The Devouring Gray(26)

It was what Violet had wanted them to say.

So she told the Hawthornes and Isaac what she felt they needed to know. Violet didn’t think she could explain Rosie, or how she’d hallucinated her, without bursting into tears. She didn’t see why she should tell them that her information had come from Harper, either, and her long-dead uncle was none of their business. But the Gray, and Orpheus, and her blackouts…all of that came spilling out.

“If I really brought Orpheus back…” Violet had reached the end. “What does that mean? What am I? How does that even work?” Her voice shook with the weight of the words—she couldn’t help it. Saying it made it real. And if it was real, maybe, just maybe, she could save Rosie after all.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her sister standing in front of her, only this time, Rosie would actually be there. Violet would be able to hug her.

And Rosie would tell her, with a loving smirk, to stop being so melodramatic, because everything was finally okay.

“I think I understand now.” Shadows flickered on the wall above Justin’s head, spiraling outward across the paneled stone like leaf-laden branches unfurling from behind his neck. “You’ve already figured out that Four Paths isn’t just a town. Technically, it’s a prison.”

Frank Anders’s bleach-white eyes swam to the front of Violet’s mind. Her stomach jolted. “A prison? For that…that thing in the Gray? Then why are we here, too?”

“It’s in our bloodlines,” Justin said, which didn’t exactly calm Violet’s unease. “It might be easier if we show you.”

Justin hurried over to the rows of shelves, returning a moment later with a yellowing scroll of paper. It was only when he unrolled it across the table and began to weight the corners down with smooth red stones that Violet realized what she was looking at.

It was a map of Four Paths, clearly drawn by hand. The woods were everywhere, hundreds of tiny green-and-brown etchings bleeding onto the winding path of Main Street as it forked around the town square. Violet had noticed before that Four Paths was far more forest than town, but the overwhelming presence of the trees was even more prevalent from a bird’s-eye view.

Her eyes traced the tiny columns of the town hall, pausing on a small, eerily lifelike drawing of what was clearly her new house. The words Saunders Territory were inked beneath the manor.

This was one of four such “territories” that had been marked on the map. As Violet glanced at the Carlisle family’s rustic stone cottage to the east and the Hawthornes in the south, she realized she recognized the other names.

There was no house in the western part of town, just a blacked-out bit of map with the words Sullivan Territory beneath it. Violet could make out the outline of a house under the blotched ink, but someone had clearly gone to great pains to strike it from the picture.

Violet’s eyes flickered to Isaac, whose face had gone perfectly still. “What happened there?”

May started to say something, but Isaac cut her off. “Nothing good.”

“And nothing relevant to our current conversation,” added May, her voice sharp and shrill. “What really matters is here.” Her pale pink fingernail tapped the words written at the top: “The Founders’ Map.”

Violet’s brain spun as she remembered what those women had called her back at the Saunders manor.

What Justin had said to her in the Diner.

How everyone at school had looked at him, and May, and Isaac.

“We’re descended from the town founders, aren’t we?” she asked, raising her gaze to meet Justin’s. “That’s why our names are on this map. That creed is about our families. And that’s why I can’t go anywhere without people staring at me.”

The surprise on his face told her she’d been right. “I’m not sure how you don’t know this,” said Justin. “But yes. Four people started this town in the 1840s—Hetty Hawthorne. Lydia Saunders. Richard Sullivan. Thomas Carlisle.”

The reverence in his voice didn’t escape her. Neither did the fact that Harper was from a founder family, too.

“Why does everyone care about that so much?”

“Because the founders are more than just people to Four Paths,” said May. “When this town first began, they were worshipped. People called them the Four Deities. Together, they represented the four paths to salvation—hence, our name.”

So Violet hadn’t imagined the way everyone had looked at them. It was like they were gods.

She wasn’t sure why that thought sat so poorly with her as she clutched her coffee mug. “What did they do, exactly, that made people worship them?”

The woodsy scent Violet had noticed before seemed stronger now. As the light outside the room faded, the shadows of the objects on the shelves had grown long and slender, spilling onto the wall behind the Hawthorne siblings.

May smiled. “They defeated a monster.”

“You mean the thing that lives in the Gray?” said Violet. “Because it doesn’t seem all that defeated to me.”

This time, Isaac was the one who answered. “This monster has been in Four Paths for a long time,” he said. “It was—is—a creature unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. Normal weapons couldn’t harm it. It was smart enough to get inside your head, see your thoughts, even your future. It could destroy you with a single touch.” His eyes met hers again, and Violet thought of what he’d said just moments ago, about breaking things. “And it was difficult—maybe even impossible—to kill.”