The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “You are weaker than you pretend to be,” Richard said. The roots continued to tighten around Justin’s throat. “And you cannot fool me, little Hawthorne. I’ll let him die—but you won’t.”

  The noises coming from her brother’s throat were unimaginable; his face was turning blue, swelling. She could see the veins in his neck bulging out, the panic in his eyes.

  Something unfurled in the back of her mind, the same doorway that opened whenever she did a reading. The voice was faint and hoarse, the quietest it had ever been, but she heard it anyway.

  Drink, it said. Drink and I will help you.

  May had nothing left to lose. Maybe this would kill her. Maybe it would make her Richard’s puppet. But maybe—just maybe—the Beast was telling her the truth.

  She lifted her head and made eye contact with her father.

  “You win,” she said, her stomach churning. “Let him go, and I’ll drink.”

  He grinned, and immediately the vines around Justin’s neck unfurled. For a moment, he remained dazed, his head drooping, and then he breathed deeply, his eyes locking on hers once more. May sagged with relief as Justin coughed and raised himself up.

  “Good,” she said, trying to force her voice not to shake. “Now promise me you’ll let him leave unharmed.”

  Richard frowned at her. “I did not agree to that.”

  “Please,” May said. “He’s your son. I know you care about him, at least a little.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Richard. “I don’t care about him.” May’s heart sank. “But… I care about you.”

  He turned to Justin. “Run, before I change my mind.”

  But Justin hesitated, and May knew why.

  “Don’t try to free me,” she whispered.

  “May—”

  “Don’t,” she repeated. “He’ll kill you. You need to go.”

  Justin looked at her one last time—and bolted. May sighed with relief as he disappeared from view. She hoped he could get out of the Gray on his own.

  “Now, then,” Richard said slowly. “Your end of the bargain. Or I could hunt him down and dispose of him right now, if you like.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” May said. “You can release me. I won’t run—I give you my word.”

  “You can’t run,” he said lazily, but he waved a hand and obliged. May rose on her own two feet and closed the remaining distance between herself and the bubbling liquid.

  Up close, the smell was overpowering. May gagged, shuddering, as her eyes traced the patterns left in the iridescent liquid. She swore that if she looked closely enough she could see entire stories playing out, figures living and dying in an endless cycle, an entire world inside this cauldron in the rotting, dying remnants of her home. It was harder than May liked to wrench her focus away.

  “Drink,” Richard said as the fumes made her eyes water, as the patterns swirled before her again and again. He dipped his own hands in the liquid and pulled them out, grinning, liquid pooling between his palms. “Go on.”

  May reached inside the stump and scooped out a handful of liquid, warm and steaming in her fingers, then held it reluctantly to her mouth. The liquid poured down her throat, thick and viscous. She gagged, coughing—but it was too late. She could feel it coursing through her, hot and strange.

  Her body convulsed, and the door at the back of her mind swung wide open. A voice swirled around her, but it was three voices, not one, and she saw visions of skulls and daggers and melting trees dancing around her, hazy and iridescent.

  Come home, the voices whispered. Come home, Seven of Branches.

  And then there was nothing.

  PART FOUR

  THE BEAST

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Harper’s sword had never looked better. It was polished and buffed to perfection, the steel gleaming in the glow of Isaac’s living room lamp.

  “You really are always ready to fight, aren’t you?”

  Harper looked up to see Isaac standing in his bedroom door, his arms crossed, his mouth a thin line of unease.

  “What?” Harper smiled at him. “Scared?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Just keep your weapons away from my books.”

  Harper was well aware that polishing her weapons in the middle of Isaac Sullivan’s apartment intimidated him. It was why she had absolutely no intention of stopping.

  Crashing here hadn’t exactly been her first choice, but she wasn’t emotionally prepared to stay with her siblings at the Carlisle cottage—or Justin at the Hawthorne house. So Harper had chosen to join Violet at the town hall instead, even though it meant she had to be on Isaac’s turf.

