The Devouring Gray(36)

Harper swallowed down a lump of relief that Violet hadn’t judged her, wasn’t looking at her like she was broken. “It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. You said you were stuck in the Gray for days?”

Harper nodded.

Violet’s dark eyes filled with a quiet, burning fury. “I could barely stand the Gray for a few minutes. So if you could endure that for days, then you’re strong as hell, and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit.”

The noise that emerged from Harper’s throat hit the exact midpoint between relief and disbelief. She usually felt weak unless she was wielding a blade. All she had ever been able to focus on was what she’d failed to do, not what she’d achieved.

But now she saw a glimpse of what she might be—who she could’ve been, maybe, if things had gone differently.

“I don’t need the Hawthornes and Isaac for this,” said Violet, although she sounded a little uneasy about it. “I’m done. I can’t support anyone who treated you that way.”

She whipped her phone out of her pocket and began to type furiously.

Panic welled up in Harper’s throat. “What are you doing?”

Violet tapped her phone, then looked up, a grim smile on her face. “Telling the Hawthornes their services are no longer needed.”

Harper gulped.

She hadn’t even been sure if Violet would believe her. She never would’ve dreamed that she would react like this.

“So, where do we start?” said Violet. “How can we find some potential leads?”

Harper thought about it. One clear answer came to mind. “The town hall is the easiest place to find information about the founders. It’s basically a museum. All the interesting stuff about the powers isn’t on public display, but there are still hints, I bet. It’s worth looking.”

“We could go today?”

Harper thought of Brett and Nora, and frowned. “I’ve got some babysitting to do. Tomorrow?”

“Fine with me.” That grim smile was still fixed on her face, her expression frozen in place like a body in rigor mortis.

Harper tried to look strong and reassuring as Violet walked away. But even as her victory began to dawn on her, she knew it would not come without a cost.

She wasn’t sure how yet, but she would pay for crossing the Hawthornes.



Violet walked down Main Street, her heeled boots clicking briskly across the cobblestones. The air felt soothing and balmy against her skin. Red-tinged trees bent across the quaint stone buildings, their chestnut trunks shining in the sunlight.

Four Paths had its charms, if you could ignore the fact that it was also a monster prison she apparently had some ancestral obligation to deal with.

“Worst magical destiny ever,” she muttered as she stomped over the founders’ symbol embedded in the square at the center of Main Street and climbed the steps to the town hall. Red-brown columns soared up on either side of her, stopping just beneath two stained-glass picture windows that depicted—what else?—a forest. The roof narrowed into a spire with a giant bell hanging in the center that reminded Violet of the spires at the top of the Saunders manor.

But she wasn’t here to admire the architecture.

She was here for clues.

Violet had planned to do this with Harper after school, but something had come up on Harper’s end. She didn’t really mind, though—she could handle a museum on her own.

She pushed open the door and stepped into an echoing stone hall. Dim light spilled in through the stained-glass windows above her head, casting everything in shifting browns and greens. Violet turned in a circle, her stomach tightening as she realized she was facing down a dozen portraits of stern-looking men and women with frizzy hair and clever eyes.

She knew, even before she peered at the first placard, that most of them shared her last name.

It was incredibly disarming to be faced with such unavoidable, permanent evidence of a heritage Violet had never known. A strange familiarity rose in her as she recognized the animals featured in a few portraits. The garter snake that was coiled around Helene Saunders’s ghostly pale neck hung above the living room mantel, while the speckled falcon perched on Cal Saunders’s dark brown hand graced the front hallway.

Companions. Like Orpheus.

They were mayoral portraits, as it turned out. The dates of their terms started in 1848, and they didn’t stray from the Saunders family name until 1985, when Hiram Saunders was replaced by Geoff Sullivan.

The names traded off to different founders after that—a Carlisle, another Sullivan—until four years ago, when Mayor Storey had been sworn in.

“You’re not going to find your ritual here.” It wasn’t Harper’s voice. “Just a lot of pictures of dead people. And people who wish they were dead.”

“You’re cheerful,” Violet said as, behind her, the door to the town hall swung shut. “Did Justin ask you to follow me here?”

“I don’t stalk people,” said Isaac, joining her beside the portraits. His backpack hung carelessly off one shoulder. There was a beat-up book stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. “Even if I’m asked nicely.”

“So then what are you doing here?”

“Coming home.”

Violet frowned at him. “You live in the town hall?”