ELEVEN

VIOLET COULDN’T STOP THINKING about Stephen Saunders’s diary. She’d taken it home from the town archives and perused it constantly over the past few days, making notes and discussing potential theories with Harper.

They were sitting on ancient lawn chairs in Violet’s backyard, the journal spread across Harper’s lap. The afternoon sun sent auburn highlights through her dark, wiry curls as she inspected the torn-out edges at the end of the notebook. Violet had reluctantly told her about Isaac’s role in finding the journal, expecting her to be upset, but she’d just smiled.

“So even Justin’s best friend is turning on him,” she said. “Perfect.”

“You really hate him, don’t you?” Orpheus stirred gently from his seat in Violet’s lap, butting his head against her hand until she scratched him between the ears.

“I don’t hate him,” said Harper, lowering the notebook into her lap. “I just want him to realize that everything his family stands for is complete garbage, and suffer accordingly.”

“You can’t judge someone by their family,” said Violet, thinking of how little she and Juniper had to say to each other.

“You can when it’s Justin Hawthorne,” said Harper, sighing. “His family is everything to him. He genuinely thinks the Hawthornes are meant to be in charge, because that’s what he’s grown up hearing. And no matter how many people die, he’ll always put his mom and sister first. He’s always been like that. Even before the ritual.”

The bitterness in Harper’s voice was palpable. There was pain there that she had carried for years. Pain that seemed to stretch far beyond her ritual.

Violet understood pain. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Harper’s dark eyes widened, and it was like a window opening—there was still misery in her gaze, but now there was hope there, too. “Are you sure you want to listen?”

Violet remembered herself and Rosie lying side by side on her bed, talking about all their worries, both the petty ones and the deeper wounds, the ones they were scared would never quite heal. It had never failed to make her feel better. Maybe it would work for Harper, too.

“Of course I don’t mind,” Violet told Harper. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Okay, then,” Harper said quietly. “Look, you’ll probably think this is pathetic. But Justin and I… What he did… it felt like a breakup. Even though we weren’t together.”

“So you had a crush,” said Violet. “That’s not pathetic. Actually, it explains a lot.”

It did. Violet was embarrassed that she hadn’t noticed anything romantic about Justin and Harper’s obvious baggage. She’d been too focused on her ritual and her blackouts to really care.

She was starting to care now, though. Even though it meant that she could feel Four Paths starting to grow on her, like roots burrowing into her heart.

Harper sighed. “Haven’t you ever had feelings for someone, even though you knew it was a bad idea?”

There had been Gracie Coors, back in seventh grade, who Violet had thought was cute until Gracie said Violet was going to hell for having crushes on girls and boys. She’d cried to Rosie about that one for days. Connor something, who she’d met at the one Ossining party Rosie had managed to drag her to. They’d been making out in the basement when they were interrupted by his girlfriend. But neither of those seemed to qualify.

“Sort of,” she said, stroking Orpheus’s back. “I don’t really date.”

“Okay, well, have you ever had your heart broken?”

That was easier. Rosie’s death had broken everything. “Yes.”

“Then you know how badly it hurts,” said Harper, looking at her. “But the thing is, it hurts more because I never should’ve expected anything else. Founder kids aren’t supposed to date one another. And he never would’ve chosen me over his family. Even if my ritual had gone perfectly.”

Violet stared down the slope of the hill, to the place where tangled weeds and uncut grass met the towering chestnut oaks of the forest. “Would you have chosen him?”

Harper lowered her head. The sun was sinking behind her, turning her into a silhouette, framed in gold.

“What do you think?” she whispered.

And Violet knew this was it. The root of all her anger. That she had expected more from Justin than he’d been capable of giving her.

“I think you shouldn’t feel foolish for caring,” she said softly, thinking about how much Harper had just poured out to her. How much worse she herself had felt since she’d stopped talking to Rosie about her problems. “My dad died when I was five. For a while, I thought, because I couldn’t really remember him, it hadn’t made that much of a difference. That I couldn’t grieve for someone I didn’t know. But when I lost him… I lost his family, too. I thought maybe coming here would help—but the Saunders family isn’t what I was expecting. And all I can think about is that I’m not feeling any of the things I’m supposed to. Like there’s just some part of me that’s always going to be missing.” A lump swelled in Violet’s throat, and she realized that she was dangerously close to talking about Rosie—something she wasn’t yet ready to do.

