The Devouring Gray(5)

She caught sight of crinkled red yarn and frizzy hair sticking out from behind a couch in what was probably the living room. Violet sighed and walked on until she reached the sun-drenched foyer.

When she swung the front door open, her mother was leaning against the porch railing, scowling.

“Thank god.” Juniper hurried inside. “I swear, this place has always hated me.”

Violet trailed after Juniper, stopping when her mother paused at the half-open door to the living room. Daria was visible now, her knees drawn up to her chest, the dress spilling across her front like a woolly bloodstain. Her hands were embedded in her wiry hair. Saunders hair—Violet had heard her mother call it that multiple times, always sounding annoyed, like their distant Scottish ancestors were to blame for all their problems.

Juniper placed a hand on Violet’s shoulder. Violet stiffened—she couldn’t remember the last time her mother had touched her. Even before Rosie’s accident, there had always been several inches of deliberate space between them. “I’ll handle my sister. You can start unloading the U-Haul.”

There was something soft in her mother’s voice, almost apologetic. It was worse than polite disinterest, the same way her talking to Violet in the car was worse than ignoring her. Because it meant Juniper could care about her if she wanted to.

Violet shrugged out of her mother’s grip. “Fine.”

She pretended to walk to the front door but turned back after a few paces, watching her mother kneel beside Daria. Indistinct words echoed through the foyer. Although Violet couldn’t make them out, she heard the underlying notes of rage and regret.

Daria braced her hand against Juniper’s shoulder—to support herself or push her sister away, Violet didn’t know. They rose together, a four-legged beast backlit by the sun streaming through the picture windows. Their figures blurred into shadowed, indistinct silhouettes, and, as Violet squinted into the hazy light, she could’ve sworn she saw a flash of turquoise hair behind their heads.





Right when Justin’s heart was about to impale itself on his rib cage, he heard three sharp blasts of sound from the side of the track.

“That’s enough!” Coach Lowell barked, lowering his whistle.

Justin sagged with relief as his pace slowed from a sprint into a steady jog. He normally looked forward to practice, but preseason conditioning had melted him into an exhausted, sweaty puddle on the track behind Four Paths High School. The rest of the cross-country team straggled behind him, panting and swearing softly as they staggered into a cool-down lap. Next week, he’d start his senior year of high school—his last year with this team.

“Time?” he called out, doubling back, slowing from a jog to a walk. Trees crowded at the edge of the athletic field, their roots rippling like veins beneath the puckering asphalt. Kids often wiped out on that section of the track during meets, but they were never locals.

Justin had grown up in those woods. But now, having those tree trunks so close to him, those branches crowding above his head, he felt a spark of unease kindle in his chest.

He couldn’t shake the feeling they were reaching for him.

Coach Lowell frowned down at the stopwatch in his meaty hand. “Hawthorne,” he said brusquely. “Come here.”

Four Paths High School was too small and underfunded for a real athletics program, but the cross-country team went to meets, and sometimes they even won races. Mostly Justin was the one winning races. But judging from the scowl on Coach Lowell’s face, he didn’t think he was being summoned for a congratulations.

“Look at this.” Coach Lowell thrust the time sheet in Justin’s face. Justin gaped at the time beside his name.

He hadn’t run a lap that slowly since freshman year—hell, he hadn’t run a lap that slowly since middle school.

“What’s going on?” asked Coach Lowell sharply. His dark brown face was furrowed with annoyance. “Gonzales almost had you on the third leg there.”

Justin bristled. “I could lap Cal Gonzales in my sleep.”

“The team looks to you to set an example, Hawthorne. If you’re not focused, they’re not focused.”

Justin dug the toe of his sneaker into the fading asphalt. Coach was right. He was off.

It just seemed so petty to be concerned about his running performance when a man was dead. He couldn’t stop wondering how this latest death, this latest man, had felt in the moments before the Gray swallowed him whole.

The man had a name. Hap Whitley. The obituary said he’d worked with his father at the auto repair shop. Justin had spent fifteen minutes studying the picture they’d pulled for the Four Paths Gazette: the backward baseball cap pulled low over loose curls, the slight squint, the shy grin.

It had been two weeks, and he still couldn’t stop picturing what the man in that photo must’ve looked like, before they’d had him cremated and tucked away in the mausoleum.

The Saunders family had arrived today, just as his sister had predicted. Half the town had seen their shiny car on its way to the Saunders manor’s driveway. Justin had been expecting this. But he hadn’t been expecting his mother to call Justin and May into her office and order them to keep their distance from the new founders.

“They don’t know how this town works,” she’d said. “They’re most likely a dead branch of the bloodline. Don’t burden them with their heritage.”