that spiraled up to the second floor. Violet had crashed at the Pathways Inn with her mom the previous night, since the spire of the Saunders manor was compromised, and was supposed to be moving her stuff into the town hall that morning, but she hadn’t shown and she wasn’t responding to his texts. He couldn’t help but worry that the corruption had spread again, so he went looking for her. His unease only intensified when he found the front door unlocked.

  “Hello?” he called out. Isaac did not like the Saunders manor. It reminded him too much of his old house—a gloomy building filled with endless reminders of the dead. He eyed the taxidermy beside the coat rack—an owl—and shuddered.

  A noise disturbed the dusty silence—a note, ringing out sharp and clear, and then a series of chords. Isaac followed the sound through the hallway and found an open doorway into an airy, spacious room that looked out on the woods behind the house. Violet was seated at the grand piano in the corner, lost in focus; her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted, her hair glowing like autumn leaves in the sunlight.

  For a moment, he was annoyed. This was where her priorities were when the entire town was in danger? But as Isaac raised a hand to knock on the side of the door frame, the music stopped him, held him in place as surely as if his hands had been bound.

  It was like nothing he had ever heard before. A melody that crept through the corners of the room and wound around him, building slowly, her fingers extending across the keys in a way that was clearly as natural to her as breathing.

  The music settled around him like a fog, plaintive and melancholy, and Isaac forgot about everything but his own memories, rumbling beneath those minor chords. The rough stone of the altar pressing against his back. His power swirling around his hands, uncontrolled and utterly wild. There was grief, sharp and furious; there was hope and fear and something deeper undercutting them all, engulfing him as she played faster. As the tempo of the piece sped up, Violet bent her head, her red hair falling across her face. And Isaac realized what he was feeling: Like this, his memories were an acknowledgment instead of an assault. A part of a bigger story instead of the entire book.

  Isaac knew Violet played piano, that she was pretty good at it. But he hadn’t known that she could do this—take feelings he’d never been able to articulate, ones she could not possibly understand, and give them shape and form. The melody had reached into his chest and turned him inside out, and when the final chord faded away, Isaac realized he was dangerously close to tears.

  He cleared his throat, his arm brushing against the doorway, and that noise must have been enough to rouse her from her trance.

  Her eyes flew open—and immediately widened with horror.

  “You.” She gasped. “How long have you been standing there?”

  Isaac felt a rush of guilt. Now that the music was gone, he realized how strange this truly was. But it had felt wrong to stop her, and he hadn’t known how to walk away.

  “Not long,” he said quickly, and then, in a weak attempt to change the subject: “What piece is that?”

  Violet hesitated, a hand curling protectively around the side of the sheet music. “It’s… mine. I’m working on it.”

  No wonder she had played with such passion, such fervor. No wonder she’d been angry with him for walking in on her.

  “You wrote that?” He stepped forward hesitantly. “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been composing. I just have the first movement right now, and it’s pretty rough.…”

  “It didn’t sound rough to me.”

  She snorted. “Well, that just tells me you know nothing about classical piano.”

  Isaac hesitated. Behind her, the forest stretched down the hill and into the distance, disappearing into the faint, smudgy horizon.

  “It feels like… that,” he said, gesturing to the window. “Like the woods, like the corruption, like the rituals. Like you put this whole town into music.”

  Violet froze on the piano bench, her dark eyes locked on his. He could not read the look in them at all. “I call it the Gray Sonata.”

/>   “That’s perfect.” The words were soft, too soft, but she smiled at them, and that made him feel like he had gotten one tiny part of this whole interaction right.

  “It’s how I deal with everything,” she said. “Rosie, Daria, this horrible cult town…”

  “I wish I had a coping mechanism that good.”

  “I’m not sure it’s very good,” Violet said dryly. “I’m still extremely sad.”

  Isaac choked back a laugh. “Well, so am I. So it’s not as if I’ve got anywhere to go but up.”