“Anyway,” she said hastily, “what I’m trying to say is that I have the right to feel whatever I want. And so do you.”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” said Harper quietly. “But… thanks.”

“For what?”

“For listening,” said Harper, clearing her throat and gesturing toward the journal. “And now… don’t we have some work to do?”

*    *    *

Violet and Harper had yet to make any progress on the connection between the blackouts and her ritual, or the location of the rest of the journal. But she felt better anyway after their conversation, even though everything was still a mess.

After Harper left, Violet walked automatically to the piano, the composition book clutched in her hand. Orpheus trailed behind her as she entered the music room. One thing Stephen’s diary had made her feel better about was growing attached to the cat—getting closer to her companion could only mean that she was getting closer to understanding her magic. And she had to admit, undead or not, having Orpheus around made her feel a little calmer. A little safer.

She studied the piano from a distance at first, then approached it, laid a finger on the keys. Let a single note ring out through the air.

Violet had been on edge the past few days, but there had been no signs of turquoise hair. No waking up in strange places.

But that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again.

“You haven’t been practicing lately.” It was Juniper, fixing the clip at the back of her bun. Today she was more dressed down than usual—jeans and a blazer instead of a pantsuit. Violet figured that meant she didn’t have any video conference calls.

“I didn’t realize you paid that much attention to when I played,” said Violet, sliding the notebook onto the piano bench—out of Juniper’s line of sight. She didn’t want to answer questions.

Juniper’s smile was sad. “I was going to ask if you’d play for Daria. She requested it. But if you don’t want to, it’s all right.”

Daria slid out from behind her, as if on cue. “Your mother says you’re very good.”

Violet eyed them both suspiciously. When she had seen them hanging out before, on the porch, she had assumed it was a fluke. Now she wondered if maybe it wasn’t. If they were actually learning how to be sisters again.

The thought made her chest hurt.

But she missed the piano. And at least, if she blacked out while there were people watching her, they’d be able to stop her before she did anything dangerous.

“Fine,” she said, sitting down and flipping her sheet music open to Chopin’s Ballade no. 1 in G Minor, op. 23, her favorite piece of her old audition program. “But I’m going to make mistakes.”

As promised, it was far from a perfect performance. She hadn’t warmed up, and it had been weeks since she’d properly played. Once, auditioning for music school had felt like the biggest challenge she would ever face. Before Rosie’s death, before all of this, she’d even put together a list: the Eastman School of Music, Juilliard, the New England Conservatory, Curtis, Oberlin. But none of that would ever happen now.

Violet channeled that frustration into her playing. It flowed into every incorrect chord and fumbled fingering, and when she was done, she felt lighter somehow, as if she had exorcised some part of herself through the music.

When she lifted her hands from the keys, Daria clapped enthusiastically. But it was Juniper who made Violet pause.

Over the years, Rosie had made sure Violet went to her lessons, had kept her practicing, had held her hand and yanked her up the stairs at her first-ever recital, when she’d been scared she was going to throw up.

Juniper had barely seemed to notice any of it.

But today she was looking. And smiling. Like she was actually proud.

Violet remembered what Daria had said, about her parents being the ones who’d started her on the piano because Stephen had played it, too.

“Well done,” Juniper said softly. But before she could say anything else, her phone began to buzz. She looked down at it, frowning, and hurried out of the room.

Violet swallowed down a twist of hurt.

“Anyway,” Violet said, standing up and grabbing the notebook. “That’s… yeah. That’s it.”

But Daria blocked her exit.

“That notebook,” she said hoarsely, clutching Violet’s hand. “Where did you find it?”

Violet swallowed, disarmed. “The town archives. It was Stephen’s.”

Daria’s head inclined. “I know.”

“Do you… do you know where the rest of it is?”

Daria’s brow furrowed. Then she reached into a pocket of her dress and extracted a dark brown cylinder.

“I might be able to help,” she said, her eyes shining, while Violet swallowed her disappointment. She’d been hoping for more pages. “After my brother died, my father wanted to get rid of the journal. But Mother hid it first. Half of it in the town archives. And the other half… she gave me this. Said it was the clue to finding it. Said to keep it safe. I keep it on me, mostly. But here.” She pushed it into Violet’s hands. “It’s yours now.”

