The Devouring Gray(95)

The sign swung behind her.

She was gone. She was out.

Violet turned her back on Four Paths, stared at the road snaking away from town. She was back in a world without rituals, without founders, without power.

She turned around.

She thought of Harper and Justin and Isaac and May. She’d given them so much trouble, yet each of them somehow decided she was worth fighting for.

It was time to fight for them, too. All of them.

Violet stepped back into the leafy embrace of the great chestnut oaks teeming at the side of the road, reaching out to her in welcome, in recognition. Determination rushed through her, thrumming in her chest like a second heartbeat as the WELCOME TO FOUR PATHS sign swung above her head.

She was going to make things right in this town, once and for all. And she knew where she wanted to start.



The inside of the Diner looked like a battleground. The fluorescent lights were shattered, their plastic casing mixing with ceramic and glass on the shadowy floor. Violet had expected resistance when she tried to walk inside, but the restaurant was gutted, empty.

Empty except for Isaac, who swept debris into a great pile in the corner. Justin had told her that despite the termination of Isaac’s employment, he’d insisted on helping. The overturned booths around him looked like the discarded playthings of a giant, the OPEN sign above his head a cruel mockery of the restaurant’s current state.

Violet took a second to watch the light streaming in through the cracked plate-glass windows at the front of the Diner, casting fragmented shadows across Isaac’s neck and shoulders. He wasn’t even trying to hide the scar anymore. She’d noticed it at school, too. She was proud of how little he’d reacted to the stares.

The light hit his face when he turned, casting a perfect diagonal line from his left eyebrow, across his lips, and into the planes of his neck.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac asked.

“Looking for you.”

He frowned. “How did you…?”

Violet shrugged. “You’re the kind of person who likes cleaning up their messes.”

Isaac’s lips curved into a wry smile. “Well. I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Behind him, a row of black garbage bags were stacked neatly against the wall. Evidence of many hours spent like this one, making amends.

Violet didn’t know the details of Isaac’s ritual. But she’d gleaned enough to understand that something horrible had happened to him.

The Beast had broken him the same way it had broken her family. The same way it had broken Harper.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About what we’re all really doing here. Why the founders actually locked the Beast up.”

“They locked it up because it’s dangerous.” Isaac’s response was rote, automatic.

But Violet could not shake what the Beast had told her in the Gray, the words it had spat out of Rosie’s mouth.

Do you really think I was bound here out of altruism? They wanted my power, and they achieved it.

“But, Isaac,” she said. “Look at us. We’re dangerous, too.”

It was the first time she’d ever said his name aloud. She liked the way it sounded in her throat. She liked the way his eyes widened a little bit, like he’d noticed.

Like he’d been listening.

She swallowed, forged onward. “Being new here means I don’t know a lot. That ignorance almost got me killed. But it also means that I can look at this from the perspective of an outsider. The holidays, the ceremonies, the patrols. I can see how much this town has hurt us. Our ancestors bound our bloodlines to something awful, and they trapped us here with it. Is that really the life you want?”

Isaac’s body had gone very still. “You can leave now, can’t you? You’re not trapped anymore.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

His gaze flickered to the broom in his hand, the overturned booths. “No. That’s not what I want.”

Violet exhaled slowly. “Good. Because I’m going to find a way to kill that thing in the Gray. The thing inside my head. I could try and do it alone, but I need someone who knows what the Beast is really capable of. That’s you.”

Again, he dodged her question. “Why not ask Harper?”

Violet smiled ruefully. “Her memories are gone. Justin told me. And I need a second before I can face her again, knowing what I know.” She paused. “He loves her, doesn’t he?”

The words rang out through the husk of the restaurant, louder than she’d intended. Something awful passed across Isaac’s face, and Violet knew she’d been right.

But his expression told her something else, too. Knit together all the things she’d noticed about the way he’d treated Justin. And the knowledge of what he felt, who he felt it for, sent a rush of disappointment roiling through her stomach.

Violet gave herself a moment to acknowledge why she would be upset at all. She let her own unsaid truth bloom, like a budding flower—and then she pushed it away.

She would not let this bother her. She would not consider how much those feelings had informed her decision to approach Isaac at all.

“You want to kill the Beast?” Isaac said hoarsely. “I’m in.”

Violet nodded. But the rush of victory she should’ve felt was muted.