The Devouring Gray(83)

“You let yourself be used,” it said. “You led yourself through every step. All I had to do was show you what you wanted to see.”

Violet thought of every moment she’d spent wishing that Rosie was back again. How she’d craved her sister’s company. How she’d felt when Rosie was standing in front of her—so light-headed, almost dizzy with joy. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was being weakened.

She had played right into the Beast’s hands, and now the whole town would pay for it.

Beside her, Orpheus hissed at the thing that had taken her sister’s face, her sister’s voice.

Not-Rosie rolled her flat eyes. “Oh, stop whining,” she said to the cat. “I’m the only reason you even exist.” She turned to Violet. “Did you know your powers wouldn’t work properly without a companion? I made that mistake with Stephen.”

Bile rose in Violet’s throat as she remembered the way Orpheus had been laid out for her. Like a present.

It had killed him so she would use her powers. So she would grow.

“Get the fuck out of my mind,” she said.

There had to be a way to fix this. A way to fight it off.

Not-Rosie tilted her head to the side. “Too late.”

Orpheus hissed. Violet looked down.

Her hand had crossed the white line of the circle.

The last things she saw before the room went black were Not-Rosie’s dark, flat eyes.





Violet came to slowly, her thoughts sluggish and aimless, like a leaf bobbing on the surface of a pond.

Her skull felt like it had been split in two. She tried to move her head, but it hurt too much.

Her arms were bound behind her back, which rested against something rough, but she sat on soft, loamy ground. Her eyes opened, blinking blearily as she tried to make sense of where she was.

She’d been in the woods, trying to get Nora home.

No, that wasn’t right. She’d been with May, getting her memories back.

No, that was wrong, too. She was in the attic, reading Stephen’s journal.

But no. She was missing something, because she had no idea how she’d gotten here. Wherever here was—somewhere suffocatingly, oppressively dark.

She shuddered, realizing why everything looked so uniform, why the world smelled faintly of mildew and body odor. Some kind of bag had been shoved over her head.

Terror rushed through her, but at least it was her terror. At least that thing, the Beast, was out of her head—for now.

She shuddered, thinking of what it could’ve made her do. What she had already done.

“She’s awake.”

A chorus of murmurs approached her as Violet squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.

“Should we take the hood off?”

“Not until the ceremony starts.”

“But what if she can’t breathe?”

“Then she can’t annoy us.”

“Surely she’s too smart to talk.”

“She went to the Hawthornes. She’s already talked too much.”

Violet knew there had to be a way out of this, if only she could concentrate. But her skull ached, her hands throbbed, and she couldn’t shake the panic roaming through her rib cage.

Her aunt’s prediction rushed back to her: You’re going to die with a hat on. Did a hood count?

“Enough.” This new voice was soft and syrupy, like an adorable southern grandma holding a glass of alcoholic iced tea. Violet knew her brain was getting loopy, possibly from the Beast, possibly from air loss. The hood was yanked off her head, and as she gasped for air, Mrs. Moore, the town librarian, came into her field of view.

“There you are, honey,” she said, smiling in a way that seemed far more at home at a picnic than a kidnapping. “Isn’t that better?”

Violet took in the world around her. They were deep in the woods, branches laced above her head like the bars of a cage. It seemed unfair that the sky was a perfect velvety black, speckled with stars.

Bells hung in the trees before her, like the ones she’d seen hanging from the eaves of the houses on her first day, like the one she’d seen in the tower above the town hall. But the robed figures that bustled about were untying them, removing them from the trees.

“You’re the Church of the Four Deities,” Violet whispered. “Aren’t you?”

Mrs. Moore smiled. “In the flesh.”

Violet screamed.

Mrs. Moore’s face crinkled with disappointment. “Oh, sweetie. Now we’ll have to gag you.”

A roll of duct tape shone in her manicured hand. She tore off a strip and slapped it across Violet’s protesting mouth.

Unable to speak, Violet scanned the Church members’ faces instead, trying to commit them to memory. Although they were mostly adults, she recognized a few people from homeroom. Apparently, the Church of the Four Deities had been recruiting fresh blood.

“He approaches!” called out a deep male voice. Robed figures scurried around in disarray as the same figure she’d seen standing over Daria at the foot of the stairs emerged from between two shadowy trees.

The hooded robes and the gloves it wore hid most of its form, but they couldn’t hide the sickly-sweet, rotten smell as it passed through the clearing.

The other figures parted around it automatically, from respect or fear, Violet couldn’t tell. She pressed her back against the tree trunk, gagging, as it shuffled toward her.