  Violet tipped her head to the side. “Do you ever worry that maybe you’re sad because it’s easy? Because you’re good at it?”

  “Are you saying that I want to feel like this?” Isaac felt a sudden swell of hurt. “Why would I ever—”

  “I wasn’t talking about you.” Violet’s voice had the same bite to it he’d heard the first time she’d spoken, when he’d seen the fire in her and thought that it was only a matter of time until Justin burned himself with it. “I was talking about me.”

  He swallowed. “Oh. Sorry.” He’d been wrong about why Justin had tried so hard with her, when she’d first come to town. He’d been wrong about everything. He didn’t want to get this wrong, too; whatever this was.

  “I don’t think either of us is sad because it’s easy,” he said slowly. “I think we’re sad because life has been kind of shitty to us, and people we love keep dying, and it would be more messed up if we weren’t sad sometimes.”

  “I guess. But I’ve started feeling guilty when I’m happy. Like it isn’t allowed, after all of this.”

  “I feel guilty when I’m happy, too,” he said. “And then I feel guilty about feeling guilty.”

  Violet snorted and lowered her gaze, her eyelashes casting dark, feathery shadows across her cheeks. “I wish I could turn it all off. Feel it all a little less.”

  “I don’t,” Isaac said, and realized to his own surprise that he meant it. “It happened, and I can’t change that. The remembering doesn’t have to break me. Forgetting would be worse.”

  She lifted her head. “I guess I feel that way about Rosie, too. Like… thinking about her isn’t always painful. Sometimes it’s actually really nice.”

  “I mean, of course it’s nice sometimes,” Isaac said, meeting her eyes. “You love her.”

  “I do.” Violet paused. “I mean, grief is just another kind of love, right?”

  Isaac nodded. “I think that’s how your music felt. Or what it made me feel, anyway.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” Violet said. “I wanted to play it one last time before I said goodbye. I guess I got carried away.”

  “About that.” Isaac hesitated. “You should’ve been at the town hall by now. I was, um…”

  “You were worried about me.” Violet’s mouth quirked upward at the corners, and he wondered if her smile had always looked like that, like they’d just shared a secret. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe.” He hovered awkwardly at the edge of the bench. “I mean, your attic is kind of decaying. And you weren’t answering your texts.…”

  “I can’t believe people are scared of you,” she said, a teasing edge in her voice. “You’re soft, Sullivan.”

  “Yes, I think soft is the first word I’d use for someone trying to make sure everyone around them stays alive.”

  Violet snorted with laughter. “Fair enough,” she said, rising from the piano bench and gesturing to a comically overstuffed duffel bag that sat on the couch. “Well, I guess I’d better get this loaded into the car.”

  “It’ll take you hours to drive to the center of town,” Isaac said grimly. “The roads are packed.”

  “Oh, joy.” Violet paused, and then a smile lit up her face, far more mischievous than the one she’d been wearing before. “Well, since you’re being so considerate today, how do you feel about carrying my stuff to the town hall?”

  Isaac had no idea what Violet had packed, but it was obscenely, ridiculously heavy. He was sweating in the chilly November air long before the town square came into view. It was even busier now than it had been before he left, cars crowded everywhere. Augusta Hawthorne paced back and forth in front of the town seal, gesturing at the small army of deputies and volunteers in front of her. The seal itself looked completely free of corruption, at least for now. A sign that maybe they could turn all this around, if only they could figure out what the hell was causing the disease.

  Isaac hated the feeling that they had half the puzzle put together. He knew they were missing something, he just wasn’t sure what. And they were running out of time to solve the mystery.

  “Did you know Augusta’s calling this in as a flood warning?” Violet asked as Isaac heaved her bag through the town hall’s back door and up the stairs to his apartment. The steps were absolute murder on his back, but at last he made it to his living room and set the duffel down. Isaac wasn’t entirely certain how he’d wound up agreeing to let Violet and Harper crash in his apartment until further notice, but it had happened anyway. Saunders and Carlisle territory wasn’t safe anymore. Neither was the Hawthorne house, but Isaac was utterly unsurprised by the family’s refusal to leave their home behind. May had been born there, and it seemed like she had every intention of dying there too if necessary.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, gesturing at the duffel. “I’m pretty sure that was my workout for the week. And no, I didn’t. How do you know that?”

