The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  She should have been terrified. And yet on some bone-deep level she felt safe. No harm would come to her from this place. The only thing she had to fear was Ezra—no, Richard.

  “What’s going on?” she murmured, the words echoing through the drifting mist. And then came the last thing she expected: a response.

  You asked for help, said a voice inside her mind, a little tinny and unfocused around the edges, like a radio with bad reception. I’m afraid I could not protect you from Richard, but—The words cut out and she heard hissing, spitting static instead.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, frowning. “I can’t hear you.”

  The cards! cried the voice. Use the cards—And then it cut out again.

  May had been forced to leave the Deck of Omens at home. And yet when she looked to her left, she saw a small box sitting on the roots with an all-seeing eye carved into the top.

  A shiver ran down her spine.

  She flipped open the box, drew out the cards. They felt real as ever between her fingers as she began to shuffle them, comforting and solid. Like home.

  “What are you trying to tell me?” she asked aloud, and to her great relief she felt the question course through her, a tether of power that had come back to her once again. The cards began to disappear in her hands a moment later, until only five were left.

  She laid out the first one—the Seven of Branches, her card—and felt the connection in her mind click back into place.

  There you are, the voice whispered in her mind, sounding relieved. Hello, Seven of Branches.

  “Hello,” May said softly, feeling raw inside. “Beast.”

  So you’ve finally figured it out.

  “Yes.” Some part of her had known before her father had said it aloud, but it was undeniable now. With a surge of shame, May thought of all the things the Beast knew about her. It had seen so many of her ugliest, pettiest desires; in some ways, it understood her better than her own family did. “Is it true? That my power has just been… talking to you, all this time?”

  Yes and no. The Beast’s voice was deep and mournful. She could hear more clearly now that it was not one voice, but several speaking in unison. Richard did not lie to you. He created you in an attempt to destroy me.

  “Destroy you?” May fought back a hysterical surge of laughter. That certainly would have solved a lot of Four Paths’ problems. “I don’t understand.”

  You will, it said. Now that you’re listening. Keep going, Seven of Branches.

  May flipped the second card over. It was the Six of Branches, her mother’s card—and a moment later a vision of Augusta Hawthorne appeared in front of her, cross-legged and thoughtful, her eyes hooded with disapproval.

  May gasped and scrambled backward. “Mom?”

  My apologies. Augusta’s head rose; her eyes met May’s, and she realized that they were flat and lifeless instead of icy blue, that this Augusta was a little wispy and indistinct around the edges, like she was imperfectly formed. I wasn’t certain how I would appear to you, but I suppose this makes sense.

  “It’s messed up.” May forced her voice not to shake. “Talking to me through her like that.”

  Your mind chose her, the Beast said. I do not pretend to understand the intricacies inherent in each of the founders’ minds, only that you are all terribly unique and exhausting, and keeping up with your entanglements has frankly been impossible.

  “I feel the same way half the time.” May sighed. And then she remembered what she was actually talking to, and she met her mother’s lifeless gaze again. “What do you actually look like? What are you?”

  That, the Beast said, is rather complicated.

  “This isn’t the time to be vague,” she said as she flipped the third card over. “I need to understand.” The art painted on the Deck of Omens revealed the Crusader. The sight of her father’s card made her hands shake, her stomach churn.

  Augusta’s face twisted with regret. When the founders came to Four Paths, they didn’t find a monster. They found a forest with power, and they took it for their own. They did not understand then that they were never meant to bind themselves to this magic. They were not prepared for the way their humanity changed the forest, nor the way the forest changed their humanity. It created a grotesque problem—a plague, of sorts, spreading through the town and the trees.

  “So the picture Richard showed me wasn’t a lie either,” she said slowly. “The founders did know about the corruption. It goes back that far.”

  They did. And the more they used their powers, the worse it became. Desperate, they decided to try to give their powers back, to fix it.

  “But Richard betrayed them?”

  Yes. He believed he could sacrifice them to the forest and steal their powers. But the founders refused to yield to him as they died, and instead they created a shield, something that would lock Richard out. A world he could not access. Powers he could not reach.

  “The Gray,” May said slowly.

  Not just the Gray, Augusta said. They created me. I am the forest you live in, Seven of Branches, I am the town you love so much. I am your home. And I am the people who gave their lives so long ago, the gods you worshipped, and now the demon you wish to kill.

  May saw it suddenly, like a vision. The three founders’ bodies melting into the ground and winding together. The way the forest felt like one great, gigantic organism to her, the way it was alive not just as all nature was, but a step beyond that. The hair and flesh on the trees. The roots burrowing beneath people’s skin. All of it now made a sick sort of sense to May.

  Violet had been right. The founders had made this monster, and their descendants were still paying for it. She was still paying for it.

  Because of the ritual she’d done as a child, May’s powers came from the Beast the same way the original founders had gotten their powers from the forest. Her strength had brought back the corruption they’d created, started this whole nightmare over again.

  All this time, she’d believed that her father had seen something special in her. Now she knew that all he’d seen was the promise of death and destruction for his own personal gain.