Violet gaped at her, the weight of this gift settling in her chest. “Thank you,” she said.

Daria smiled. “You’re welcome, little bone.”

“Daria? Violet?” called Juniper’s voice from the other side of the house. Whatever had caught her attention before, it was clearly over with. “What are you two doing?”

“Better go,” said Daria hoarsely. “She won’t understand.”

Violet nodded. She clutched the cylinder and Stephen’s journal close to her chest and hurried back to her room.

When the door was safely shut and locked, she let herself inspect her aunt’s strange present.

It was almost a foot long, and hollow, if the weight of it was any indication. There was a gap in the wood grain, close to the top. She twisted the edge of the cylinder, and it came off in her hands, revealing the roll of paper inside.

The lines and dots inked on the pages were incomprehensible. It took Violet a few seconds to realize what she was looking at, and when she did, she was even more confused.

It was the blueprints to the Saunders manor, hand-drawn in faded ink on yellowing paper. She spread the pages out on the floor of her room, weighted them with books, and looked them over, but as far as she could tell there was nothing interesting about them aside from how old they had to be.

She rolled them up again and sighed. She didn’t understand why Daria had wanted her to have these.

Beside her, Orpheus mewled. He was batting around a yellowing piece of paper that sat beside the blueprint case. It must’ve been in there as well—she just hadn’t noticed it before.

Violet snatched it away from his claws.

And then she gasped, because it wasn’t a piece of paper at all—it was a photograph.

Three teenagers sat on the front porch of the Saunders house. The girl in the center had perfect posture and a poised, careful smile on her face, dark eyes fixed on the camera lens. On her right sat another girl with her head turned to the side, mouth wide open in a raucous laugh as her hands reached up to clutch the edges of her oversize windbreaker. Her dark, frizzy hair fell almost to her waist.

But it was the boy on their left that held her attention. Dark curls, a thin, handsome face, an easy grin.

She turned the picture over and read the caption:

The Saunders siblings ( from left to right): Stephen, Daria, Juniper. 1984.

Violet flipped the picture over again.

The girl in the windbreaker was Juniper.

Laughing, wild, free. A version of Juniper unburdened by a dead brother, a dead husband, a dead daughter.

She was completely unrecognizable from the woman Violet had always known.

For the first time, Violet considered how much Juniper had been shaped by the people she loved being taken away from her. Losing Rosie had demolished Violet’s world. To endure that three times was more than any one person should have to bear.

Were the past few months just the first step to her becoming as jaded and cynical as her mother?

Violet shuddered, wondering if, years from now, her own daughter would be thinking the same thing about her.

“That’s not who I’m supposed to be,” she whispered to the photo.

But maybe that wasn’t true.

Maybe the thing no one had told her about growing up was that nobody ever really became the person they’d wanted to be.

Violet slid the picture carefully into the bottom compartment of her jewelry box, then crawled into bed, her fingers curled around Rosie’s bracelet, Orpheus at her side.

Her heart was so heavy in her chest, she was surprised it could still beat.

*    *    *

Parties in Four Paths were small by necessity, because although inviting anyone meant inviting everyone, there weren’t many kids to go around. But tonight, the shadowy interior of Suzette Langham’s barn was packed, everyone yelling over the blasting music and posing for pictures under the out-of-season holiday lights strung up on the walls. A cloud of cigarette smoke drifted above Justin’s head.

If Justin left Four Paths, he’d get to go to real nightclubs someday. Sit in real bars, flirt with girls he hadn’t known since preschool, instead of dutifully avoiding eye contact with Seo-Jin and Britta and all the other girls he’d dated for a day, a week, a month. But if he didn’t know them, they wouldn’t know him. Before his ritual, Justin had relished the way any high school party’s focus shifted where he walked. He could step into whatever conversation he wanted and know he was welcome there.

Any conversation, unless it included Harper Carlisle.

Years away from her, and still, within seconds of talking to her earlier that week, he’d wanted to tell her the truth. About what he’d really done to her. About what had truly happened the night she’d vanished into the Gray.

Harper had always been able to disarm him without trying, whether she was holding a sword or not. That hadn’t changed. It had cost him Violet Saunders, which meant it had cost him everything. But he deserved it.