  She had lost herself in the familiar rhythms of preparing for a fight when a knock sounded on the apartment door.

  “Are you there?” Justin’s voice drifted through the room, ragged and upset. “Isaac, open up—”

  Harper and Isaac both rushed for the door. The surprise on Justin’s face when he saw them standing beside each other was quickly eclipsed by distress. He looked awful, eyes red and puffy, panting and sweaty from a clear sprint over to the town hall.

  And Harper didn’t understand how, but in that moment she and Isaac somehow knew exactly what to do. Isaac shut the door behind Justin and rushed for his first-aid kit, while Harper guided him to the couch.

  “What happened?” Harper asked as Isaac emerged with a towel. Justin accepted it wordlessly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He looked horrible, clammy and pale, his skin drained of color and his hair glimmering with iridescent bits of slime.

  “Water?” he croaked.

  “Already on it,” Isaac called from the kitchen. “Now tell us what the hell is going on.”

  “It’s May.” Justin’s eyes locked on Harper’s, wide with panic. “She’s in terrible danger. We need to call Augusta—”

  “Slow down.” Now that the spaces between them had been closed once, it felt far too easy to do it again. Her hand fit automatically into his, where he curled his fingers around hers so tightly that it was almost painful. “We’ll figure it out. Isaac?”

  “My phone isn’t working,” he said. “Is yours?”

  Harper spared a glance at hers, sitting screen-up on the table. “Huh. No service. Not even Wi-Fi.”

  Not that that was much of a loss. Isaac called his Wi-Fi network the Sanctum, which had made Harper roll her eyes so hard it actually hurt a little bit.

  “Same here,” Isaac said, reappearing in the living room with a mason jar full of ice water. His eyes flickered over their clasped hands, but he said nothing. “Do you think the corruption is messing with the signal?”

  “I don’t know,” Harper said as Justin grabbed the water glass and drained it in a few quick swallows. “Justin, what’s going on with May?”

  Justin’s brow furrowed. But before he could speak, the lamp beside them flickered. A second later, every light in the room went out, plunging them into pitch darkness.

  “Shit!” Isaac swore, tripping over something and clattering into a wall. Harper sat stock-still, waiting impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the change in light. She could see something moving outside the window, shifting and slithering in the air. Smoke. The corruption had spread—again.

  “Violet and her mom are supposed to be patrolling down there,” Harper breathed. “Justin, did you see them? Did you see anything weird?”

  “I went in through the back,” Justin said hoarsely. “I wasn’t really looking.”

  “Well, something’s wrong,” Isaac murmured from in front of the window. Harper joined him a moment later.

  In the last vestiges of the fading twilight, she saw movement: saplings, their veins glowing silver in the night, weaving together in front of the founders’ seal in the center of the town square. A mushroom cloud of dark gray smoke rose from their unfurling branches. Violet stood before it, her arms outstretched, red hair blown back from her face with the force of the whipping wind. There was no sign of Juniper at all.


  “She’s trying to hold it back.” There was something like awe in Isaac’s voice.

  A great crack sounded through the sky above them. The clouds ripped open, dusk fading to off-white while the Gray poured through. Harper watched, horrified, as it cascaded out in a great wave, the trees at the edge of the town square transforming before her eyes from brown to gray. The world was warping far more quickly than she’d ever thought possible; with every breath, the fog rolled closer to them, creeping across the treetops like extending hands.

  The founders’ seal was falling, and Violet was still out there. Harper saw no hesitation in her stance, even as Orpheus’s small form wound angrily around her ankles.

  “She’s not going to run.” The words were heavy on Harper’s tongue as she turned to Isaac and Justin.

  “I know,” Justin said.

  “Come on,” Isaac added. Something glinted in Harper’s peripheral vision, and she realized what he was holding: her sword. “We need to get her inside.”

  Harper grabbed the weapon from his hand and nodded. Justin started to get up, but as one, they turned to him and glared.

