TWENTY

VIOLET CAME TO SLOWLY, her thoughts sluggish and aimless, like a leaf bobbing on the surface of a pond. Her skull felt like it had been split in two. She tried to move her head, but it hurt too much.

Her arms were bound behind her back, which rested against something rough, but she sat on soft, loamy ground. Her eyes opened, blinking blearily as she tried to make sense of where she was.

She’d been in the woods, trying to get Nora home. No, that wasn’t right. She’d been with May, getting her memories back.

No, that was wrong, too. She was in the attic, reading Stephen’s journal.

But no. She was missing something, because she had no idea how she’d gotten here. Wherever here was—somewhere suffocatingly, oppressively dark.

She shuddered, realizing why everything looked so uniform, why the world smelled faintly of mildew and body odor. Some kind of bag had been shoved over her head.

Terror rushed through her, but at least it was her terror. At least that thing, the Beast, was out of her head—for now.

She shuddered, thinking of what it could’ve made her do. What she had already done.

“She’s awake.”

A chorus of murmurs approached her as Violet squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.

“Should we take the hood off?”

“Not until the ceremony starts.”

“But what if she can’t breathe?”

“Then she can’t annoy us.”

“Surely she’s too smart to talk.”

“She went to the Hawthornes. She’s already talked too much.”

Violet knew there had to be a way out of this, if only she could concentrate. But her skull ached, her hands throbbed, and she couldn’t shake the panic roaming through her rib cage.

Her aunt’s prediction rushed back to her: You’re going to die with a hat on. Did a hood count?

“Enough.” This new voice was soft and syrupy, like an adorable southern grandma holding a glass of alcoholic iced tea. Violet knew her brain was getting loopy, possibly from the Beast, possibly from air loss. The hood was yanked off her head, and as she gasped for air, Mrs. Moore, the town librarian, came into her field of view.

“There you are, honey,” she said, smiling in a way that seemed far more at home at a picnic than a kidnapping. “Isn’t that better?”

Violet took in the world around her. They were deep in the woods, branches laced above her head like the bars of a cage. It seemed unfair that the sky was a perfect velvety black, speckled with stars.

Bells hung in the trees before her, like the ones she’d seen hanging from the eaves of the houses on her first day, like the one she’d seen in the tower above the town hall. But the robed figures that bustled about were untying them, removing them from the trees.

“You’re the Church of the Four Deities,” Violet whispered. “Aren’t you?”

Mrs. Moore smiled. “In the flesh.”

Violet screamed.

Mrs. Moore’s face crinkled with disappointment. “Oh, sweetie. Now we’ll have to gag you.”

A roll of duct tape shone in her manicured hand. She tore off a strip and slapped it across Violet’s protesting mouth.

Unable to speak, Violet scanned the Church member’s faces instead, trying to commit them to memory. Although they were mostly adults, she recognized a few people from homeroom. Apparently, the Church of the Four Deities had been recruiting fresh blood.

“He approaches!” called out a deep male voice. Robed figures scurried around in disarray as the same figure she’d seen standing over Daria at the foot of the stairs emerged from between two shadowy trees.

The hooded robes and the gloves it wore hid most of its form, but they couldn’t hide the sickly-sweet, rotten smell as it passed through the clearing.

The other figures parted around it automatically, from respect or fear, Violet couldn’t tell. She pressed her back against the tree trunk, gagging, as it shuffled toward her.

“That’s right,” said a robed figure who was walking beside it, like an aide. “We’ve acquired the girl.”

It stopped only a few feet away from her, then slowly, deliberately, its hands lurched to its hood. And pulled it back.

The eye sockets were rotted away, the forehead half-demolished; the hair clung on to the scalp in patchy bits of frizzy, dark curls.

It didn’t matter.

Violet recognized the face immediately.

He was a funhouse-mirror version of the boy in the photograph. The boy behind the journals. The boy who’d died with the Beast inside his head.

Stephen Saunders.

The corpse was disturbingly young, the slender build and half-rotted face of a boy forever frozen at sixteen.

Bits of preserved flesh flaked off him as he leaned toward her. As he tugged off a glove.

Violet whimpered behind the gag as he reached out a skeletal finger and raked it down her cheek. The smell of decay assaulted her nostrils. Bile rose in her throat; every instinct begged her to flee.

