The Devouring Gray(96)

She left the Diner and started down Main Street, following the gravel road until it was just her, gazing up at the reddish-gold leaves hanging above her head.



Harper didn’t know where the piece of paper had come from. It tumbled out of her pocket as she shrugged her jacket off in her living room. She knelt down to inspect it as it fluttered down to the floor, like a bird that had left the nest too soon.

When she unfolded it, the words scrawled across it made no sense.

It was a cruel joke. It had to be.

But as Harper moved through the rest of her evening, the words wouldn’t leave her head.

They beat through her brain as she tucked Nora into bed and arranged each of her stuffed animals in the perfect position. As she nodded good night to a father who she couldn’t look in the eye anymore, who didn’t remember what he had done to her.

It was only when she stood silently in the bathroom, draped in her lace nightgown, that she allowed herself to mentally unfold that paper.

Do your ritual again.

Harper stared into the mirror. Bandages swathed her neck like a premature Halloween costume. She remembered a story she had read as a child, about a girl who wore a red ribbon around her neck that kept her head in place, and shuddered.

Violet and her mother had told Harper she could stay at the Saunders manor if she wanted, for as long as she liked, but Harper hadn’t made up her mind yet.

The Carlisle cottage had always been her home, and she didn’t want to leave Brett and Nora to face it alone.

Yet she could not deny that she no longer felt safe there.

She tugged the bandages off and stared at the purpled finger marks that crisscrossed her neck.

Three years ago, she had failed her ritual. The lake had deemed her too weak. The Gray had devoured her whole.

There was no changing that.

Do your ritual again.

An uncontrollable urge rose up in her throat, to shout, to sing, to swing a blade.

Do your ritual again.

Harper opened the bathroom door and padded down the hallway. She hesitated at the doorway to her room, at Mitzi’s slack-jawed face illuminated by the moonlight streaming through their window, but the words didn’t feel like a joke anymore.

They felt right.

A moment later, she was at the back door.

Harper traversed the slope of shadowy grass in her backyard, her white nightgown shining as she entered the forest. The nights were growing colder, but the rush of chilled air against her skin didn’t bother Harper—it just made her feel more alive. Her bare feet made no sound on the fallen leaves, and although she kept her gaze trained on the well-worn path ahead, she could have closed her eyes and walked there just the same.

At the edge of the lake, she stared down at the darkened water, watching as it sucked in the moonlight instead of reflecting it. It wanted to suck her in, too. She could feel the pull of the lapping waves like a lodestone in her heart.

Harper remembered the muddy water closing over her head. Her reddish-brown arm, lost at the bottom of the lake.

She stepped into the water.

Her bare toes sank into silt as wetness spread across the bottom of the nightgown. Crumbled bits of stone scraped the soles of her feet, but she didn’t stop, didn’t waver. The water was like crushed velvet against her skin, cool and welcoming. Soon the lake had reached her chin. Her hair floated around her head like strands of seaweed.

Harper tilted her head back. Stars circled the moon, bright freckles orbiting a half-shut eye.

She breathed in, closed her eyes, and submerged herself in the water.

There was no light beneath the surface of the lake. The world around Harper felt like a womb, a dark embrace that urged her, improbably, to sink. She pulled her residual limb across her knees and let the current take her, driving her to the bottom of the lake.

Stone scraped across her shoulder, and she tumbled out of her little ball. Her body splayed across the lake’s heart as she breathed out in a rush, air bubbles winding invisibly back to the surface.

Her hand reached forward, fingers scrabbling in the earth, until they closed around a single stone.

Her feet embedded themselves in the lake bed. She unwound upward, bit by bit, until she stood at the bottom of the lake. Her hair streamed around her shoulders and her waist, tangling with the lace of her nightgown. For the first time in years, Harper was utterly, completely calm.

She was waiting.

Something loosened in the back of her mind as the lake water rushed and roared around her, pushing open a door she hadn’t realized was there.

And Harper remembered. She remembered everything.

Her grip tightened around the stone as she kicked her legs back through the water. She hit the surface seconds later, sending rippling waves back toward the shore as she gulped a lungful of air.

Harper tilted her head back to the winking moon and sang a long, low note of rage.



A copper crown of leaves was nestled in Justin’s hair. Now that the trees had begun to change color, he couldn’t seem to return from an early morning run without taking a bit of the forest home with him. He picked them out of his hair as May’s voice rang through his bedroom door.

“Come out,” she said. “Justin, please. I need to show you something important.”

He ignored her. Yes, he’d come home. But it would be a long time before the things she’d said stopped resonating within him.

He wondered if there would ever be a day when he didn’t believe them, just a little bit.