The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,36
The smell was disgusting, but that was just the beginning of their problems. Iridescent gray liquid oozed steadily from the founders’ seal toward the trees around it. The trees looked terrible, veins spiraling around their bark and down their branches. The Carlisles had tried to block off the area with stone bells, but it had done nothing at all.
It was mid-October now, and the girls were dressed for true fall, Violet in a faux-leather jacket, Harper in an oversize green parka and a beanie pulled tight over her dark curls. May looked perfectly pulled together as per usual in a quilted pink vest and fluffy cream-colored earmuffs.
“That’s why we’re here,” she said, her voice high and crisp. “We need to keep track of its advancement.”
“I know why we’re here,” Violet said, more sharply than she’d intended. That was the guilt talking, but knowing why she was being harsh didn’t make her feel better. “You don’t have to treat us like infants just because we’re new to this patrol.”
“Well, you weren’t exactly the most willing patrol partners,” May said dryly. “No offense.”
Since the corruption had spread, Juniper and Augusta had made a patrol schedule together that was supposed to combine experienced and inexperienced founders and minimize danger by sending them out in larger groups. Which was how the three of them had wound up together.
Violet had no good reason to protest it. Technically, she knew she should feel good about this alliance?—it had the potential to actually help solve this ever-mounting problem. But she’d already caused so much trouble with the Church and the Beast, and she hated the idea that, once again, everyone else would have to rally to fix something she had broken.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Harper said as they picked their way through the clearing, staring more closely at the trees. Her hand was constantly hovering over the scabbard at her waist. Dusk had muted the world around them, brushing deep blues and purples over the trees in the final fading light of the sunset. “Not that I can really see much. Why is your mother so determined to do these patrols at night?”
“It’s easier to clean up messes in the dark,” May said, her voice strained. “It does mess with your sleep, though. I recommend bringing coffee next time?—it’ll make the next day less horrible.”
Harper snorted. “Is that why Justin takes so many naps in class?”
May laughed, a sound that seemed utterly out of place in front of the decaying trees. “No, he’s just bored. And he knows there isn’t a teacher in this town who would dare to fail him. Well, knew, I guess.”
Her voice faltered, and Violet thought about how much the town’s attitude had changed, not just toward Violet but toward Justin, too. The trust extended to her and the other founders, whether deserved or not, was deliberately being kept away from the town’s former golden boy. He was glared at, whispered about, sometimes even jeered at. Harper had told her that his birthday was coming up, something that had basically been a local holiday the year before and was now clearly a massive source of shame for him. Violet felt for him, for all of them.
To be a founder, it seemed, was to fit whatever role the rest of the town had decided you would play or be discarded completely.
“Ah, shit.” Violet turned and saw Harper shining her flashlight onto a bit of nearby tree trunk. Something was growing from the gleaming, fleshy bark: thin silver strands clumped together. “Is that hair?”
“I think so.” Violet’s stomach churned. She didn’t understand how she’d managed to do this, to unleash something that was twisted and disgusting even by Four Paths’ low standards.
“Oh, gross,” May mumbled from beside her, her face ashen.
“Something has to be causing this,” Harper said. “If the Gray keeps opening and infecting our world like this, in a way the Beast has never done before, there has to be a source point. Some event that started it.”
Violet shifted uncomfortably. She’d hated keeping this from Harper, and she knew that May had clear ties and allegiances that were more important than any bond between the two of them. Harper had been nothing but a good friend to her, and May had given Violet her memories back when she’d had no obligation to do so.
They deserved to know what was happening here before it went any further.
“Harper…” she started. “I have to tell you something. Oh, screw it, both of you. You should both