The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  The form flickered weakly in the air.

  You should not… have done this.… The words were laborious and carefully formed, as if each one had taken tremendous effort. I… am weak… and your cards together are… too much… so tangled.… My control is… fading.…

  “If you know how to help us,” Justin said, “please. Tell us.”

  The Beast’s form flickered in the air, and Harper wondered if it was too weak to materialize. The voice felt softer and weaker than she had ever heard it before.

  I can tell you the ritual… the founders did.… They… we… They… met at the heart of things… and renounced their titles as the deities.… They gave their power back to the forest.…

  Harper struggled to keep up. “Can you tell us how to do it again?”

  The Beast’s form flickered again, and for a panicked moment Harper thought it was fading away. But then a sound drifted through the room like an ancient radio. It was the song the Church of the Four Deities had sung, but the lyrics were different. Harper had never heard these words before, soft and strange, and yet it felt as if she had always known them, the same way the voices that were singing them were new to her and yet just as familiar as her own name.

  “Of course,” she whispered, understanding surging through her.

  Then she saw the tear glistening in the corner of Justin’s eye—gray and iridescent. Harper followed it down his cheek—and then her throat clenched with dread. Because she could see something wriggling beneath the skin of his jawline. A root.

  “I think…” Justin began, reaching a hand toward his cheek. “I think I’m…”

  And then he shuddered and jolted backward, the staticky presence in the room fading away.

  Harper lunged across the circle. Cards scattered everywhere as she gripped his shoulder, unable to hide her panic.

  “Justin,” she whispered. “Oh, Justin, what did you do?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, shaking his head. “You got what you needed.”

  Something was seeping through his shirt at the abdomen. Harper released his shoulder and yanked it upward, revealing his stomach. Gray veins pulsed beneath his skin.

  “It’s not supposed to hurt you,” she whispered, horrified. “You’re a founder.”

  “But I don’t have powers,” Justin said weakly, another iridescent tear sliding down his cheek. She could see the roots now, clustering beneath his skin. She had no idea how he’d hidden them for so long. “I’ve been corrupted since the lake. I figured it out when we got back. It’s moving more slowly than it did for the rest of the people who got sick, but it’s still spreading.” He sighed. “So I thought I could give you all a fighting chance instead of being a total liability.”

  He locked eyes with her, and the determination in them surprised her: There was no hint of regret, no panic, only acceptance.

  “You should have told us,” Isaac said, looking perturbed as Justin turned back around. “If you’ve been corrupted this whole time…”

  “I know.” Justin looked at them all, shamefaced. “I just… I wanted to do something, okay? I wanted to matter, for once.”

  Harper’s heart ached. She understood all too well what it was to feel powerless in a group of people who could do so much more than you. She knew he hadn’t asked to be corrupted. But that didn’t change the fact that he had just gone from an ally to a potential threat.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said quietly.

  Justin grinned at her. “Okay—”

  “Not like that.” She glared at him. “We need to know how bad it is.”

  Dread coursed through her as he pulled his sweater over his head. He turned around, displaying his back, and her heart sank into her toes.

  Silver veins snaked from his waistline up to his shoulders, the skin around them gray and iridescent. The roots had settled here, twitching slowly but not moving; they had joined together in a sort of spiral on his back, like a plant that had grown beneath his skin. There were far too many to cut out. Far too many to destroy.

  “Harper.” It was Violet’s voice. She turned to see her friend crouched gently beside her, eyeing Justin with obvious trepidation. “Get back.”

  “He’s our friend,” Harper protested. “And he can’t infect us—”

  Violet gripped her shoulder and tugged her away. “He’s still dangerous.”

  A convulsion ran through him, and his shoulders twitched, his eyes glazing over. He dropped to his knees, coughing, then wiped away gray slime. When he looked up, Harper blanched.

  Once again, she was staring at the Beast as it wore Justin’s face, as it stared back at her from those flat, dark eyes.

  May didn’t remember how she’d returned to her own bed, but she was warm and comfortable, and the room was dark. She rolled over, yawning, and stretched, wincing at the soreness in her joints as she sat up.

  And gasped.

  Dried blood was crusted at the tips of her fingers, rust-brown and flaky, and she could feel something on her cheeks—like a skincare mask left on too long. She swung out of bed and rushed to the vanity in the corner. At the sight of the tear tracks on her face, blood that had long since dried, it all came back to her.

  Richard. Her power. The cauldron. The Beast.

  She walked toward the window, dread pounding in her chest, and yanked up the storm shutters. Outside her bedroom was a world gone gray. Fog blanketed the woods beyond the backyard, rendering it nearly invisible, and ash coated the ground, bits of iridescence and bark mixing with the dead leaves. The tree itself looked worse than ever, veins standing out starkly against the thinning trunk, fleshy and bloated. The sight made May feel ill.

  Four Paths was dying, and it was all her fault.

  A knock sounded on the door, and May jumped, whirling around, scanning the room for anything she could use as a weapon.

  “May?” It was her mother’s voice. “Are you awake?”