He hadn’t told May and Isaac that he’d been desperate enough to confront Harper in person. Justin was drunk enough to enjoy the taste of the cheap beer someone’s older sibling had bought, but he wasn’t drunk enough to admit that he had failed. He wasn’t sure he could ever be drunk enough to do that.

He wove through the barn, high-fiving Cal Gonzalez and tapping his red cup against Suzette and her girlfriend Lia’s matching ones before tipping it up to his mouth.

But all socializing made him realize was how little he deserved to be treated this way. The way his classmates stared at him, with respect he hadn’t earned… Fake. It was all fake.

Justin couldn’t handle it anymore. He didn’t care that it was a Saturday night, or that he had appearances to keep up. He did a shot of terrible vodka with Marissa Czechowicz, then chased it with the rest of his beer. The force of the alcohol hit him hard after that, and he gulped and staggered away, trying to forget how Marissa had laughed at him when he grimaced at the shot.

But there wasn’t enough cheap liquor in the world to wash away the guilt Justin felt when he thought of what he’d done to Harper.

A flash of pastel pink appeared behind a hay bale, and Justin hurried over to May, the world spinning around him. His sister was usually alone at these parties—she liked it better that way.

But this time, she was talking to a boy.

A boy with dark, curly hair, a T-shirt that said PUBLIC SAFETY HAZARD, and a half-smoked cigarette held lazily in his left hand.

Seth Carlisle.

Justin couldn’t face a Carlisle right now. He was about to turn away when May caught his eye.

“Hey!” she called out. “You should go check on Isaac. He was matching Henrik Dougan on shots, and you know…” She trailed off, then hiccuped. Seth chuckled at her, raising the cigarette to his mouth. “You know how that ends.”

Justin wondered, vaguely, if she was trying to get rid of him. He didn’t like how closely she and Seth were standing. Or the way Seth was looking at her.

But May knew the rules about founder hookups. And May would die before she broke a rule. Also, she had a point.

Drunk Isaac had a tendency to disintegrate party decor he didn’t agree with. It was getting to the point where Justin was considering texting hosts in advance and warning them to hide their books by Isaac’s least favorite authors. Drunk Isaac would also sneak away with whoever caught his eye that night, girl or guy, which was partially why Justin had let him wander off in the first place. Isaac had only come out to him as bi a few months ago, and Justin wanted to be supportive—but knew how private his friend was about his love life. So he’d made a point of asking if Isaac needed a wingman, then backed off when Isaac had laughed and told him no.

But Isaac only hooked up with people when he was in a good mood, and these past few weeks, he’d been nothing but preoccupied and grumpy. So, faced with the prospect of having to deal with a drunk, angry best friend, Justin left May and Seth and started across the barn.

It wasn’t long before he caught sight of Henrik’s bulky form among a crowd in the far corner. Justin moved past a few couples stealing furtive kisses, the noise growing as he approached. He found Isaac leaning against the slatted wooden wall, slurring and shimmering and short-circuiting, a semicircle of people forming around him.

“No, see, I can do it!” Isaac insisted as Justin pushed his way through the crowd, muttering excuse mes as he jostled shoulders and stepped on feet. Justin reached the front of the circle as the empty whiskey bottle in Isaac’s hands disintegrated into ash. Henrik roared with approval and clapped Isaac on the shoulder. Isaac jolted forward, then stumbled, chuckling, back to the wall.

“Hey.” Justin crossed the circle and stood between the other boys. Adrenaline cut through his intoxication—he had to take care of Isaac. That was more important than his self-pity. “You all right?”

“’Course I’m all right.” Isaac frowned at him. “Best I’ve ever been.”

“Want a swig?” boomed Henrik, holding up another bottle.

Justin shook his head, his stomach churning. The Dougans made their own whiskey. How, no one was quite sure, but everyone knew a few sips were strong enough to kill a goat. Judging by the way Isaac was swaying, he’d had at least enough to kill an elephant.

“Do it again!” called the crowd.

Henrik held out a bale of hay. “Think you can do that?”

Isaac snorted. “Easy.” A second later, ash was dripping onto Henrik’s size-fifteen shoes. But the crowd barely clapped this time. The looks on their faces were clear—they were no longer impressed.

Justin’s mother had once warned him about showing off, back before his ritual day. Our powers aren’t cheap, silly tricks, Augusta had said. They are life and death. Never forget that.

