The Devouring Gray(54)

Justin realized, his chest tightening, that this was the same animal he’d watched Violet resurrect days earlier.

It moved like a cat. It meowed like a cat.

But when he reached down to pet it, its body was far too cold for something living. He jerked his hand away, his heart thudding in his chest.

Here was evidence that what Violet could do was real, and powerful, and deeply, deeply strange.

Justin tried knocking on the bedroom door, but when there was no response, Isaac finally lost his patience and tugged the door open.

Violet’s room was dark and shuttered, curtains pulled tightly across the windows, save for the light spilling in through the doorway. That slice of hallway light illuminated a pile of boxes on the far wall of Violet’s room, each marked with the word ROSIE.

Harper’s eyes widened as she took them in from her perch on the edge of the bed, but before she could open her mouth, Violet’s voice rang out.

“Get out!” The covers stirred, then parted, revealing Violet’s rumpled dark hair and her pale, indignant face. “Oh my god, you’re all here? Who the fuck let you in?”

“Your mother,” said Isaac. “Lovely woman. You inherited her charm.”

“We’re sorry to hear what happened to your aunt.” Justin could tell from the pain blooming on her face that his words had been a mistake.

“I asked you to come here last night.” Violet drew her comforter around her shoulders, like a cape. “None of you listened. So why the hell would I want you here now?”

“You let Harper in,” said Isaac.

Harper glared at him. “Yeah, because I actually feel bad.”

“You think we don’t?” said May.

“Enough.” Violet’s voice was ragged and furious. “All of you. Leave. Even you, Harper. Go argue somewhere else.”

Harper was visibly distressed, but she nodded, sliding off the bed. “I understand.”

The look she shot Justin as she elbowed past him made him glad she wasn’t saying whatever she was thinking.

It would probably be awful.

It would probably be true.

Justin took a hesitant step back as Harper slammed the door behind her. Isaac had been right: This type of pain was beyond him.

He did not know what to say. He did not know how to help her. And Justin suddenly wanted nothing more than to bolt, away from Harper, down the stairs, and out of that horrible, empty house.

But Isaac’s hand landed on his shoulder before he could move.

“Hey,” he said. “I got this one.”

Before Justin could say anything in response, Isaac pushed open the door to Violet’s bedroom and stepped inside.





Violet’s life had been a numb, quiet haze since the bottom of the stairs, since the resurrected body.

She could only remember it in flashes—Daria’s body being loaded into the ambulance. The EMTs shaking their heads as they spoke to Juniper, her mother’s face crumpling like a discarded piece of paper.

Daria’s blood on her hands, dried into a coppery-brown residue.

Augusta Hawthorne’s face slackening with relief when she saw Juniper standing by the staircase.

And finally, she and Juniper, the most alone they had ever been, sitting beside each other at the end of her bed. Orpheus was curled up at their feet, his yellow eyes staring mournfully at the door.

Her mother looked smaller than Violet had ever seen her, draped in a giant terry-cloth robe, feet shoved hastily into a pair of beat-up sneakers. Violet watched her twist a bit of red yarn around her fingers. She must’ve kept it after the ambulance took Daria away. Just like the bracelet clasped around Violet’s wrist.

“You know,” Juniper said, “I came back here because of you.”

Violet looked at her mother’s face. Without the makeup, she looked younger. More like the girl Violet had seen in the photograph. “Why?”

“Watching you…after everything…it reminded me how much losing Stephen hurt. It made me realize how much I’d regret it if I never got to see Daria again.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t live with that.”

Violet flinched. “After everything? You mean after Rosie died, Mom. You can say it. I won’t break.”

“No, you won’t,” Juniper said softly. Her eyes were suddenly filled with the grief Violet had spent the past five months looking for. “But I might.”

It wasn’t nearly enough to fix things between them. But Violet was too frightened and tired to argue. So when Juniper reached for her hand, Violet let her take it, and they stayed like that for a long time.

The next morning, Juniper was already perfectly put together again. Already on her first conference call. As if the night before had never happened.

Violet knew that trying to discuss it would only cause them both more pain.

They would deal with this the only way they knew how: separately.

She had spent hours that morning inspecting the palms of her hands, searching for any evidence that it had been her, not that body, who’d pushed Daria down the stairs.

And if it had been the body, and if Violet had resurrected it—didn’t that leave her aunt’s blood on her hands either way?

Those were not the kinds of thoughts that should be contemplated alone. Which was why she’d let Harper in.