The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,90
came the unmistakable stench of death.
CHAPTER TWENTY
May stared unhappily at the front of the Hawthorne house. Smoke wafted in curls above the gabled roof, but it wasn’t coming from the chimney. It was coming from the tree.
The buds, once unfurled, could not be closed. Harper, Violet, and Isaac had done their best, but that was not enough to stop the air from changing. May blinked, her eyes watering in the thin film of mist that now hung around her home. It was a problem in all four of the founder territories, collected in the areas that had fallen to the corruption.
May hated it. It was a reminder of her failure. She’d tried to change the future and the cards had seized up on her. She’d been wrong about her capabilities, and the corruption had spread even farther as a result, leading to the evacuation of the town.
Which had left her with only one option: pooling her resources.
Ezra had seemed to view her inability to change the future as a mishap, not a catastrophic error, and he’d said he had another plan but it would take extra help. The time for respecting petty family rivalries was past. If Juniper Saunders could come to stay at their house, May figured she had nothing left to lose by inviting over her father. She was worried about his susceptibility to the airborne corruption, but he’d promised her that he was taking every precaution he could. May had to believe that would be enough.
His car pulled into the driveway, and she walked him to the front door, watching as he scanned the smoke rising behind the house.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “The evacuation must have been hard on you.”
“The evacuation was tough, but this is going to be worse,” May said. “Mom’s going to freak out when she sees you.”
“You didn’t warn her I was coming?”
“She would have told me no and grounded me until the corruption ate Four Paths alive.”
“So she hasn’t changed at all, then.”
“Nope.” May swung open the front door, took a deep breath, and gestured for her father to follow her inside.
She had known springing Ezra Bishop on the rest of her family would be an unpleasant experience. But she had not anticipated just how severely they would react when he appeared behind her in the doorway to the living room.
Augusta rose to her feet immediately, disbelief and anger mixing together on her face. Brutus and Cassius rose with her, their hackles raised defensively, while Justin remained seated, frozen.
He stared at Ezra as if he were seeing the Beast itself. It was like watching them both gaze into a mirror. Ezra had aged so well he barely looked in his thirties, let alone his fifties, and Justin had grown up in his absence. They had the same hair, the same eyes, the same wide, easy smile. But May knew already that neither of them would be smiling now, that this reunion wouldn’t be anything like hers.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Augusta asked, the words ricocheting off the wall like bullets. May rarely heard her mother swear. The word dropping out of her mouth so casually made May realize just how much she’d thrown into her family’s path.
But things were desperate. She wasn’t sure she’d had a choice.
“Helping,” she said, meeting Augusta’s eyes. “I know you’re not going to be a huge fan of this idea, but he’s been studying the corruption and he has a plan?—”
“Studying the corruption?” Augusta snarled. “How long has he been here?”
“Augusta,” Ezra said.
“I’m not talking to you.” Augusta’s gloved hands twitched with fury. “Ezra, sit. The dogs will keep you company. I need a word with my children.”
Ezra sat nervously on the couch. Brutus and Cassius flanked him, still at full attention. A long string of drool dripped onto the floor from Brutus’s gaping maw as he gazed at May’s father like he was an afternoon snack. She hoped he’d still be in one piece whenever they came back.
Augusta herded Justin and May into the foyer. The moment the living room door was closed behind them, she rounded on May, her voice low but furious.
“May Elaine Hawthorne, how long has he been here?”
When Augusta was angry, she had a kind of terrifying focus. May had seen it in action many times, the way her mother could zero in on a target and immediately decide how best to eliminate it as a threat. Right now May was in the center of her mother’s furious