The Devouring Gray(91)

Violet tried to mask her relief. “As if I would ever tell you that.”

“Perhaps we can trade?” said Augusta icily. “I’ll fill in the blanks of the spring equinox of 1985, if you tell me how you retrieved your memories.”

Violet considered it. Augusta Hawthorne was her best shot at knowing the truth. But the thought of selling out May to a woman who had nearly gotten Violet killed made her nauseous.

“Oh, please,” she said. “You would never tell me the real reason why you took my mother’s memories away.”

A new voice rose up from the cot beside Violet, precise and coiled, like a viper waiting to pounce.

“That’s an easy one to answer, actually,” said Juniper Saunders. “She took away my memories because I asked her to.”

Augusta whirled back toward the cot, while Violet hopped off her own, not caring what her flimsy hospital gown was showing off as she rushed over to her mother’s makeshift hospital bed. Juniper was still lying down, but her eyes were wide open.

“Mom?” she said, but her mother wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the sheriff.

The room was suddenly thick with tension. There was something in their body language that spoke of truth. Of pain. Of history.

“August?” said Violet’s mother.

“June?” said Augusta. “Is that—are you…?”

Juniper nodded, and then Augusta swept her up in an embrace, heedless of Juniper’s hospital gown. Her mother looked so small like that, almost doll-like against Augusta’s larger frame.

Juniper had called them best friends. But Violet saw the truth between them, the tenderness that spoke to something very different from friendship.

They were looking at each other the same way Justin and Harper did.

And Violet realized that, for all she and her mother had learned about one another, there was still so much uncharted territory between them. But for the first time, she truly wanted to bridge that gap.

It wouldn’t be easy. But she thought of her new friends, who had risked their lives to save her family, and promised herself that she would try.

“How?” the sheriff whispered, once Juniper had pulled away and settled herself on the cot, her brown hair frizzing out in all directions.

“I was part of Violet’s ritual,” said Juniper. “I suppose it makes sense that it could be a cleansing, too, especially when ours is so cerebral. Violet…” Her mother’s smile, unpolished and real, showed off her incisors. “Thank you. I’m so sorry you had to figure this out on your own.”

“So you know?” Tears welled up in Violet’s throat. “About our family? Our powers?”

Juniper nodded. “It all came back.”

Violet swallowed hard. “Can you tell me what happened to Stephen?”

Juniper’s face tightened. She raised a hesitant hand to her frizzy hair, pushed it behind her ear.

“You don’t have to do this right now,” Augusta said, her voice still soft and wobbly.

“No, August,” said Juniper. “She’s waited long enough. And she deserves to hear it from me.”

Violet felt a pang of recognition in her chest at the determination on her mother’s face.

Juniper knotted her hands together in her lap and began. “Stephen was the baby of the family. Daria and I completed our rituals by the time he turned fourteen.” Her eyes flickered toward the sheriff. “I’m going to talk about our ritual now. August, you know the rules.”

The sheriff sighed but nodded, turning her back as Juniper beckoned toward Violet to lean in close.

“It’s slightly ridiculous,” she whispered in Violet’s ear. “But we do keep the particulars of the rituals a secret from one another. On a Saunders’s sixteenth birthday, we go into the ritual room hidden in the spire, enter the founders’ symbol painted on the floor, and let the Beast inside our heads. We travel into the Gray and best it there. To understand death, you must be intimately close to it. When you traveled into the Gray and forced the Beast out of your head, you completed the ritual, too—albeit under far more dangerous circumstances.

“Unfortunately, Stephen’s ritual went awry. The Beast took up residence inside his mind, as it normally does, but he hadn’t gained control over it before he came back out. It changed him over time, altering thoughts, moods, and eventually his actions. But Stephen had always been a little unpredictable, and the Beast used that to keep the reformation of the Church—frankly it was a bastardization of the Church—a secret.”

“So you really didn’t know the Beast was in his head?” Violet asked.

Juniper’s lips tightened into a rueful smile as she pulled away from Violet. “I had no idea.”

Augusta turned around. “I trust you’re done with the family secrets?”

Juniper smiled. “You were never good at hiding your annoyance.”

Augusta huffed but stayed silent as she made her way back over to them.

“As I was saying,” Juniper continued, “I didn’t know what had happened to my brother. Not until the equinox, anyway. Stephen dragged me out of bed and into the woods at knife-point. He was going to let the Beast take control of me so it would have a physical form, which would break its bonds to the prison. He would have given it his own body, but he wasn’t strong enough. My powers were…uniquely suited to the Beast’s needs. But he didn’t…” Her hand jerked up toward her face, then stopped, trembling, by her shoulder. “He didn’t know,” she whispered.