The tether between them snapped into place, like the one she’d sensed with Orpheus. But while the energy that tethered Violet to her companion was a thin, warm strand of effort, this felt different. Something was being forcibly extracted from her chest, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

She tried to pull back against it, to break it. But Violet’s already-sore limbs were going numb. The branches around her blurred. Her vision had begun darkening around the edges when Stephen jerked his hand away, then rose slowly to his feet, leaving her lolling against the tree in relief.

When her vision cleared enough to watch the Church members again, she noticed they seemed somewhat confused. Several whispered among themselves, until finally one member approached Mrs. Moore. She caught snatches of the conversation.

“…late?”

“Supposed to…”

“Start without…?”

“We can’t hold off any longer.” Mrs. Moore’s voice made the other robed figures turn their heads. “It’s time to begin.”

The bells were gone from the trees by now, a discarded row at the edge of the clearing. The Church members assembled in a circle. Violet caught a flash of the founders’ symbol on the ground, made of bones that glowed white against the dirt. They were too small to be human, a minuscule consolation. It hadn’t been there before—the Church members must have made it, a gruesome tribute to her family’s Deck of Omens suit.

Two robed figures stepped out from between the trees. Juniper’s limp body sagged between them.

The sight of her mother, so helpless, was far more frightening than Stephen’s undead body. Violet cried out, but the duct tape muffled her screams. None of the robed figures even flinched.

They dragged Juniper into the center of the circle and laid her diagonally between the lines of bone. A second later, her brother joined her. He raised his hands toward the sky, and the singing began.

“Sinners who’ve been led astray,

Wandered through the woods one day…”

They were an unnerving sight, their dark hoods pulled back to reveal the reverence on their faces. They were calling on a monster. Calling for it to take Violet’s mother away. The air crackled around them as the line between Four Paths and the Gray began to blur.

She was going to die. So was Juniper.

Her tears grew thicker as she realized that she’d never get to tell her mother she was sorry.

The Gray began to spill open before her, harsh white clouds seeping through a tiny sliver of the night sky. The trees around them turned squat and dark, the ridges on their trunks pulsing to the rhythm of the Church’s song.

Which was when the ropes around her body went slack, pooling at her waist. Violet wriggled her fingers cautiously, her eyes darting to the side.

A familiar head of blond hair peered out from behind a neighboring tree. A moment later, a flash of dark curls and concerned, furrowed eyebrows joined him.

The tears on her cheeks were relieved ones now.

Isaac and Justin had come to help her. Which almost made up for them lying about Augusta Hawthorne.

“Don’t move your hands,” said Isaac. “Pretend you’re still tied up.”

“And don’t freak out,” Justin added. “We’re your friends. I’m not sure what you remember.”

Violet ignored Isaac and ripped the duct tape off her mouth. Half the skin on her lips came off with the adhesive, but she didn’t care.

“What did I just say—” hissed Isaac.

“I know who you are.” Blood pooled into Violet’s mouth from her ruined lips. She would keep May’s secret. But she couldn’t pretend she didn’t know what was going on, not when her mother’s life might depend on it. “I got my memories back.”

Isaac’s face slackened with such undisguised happiness, Violet had to wrestle down a grin.

There would be time later to discuss how they’d deceived her. Right now, she had other things to worry about.

“My mother’s in there.” Violet jerked her head toward the circle, where the singing was reaching a feverish pitch.

“We know,” said Justin. “We planned for it.”

“You’re both getting out of here alive.” Isaac locked eyes with Violet. “Your mom’s going to be okay. I promise.”

Violet believed him, or at least the rush of warmth in her chest did.

But they were three on fifteen. She didn’t know how that was possible.

And then, on the other side of the clearing, a flash of silver emerged from beneath a hooded figure’s robe.

A sword.

A moment later, the Church member closest to the figure was howling in pain, stumbling back into the woods.

The figure’s hood fell back, revealing a tangled mane of dark curls and a face filled with murderous rage.

Violet grinned.

Harper.

It didn’t matter that they couldn’t stand one another. They’d teamed up—to rescue her.

