A surge of energy coursed through her, to the card in her hands. It burned white-hot between her interlaced fingers, tracing the maps of old wounds that had long since faded. It was only her sense of self-control that kept her from crying out.
May felt the path lock into place. Felt the card in her hand vibrate—then shift, until the heat on her palms had faded.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She could feel blood pooling beneath her nostrils and at the rims of her eyes, blurring her vision. When she blinked, crimson splatters appeared on her pajama pants.
“What was that?” Augusta said sharply.
May’s lie was quiet, easy. “The cards had more to tell me.”
But it had been just the opposite. She’d had more to tell the cards—and they had changed. They’d listened to her.
A Hawthorne shouldn’t have been able to do that. But she had.
May flipped over the final card without another word, ready to see her path, ready to accept her future.
And gasped.
Her eyes took in the Crusader—a knight on a horse, reared back to charge, no part of him visible but two fiery eyes beneath his helmet.
Her father’s card.
May already knew that when she looked at her mother’s face, all she would see was crushing, inevitable disappointment. Augusta would insist it meant nothing, that it was a sign to be ignored.
But May knew better.
Because the Crusader in this context could only mean one thing: She would not be able to fix the hawthorn tree without her father. And if that meant going against Augusta’s wishes, so be it.
After all, the Deck of Omens wasn’t her mother’s to command. It was hers.
CHAPTER TWO
One week later
Harper Carlisle waited for her reckoning with a blade in her hand and a deep, impenetrable dread in her heart.
“You can put that down,” Violet Saunders said, the calm in her voice belied by how aggressively she was gripping her cup of coffee. They stood side by side in the backyard of her friend’s imposing manor house, staring out at the woods. The treetops on the hill before them shone like a wildfire in the late-afternoon sunlight. “They aren’t going to hurt you.”
Harper eyed the two figures standing at the bottom of the hill, perhaps twenty feet away, and opted not to lower her sword.
“They’re my family,” she said. “Of course they’re going to hurt me.”
This meeting hadn’t been her idea. But she had agreed to it when her siblings texted Violet, desperate to see her. Because after a week sequestered in the Saunders manor with nothing to do but stare at creepy taxidermied animals, Harper was sick of hiding.
There were problems she needed to deal with if she ever wanted to leave the safety of Violet’s house again. And although she didn’t want to talk to them, Seth and Mitzi Carlisle were still the least awful of the conversations she had ahead of her.
Nobody spoke beyond awkward greetings as Harper’s siblings shuffled through the back door. Violet shepherded them all to the living room, where Seth and Mitzi sat on the wide leather couch. Harper took a plushy armchair, her residual limb twinging with pain as she surveyed her brother and sister. Her left arm ended just after the elbow, the result of an accident that had happened right after her ritual. When she was particularly frightened or upset, she could still feel the pain in her phantom limb, an invisible left hand aching.
They had both seen better days. Mitzi’s long red hair was piled in a messy bun atop her head, her eyeliner smudged at the corners and a zit budding on her chin. Seth was wearing a sweatshirt that read PUBLIC SAFETY HAZARD; it looked more like a statement of fact than a bad joke.
“I brought this,” her sister said quietly, shoving a duffel bag onto the coffee table between them. “It’s your clothes and makeup and shit.”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “You’re wearing my black sweater right now.”
“I didn’t say all your clothes.” Mitzi was fourteen, and in that moment she sounded it, petulant and frustrated. “You know you don’t have to do this, right? You could just come home.”
“Mitzi.” Seth’s voice was low and hoarse. He reached into his pocket, pulled out Harper’s phone, and tossed it onto the table beside the duffel bag. “She was so desperate to get away from us that she didn’t bring anything with her. She’s not coming home just because you ask.”
Harper stared at the gauntlets her siblings had thrown on the table, her heart heavy. She wanted to give Mitzi skin-care advice and tell Seth to wash his hair. She lowered the sword onto her lap instead. It was the only thing she’d brought with her when she’d shown up here seven days ago—that and a muddy, soaking-wet nightgown that she’d been forced to throw away.
“Seth’s right,” she said. “I’m not coming home. But it’s not because I’m trying to get away from either of you.”
Mitzi leaned forward. “Is it…?” Mitzi’s voice was soft. “The reason you’re not coming back… is it because it’s true? What the Hawthornes are saying about you?”
Harper’s heartbeat hammered in her throat. Violet, who’d remained perfectly silent until now, cleared her throat.
“Careful,” Violet said. Orpheus, formerly a house cat and currently Violet’s undead companion, leaped into her lap. “You promised not to ask too many questions.” It wasn’t a threat, not exactly, but Harper’s siblings stiffened just the same.
This was why Harper had asked Violet to sit in. Not for physical protection—Harper was more than capable of defending herself if necessary—but because there were things they both knew she was unwilling to talk about. Truths she wasn’t ready to tell. This one, though, Harper was okay with.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You want to see what I can do? You want proof?”
Harper’s hand brushed the edge of the neglected fern sitting beside the table. She took a deep breath and pushed.
She had not gone to the Hawthorne house the night she got her powers back with the conscious thought of destroying their tree. But when she saw the hawthorn’s great branches spreading behind the roof, waving in the wind, she had felt the cumulative rage about everything that had been done to her—her father’s hands closing around her neck, the Church of the Four Deities in their dark brown robes, Justin staring at her, a sword pressed against his neck, and, of course, the night that had just come back to her. The night Augusta Hawthorne had taken her powers away before she’d ever gotten the chance to use them.
Violet was obviously the reason her memories were back. Violet had gotten them back herself, after all, and so had Violet’s mother; clearly she was the one who had figured out the secret to restoring herself, clearly she was the one who had left Harper that note.
There was so much to sort through. So much to feel. Harper understood now why Justin Hawthorne had behaved strangely toward her these past few weeks—because his mother wasn’t the reason she’d lost everything.
He was.
He’d betrayed her the night of her ritual. Sold her out to his mother before she could have the chance to use her newfound powers.
Pushed her into the lake, which had led to the accident that had cost her a hand—and led her straight into the Gray.