  “No,” Harper said sharply. “You’re not okay. Rest.”

  All this time she’d thought of herself and Isaac as opposites. He was pretentious and tormented, unable to handle the power that had been heaped on him, while she’d clawed her way to everything she had. Now, as she followed him down the stairs and through the foyer of the town hall, she realized that she’d had it all wrong.

  They were both careful with their loyalties. Both emotionally hesitant because of how deeply they felt everything. And when they cared for someone, they would not hesitate to rush into the line of fire to save them.

  Harper had experienced the equinox before, where the lines between the Gray and Four Paths blurred. But she had never seen anything like this. Iridescent ash fell from the cracks in the sky like rain, swirling in the wind. The trees that had grown around the founders’ seal were grotesque, pulsating things—their roots snarled and knotted together like conjoined fingers. She could feel the spread of corruption through the town, the creep of a death rattle. She hoped Mitzi and Seth were safe, even though they were angry with her. She hoped everyone else had truly left Four Paths.

  She didn’t feel like she was in the real world anymore, and yet this did not feel like the Gray, either—it was both and neither, it was something outside of time, outside of space.

  Violet was only a few yards away from the town hall, but it felt as if it had taken years to reach her by the time her thin frame came into view. Roots had wound around her ankles, and she was clutching Orpheus for dear life, the cat’s head buried in her chest.

  “What are you doing here?” she gasped at the sight of them.

  “Helping you escape.” Isaac’s hands began to glow. He knelt down and set about disintegrating the roots holding Violet in place, while Harper used her sword to slash through the remaining bits of tree. But they were growing fast, faster than Harper had seen before. A root snaked beneath Isaac’s foot, tripping him, while another one tried to yank her left leg out from under her. Harper kicked it away.

  “Here,” Violet gasped, shoving Orpheus into Isaac’s arms. “Take him.”

  The cat squirmed for a moment, but settled almost immediately. Violet turned, a wild expression on her face, and stretched out her arms again.

  “You can’t fight this!” Isaac said desperately.

  “I’m just trying to hold it back.” Tears leaked from the corners of Violet’s eyes, sliding down her cheeks. Harper felt a rush of relief as the roots attacking them slowed, then stilled. “We have a few seconds,” Violet said. “Run.”

  They did, bolting back through the mist. Harper had no idea how Isaac knew what direction to go in, but she had never been so happy to see the steps of the town hall appear in front of her. A moment later, they had pushed open the door and collapsed in the foyer, all panting on the cold marble floor.

  “Well, okay, then,” Isaac mumbled from beside Harper. She turned and realized, to her great amusement, that Orpheus did not appear ready to let go of him. He’d tucked his entire body into Isaac’s jacket, quivering. All that was visible was his gray-striped tail and the tips of his ears, one adorned as always with red yarn. “Uh, Violet? Do you want him back?”

  But Violet didn’t even seem to notice. She was already on her feet, riffling through her pockets. “Mom went to get the sheriff as soon as the seal fell,” she said to Harper. “Is there still no service? We couldn’t call anybody.”

  “Yeah, none of our phones are working.”

  Violet frowned. “I hope she’s all right.”

  “You said she was going to find Augusta, yeah?” Isaac asked. “She’s probably safe at the Hawthorne house.”

  “She’d better be,” Violet murmured. “I should try to go find her.”

  “It’s not safe out there,” Harper said gently. “Your mom can protect herself. And she wouldn’t want you running into danger.”

  Violet scowled at her, but Harper could tell she’d seen reason.

  “Fine,” she mumbled. “Well, I’m glad you two are here; I have something terrible to tell you—”

  “So does Justin, apparently,” Harper said, pushing open the door to Isaac’s apartment. In their absence, Justin had lit candles, casting the room in a dim glow. At the sight of all three of them, the boy in question stepped forward, his face creased into a relieved smile.