  May swallowed her panic and opened the door. “Mom?”

  Half of her was expecting the Beast again. But she knew immediately that this was the real Augusta. It wasn’t just her light blue eyes—it was the way she carried herself, the sharp expression on her face.

  “So you’ve seen it,” she said, gesturing toward the window.

  May nodded. “Are we… in the Gray?”

  That didn’t quite feel right, but nothing outside looked right, either.

  “No,” Augusta said grimly. “The Gray seems to be bleeding into Four Paths instead.”

  “Good thing the evacuation happened,” May said dully.

  “Yes,” Augusta said. “Good thing.” She sat down on the bed and fixed May with an expectant stare. “Now—would you like to explain to me why I found you collapsed on the front porch several hours ago, covered in slime?”

  May stared at her hands. “You won’t like it.”

  Augusta’s laugh sounded more like a bark. “Try me.”

  May’s head spun, contemplating all she had learned, all the Beast had told her, all she’d ever believed Augusta could tolerate before she told her to leave for good.

  She had nothing left to lose anymore. So she explained everything, from the rituals she’d done as a child to those final moments in the Gray. It was like sucking out the poison Richard had pumped into her veins.

  “I never wanted any of this to happen,” May finished, aware as she said so of how false the words sounded. She’d wanted to be important, after all. She had asked for this, pushed aside red flags, deceived everyone in her life just to feel special. “I messed up. I ruined everything. I’m sorry.”

  She was staring down at her hands, trembling a little, when she heard her mother’s voice.

  “You didn’t ruin everything.” Augusta didn’t sound furious, as May had feared. She sounded almost… gentle.

  “I caused the corruption,” May whispered, looking up at her. “People are dying because of me.”

  “This is not your fault,” Augusta said hollowly.
“It’s mine.”

  “What?” May had never in her life heard those words come out of her mother’s mouth.

  “You heard me.” Augusta sighed, looking deeply uncomfortable. “I miscalculated how far your father could reach. How talented he is at twisting minds and hearts.”

  “He didn’t manipulate me. I invited him here.” Shame burned through May as she thought of how easy it had been for him to talk her into pulling at the future more, spreading the corruption further. Her desperation for affection and validation had overridden her better judgment in favor of some foolish quest to save everyone. She’d been frustrated with Justin for constantly playing the hero, only to go and do the exact same thing—with far more disastrous results. “I worked with him. I trusted him.”

  “Yes, you invited him here,” Augusta said. “But you only did so because I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. There are some burdens I hoped you’d never have to bear. But I see now that keeping them from you has only hurt us both.” She hesitated. “Remember what I told you before, May? About your father’s interest in Four Paths? From the moment you were born, it was always centered on you and Justin. He explained to me that he had a theory about how to re-create the original ritual the founders did to imprison the Beast, but this time, the ritual would kill it. But there was a catch: It would require a different bonding process. And you two would be, effectively, his first experiments.”

  “So you knew about the ritual?” May’s head swam. “Did you know that I actually did it?”

  “No,” Augusta said. “I was so horrified by the idea that I threw him out. But somehow, he always found a way back in. He’d send you two presents, or he’d make some ridiculous grand gesture, and I would relent.”

  May’s stomach churned. She could remember Ezra flittering in and out of their lives, could remember the toys he’d bought them. She had always thought of Augusta as the harsh one for continuing to kick him out.

  “You never told me any of this. Why?”

  “Because you loved him,” Augusta said simply. “Because he’s your father, and even if our relationship wasn’t going to work out, I thought you deserved to have one with him. And up until a few weeks ago, when you came to me with questions about changing the future, I thought he hadn’t gone through with it.”

  “But you haven’t let him back in for the last seven years,” May said slowly. “What changed?”

  Augusta’s face paled.

  “Something happened the day he left. We had a fight… but it went too far.”

  And May remembered then, that old memory swimming back into her brain. The screaming. Don’t go downstairs, May. Justin standing in front of her, shielding her, and when she’d rushed into the front hallway—

  There had been a red mark on her mother’s cheek.

  Nausea coursed through her.

  “He hit you,” she whispered.

  Augusta blanched. “I thought you didn’t see.”

  “I didn’t.” May’s mind knitted it together then. She’d heard it happening. Justin had run up the stairs and told her not to go down there, and when she had, Ezra had been storming for the door, his bag in his hand. She couldn’t imagine how painful it must have been, after that, for her mother to watch her rush after him, to beg her dad to take her with him. “But I should have figured it out. Of course you didn’t want him to come back after that. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry—” Her voice broke, and then there was nothing left but tears.

  She was breaking, sliding into oblivion, struggling to reckon with a family that was stitched together by nothing more than the ways they’d hurt one another. No wonder Justin had chased her into the forest. He’d kept this secret all these years alongside her mother.

