The Deck of Omens (The Devouring Gray #2) - Christine Lynn Herman Page 0,98

eclipsed by distress. He looked awful, eyes red and puffy, panting and sweaty from a clear sprint over to the town hall.

And Harper didn’t understand how, but in that moment she and Isaac somehow knew exactly what to do. Isaac shut the door behind Justin and rushed for his first-aid kit, while Harper guided him to the couch.

“What happened?” Harper asked as Isaac emerged with a towel. Justin accepted it wordlessly, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He looked horrible, clammy and pale, his skin drained of color and his hair glimmering with iridescent bits of slime.

“Water?” he croaked.

“Already on it,” Isaac called from the kitchen. “Now tell us what the hell is going on.”

“It’s May.” Justin’s eyes locked on Harper’s, wide with panic. “She’s in terrible danger. We need to call Augusta?—”

“Slow down.” Now that the spaces between them had been closed once, it felt far too easy to do it again. Her hand fit automatically into his, where he curled his fingers around hers so tightly that it was almost painful. “We’ll figure it out. Isaac?”

“My phone isn’t working,” he said. “Is yours?”

Harper spared a glance at hers, sitting screen-up on the table. “Huh. No service. Not even Wi-Fi.”

Not that that was much of a loss. Isaac called his Wi-Fi network the Sanctum, which had made Harper roll her eyes so hard it actually hurt a little bit.

“Same here,” Isaac said, reappearing in the living room with a mason jar full of ice water. His eyes flickered over their clasped hands, but he said nothing. “Do you think the corruption is messing with the signal?”

“I don’t know,” Harper said as Justin grabbed the water glass and drained it in a few quick swallows. “Justin, what’s going on with May?”

Justin’s brow furrowed. But before he could speak, the lamp beside them flickered. A second later, every light in the room went out, plunging them into pitch darkness.

“Shit!” Isaac swore, tripping over something and clattering into a wall. Harper sat stock-still, waiting impatiently for her eyes to adjust to the change in light. She could see something moving outside the window, shifting and slithering in the air. Smoke. The corruption had spread?—again.

“Violet and her mom are supposed to be patrolling down there,” Harper breathed. “Justin, did you see them? Did you see anything weird?”

“I went in through the back,” Justin said hoarsely. “I wasn’t really looking.”

“Well, something’s wrong,” Isaac murmured from in front of the window. Harper joined him a moment later.

In the last vestiges of the fading twilight, she saw movement: saplings, their veins glowing silver in the night, weaving together in front of the founders’ seal in the center of the town square. A mushroom cloud of dark gray smoke rose from their unfurling branches. Violet stood before it, her arms outstretched, red hair blown back from her face with the force of the whipping wind. There was no sign of Juniper at all.

“She’s trying to hold it back.” There was something like awe in Isaac’s voice.

A great crack sounded through the sky above them. The clouds ripped open, dusk fading to off-white while the Gray poured through. Harper watched, horrified, as it cascaded out in a great wave, the trees at the edge of the town square transforming before her eyes from brown to gray. The world was warping far more quickly than she’d ever thought possible; with every breath, the fog rolled closer to them, creeping across the treetops like extending hands.

The founders’ seal was falling, and Violet was still out there. Harper saw no hesitation in her stance, even as Orpheus’s small form wound angrily around her ankles.

“She’s not going to run.” The words were heavy on Harper’s tongue as she turned to Isaac and Justin.

“I know,” Justin said.

“Come on,” Isaac added. Something glinted in Harper’s peripheral vision, and she realized what he was holding: her sword. “We need to get her inside.”

Harper grabbed the weapon from his hand and nodded. Justin started to get up, but as one, they turned to him and glared.

“No,” Harper said sharply. “You’re not okay. Rest.”

All this time she’d thought of herself and Isaac as opposites. He was pretentious and tormented, unable to handle the power that had been heaped on him, while she’d clawed her way to everything she had. Now, as she followed him down the stairs and through the foyer of the town hall, she realized that she’d had it all wrong.

They were both careful with their loyalties. Both emotionally hesitant because of how deeply they