The Devouring Gray(81)

She was so close to hurting him, really hurting him.

Harper took a deep, shuddering breath. She wanted to throw up.

“What the hell is this?” her father hissed, touching the torn fabric of his shirt with quiet disbelief. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I’m protecting myself.” Harper’s voice was shaking. Tears glimmered in her eyes, blurring the fury on her father’s face. “I’m saving my friend. I’m saving our town. And if you try to hurt me, I’ll use this again, I swear I will. So tell me how the Church is going to set the Beast free.”



The journal entries from December onward were monotonous and vague. The lack of detail was incredibly frustrating, but Violet kept reading anyway, searching for clues, trying desperately to understand what Stephen had been planning.

March 1, 1985

Juniper talked to me today. She said I’ve been acting differently lately, that I’m not the brother she knows. I told her I’m growing up. I’m stronger. She told me this was good. We need strong founders to fight.

I wish I could give the Beast what it needs on my own, but I do not even have a companion. I am not Juniper. She is the strong one.

Branches and stones, daggers and bones, will meet their judgment day.

March 18, 1985

Two days until the world is made right.

I didn’t want to do it at first, but the Beast has shown me Juniper is the proper choice. When it joins with her in blessed unity, the world will bend before them.

I have prepared the circle of bone.

It is almost time.

Branches and stones, daggers and bones, will meet their judgment day.



“The Beast’s body is bound to the Gray,” said Harper’s father, his back against the wall of the shed. “But there is a way to let it out—by giving its consciousness a new body.”

Harper was still shaking. She tried not to think about what her life would look like after this. The lines her father had crossed by attacking her. The lines she’d crossed by defending herself.

“Like Violet?” she asked, thinking of the way her friend’s fingers had changed to gray.

Maurice Carlisle shrugged dismissively. “The girl is a temporary measure. She’s not strong enough to hold it for long. No, there is a perfect vessel, one the Beast has wanted for decades.”

“Who is it?” said Harper.

Her father bared his teeth in a poor facsimile of a smile. “Juniper Saunders, of course. Because Juniper Saunders can’t be killed.”

He lunged forward, kicking her in the knee, and Harper toppled to the floor.



Violet turned the last torn-out page over, her heart hammering against her chest, but the back side of the loose leaf was blank.

There were no more entries in the journal.

What had happened to her mother on the night of the spring equinox? Was that when Stephen had died? He’d wanted her for something. And whatever blessed unity with the Beast was, it didn’t sound good.

Frustrated, she lowered the journal to her lap. Turquoise flashed into her peripheral vision, and she whipped her head around as Rosie materialized on the floor beside her, sitting in the middle of that circle of white paint.

This time, Violet saw the flatness in her dark eyes.

And it all fell into place.

The Beast had gotten inside Violet’s head, the same way it had gotten into Stephen’s.

She wondered how it was possible that she’d never seen it before. That it had taken her this long to link together why she had been pulled into this.

She’d allowed the Beast—and the Church—to pick up where they’d left off.

“You’re not my sister,” she said hoarsely.

Not-Rosie’s mouth creased into a cruel smile. “But I gave you the power to bring her back,” said the thing beside Violet. It was still using her sister’s voice. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”



Harper’s father was crushing her. They rolled around on the wooden planks of the workshop, scrambling for control of the blade between them. A lock of Harper’s hair swung to the side, sliced off by the sword’s edge, and then the blade bit into her shoulder, drawing blood, as her father struggled to rip it out of her hand.

He was not a particularly big man, but he was so much stronger than her, and she only had one hand. Soon he was kneeling above her, pinning her to the ground. He kicked the sword across the floor behind him. Harper’s breath rose in her throat, sharp and panicky, as she stared up at his face. Ropes of hair were caught in his gnarled hands.

There was a deep sadness in his eyes as he closed his hands around her neck.

“I never wanted this,” he said, digging his fingers into her throat. “Believe me, Harper, if there was any other way…But the Beast demands that we put secrecy first. No matter what we sacrifice to do it.”

Harper sank her nails into his arm, but it did no good. She wanted to cry for help, but she couldn’t get the words out. Her lungs felt like they were filling with dark, muddy water; her body was cold and limp, as if it were sinking beneath the surface of the lake. Her eyes fixed on the sentinels that hung from the ceiling as her vision began to blur.

The door to the workshop slammed against the wall.

“Get the hell away from her!” yelled Justin, and then her father’s hands were wrenched away from her neck and she was gasping and sputtering for air.