  “But why do you kill people, then?” May asked slowly, thinking of the body count the Beast left in its wake. “If you were created to protect the Gray from Richard…”

  Blood is needed to keep the corruption from spreading further, to keep me strong. We have kept it at bay by taking from the town. But most people do not satiate us for long. It is founder blood we crave, founder blood we need.

  May flipped the fourth card over, her stomach clenching.

  A boy knelt in the center of a clearing, three swords hanging over his head. He was on his knees, arms outstretched; but he did not look like he was pleading. He looked defiant. He looked furious.

  “Isaac,” May breathed, understanding at last. “Is that why the Sullivans kill each other? Because Richard didn’t die like the other founders?”

  Yes, the voice hissed.

  “That is so messed up,” May mumbled. “That’s why you tried to possess Violet—you wanted more.”

  Yes. The word coursed through her, laced with such need, May almost agreed with it—and then she pulled her mind back. The Beast might be trying to help her, but it was still dangerous. It was a monster that hadn’t asked to be a monster, and May did not know what to do about that or how to fix it. And there was only one card left.

  “There has to be a way to stop this,” May said. “A way where you don’t kill more people. A way where the corruption stops.”

  We thought so too, long ago, sang the voices in her ear. She knew who they belonged to now: Thomas Carlisle, Lydia Saunders, Hetty Hawthorne. But Richard killed us before we could change anything.

  “So how do I stop him?”

  You are stronger now, the voices mused. And we are dying. You could destroy us and take the power he wants for yourself, if you wish. But that will not stop the corruption.

  “So if you
die, the corruption spreads,” May said slowly. “And if you live, I find some way to halt the corruption, and I defeat my dad, you’ll still exist. You’ll still kill people, because you need our deaths to keep going.”

  It is… not ideal. Augusta gestured toward the final card.

  May flipped it over and stared into the cruel yellow eyes of the Beast, and she watched, her stomach sinking, as the bloodstained spires of the crown shifted before her eyes. The deck was changing to fit this nightmare she was living in, a threat—no, a warning. There were people on each of the spires now—people she recognized. Justin and Isaac and Harper and Violet, each of them dead. The sight made her want to vomit, want to cry.

  “No,” she whispered. “I won’t let that happen.”

  You may not have a choice.

  The roots below her shriveled and shrank, revealing the stone of the founders’ seal. May saw a gap in the very center of the circle; light shone through it, a keyhole, an idea. And then the branches swam around her, and everything disintegrated into blackness once again.

  But when May opened her eyes, she was no longer in her vision—or the Gray. Instead, she had somehow been transported back to Four Paths. She sat in the center of Main Street, on the real-life founders’ seal that had been placed in the center of the town square. Trees surrounded her in a pulsating circle, their branches snarled and knotted together. The sky was open and screaming above her, gray and white bleeding together. And all around her, blanketing the ground, were iridescent bits of ash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Justin’s idea was utterly ridiculous, which Isaac suspected meant it might actually work.

  “This is all too much,” Violet said. They were in the lobby of the town hall, pulling down the storm shutters on the windows. Harper and Justin were doing the same in his apartment. Before they could do anything, Isaac wanted to be sure they were as safe as possible. But the town hall was a large building, and it was taking longer than he had anticipated to check everything. “How are you feeling about all of this? If what Justin’s saying about his father is true…”

  “Then he’s my ancestor. Yeah, I know.” Isaac slammed down a storm shutter with slightly more force than necessary as he thought of Richard Sullivan’s burial slot in the mausoleum. Of the portrait hanging in the archives. Lies, all of it, and Isaac didn’t know why that even surprised him anymore. “I mean, clearly he’s some kind of founder. And my family always has been a bunch of assholes. Seems fitting that the guy responsible for all our problems would be one of us.”

  The only silver lining of all of this, Isaac reflected bitterly, was that the Sullivan bloodline was gigantic. All those disappearances had led to a vast, disconnected family network, which meant that he and Justin were probably only about as distantly related as anybody else in Four Paths. He’d dealt with enough tonight; finding out he’d once had a long-term crush on his cousin would have been the last straw.

  “That doesn’t seem like an entirely fair judgment,” Violet said softly. “I mean, there’s you, there’s Gabriel…”

  “Gabriel left.”

  Violet stared at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

  “He ran away from this fight. Just like he ran before.”

  Isaac hadn’t realized how much it was hurting him until he’d said it aloud.

  “Shit,” Violet said. “You’re right. Most of your family are assholes.”

  Isaac couldn’t help it—he laughed, and after a moment she joined in, both of them sounding slightly hysterical over the wind battering the storm shutters behind them.

  “I can’t believe any of this is happening,” he confessed, tugging the latch closed on the window and turning toward her. “I can’t believe Four Paths has turned into this. I can’t believe we’re stuck in here. And I can’t believe the single real idea we have rests on the only one of us without any powers.”

  “Ah, Four Paths.” Violet sighed. “Always finding new ways to ruin our lives.”

  “As if we can’t do that all by ourselves.”