And if she was worth enough to these people for May to defy her family and return her memories, for Harper and Justin and Isaac to put aside years of hurt to come to her aid, then she wasn’t alone. Not anymore.

The circle shifted uneasily, the chant weakening. Isaac took advantage of the moment to charge forward, his hands already beginning to glow.

“Hey, assholes!” he called out. “Come and get me!”

Violet shoved the ropes away from her torso. “The Beast wants something with my mom,” she murmured to Justin.

“I know.” Justin helped her to her feet. She could barely feel her limbs. “It wants to possess her permanently so it can escape the Gray.”

The thought was horrifying. “Like it’s been possessing me?”

Justin nodded. “So you figured it out.”

“Yes.”

Behind them, a scream rang out through the air—Isaac’s distraction had done its job. Harper’s silver sword flashed on the other side of the clearing, and two robed figures fell back, yelling with pain.

The singing was completely gone now; everything was chaos and screams. But the circle of bone was still intact, Stephen and Juniper at its center.

That was all that mattered now.

Violet caught sight of a flash of steel behind Justin’s shoulder. “Look out!”

Justin dodged the blow and jumped backward as a figure emerged in front of them, a knife in his hand. It was a boy Violet didn’t recognize, but Justin clearly did.

“Justin Hawthorne,” the boy said viciously. “I was hoping you’d show.”

Justin’s voice was clouded with resignation. “Brian Whitley. This won’t get you the revenge you want.”

Violet didn’t know how they knew each other, but as the boy brandished his knife, the defeat on Justin’s face was palpable.

“Leave them alone!” called out a voice from the other side of the fray. Brian Whitley charged toward the trees as Harper Carlisle appeared beside them, her sword gleaming in the moonlight.

“Traitor!” Brian cried at Harper as he fled into the forest.

“Traitor?” said Violet.

Harper and Justin exchanged a loaded glance.

“I’ll explain later,” Harper said softly. “You need to get to your mom.”

Violet’s eyes sought out the circle. Stephen was on his knees, his corpse crouching over her mother’s body. Every part of her was flooded with panic; but she would not let it overwhelm her. She could cry later. Now was the time to act.

But beside her, Justin nudged her elbow. “You might not have to.”

He gestured at Isaac, who was running toward the circle of bone. Violet shuddered with relief as he began to step over the line—but something sparked upward, like a firework, and he stumbled back.

“I can’t get in!” he called, panic lacing his voice.

Stephen Saunders’s hand slid into his robe. It emerged clutching a knife made of bleached, whittled bone.

Violet’s entire world narrowed to the blade as Stephen lowered it to her mother’s neck.

The Gray wasn’t letting anyone in. Which meant there was no way to stop Stephen.

No way, of course, unless your mind was somehow bound to the monster that lived inside it.

She bolted toward the circle, shoving away a figure who came at her with a knife. Maybe Justin was yelling in protest, and maybe Isaac was yelling, too. She didn’t care.

Because Juniper was her mother. And she would do anything, anything, to save her.

She leaped over the line of bone. And just as she’d known in her gut, just as she’d feared, it let her pass.

*    *    *

Violet landed in the Gray.

Bent-back trees with pulsing, ashen trunks. Dull, unmoving sky. A feeling like static in her chest. Already she felt like she couldn’t breathe. The Church and her friends were gone.

Juniper lay on the ground, still surrounded by bones. Stephen Saunders hovered above her. The ivory blade in his hand was as menacing and colorless as the world that stretched around her.

Violet lunged for the blade, wresting it from her uncle with no real resistance at all. She shuddered at the feeling of his dead hands on hers as she knelt beside Juniper, pressing two fingers to her neck. The thin, erratic pulse of Juniper’s heartbeat against Violet’s fingers was the sweetest thing Violet had ever felt.

She tipped her head up to Stephen, extending the knife he’d held just moments ago.

“Get away from us.” Violet shuddered as the words echoed through the dim landscape a second too late. The bond between them tugged at her again, but she ignored it as she gathered her mother into her arms. She half carried, half dragged her toward the edge of the circle.

Stephen didn’t try to attack her. He didn’t even move.

“It won’t work.” Her sister’s voice floated through the circle.

The Beast gnawed at the edge of her mind, coating her skull like a second skin.

Violet froze, her boots crunching bone.

