The Devouring Gray(92)

And then her mother was crying. She hadn’t cried for her husband, she hadn’t cried for Daria, she hadn’t cried for Rosie. But here she was, tears nestling at the rims of her eyelids, ready to splatter across her cheeks.

“June,” said Augusta again. “You don’t have to tell her.”

“I do,” Juniper said, her voice wobbling. “Stephen didn’t know what my power was. We’d kept it a secret because it was a difficult thing to prove. But every Saunders family deals with death somehow. Daria saw it. Stephen raised it.” Juniper’s hand steadied itself, then lowered, methodically, back to her lap. “I suppose you could say I’ve mastered it.”

Violet gaped at her. “Mastered it? What, you mean you can’t die?”

“Oh, no, I’m not immortal,” Juniper said, which made Augusta tense up for some reason. “I still age. I can be drugged, as you’ve seen. But I am impervious to most things—I fell off the roof of the manor a few weeks after my ritual, and I walked away without a scratch. I don’t get ill. And when someone hurts me, whatever they were trying to inflict on me is done to them. That’s why the Beast wanted me. In my body, it would have been almost impossible to destroy, at least for some time.”

Violet shuddered at the thought. “So you were its perfect host.”

Juniper nodded. “Exactly. But when Stephen tried to stab me…”

She didn’t have to finish. Violet understood with a rush of nausea exactly what would’ve happened next.

And she understood now why the Church had needed Stephen to be resurrected. Because an undead boy would be unaffected by Juniper’s abilities.

Juniper grabbed a tissue from the stand beside her cot and dabbed briskly at her eyes. “After Stephen died, his body went missing. His vault in our mausoleum is empty. But the Saunders family kept the entire tragedy a secret, and all of that guilt, that shame, eventually became too much. So I asked Augusta to take it away. I thought if I couldn’t remember my grief, it would be easier to get on with my life. But it was a weak thing to do. My family fell apart after I ran away. And while I’m so grateful I met your father and had you and Rosie…” She gave Violet a teary smile. “That’s not the life I was supposed to live. I’ve always felt like I was running from something. It found me in the end. It always does, I guess.”

Violet choked back tears of her own.

For the first time in her life, she understood her mother. Juniper wasn’t insensitive or clueless. She had weathered incredible loss, greater than even Violet had ever known.

She also hadn’t been strong enough to handle it on her own. It had made her hurt people, even the ones she loved. Violet understood that feeling, too.

“I’m sorry,” she told Juniper. “For what I said, about you, about Rosie.”

Juniper reached forward, clutched Violet’s hand in hers. “I’m sorry, too. I can’t imagine how terrifying it must have been, dealing with all of this alone. There is so much I want to show you now. So much I can teach you.”

“About Four Paths?” said Violet.

Juniper smiled. “Four Paths, yes,” she said. “But what you said about your father’s family…you were right. You deserve to know them, and they deserve to know you, if that’s what you want. No more secrets. No more lies.”

When she leaned in for an embrace, Violet let her.



The front hallway of the Hawthorne House was unchanged. He ran his hand along the stone wall, the familiar touch of the foyer’s cool, oppressive air pushing against his skin. A twisted branch of the hawthorn tree was splayed against the window like a hand beckoning him inside.

The truth about his failed ritual was already spreading through town. But wearing a stone pendant to school instead of his medallion was the easy part. The hard part was just beginning: The whispers in the hallways. The dirty looks in class. People’s faces closing up as he walked past them on Main Street, when they’d once been friendly and open.

It hurt, oh, it hurt.

But it was a good kind of hurt, like sore muscles after a long run.

“Thanks for taking me in,” he told Isaac, who lingered behind him in the front hallway.

Isaac slid his index finger along the edge of an ornate picture frame. His face was clouded; he seemed preoccupied. Justin knew he’d been working to clean up the Diner, even though Augusta had already paid for the damages.

It seemed like that had happened years ago, but it had barely been a week. So much change in such a short time.

Isaac looked at him, and every strange thing Justin had noticed about his behavior in the past few weeks reared its head. He was standing in a battle stance, his shoulders jutting forward like he was about to face down an enemy.

But he and Justin were the only people in the hallway.

“Now that you’re home, there’s something I have to say.” His voice was guarded, careful. “Justin, I’m done.”

Justin wondered if he’d misheard. “What do you mean, done?”

Isaac’s eyes fixed firmly on something above Justin’s head. “Have you ever noticed how I’m always there? You ask me to be your backup. Help Violet. Help Harper.”

He spat Harper’s name out of his mouth with obvious revulsion.

“I always say yes. But I can’t do that anymore.”