  Violet shook her head, still grinning. Her sweater had slid down over one of her shoulders. Isaac couldn’t help but notice the smooth curve of her collarbone, the light of the candle she held aloft flickering across her exposed skin. There was a strange, heady feeling building inside him.

  “What?” she said.

  He shrugged. “It’s just surreal to me that it’s only been a few months since you moved here.”

  “I feel the same way.” Violet tugged down the next storm shutter and latched it shut. “A year ago, my biggest problem was trying to perfect my audition program for conservatories. Now we might damn an entire town because our ancestors made some disastrously bad choices.”

  “Has it really been so bad here?”

  She met his eyes. Smirked just a little. “It could’ve been worse.”

  Isaac still couldn’t believe that Violet knew everything he had been through and didn’t pity him. All his hopes, his fears, his dreams—she had borne witness to them without flinching, and he had done the same for her. Not because they needed something from each other, but because they’d wanted to. And after years of people looking at him like he was broken, it was a relief bigger than words to know someone else understood that healing did not mean going back to the way things had been before. It meant transforming into someone new and accepting that person, sharp edges and all.

  He wanted to kiss her, he realized, and he’d never known that he could have romantic feelings for someone without the sadness, without the longing, without the hurt. He did not know how to tell her this; all he knew was that the knowledge of it was burning inside him like a newly lit flame, wild and unavoidable.

  And he was trying to find the words to do this, to do it right, when Violet spoke again.

  “Harper and Justin are done,” she said, glancing over his shoulder.

  Isaac turned to see that her cat had appeared at the end of the hallway, his tail twitching.

  “He can tell you that?” he asked.

  “Our tether can,” Violet said, already halfway down the hallway. “It’s sort of hard to explain.”

  Isaac watched her walk away for a moment. Then he sighed and trudged after her.

  The four of them sat on the floor in the center of Isaac’s living room, staring at the cards stacked in front of Justin’s crossed legs. Harper couldn’t help but feel a stab of unease as she gazed at the all-seeing eye etched into the back. The Carlisle abilities were straightforward and steady, while the Hawthornes dealt in the abstract: memories, fates, futures. It was a power she wasn’t sure any human had the right to hold. Then again, that was how they’d gotten here in the first place: because their ancestors had been too greedy to know their limits.

  “Okay,” Violet said slowly. “So how, exactly, does this work?” She reached forward, but the second her fingers touched the cards, she gasped and pulled her hand back. “Shit. That hurt.”

  “I probably should have warned you,” Justin said from across the circle. “Touching the cards is a Hawthorne-only thing. That’s why they’re usually in the box.”

  He reached down and scooped up the cards. They clearly weren’t bothering him, although Harper could tell how nervous he was. He looked pale and exhausted; all of this had obviously worn on him. He didn’t hold the cards like May did, like they were an extension of her. He held them like a weapon he wasn’t sure how to use.

  “There’s no guarantee this will work,” he said. “But I heard most of May’s confrontation with our father. The Deck of Omens talks to the Beast. And surely the Beast knows how to defeat Richard and give our powers back. So we’re going to try asking it.”

  It sounded absolutely absurd, willingly talking to a monster. But Harper had to admit that none of them had a better idea.

  “Aren’t you supposed to ask a question to direct the reading?” Violet said.

  “Someone else should,” Justin said. “That’s how May does it.”

  “You
always promised you’d read my cards,” Harper said softly.

  “I did,” Justin said. “So ask your question.”

  Harper smiled. “How can we defeat Richard?”

  And Justin began to shuffle the deck.

  For a few moments, there was only silence. The wind howled at the storm shutters, the candles flickered, and Justin’s face registered rapt concentration. Then he spoke.

  “Okay,” Justin said. “I can feel something.… May always says it’s like a path opens in the back of her mind, like she can see her way down to all of Four Paths’ roots.…”

  Soon Harper felt it, too. A presence stole into the room, making the candle flames shiver. And one by one, just like they did when May touched them, the cards began to disappear.

  Justin was doing it. He was actually using the power he’d always wanted. Harper wondered how it felt for him, to know that after all this time he had finally been able to prove himself. His face was slightly flushed; sweat beaded along his forehead. But he kept at it, the presence growing stronger, until there were only a few cards left.

  He laid them out on the floor, his hands trembling. Harper tried to remember what came next—May had to touch people for the power to work, she was pretty sure. She stretched out her hand, and Justin, looking grateful, took it. Their fingers twined together, his palm warm and gentle against hers.

  And then the presence stirred again, and from the corner of the room, at the edge of Violet’s peripheral vision, she saw the thin wisps of a humanoid figure forming.

  Harper’s heartbeat accelerated, and she braced herself for another Beast-Justin. But he never showed up.

  Eight of… Branches…

  The words rasped through Harper’s mind, and she gasped. Across from her, Isaac clutched at his forehead and muttered a curse.

  I have already told you, Two of Stones.… I have already warned you.…

  “Can you all hear that?” Harper whispered.

  The others nodded.

  “It’s the Beast,” Justin said hoarsely. “Aren’t you?”