Where would she go? This was the Beast’s prison. In here, they were at its mercy.

“You won’t get her out like that.” Not-Rosie’s voice was languid, almost lazy. She appeared a moment later. Her body was no longer transparent, and her shadow crept across the circle, the edges twisting and winding like the branches behind her head.

Almost real, except for the utter lack of empathy on her face.

Violet clutched Juniper like a lifeline. At least her mother didn’t have to be awake for this. “I’m not letting you take my mom away from me.”

Juniper wasn’t perfect. But she was the only family Violet had left.

She couldn’t let the last memories they had of each other be a fight. She couldn’t let it end like this.

“She won’t be gone,” said the Beast dispassionately. “She’ll just be dead. And I…” Not-Rosie’s mouth stretched into a wide, mad grin that did not belong to her sister at all. “I’ll be free, and your ancestors’ greed will have been their own undoing.”

“Greed?” The question spilled out of Violet’s throat.

“Oh, child,” said the Beast. “Do you really think I was bound here out of altruism? They wanted my power, and they achieved it. But they can only keep it where I’m trapped, so they stay forever in this miserable little place. You should be glad to set me free. The founders have never understood my view of things. But I knew Stephen was different from the moment he let me into his mind.”

Those words triggered something in Violet, a realization that had been working in the back of her head since before the equinox.

She knew why her mind had gone blank. Why the Beast had burrowed into her head, why Stephen had been such an easy target for it. The Saunders family had to prove they could handle their powers. And what better way to show their worth than to let the Beast inside their heads—and drive it out again?

It would solidify that tether between them.

It would show that they were stronger than the monster they were bound to.

It had to be her family ritual. Which meant there was a chance she could still fix this.

Violet laid out her mother on the ground and rose, trembling, to her feet.

“How about this?” she asked as the Beast cocked Not-Rosie’s head to the side. “How about you take me instead? I know you love hanging out inside my head.”

“You’re not nearly strong enough,” said the Beast disdainfully.

“But I’m willing,” said Violet. “Was Stephen willing? Because I think you brainwashed him into doing this. I don’t think he wanted you in there at all.”

“Stephen was weak.” The word hung in the air between them, echoing back from the trees that wound around them. “So are you. Weakened by grief and love and sadness. You called to me from the moment you entered the town, from the moment you sat down at that piano. Your mother’s power is the only one strong enough to hold me.”

“I thought you might say that.” Violet steeled herself for what she was about to do. It was a bad plan. But it was the only one she had. “I guess expecting you to cooperate was unrealistic.”

She charged toward Not-Rosie and closed her hands around her sister’s wrists.

They were real because she needed them to be real, and as she stood nose to nose with her sister’s image, something flickered in those dark eyes. Something hungry.

“Stop that,” hissed the Beast.

Her sister’s form shimmered in the air.

“Stop it,” whined the Beast. “Stop it and I’ll let you bring her back. For real. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

And suddenly Rosie looked even more solid than before. Her skin glowed with life and health; her hair shone turquoise in the Gray’s weak imitation of sunlight.

Her mouth opened in a grin. “You know you can do it,” said her voice. “You brought back Orpheus. Why not me?”

Violet saw it in her mind then.

Saw herself letting go. Letting the Beast take hold of Juniper, then granting her powers that would let her leave the town, that would be strong enough not just to reanimate Rosie’s body, but to heal her.

Trading a mother for a sister. A life for a life.

“I’m all you’ll ever have,” her sister’s form whispered. “I’m the only person who’s ever loved you. Are you really ready to let me go?”

It was the hardest thing Violet had ever done—but she looked away from her sister’s face.

To Juniper, lying in the dirt, looking both older and younger than Violet had ever seen her before.

“Do you really think,” she said, moving her eyes back to the Beast—because no matter what it looked like, that was what it was—“that I would ever consent to you murdering my mother? You’re the monster here, not me.”

Not-Rosie hissed with displeasure. “Then you’ve doomed me,” she snapped, and suddenly her skin was shriveling across her skull, her eyes blackening with rot, her hands withering in Violet’s until Violet was clutching flaking skin across yellow bones.

Maggots writhed behind her sister’s empty eye sockets as her withered mouth cracked open into a grin—or perhaps it was just a silent scream.

