The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,79

had to help Violet back down the ladder. She didn’t want to leave the corruption behind, but even she could admit that she needed to rest. Back in the living room, she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sipped anxiously from a hot mug of tea as Harper stared at her phone screen. Juniper had stayed behind to barricade the trapdoor.

“It’s not just us,” Harper said grimly. “Something’s happening at the Hawthorne house. And the Sullivan ruins.”

“Shit!” Violet groaned and tugged her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, shivering. “We have to go. We have to try to stop it?—”

“We can’t possibly be in three places at once.” Harper’s voice was gentle but firm. “Sit. Drink your tea.”

Violet frowned at her. “Since when did you get so bossy?”

“I have four younger siblings,” Harper said wryly. “I’ve always been bossy.”

Harper’s phone began to buzz, and her eyes widened. Violet leaned over, saw the name flashing on the screen, and choked back an incredulous laugh.

“You have Justin Hawthorne listed in your phone as Ugh?”

“You knew it was him, didn’t you?” Harper asked, tapping the screen. A moment later his voice sounded through the speakers, crackly but clear.

“Harper?” he said.

“I’m here. What’s going on?”

“I’m at the lake; I ran here?—not important. The point is that the corruption is spreading here.”

“What?”

“It’s going to?—it’s—” He let out a panicked yell, and the call cut out abruptly.

“Justin?” Harper tapped frantically at her phone. “Justin! Are you kidding me? I’m going to kill him.”

Again, Violet felt her own panic creeping up in her chest. If another ritual site was falling so close to this one, if those buds were unfurling, something had gone terribly wrong. An airborne strand of the corruption meant that anyone who breathed it in would get sick. They’d contained it in her attic, but if those flowers bloomed at the lake…

“I have to go home.” Harper sounded calm, but Violet saw the urgency in her movements as she rose to her feet and went for the door. “He could be in danger.”

“Won’t your siblings be patrolling?”

“That doesn’t mean they’ll be enough to handle it, if what just happened in your attic is any indication.”

Violet nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. You need to keep an eye on the attic.”

Violet understood. This was her home. Her turf to defend, just as the lake was Harper’s.

“Be careful,” she said fiercely.

Harper’s smile was sharp around the edges. “You too,” she said, and then she was gone.

In her absence, Violet paced back and forth in the living room, restless and uneasy. Her mother was watching the spire, had asked Violet to rest, but she had never felt less like relaxing. Dread squirmed in her stomach as she peered out the window?—she could see a trail of smoke rising above the trees in the direction of the Carlisle cottage. Orpheus wound around her legs, his too-cold body somehow still comforting.

And then a knock sounded on the front door.

Violet didn’t know who she was expecting. Isaac, maybe. Certainly not Augusta Hawthorne, flanked by her two giant dogs.

“Uh,” she said. “I’ll get my mom?—”

“I’m here.” Juniper appeared beside her a moment later, looking utterly exhausted. “August, I thought you were at your place?—”

“June.” Augusta’s voice was utterly defeated. “The airborne corruption has begun to spread. We have to activate the emergency protocol.”

Her mother’s face collapsed, and Violet stared between the two of them, uncomprehending.

“What do you mean, emergency protocol?”

“She means it’s time for the founders’ last resort,” Juniper said. “We’ve failed to protect this town. Which means we need to evacuate Four Paths.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Harper followed the smoke rising above the trees, winding her way through a route she knew by heart: one that would take her home to her lake. She knew the corruption had spread again, but she was still unprepared for what she might find there. The horrors she’d seen in the Gray were merging with Four Paths in her mind the same way the Beast’s face had merged with Justin’s.

Justin.

The moment she’d heard the phone call cut out, something sharp and painful had crystallized in her chest. She’d remembered dropping that cheap wooden sword at his feet. The way his hair felt when she curled her fingers into it at his party. The conversation she’d had with Violet about how she didn’t have to save him.

Harper knew how he felt about her. She had known for a long time. And in that moment, she was tired of pretending she did not feel the