The Devouring Gray(86)

Stephen didn’t try to attack her. He didn’t even move.

“It won’t work.” Her sister’s voice floated through the circle.

The Beast gnawed at the edge of her mind, coating her skull like a second skin.

Violet froze, her boots crunching bone.

Where would she go? This was the Beast’s prison. In here, they were at its mercy.

“You won’t get her out like that.” Not-Rosie’s voice was languid, almost lazy. She appeared a moment later. Her body was no longer transparent, and her shadow crept across the circle, the edges twisting and winding like the branches behind her head.

Almost real, except for the utter lack of empathy on her face.

Violet clutched Juniper like a lifeline. At least her mother didn’t have to be awake for this. “I’m not letting you take my mom away from me.”

Juniper wasn’t perfect. But she was the only family Violet had left.

She couldn’t let the last memories they had of each other be a fight. She couldn’t let it end like this.

“She won’t be gone,” said the Beast dispassionately. “She’ll just be dead. And I…” Not-Rosie’s mouth stretched into a wide, mad grin that did not belong to her sister at all. “I’ll be free, and your ancestors’ greed will have been their own undoing.”

“Greed?” The question spilled out of Violet’s throat.

“Oh, child,” said the Beast. “Do you really think I was bound here out of altruism? They wanted my power, and they achieved it. But they can only keep it where I’m trapped, so they stay forever in this miserable little place. You should be glad to set me free. The founders have never understood my view of things. But I knew Stephen was different from the moment he let me into his mind.”

Those words triggered something in Violet, a realization that had been working in the back of her head since before the equinox.

She knew why her mind had gone blank. Why the Beast had burrowed into her head, why Stephen had been such an easy target for it. The Saunders family had to prove they could handle their powers. And what better way to show their worth than to let the Beast inside their heads—and drive it out again?

It would solidify that tether between them.

It would show that they were stronger than the monster they were bound to.

It had to be her family ritual. Which meant there was a chance she could still fix this.

Violet laid out her mother on the ground and rose, trembling, to her feet.

“How about this?” she asked as the Beast cocked Not-Rosie’s head to the side. “How about you take me instead? I know you love hanging out inside my head.”

“You’re not nearly strong enough,” said the Beast disdainfully.

“But I’m willing,” said Violet. “Was Stephen willing? Because I think you brainwashed him into doing this. I don’t think he wanted you in there at all.”

“Stephen was weak.” The word hung in the air between them, echoing back from the trees that wound around them. “So are you. Weakened by grief and love and sadness. You called to me from the moment you entered the town, from the moment you sat down at that piano. Your mother’s power is the only one strong enough to hold me.”

“I thought you might say that.” Violet steeled herself for what she was about to do. It was a bad plan. But it was the only one she had. “I guess expecting you to cooperate was unrealistic.”

She charged toward Not-Rosie and closed her hands around her sister’s wrists.

They were real because she needed them to be real, and as she stood nose to nose with her sister’s image, something flickered in those dark eyes. Something hungry.

“Stop that,” hissed the Beast.

Her sister’s form shimmered in the air.

“Stop it,” whined the Beast. “Stop it and I’ll let you bring her back. For real. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

And suddenly Rosie looked even more solid than before. Her skin glowed with life and health; her hair shone turquoise in the Gray’s weak imitation of sunlight.

Her mouth opened in a grin. “You know you can do it,” said her voice. “You brought back Orpheus. Why not me?”

Violet saw it in her mind then.

Saw herself letting go. Letting the Beast take hold of Juniper, then granting her powers that would let her leave the town, that would be strong enough not just to reanimate Rosie’s body, but to heal her.

Trading a mother for a sister. A life for a life.

“I’m all you’ll ever have,” her sister’s form whispered. “I’m the only person who’s ever loved you. Are you really ready to let me go?”

It was the hardest thing Violet had ever done—but she looked away from her sister’s face.

To Juniper, lying in the dirt, looking both older and younger than Violet had ever seen her before.

“Do you really think,” she said, moving her eyes back to the Beast—because no matter what it looked like, that was what it was—“that I would ever consent to you murdering my mother? You’re the monster here, not me.”

Not-Rosie hissed with displeasure. “Then you’ve doomed me,” she snapped, and suddenly her skin was shriveling across her skull, her eyes blackening with rot, her hands withering in Violet’s until Violet was clutching flaking skin across yellow bones.