The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,8

been looking for: a weakness.

“So if we can draw the Beast out,” she said slowly, “the same way the Church did, but cut it off from the Gray…”

“It’ll die,” Isaac finished.

“How can we close the Gray, though?”

Isaac raised his hands in the air. “My power extends to the Gray, remember? Any portal it opens, I can disintegrate.”

Violet winced, remembering how much messing directly with the Gray had seemed to cost Isaac, but nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “But that doesn’t answer how we would lure it out, does it? We’d need somebody connected to it. Somebody?—oh.”

Suddenly she was back on the night of that ritual again, staring at her mother’s lifeless body lying in the circle of bone. Watching Rosie appear in front of her, in her bedroom, in the Gray, in the spire.

She couldn’t do that again. Not willingly. Not when it had taken everything she had just to escape with her life.

“Absolutely not.” Violet slammed the book shut. “I refuse to be monster bait.”

“You just said you agreed that we couldn’t play nice,” Isaac said roughly. “And you already drove it out of your head once. I know you can do it again.”

“This is different,” Violet whispered, thinking of how the Beast had melted the flesh away from Rosie’s face, forced her to watch it decay. “I beat it that one time, yeah. But if it comes back, it’s not going to let me get away so easily. And we don’t even know if this will work. To risk everything like this?—it’s reckless.”

“Maybe it is,” Isaac said. “But if you really want it dead, well, this might be our best chance.”

“I have to think about this.” Violet snatched up the journal and stuffed it in her bag. “Just give me a little time, okay?”

Isaac’s face softened. He made no move to get the book back from her, which Violet appreciated.

“All right. But know this: Nobody’s ever changed things in Four Paths by pulling a punch. They pay for every victory.”

Violet’s eyes strayed to the founders on the wall, all solemn, all beautiful, all dead.

“I know,” she said, and then she turned and strode out the door.

CHAPTER THREE

Most of Four Paths avoided the depths of the forest, especially at night. But it was the part of town May loved best. She tipped her head back and shook the tension out of her shoulders, listening to the birds chirping in the trees. A yellow moon hung above her head, a waxing gibbous surrounded by a sea of hazy stars.

“I think I just twisted an ankle,” grumbled a voice beside her. “This is totally going to mess with my race next week.”

The tension returned to May’s shoulders immediately. She moved her gaze away from the sky and toward the figure on her right?—Justin Hawthorne, her older brother, Four Paths’ guilt-ridden golden boy and their mother’s undisputed favorite child.

“You’ll live,” she said tersely. “Stop complaining. You should feel lucky you’re back on the patrol schedule at all.”

“Yeah, on a trial basis,” said Justin.

May thought bitterly that a trial basis was more than Justin deserved considering all the shit he’d put their family through. He’d betrayed their mother and she’d still given him what he wanted.

Justin, it seemed, was impervious to true damage?—he would spring right back up again no matter how many times you knocked him down, while May felt sometimes as if she would shatter into tiny pieces if she had to handle one more catastrophe.

“Let’s just concentrate on completing the route,” May said. He was ruining the way the forest made her feel at night, reminding her of everything she couldn’t be. “We need to be on alert. We don’t know when or how Dad is coming back.”

Mentioning their father was a cheap shot, but it did what May had intended?—made Justin tense up, too.

“Are you totally sure you saw him returning?” he asked, not for the first time.

The Hawthorne family did not talk about Ezra Bishop. No one had ever specifically made the rule, but May had followed it anyway?—it was an unspoken truth in a sea of other unspoken truths, and May had grown quite good at learning how to veer away from anything that might tip the delicate balance between herself, her mother, and Justin.

But there was no avoiding this. Not anymore. And deep down, May was grateful for it.

Augusta hated May’s father, so of course Justin did, too. But May missed him. He was the only person in her life who had ever chosen her over Justin. Who