  “Thanks for carrying it,” Violet said, swinging her satchel-style backpack off her shoulder and setting it gently beside the duffel. Her cat jumped on Isaac’s secondhand couch and surveyed his new territory, his whiskers twitching. “And I know because Augusta and Juniper were up till five a.m. holding a strategy meeting in the Pathways Inn. Talking about how to get the people who are sick into a hospital, how to cover all this up. Basically, they spent a million hours figuring out how to convincingly lie to the state of New York about the supernatural hellscape we live in.”

  “So she and your mom are still getting along?” Isaac had seen Violet’s mother in passing on their way into the town hall. She’d been standing close to Augusta, tapping furiously away on a tablet.

  “Mom’s staying with the Hawthornes, so yeah, I guess so. She tried to get me to leave town, you know. As part of the evacuation.”

  Isaac turned his head sharply. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Only been here a few months, responsible parenting, protection, blah blah blah.”

  “And?”

  Violet looked at him incredulously. “Are you kidding me? I can help fight this. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Good.” His voice was a little too raw for his liking.

  A knock sounded at his door, and he went to swing it open, half expecting Harper asking him to carry something heavy, too. But it was Gabriel instead, far more disheveled than the last time Isaac had seen him. His clothes looked as if he’d slept in them, and his face was tired and worn.

  “Hey,” he said. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

  They wound up sitting on the couch. Isaac usually loved his apartment, but right now he saw it through Gabriel’s eyes—the messy piles of books next to the overstuffed shelves, the unwashed dishes in the sink, the clothes spilling out of his closet and across his bedroom floor.

  “So, you really live here by yourself,” Gabriel mused, fishing out a worn paperback lodged between two couch cushions and tossing it onto the battered end table. “I’m surprised you can afford it.”

  “I can’t,” Isaac said shortly. “I live here for free. The sheriff and the mayor worked out an agreement.”

  “Four Paths sure does love its nepotism.”

  “And Augusta loves knowing I owe her family something.”

  “That checks out.” Gabriel hesitated, his eyes darting around the room. Isaac wondered what he was looking for. “Listen, about the other day—I wanted to tell you that I meant what I said. I’m sorry about everything that
’s happened to us. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the brother you needed.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” Isaac couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something off here. He and Gabriel had covered all this already, and his brother wasn’t really the type to keep picking the scabs off old wounds. “But at least you’re here now.”

  “Yeah. About that.” Gabriel’s voice lowered. “You know how serious this situation in Four Paths is, right? I’ve been here for ten minutes, and even I can tell everything’s crumbling.”

  “Everything’s always crumbling,” Isaac said, shrugging. “That’s just how Four Paths is.”

  “This is different.” Gabriel looked at Isaac, his expression deathly serious. “This isn’t the Gray, Isaac. The more this corruption spreads, the more I see how different it is. How dangerous.”

  “Of course it’s dangerous,” Isaac said. “That’s why we’re evacuating the town. So we can fight without worrying about everyone else.”

  “I’m not staying,” Gabriel said.

  Isaac blinked at him. “What?”

  “I’m evacuating with the rest of the town, Isaac, and I think you should come with me.”

  The words didn’t register at first. They were nonsensical, foolish. Sullivans didn’t hide from a fight—in fact, they were usually the ones who’d started the fight in the first place. And Isaac wasn’t leaving his friends, his home, to fall to the corruption.

  “I’m not running away,” he said, his voice hoarse with disbelief. “And I can’t believe you are. What about your healing powers? Our research?”

  “All we’ve found are dead ends and proof of lies,” Gabriel said. “We didn’t ask for this fight, Isaac. It was forced on us, but we can turn it down. We can say no.”