The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,103

Four Paths. She sat in the center of Main Street, on the real-life founders’ seal that had been placed in the center of the town square. Trees surrounded her in a pulsating circle, their branches snarled and knotted together. The sky was open and screaming above her, gray and white bleeding together. And all around her, blanketing the ground, were iridescent bits of ash.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Justin’s idea was utterly ridiculous, which Isaac suspected meant it might actually work.

“This is all too much,” Violet said. They were in the lobby of the town hall, pulling down the storm shutters on the windows. Harper and Justin were doing the same in his apartment. Before they could do anything, Isaac wanted to be sure they were as safe as possible. But the town hall was a large building, and it was taking longer than he had anticipated to check everything. “How are you feeling about all of this? If what Justin’s saying about his father is true…”

“Then he’s my ancestor. Yeah, I know.” Isaac slammed down a storm shutter with slightly more force than necessary as he thought of Richard Sullivan’s burial slot in the mausoleum. Of the portrait hanging in the archives. Lies, all of it, and Isaac didn’t know why that even surprised him anymore. “I mean, clearly he’s some kind of founder. And my family always has been a bunch of assholes. Seems fitting that the guy responsible for all our problems would be one of us.”

The only silver lining of all of this, Isaac reflected bitterly, was that the Sullivan bloodline was gigantic. All those disappearances had led to a vast, disconnected family network, which meant that he and Justin were probably only about as distantly related as anybody else in Four Paths. He’d dealt with enough tonight; finding out he’d once had a long-term crush on his cousin would have been the last straw.

“That doesn’t seem like an entirely fair judgment,” Violet said softly. “I mean, there’s you, there’s Gabriel…”

“Gabriel left.”

Violet stared at him, her eyes wide. “What?”

“He ran away from this fight. Just like he ran before.”

Isaac hadn’t realized how much it was hurting him until he’d said it aloud.

“Shit,” Violet said. “You’re right. Most of your family are assholes.”

Isaac couldn’t help it?—he laughed, and after a moment she joined in, both of them sounding slightly hysterical over the wind battering the storm shutters behind them.

“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” he confessed, tugging the latch closed on the window and turning toward her. “I can’t believe Four Paths has turned into this. I can’t believe we’re stuck in here. And I can’t believe the single real idea we have rests on the only one of us without any powers.”

“Ah, Four Paths.” Violet sighed. “Always finding new ways to ruin our lives.”

“As if we can’t do that all by ourselves.”

Violet shook her head, still grinning. Her sweater had slid down over one of her shoulders. Isaac couldn’t help but notice the smooth curve of her collarbone, the light of the candle she held aloft flickering across her exposed skin. There was a strange, heady feeling building inside him.

“What?” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s just surreal to me that it’s only been a few months since you moved here.”

“I feel the same way.” Violet tugged down the next storm shutter and latched it shut. “A year ago, my biggest problem was trying to perfect my audition program for conservatories. Now we might damn an entire town because our ancestors made some disastrously bad choices.”

“Has it really been so bad here?”

She met his eyes. Smirked just a little. “It could’ve been worse.”

Isaac still couldn’t believe that Violet knew everything he had been through and didn’t pity him. All his hopes, his fears, his dreams?—she had borne witness to them without flinching, and he had done the same for her. Not because they needed something from each other, but because they’d wanted to. And after years of people looking at him like he was broken, it was a relief bigger than words to know someone else understood that healing did not mean going back to the way things had been before. It meant transforming into someone new and accepting that person, sharp edges and all.

He wanted to kiss her, he realized, and he’d never known that he could have romantic feelings for someone without the sadness, without the longing, without the hurt. He did not know how to tell her this; all he knew was that the knowledge of it