“That all you got?” said a kid who Justin vaguely recognized as someone’s younger sibling. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen, but he stood at the front of the crowd with a gap-toothed smirk. Writhing in his arms was a panicked barn cat, a scrawny orange thing doing its best to sink its claws into the boy’s neck. “If you’re really as powerful as people say, why don’t you get rid of this?”

“Hey,” said Justin, but Isaac had already taken a wobbling step toward the boy, distress leaking through the intoxicated expression on his face.

“I won’t hurt something that doesn’t deserve it. I’m… honorable.”

The last word was barely decipherable. Justin was fairly certain this was the drunkest Isaac had ever been.

“Really?” said the boy. “’Cause that’s not what they say about your family.”

Isaac’s hands began to tremble, the twin medallions on his wrists glowing dully in the dim light.

And Justin saw something he’d never seen before on the faces of the people watching them. Disgust.

He wondered if it was just the alcohol that had allowed them to be so bold. But no, this felt different. Like the alcohol was merely allowing them to show something that had been festering for a long time.

“Yeah!” called someone else. “Where’s the Sullivan we’ve all heard so much about?”

“I bet you’re not even that powerful. Your family probably made up all those rumors to scare us.”

“Yeah, if you’re so powerful, how come Hap Whitley’s dead?”

“What about Vanessa? And Carl?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be stopping shit like that from happening?”

Justin could feel the crowd swelling. He needed to do something.

“Enough,” Justin said.

“Or what?” the boy said, still looking at Isaac. “You’ll carve one of us up like your family carved up each other—”

“ENOUGH,” Justin roared. One step put him in front of the kid’s face. He swiped the barn cat out of his arms, handed it to Henrik, and yanked on the boy’s collar until they were inches apart. “Get the hell out of this party.”

“But it’s not even your party,” whimpered the kid.

Justin wasn’t the type to threaten people. But he couldn’t let this escalate any further.

“The Hawthornes don’t forget an insult.” He let the crowd hear the truth in every word, see it on his face. “Neither do the Sullivans. Do you really want to be on the founders’ bad side?”

Justin released the boy. He ran off, and as the crowd around them dissipated, demoralized by the lack of a fight, Justin turned to Isaac.

“The cat,” Isaac said, looking around frantically. “Is it okay?”

“It’s fine,” said Justin, glancing over his shoulder—the cat was snuggled against a drunk Henrik’s chest, who was cooing soft endearments at it.

“Good,” Isaac said weakly. “Fuck, I hate that you had to threaten them.”

“Me too,” said Justin. His mother and May relished the reaction their name got from the rest of the town, but the way Justin had used it tonight made him nauseous. So did the expressions on the faces in the crowd he’d seen just now. The Hawthornes were losing the town, they were losing everything, and it would only get worse once people realized he didn’t have powers, either.

He’d already lost Violet’s help. He’d been so colossally foolish to even try to get it.

The last place in the world he wanted to be was a crowded party. The barn swam around him, intoxication blurring his vision. The temporary clarity defending Isaac had given him was gone.

“C’mon, man.” Justin swung Isaac’s arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“It would’ve been so easy,” said Isaac as they moved toward the barn door. “If I’d touched that boy, I could’ve made him just… go.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“I could’ve.”

“But you didn’t.”

They were almost at the door when Isaac looked at him, his eyes as lifeless as two snuffed-out candles. Justin had the sudden worry that Isaac could see the thoughts swimming in his brain, every gory detail of his insecurities and failures laid out for his perusal.

Isaac’s hand, which had been hanging limply over Justin’s shoulder, closed around his wrist.

“You always do that.” Isaac’s words didn’t sound slurred anymore. “Show up when I need you. How do you do that?”

Isaac’s jaw tensed, his face mottled and distorted by the Christmas lights, and Justin felt a rush of embarrassment he didn’t quite understand. Isaac never wanted anyone to see him like this. It felt wrong to watch him with all his defenses down.

And then he caught a flash of pink again, and he shrugged off Isaac’s arm, the moment gone, ready to tell May it was time to go home.

But May had a message for him, too.

“Thank goodness I found you,” she said, holding up her phone. Her pale face was taut with worry. “Violet texted us, all of us. Something’s wrong.”