The Devouring Gray(61)

“I know,” said Augusta, meeting his eyes. “Which is why I’m putting you back on the roster. Consider it my way of seeing if pulling you off patrol was a mistake or not.”

“Oh.” Justin tried not to feel proud, and then tried not to feel guilty about it. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure,” said Augusta. “And, Justin?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“I hope you understand that what you’ve just agreed to means no regrets. Not like with Harper Carlisle.”

Justin forced himself to smile at her.

“I understand,” he said, and then a deputy came to lead him to the holding cell Isaac was in.

Isaac looked better than Justin had expected him to, considering. They’d treated the wounds the Burnham brothers had given him at the station clinic.

“You here to spring me from the pokey?” he said dryly, sprawled out on the bench in the back of Four Paths’ one and only holding cell.

“Nah,” said Justin. “Just came by to make fun of the prisoners.”

“And you didn’t even bring any fruit to throw at me? Shameful.”

The deputy started to punch in the code on the keypad at the other side of the cell. Isaac rose, yawning and making a show of stretching his arms above his head.

“You know they don’t even let us read in here?” he said as the reddish stone bars of the prison slid upward. “How inhumane is that?”

“You’re supposed to meditate on your wrongdoing.” Justin barely recognized this deputy—his mother was clearly hurting for staff after Anders’s death.

“Do I look like I meditate?” said Isaac, stepping through the bars.

Justin gestured toward the exit as the deputy’s light brown forehead furrowed with annoyance. “Let’s go. Before they lock you up again.”





Outside the police station, the sun shone brightly down on Main Street. People were everywhere, perusing stalls set up by local businesses who’d turned out to sell their wares at Founders’ Day and chatting on the sidewalk. But Justin sensed an undercurrent of unease beneath the bustling town. Tonight was one of the most dangerous nights of the year in Four Paths. The night when the lines between the town and the Gray began to blur.

Which was why it was the perfect time for the Founders’ Day festival. It was a way to boost morale for the town and remind the people of their trust in the founders—even when the founding families were at their weakest.

It was a smart idea. Justin was willing to bet a Hawthorne had come up with it.

The crux of the celebration was the Founders’ Pageant, an event that was meant to symbolize the contributions the founding families had made to the town. One representative from each of the founding families would be “crowned” by the mayor, then sent to place a token of their family’s esteem on the town seal.

For the past three years, Justin had been the Hawthorne to do the ceremony, joining a disinterested Daria Saunders, Isaac, and one of the Carlisle children in the town square.

But Daria Saunders was dead, and this was Justin’s first festival since failing his ritual. The thought of wearing a crown and grinning at the crowd felt different now.

All the things that had once been easy for Justin were slowly becoming impossible. He didn’t like it.

“She took me off patrol, didn’t she?” said Isaac as they strode past the booth where Old Man Moore sold pigs—pigs that families desperately returned a few days later.

“She did,” said Justin. “Said there wasn’t any room in her equinox plans for unpredictable threats.”

“So she’s saying I’m a danger to myself and others?”

“Yep.”

“How’d it take her so long to notice?”

Justin snorted, sidestepping a few kids trying their hand at an old wooden ring-toss game. “You still have to do the pageant.”

“Seriously?” Isaac scowled. “I just destroyed the Diner. Does your mother really think the ceremony will make everyone less angry?”

“I think you should focus on making my mother less angry right now.”

Isaac rolled his eyes, but he followed Justin to the front of the town hall, where a crowd was already beginning to form at the edge of the giant founders’ symbol embedded in the square.

“Took your time getting here, didn’t you?” said May. Nestled carefully between her hands was the wooden Hawthorne crown, a delicate thing made of intricately woven branches that had been made by Justin’s great-grandmother, Millie Hawthorne, nearly eighty years ago. Their family had done a good job of preserving the wood, but Justin worried about it breaking as he took it from May and wedged it in his blond hair.

His sister looked at him, her normally expressionless face colored with longing as her eyes lifted to the crown upon his head. Justin felt a rush of guilt.

“Did you ask Mom if you could do it this year?” The words were out before Justin could stop them.

The way her face hardened around the edges told him she had. “Maybe next year,” she said, each word a bit too carefully formed. “When you’re at college.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

The tense moment was broken by Isaac sidling up to them, the steel, pointed Sullivan crown nestled in his dark curls. He must’ve gone back inside the town hall to fetch it. “Excited to show everyone how pretty you look?”