  “You didn’t know,” Augusta whispered. May collapsed into her, and Augusta held her like she was a child again, stroking her hair as she sobbed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she choked out, clinging to her mother for dear life. “He won.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Augusta drew away from her, and May stared at her mother, her eyes wide. “He made a crucial mistake. He thought he could beat you down until you’d follow him anywhere. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

  For the first time, May did not see her mother as an obstacle or an enemy. She saw her for who she was. Selfish and corrupt, frightened and angry, yet still fighting with every breath she had to protect the people she loved.

  May’s father had been wrong about Augusta and Justin. Maybe he was wrong about her, too.

  “No,” she whispered. “It isn’t.”

  “I’ve got a plan to end this,” Augusta said gently. “All you have to do is listen to me.”

  Unease pricked at May’s chest. Part of her wanted nothing more than to fold herself back into her mother’s embrace and nod. But all that would do would be going from being one parent’s tool to the other’s. Her mother might not have been a monster, but May knew she couldn’t fully be trusted.

  “I’m the only one who’s seen Dad in action these last few weeks,” May said, “and I’m the only one strong enough to beat him. I need you to listen to me if we’re going to take him down, okay?”

  Her whole life she’d looked to someone else to give her validation, be it Augusta or Richard or the rest of Four Paths. But all that really mattered was that she knew what she was capable of.

  She had the power to break this vicious cycle for good. She’d known that was true, but now at last she let herself believe it. Let herself trust that her own voice was enough, that she didn’t need someone else to tell her so.

  Augusta stared at her, and May stared back, unbroken, unbending.

  “Okay, then,” her mother said at last, the respect in her voice as sweet to May as honey. “What did you have in mind?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  They quarantined Justin in Isaac’s bedroom. It was brutal work, and he writhed and wailed as roots pulsed down his back.

  He didn’t attack them as Violet had feared he might, but she was still worried enough about his mental state to remove everything from the room he could possibly use to hurt either himself or others. When they were done, there was hardly anything left besides the mattress he was lying on, wincing at the ceiling.

  “It’s not… going so well,” he murmured. He was drifting in and out—sometimes it was the Beast in there, sometimes it was Justin. Violet was all too familiar with the feeling.

  “You have to fight it,” she said. “You’re still you. It’s still your mind. I promise.”

  “I’m… sorry,” he croaked, locking eyes with her. “Wanted… to change things. But not like this.”

  “I know,” Violet said. And she did know. “You saved me when the Church kidnapped me. Now we’re going to save you, okay?”

  Outside the room, she found herself pacing back and forth in the kitchen, wrecked with exhaustion. Orpheus rubbed against her legs in a futile attempt to comfort her, but she was far beyond that.

  Things had moved so fast, she’d had very little time to process what Juniper had told her—or to worry about her. Now she let it all surge through her, utterly overwhelmed by its harshness. She had no idea where her mother was or if she was all right. And their last moments together before they’d been separated by the corruption had been a fight.

  Violet was sad that Juniper hadn’t told her the truth earlier, but she also understood the rationale behind her mother’s lie. She had to believe for her own sanity that soon they’d get the chance to talk all this out in person.

  For now, she had to focus. Justin was sick, and Richard had May in his clutches. They knew how to save them both, but the battle to come would not be easy.

  She had the feeling that, one way or another, this fight would be her last.

  Harper did not know how to say goodbye. She’d asked for a few minutes alone in the quarantine room, and it felt pathetic to spend them clutching her sword and choking back tears next to her not-quite-boyfriend. But the sight of him
wincing with pain on Isaac’s bare mattress was too much for her to bear. It had occurred to her many times that their lives were in danger. But never before had it felt so immediate. They were so fragile, all of them, and Harper hated that the feeling she’d had at the lake had come to pass. That she hadn’t been able to save him after all.

  Justin’s blond hair was slicked back against his forehead, his skin sweaty and discolored from the corruption. Nobody had bothered to put his shirt back on, so Harper could see every root wriggling beneath his arms and burrowing deeper into his abdomen.

  “You asshole,” she whispered, staring at his slightly parted lips. “You should have told us you were sick. You should have let us try to help you—”

  “Harper.” His eyes fluttered open. His voice was weak, but unmistakably his own. “I thought I heard you insulting me.”

  Harper had walked into the quarantine room like it was a morgue, braced for a body that was already too far gone. Finding Justin instead, shuddering with pain but still himself, was almost worse.

  “It worked,” she said softly. “You woke up.”

  “It wasn’t… easy.” His eyes focused and unfocused. “But it’s a little easier… when you’re here.”

  “We’re going to stop this,” she said fiercely. “We’re going to help you.”

  “Don’t—” He coughed, then lifted a shaking hand to his mouth. It came away gray and glistening. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

  Harper realized dimly that she had lost the battle against her tears, but these were neither iridescent nor crimson—they were ordinary, and that only made them all the more painful as they rolled down her cheeks.

  “You’re going to get better,” she said, her voice rising in volume. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “You’re beautiful when you’re stubborn,” Justin murmured. “Have I ever told you that?”

  Harper sniffled. “I think the corruption’s reached your brain.”

  “Nah.” Justin’s mouth quirked up into a half smile. “I’ve thought that… for years.”