  “You’re all okay,” Justin said hoarsely, and then he turned to Isaac. “Huh. I guess you made a friend.”

  “He won’t let go.” Isaac attempted again to dislodge Orpheus, but the cat let out a hiss in protest. “Violet, can’t you do something about this?”

  “I don’t control him.” Violet’s lips twitched with amusement. “Don’t worry. He’ll detach when he calms down.”

  “His claws are digging into my stomach.”

  “I think you’ll live. Try scratching behind his ears; he likes that.”

  “Enough.” Harper turned to all three of them. “Talk.”

  Violet’s story was terrifying on its own, relaying the unpleasant truths of the secrets the founders had kept from their own flesh and blood. But Harper’s horror only grew as Justin described who Ezra really was, the true nature of May’s power, and the impossible decision that he’d forced upon her, with Justin’s life on the line. After he was done, the room was silent for a long, unpleasant moment, until at last Isaac spoke.

  “So you really believe he’s Richard Sullivan?”

  “I really do,” Justin said grimly. “He used powers in a way I’ve never seen anyone do before.”

  “But what does that mean for you and May?” Violet asked.

  Justin shrugged. “I’ve always known my dad was a scumbag. Now I just know he’s an even bigger scumbag.”

  Isaac spoke then. “Do you think Augusta—”

  “No.” Justin looked haunted. “I don’t think she did. Two founders make a dud, remember?” He gestured toward himself. “May only got the powers because he did something to her—bound her to the Beast the same way he bound himself.”

  “Shit,” Isaac breathed.

  Harper shuddered, thinking of Ezra Bishop—a Sullivan. The Sullivan. Of May in his clutches. May was tough, she knew that, but Harper had no idea what was happening to her, what unleashing the corruption on the town at this magnitude had done to her. Harper understood exactly how that kind of betrayal felt. The way it turned you inside out, made you into someone new, someone worse.

  “So we’re safe for as long as May can hold out against him,” she said. “He can’t finish this without her.”

  “May’s strong,” Isaac pointed out.

  “We all are,” Harper said. “But that’s not the point. We shouldn’t have to be.”

  She wanted a world where girls did not need to grow a spine of steel just to survive. Where they could be as soft and silly as they wanted. Where they could walk into
a room full of new people and see endless possibilities instead of potential threats.

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Violet said. “But we’re cut off from everyone else, and we’re the only four people with some idea of what’s going on. That means we’re the only ones who have a real chance of stopping Richard Sullivan before he gets even more powerful.”

  “How do we do that?” Isaac asked.

  Violet twisted a lock of crimson hair around her finger, shadows flickering across her face in the candlelight. “The story Juniper told me was missing a piece. The founders’ ritual to stop the corruption didn’t fail because they did it wrong. It failed because Richard murdered them. Which means if we finish the job the founders tried to do, we can fix this.”

  “But how can we figure out what the founders did?” Isaac asked.

  And then came a soft, gentle voice from the last person Harper expected.

  “I have an idea,” Justin said.

  May woke up with the taste of guilt and bile in her mouth. Everything hurt; her limbs and torso ached in a way that felt soul-deep, as if she’d been ripped apart and sewn crudely back together.

  She didn’t want to open her eyes. She was too frightened of what she would see: the corrupted trees in the Gray, Justin’s veins bulging out in his neck, the bubbling cauldron she’d been forced to drink from, or—worst of all—her father’s sick, smiling face.

  But when she finally forced herself to look, she was no longer in the Gray.

  Instead, she was lying in the same place she’d seen at Justin’s birthday party: fog drifting around her, branches knitting together above her head. Roots spiraled below her body like a bed, and through it all thumped a heartbeat, slow and steady, one May knew as well as her own. She rolled over and braced her hands against the roots, realizing as she sat up that she recognized where she was. Beneath the roots was the smooth gray stone of the founders’ seal, but she was no longer here with her father, and that horrible cauldron of a tree stump was gone. Instead, she was alone in the center of another vision.