yell of disapproval.
Isaac Sullivan appeared on the front steps of the town hall a moment later, eyeing them both with slight trepidation. He was the real reason why Harper had invited Violet here?—because she knew there was a far better chance he’d show up if it wasn’t just her. And she needed him for her terrible plan to work.
It was a plan that was deceptively simple: Go into the Gray. She had survived there far longer than anyone else in town, which meant she had the best shot of anybody of getting out. And this time, she had a mission: Try to find a source point for the corruption. She knew, as did Violet, that there was a possibility it would accelerate the spread of the disease or lead to some sort of retaliation from the Beast. But they had no leads, no ideas for how to cure it. They had to try everything they could.
Which had meant contacting the last person in Four Paths she’d ever expected to get any help from: Isaac Sullivan. The last time the three of them had hung out, they’d been chasing down her little sister in the forest on the night of the equinox. Somehow, this was just as stressful.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” he asked her now as they stood in front of the founders’ seal. “You might not come out. Also, someone might see us.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Harper said. It was why she’d chosen the break of dawn. As for the location?—that was all Augusta’s doing. She’d heard about corruption spreading at the Sullivan house, and she had the stirrings of a theory building in her. Something about the corruption having source points. Going into the Gray from the seal would help her figure that out.
“She said she can handle it,” Violet said. “I trust her.”
Isaac still looked skeptical. “Last chance to back out, Carlisle.” He lifted his hands palms-out and spread them wide. The air around them began to hum and ripple, light refracting off the tree trunks at the edge of the clearing.
“I won’t,” Harper said calmly.
The world split open a second later, and tendrils of gray oozed out from the rip Isaac had created, growing stronger.
“We have to be careful here,” Isaac said, gesturing at the gray. “I can’t keep this open.” Harper understood?—they were creating a gateway to the corruption. It couldn’t hurt them, but it could potentially hurt someone else.
“Reopen it in an hour,” she said. “If I’m not there, don’t come looking for me.”
“I absolutely will come looking for you,” Violet said sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Harper bit back a laugh. “Then I guess I’d better be there.”
“Yes! You’d better!”
Harper smiled and patted the scabbard strapped to her waist. “You know I can protect myself.”
“I know you can,” Violet said.
Then she stepped back, and Harper stepped forward, and the moment the first wisp of fog brushed against her skin, the world around her disappeared.
This was the Gray, for Harper: tendrils of white mist swirling around her, opening before her like a tunnel, or maybe a throat; a tinny sound in her ears, hollow and tuneless, whirling around her in words she could almost understand, and a smell that felt familiar, a mixture of the wood chips in her father’s workshop and the loamy dirt at the side of the riverbank.
When the fog dissolved a heartbeat later, she was standing in the center of Four Paths as it had been a hundred and fifty years ago. Although it looked different, she knew her bearings from the town hall. It lacked the spire, but the stained-glass windows were still there, shaded in grayscale and backlit by the weak light.
The biggest difference was the seal itself: It was ringed by trees, gray chestnut oaks with too-still branches and strangely patterned trunks. In the center of the founders’ symbol was a stump, gnarled and ancient, the roots cracking through the stone and burrowing beneath it. But although Harper scrutinized the copse of oak trees carefully, she saw no signs of iridescence.
Harper walked slowly down Main Street, where, instead of storefronts, there were only a few log buildings and a dirt road. In the field where the mausoleum stood now was a graveyard, thin crosses and headstones tilting to the side. And all around them stretched the woods. Harper had always thought in the present day that the woods looked like they were about to take over the town, but now she could see how