The Devouring Gray(38)
Something about the man—slim and pale and looking off to the side, his hair streaked with gray—made her uneasy. Hetty Hawthorne had painted a dark smudge of something that might have been blood on the dagger he was tucking into his waistcoat.
But it was Lydia Saunders who primarily held Violet’s attention.
This was the woman at the root of all her problems. She’d signed up her family for generations of strife and struggle, and for what? Powers that seemed to hurt just as much as they helped?
Violet’s eyes drifted to the placards beneath the paintings, frowning as she noticed a distinct similarity between all four portraits.
“They died on the same day.” She turned away from Lydia’s slight, upturned smirk. “I’m guessing that’s not a coincidence.”
“Truly, your powers of deduction are remarkable,” said Isaac. “The founders sacrificed themselves to create the Gray and bind the monster to Four Paths. Which is why we’re all still so obsessed with them. Everybody loves a martyr—or four.”
Violet swallowed, hard. “So they knew it would kill them?”
Isaac shrugged. “That’s what the town believes.”
She took a step toward him. “What about you? What do you believe?”
A shadow passed across his face. “I think our ancestors went looking for a monster. And I don’t think they realized what the cost would be once they found it.”
The weight of his words stayed with Violet as she began searching through the filing cabinets and rifling through the bookshelves, all under the watchful gaze of the founders’ portraits.
When they’d first arrived, Violet had wondered why the archive room—a place that seemed important—had been left virtually abandoned. But after just a few minutes of sorting through dusty books and articles, she realized why.
Most of the information stored here was completely useless. Whoever had maintained these records had clearly believed in preserving everything they could find, from supply lists and order slips to ancient newspaper articles about people long dead.
Worst of all, there was no method of cataloging or organization that Violet could see. For a place that cared so much about its roots, the town was terrible at actually documenting them.
“Hey,” said Violet, glancing at Isaac and noting the red spots on his cheeks. “Are you blushing?”
He jerked his head up from the stack of papers he’d been reading. “What? No. I just…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, I found some love letters. Between Helene Saunders and Malcolm Carlisle. Forbidden love, super sordid.”
Violet frowned. “Forbidden? Why?”
“Founder descendants aren’t supposed to pair off,” said Isaac. “When two founders have kids, it cancels out their powers. Since only one branch of the family inherits powers anyway, competition is fierce, and no one wants to guarantee that their kids will be powerless.”
“Oh,” said Violet. She’d perched on a chair beside one of the bookshelves, building a nest of discarded materials on the floor beneath her. Her eyes scanned the picture of something called the Founders’ Pageant—four grinning people wearing crowns and waving at an adoring crowd, like a warped version of homecoming.
“Does this Founders’ Pageant thing still happen?”
“Every damn year, at the Founders’ Day festival,” said Isaac, who was sorting through a filing cabinet a few feet away. “Actually, as the only Saunders founder who’s semifunctional, you’ll probably have to participate.”
Violet scowled at the back of his head. “Do I look like the kind of person who participates in things?”
Isaac shrugged. “You get to wear a crown. People clap. It’s a morale booster.”
“Clap for what?” said Violet. “Justin said three people have died this year alone.”
“So you understand, then,” Isaac said, “why it’s so important to pretend everything is fine.”
They fell silent for a few minutes after that.
She glanced up at the angles of Isaac’s profile, his brow furrowed in concentration. Several buttons at the collar of his flannel shirt had come undone, exposing a line of crude discoloration that marred his throat. She was close enough to him to see the swollen, mottled flesh contract and expand as he breathed.
A scar.
Isaac caught her glance. An instant later, his hand was redoing the loose buttons with a kind of frenetic ease that told Violet he’d had a lot of practice.
“Don’t ask,” he said sharply.
“I wasn’t going to,” she said, and meant it. She could tell from the way his eyes widened that he believed her.
Everyone deserved the chance to tell their own story when they were ready, not when they were forced to.
She reached for the next thing on the bookshelf, realizing as she examined the binding that she recognized this kind of notebook. She’d used the same type of splotchy, black-and-white composition book in elementary school.
Violet flipped it open to the first page. The words were handwritten.
The Diary of Stephen Saunders, January 1984—.
March 23, 1984
In nineteen days, my life is going to change.
I’ve decided to write in this journal because I want to be able to look back and see how things were when everything was just getting started. My life, I mean.