“You’re not real,” Violet whimpered, shutting her eyes, but she could feel Rosie’s dead hands in hers.

Smell the sweet, musky scent of decay.

Violet gagged and gripped harder. Knives seared at the back of her skull as the Beast’s voice—its real voice—echoed through her, hissing in an unfamiliar language.

It went against her every instinct to pull the Beast into her mind. But she pushed her panic away, tugging its presence toward her and forcing herself not to retreat. Cold hands grasped her mind, and Violet let out an involuntary shudder as her toes, her feet, her ankles went numb.

Tears forced her eyes open, dripping in viscous lines down her cheeks that were too thick to be water. Gray ran up the inside of her wrists, racing toward her shoulders, her chest, her heart. Violet felt as if she were sinking into a treacly black lake. She was holding her breath, but soon, she’d have to open her mouth and take in a lungful of molasses.

It was inside her. Wrestling control away from her body the way it had on the equinox.

Violet couldn’t remember why she’d thought she could beat it. Why she’d let it in. But it didn’t matter anymore, none of it did.

All that was left was to surrender. It would be so easy to surrender.

And as Violet stared out at the bleak, colorless world of the Gray, the last vestiges of her consciousness slipping away, she saw Rosie.

At first, she thought this was another cruel trick of the Beast’s. But Rosie’s eyes were brown and glowing, with gold liner at their corners. And she wasn’t wearing the clothes she’d had on the night she died. Instead, she wore the dress she’d bought for prom, a flowing black thing that struck the perfect balance between edgy and classy, with a chunky gold statement necklace.

She’d never gotten to show it off anywhere besides a dressing room.

“Damn straight I’d choose to spend eternity in this.” Rosie frowned at her. “I can feel your judgment. Figures you’d lose control of your motor functions before you surrender your attitude.”

“Rosie?” Violet wasn’t sure if she was talking or thinking. But this wasn’t the Not-Rosie the Beast had shown her. This Rosie felt like her sister the same way her paintings did. “Are you real?”

Even the Gray began to flicker as the Beast burrowed into her mind. The edges of her vision were blurring black.

“Real or not, you know what I’d say,” said Rosie. “I love you, but I don’t want any company. Not for a long time.”

“I love you, too,” Violet whispered.

Rosie gave her a grin that was tinged with sadness. “I’m sorry I left you.”

And then she was gone, and there was only blackness.

Something inside Violet had cracked the day Rosie died. There was an abscess in her chest, a gaping hole in the back of her skull.

A place for evil things to slip right in.

Her grief had let the Beast inside her head. But Violet’s grief was also her anchor to herself.

And she could use that grief to drive out the Beast.

Violet let the months of pain and sorrow rush through her as she clawed back her mind. This was hurt it would never understand. This was hurt made from love. And as she immersed herself in grief, embraced it, the parts of her that had been so lost and broken, so long her enemy, were now her savior.

“You’re not coming back,” she said, to Rosie, and to herself, the girl she’d been before. She was different now, broken and remade. There would always be sorrow buried within her. But that was okay—that was part of who she was. And as the Beast’s grip over her mind snapped like a bone breaking in two, Violet knew it would never leave her head, either. Not completely.

That was the price the Saunders family had paid for power.

Violet opened her eyes.

The Gray was gone, and she was back in the clearing, surrounded by woods, noise rushing through the circle of bones.

Color spread back across her skin, chasing the Gray past her wrists, past her fingertips—which were curled, unconsciously, around her sister’s silver bracelet.

Stephen Saunders still stood at the edge of the circle. It might’ve been her imagination, but his rotted eye sockets seemed to gleam with fear.

She breathed in deep. The cool night air filled her lungs with the smell of earth, the smell of the woods.

Then she strode across the circle, her feet crunching across animal bones, until she and Stephen were inches apart, nose to skull.

The tether she’d felt earlier spun between them, a horrible, queasy thing.

Violet remembered the boy in the journals. He hadn’t deserved to end up like this, a heap of ruined clothes and eroding bones, held together by her magic.

He deserved peace.

She reached her hand up, mimicking his movements from before, and touched a bloodstained finger to his rotting cheek.

