The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,1

down a path she’d never seen before. One where everything changed. She could have stopped it, let the roots wither. But instead, May had chosen to trust her brother and Isaac, chosen to give Violet Saunders her memories back after Augusta had erased them. She’d believed it had been the right thing to do to keep the town safe.

And Violet had kept the town safe?—but surely she had realized that Augusta was capable of much more. That she had used her powers against other founders, like Harper. Violet must have figured out how to return Harper’s memories, too, leading Harper to seek revenge on the family who had taken them from her. Which meant that what had happened to the hawthorn tree was May’s fault. Guilt rose in her stomach, thick and bubbling, as she wondered how long it would take for Augusta to realize what she’d done.

May had been the perfect daughter to Augusta Hawthorne for the last seven years. But Augusta’s memory was long, and May knew that she had not forgotten the time before that, when her daughter’s attention and adoration was reserved solely for her father. It didn’t matter how well May behaved herself now. Augusta would never truly trust her. And if Augusta found out about what she’d done, it would shatter the fragile peace between them?—possibly forever.

“How do you think it happened?” May asked, trying to keep her voice calm and methodical.

“The Saunders family,” her mother said immediately. May sagged with relief. “I was a fool to think I could change the old Carlisle-Saunders alliance. To be happy that June?—” She shook her head and pressed a gloved hand to her mouth.

“Okay, so the Saunders family might have given Harper her memories back,” May said hastily. She didn’t like people paying special attention to her when she was overcome by emotion; she could extend her mother the same courtesy. “What do we do about it? How do we fix this?”

Augusta’s face twisted with fury. “If Harper Carlisle is truly the one responsible for this,” she said, “we will see to it that she sets this right, and answers for what she’s done.”

May let the word we kindle inside her?—a promise. “Yeah. We will.”

Augusta nodded approvingly. “You know what you need to do next, I assume.”

May sighed, but she inclined her head. It wasn’t that she minded using her powers?—it was just that Augusta never asked her for any help beyond her abilities. They were the only part of her daughter she seemed to care about. “You want a reading.”

“Yes.” Augusta gestured toward the hawthorn. “But I want you to do it for the tree itself. Is that possible?”

May stared up at the tree, her heart heavy in her throat. Normally the smaller branches would be bending in the wind, birds chirping from above as they nestled in the copper-and-yellow leaves. But the tree was stiff and still, the wildlife gone. Perhaps they had been scared away; perhaps they had been petrified, too, for May had spent the past three weeks with Harper Carlisle, and she knew by now that Harper had no mercy. Still, May understood that it was not in the branches where the true lifeblood of a tree lay, nor was it in the knot on the trunk or its yellowing leaves.

It was the roots that really mattered.

“I think so.” May reached into the pocket of her pink pajama shirt and pulled out the Deck of Omens, then knelt at the base of the tree. “I can do my best.”

Augusta’s lips pursed, and May knew exactly what her mother was thinking?—that her best was not a guarantee of victory. That it had never truly been good enough. But she sat beside May anyway.

The Deck of Omens was the Hawthorne family’s greatest heirloom, crafted by the family’s founder, Hetty Hawthorne, from the bark of this very tree. In most hands they were useless, but in May’s grip they contained the power of possibility?—the ability to gaze into the past and future of a living focal point, assuming she asked the right question. The cards changed over time, evolving with each generation to reflect the town and allow for more accurate readings. The only person May couldn’t do a reading for was herself.

May’s hands shook as she began to shuffle the deck, searching for the connection that always formed in the back of her mind when she touched the cards, the opening of a pathway that only she could travel down. Lives were complex,