The Devouring Gray(42)

September 22, 1984

The founding families weren’t meant to run this town. I see that now.

Violet turned the page, her heart thudding in her throat, but the rest of the journal was missing. Every remaining page had been torn out, leaving behind nothing but bits of yellow loose-leaf residue in its wake.





Violet couldn’t stop thinking about Stephen Saunders’s diary. She’d taken it home from the town archives and perused it constantly over the past few days, making notes and discussing potential theories with Harper.

They were sitting on ancient lawn chairs in Violet’s backyard, the journal spread across Harper’s lap. The afternoon sun sent auburn highlights through her dark, wiry curls as she inspected the torn-out edges at the end of the notebook. Violet had reluctantly told her about Isaac’s role in finding the journal, expecting her to be upset, but she’d just smiled.

“So even Justin’s best friend is turning on him,” she said. “Perfect.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?” Orpheus stirred gently from his seat in Violet’s lap, butting his head against her hand until she scratched him between the ears.

“I don’t hate him,” said Harper, lowering the notebook into her lap. “I just want him to realize that everything his family stands for is complete garbage, and suffer accordingly.”

“You can’t judge someone by their family,” said Violet, thinking of how little she and Juniper had to say to each other.

“You can when it’s Justin Hawthorne,” said Harper, sighing. “His family is everything to him. He genuinely thinks the Hawthornes are meant to be in charge, because that’s what he’s grown up hearing. And no matter how many people die, he’ll always put his mom and sister first. He’s always been like that. Even before the ritual.”

The bitterness in Harper’s voice was palpable. There was pain there that she had carried for years. Pain that seemed to stretch far beyond her ritual.

Violet understood pain. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Harper’s dark eyes widened, and it was like a window opening—there was still misery in her gaze, but now there was hope there, too. “Are you sure you want to listen?”

Violet remembered herself and Rosie lying side by side on her bed, talking about all their worries, both the petty ones and the deeper wounds, the ones they were scared would never quite heal. It had never failed to make her feel better. Maybe it would work for Harper, too.

“Of course I don’t mind,” Violet told Harper. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Okay, then,” Harper said quietly. “Look, you’ll probably think this is pathetic. But Justin and I…What he did…it felt like a breakup. Even though we weren’t together.”

“So you had a crush,” said Violet. “That’s not pathetic. Actually, it explains a lot.”

It did. Violet was embarrassed that she hadn’t noticed anything romantic about Justin and Harper’s obvious baggage. She’d been too focused on her ritual and her blackouts to really care.

She was starting to care now, though. Even though it meant that she could feel Four Paths starting to grow on her, like roots burrowing into her heart.

Harper sighed. “Haven’t you ever had feelings for someone, even though you knew it was a bad idea?”

There had been Gracie Coors, back in seventh grade, who Violet had thought was cute until Gracie said Violet was going to hell for having crushes on girls and boys. She’d cried to Rosie about that one for days. Connor something, who she’d met at the one Ossining party Rosie had managed to drag her to. They’d been making out in the basement when they were interrupted by his girlfriend. But neither of those seemed to qualify.

“Sort of,” she said, stroking Orpheus’s back. “I don’t really date.”

“Okay, well, have you ever had your heart broken?”

That was easier. Rosie’s death had broken everything. “Yes.”

“Then you know how badly it hurts,” said Harper, looking at her. “But the thing is, it hurts more because I never should’ve expected anything else. Founder kids aren’t supposed to date one another. And he never would’ve chosen me over his family. Even if my ritual had gone perfectly.”

Violet stared down the slope of the hill, to the place where tangled weeds and uncut grass met the towering chestnut oaks of the forest. “Would you have chosen him?”

Harper lowered her head. The sun was sinking behind her, turning her into a silhouette, framed in gold.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

And Violet knew this was it. The root of all her anger. That she had expected more from Justin than he’d been capable of giving her.

“I think you shouldn’t feel foolish for caring,” she said softly, thinking about how much Harper had just poured out to her. How much worse she herself had felt since she’d stopped talking to Rosie about her problems. “My dad died when I was five. For a while, I thought, because I couldn’t really remember him, it hadn’t made that much of a difference. That I couldn’t grieve for someone I didn’t know. But when I lost him…I lost his family, too. I thought maybe coming here would help—but the Saunders family isn’t what I was expecting. And all I can think about is that I’m not feeling any of the things I’m supposed to. Like there’s just some part of me that’s always going to be missing.” A lump swelled in Violet’s throat, and she realized that she was dangerously close to talking about Rosie—something she wasn’t yet ready to do.