“We both know you’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered. “I hope it’s not so bad, where you’re going. Maybe I’ll see you there one day.”

She harnessed the same part of herself that had clawed her mind back from the Beast’s hold. Power surged within her, wild and wonderful and, at last, truly hers.

Something on that decayed face twitched with what might’ve been relief. And as the tether between them snapped, Stephen Saunders collapsed beneath her hand.

She stepped away from him, shuddering, and wiped her fingers off on her jeans.

To her surprise, far more than three figures were now dealing with the Church members. They were older and better trained, which meant only one thing: The sheriff had arrived.

Violet dragged Juniper across the barrier, bones crunching beneath her boots with every step. Then she knelt down beside her, smoothing a lock of frizzy hair away from Juniper’s slack-jawed face.

“Wake up,” she said softly. “Come on, Mom. It’s over.”

A figure knelt down beside her, a blond, angular slab of marble. “Is she all right?” asked Augusta Hawthorne, her words raw with panic.

Violet recoiled. “Don’t try anything.”

Augusta held up her gloved hands. “I won’t.”

Violet was surprised by how the fear in the sheriff’s voice matched the fear that pulsed through her as she stared at Juniper’s limp form. Behind her, figures in brown robes were being handcuffed and led to squad cars, while other officers squatted beside the circle of bones, putting fragments into plastic evidence bags.

“Violet?”

She turned at the sound of her name. Justin and Isaac trotted out of the fray, Harper trailing behind them. And if her eyes stung a little at the sound of Justin’s familiar voice, well, it was dark, and no one noticed, so it didn’t count.

“Your face,” said Isaac softly. “There’s blood…”

“I’m fine,” said Violet. “Juniper’s the one who needs help.”

“She should see a doctor,” Augusta said. “She could be concussed. Or drugged. There’s a clinic at the station.”

“Only if I get to stay with her the whole time,” said Violet firmly. “And only if those gloves stay on.”

Augusta hesitated, her face still creased with concern. “You remember.”

Violet smiled. “Yeah. I do. And I will find some way to set an undead army on you if you lay a finger on either of us again.”

Augusta raised an eyebrow at the threat, but it must’ve worked, because she backed away.

As Juniper was lifted up onto a stretcher, Violet realized that Justin, Harper, and Isaac were flanking her.

“You didn’t have to do this,” she muttered. Her gaze darted from Justin’s dirt-streaked hair to the bloody paperback sticking out of Isaac’s pocket to the sword gleaming in Harper’s hand.

“Do what?” said Justin.

“Come on. You know what.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Violet raised her arms to the sky in protest, Rosie’s bracelet jangling on her wrist.

“Save me.” It was a struggle to spit the words out, because she really meant them. “But you did. So thank you.”

Harper ducked her head and swung her sword up onto her shoulder. The corners of Isaac’s mouth twitched as he wiped a smudge of dirt off his nose.

“I’d give that a four out of ten,” he drawled.

“I’ll be sure to consider your judgment the next time I’m trapped in an alternate-dimension prison with a monster that has possessed me.”

His eyes crinkled with mirth, and suddenly it was a little harder for Violet to stand straight.

“Are you going to be okay?” said Justin.

“I think so,” Violet said. “I figured out my ritual.”

Justin let his smile loose. His white teeth glowed like a beacon against the night.

She didn’t know how he could still look so happy, but she was grateful for it. She was grateful for all of them. And she could tell they knew it. She could see it on their faces. There was a sense of mutual relief humming among all four of them. They were alive, and they were safe.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked Harper as they headed toward the edge of the clearing. The trees around them were bathed in red and blue light from the sirens flashing at the edge of the forest.

“My father,” said Harper hesitantly. “Violet… there are some things you should know. Now that your memories are back.” The beam of a police flashlight caught Harper’s neck, illuminating the bruises on her throat. Bruises that were shaped a lot like fingers.

Violet remembered, with a rush, that Harper had been wearing one of those robes, too. “What happened?”

Harper cast a careful glance at Augusta Hawthorne. “I’ll explain later.”

Her voice sounded different. Smoother. Stronger.

Violet had questions for all of them, but right now, her priority was getting to the squad car that held her mother. She had earned herself a second chance with Juniper, and she would not waste it. It was time she started learning to move on.