Harper had lost sight of herself in that moment, dizzy with longing for everything Justin and his family had taken from her. She’d reached forward, her palm pressing tightly against the trunk, and pushed her anger into it. And when she pulled back and realized that the hawthorn had gone deathly still, she hadn’t wanted to reverse it.
This time, the change was smaller, almost gentle. The leaves froze in place, their color fading to red-brown and spiraling down into the dirt, until there was no plant remaining, only stone. But then Harper felt something else: a push to keep going. The stone spread down the side of the fern pot, encroaching toward the floor, and Harper’s throat went dry with panic as she realized that she didn’t know if she could stop.
Violet’s hand landed on her shoulder, wrenching her focus away. Harper exhaled with sharp relief as she realized that the spread of stone had stopped. When she looked up, Mitzi and Seth were both gaping at her.
Her brother spoke first. “Shit.”
Mitzi knelt on the floor, examining the plant. When she caught Harper’s gaze, her eyes were as round and wide as two full moons. “You have powers?”
Harper’s laugh was slightly bitter, slightly manic. “Yeah.”
“And you used them…”
“On the family that deserved some retribution,” she said. “So, yeah, I left, because I didn’t want Augusta Hawthorne to punish any of you for me. Because you deserve to make your own choices instead of being forced to go along with mine.”
“Choices?” Mitzi returned to the couch, tugged on her earring—a nervous tic.
Harper sighed. This was the part of the conversation she’d been dreading the most.
“Augusta Hawthorne took my memories of my powers away,” she said. “Do you still want to patrol for her, knowing that?”
Mitzi hesitated. “Patrolling is what keeps the town safe.”
“Does taking my powers away seem safe to you? Maybe if I’d had access to them, fewer people would have died.”
“Or maybe you would’ve turned more than the hawthorn tree to stone.” Seth’s voice was the most somber Harper had ever heard it.
Her stomach churned with nausea. She’d known it would go this way—but she’d still hoped otherwise.
“Well,” she said. “I’m here if you change your minds.”
After Harper’s siblings had left—Mitzi stomping hastily out the door, Seth moving a little more slowly, eyeing a taxidermied bear head in the corner suspiciously—Violet helped her carry her things up to the room she’d claimed.
“You could have told them the rest of the truth, you know,” Violet said as Harper shoved her clothes into a musty old dresser and grabbed her phone. “That might have changed their minds.”
Harper looked up from her phone screen. She’d been trying to turn it back on, but the battery was dead. Phantom pain twinged at the end of her residual limb again.
She wasn’t just staying with Violet and her mother because she’d turned the hawthorn tree to stone. The real reason she couldn’t go home was because her dad had tried to kill her. He couldn’t remember it, thanks to Augusta Hawthorne, but she would never forget.
“You saw how it was with them,” she said, plugging her phone in to charge. “They wouldn’t have believed me anyway. They don’t even need Augusta to use her powers on them to be in the Hawthornes’ pockets.”
Violet’s mouth thinned into a sharp line, and Harper could tell she disagreed with her, but to her relief, the other girl didn’t push it. Maybe she figured Harper had been through enough for the time being.
“All right,” she said. “Hey—I’m meeting Isaac to do some research into the founders this afternoon. Do you want to come? We could use the extra pair of eyes.”
“I do not want to talk to Isaac Sullivan right now.” Harper knew she sounded irritable and petty. She didn’t care. She was worn thin enough as it was. “And I can’t even leave the house, remember? I’m stuck waiting around until the Hawthornes decide they don’t want to kill me.”
“You don’t usually wait around for someone to give you permission,” Violet said, fixing her with a pointed stare. “Why now?”
Harper hesitated.
The truth was that for so long, she’d been ignored. It had felt a lot easier to be bold when she knew no one was watching her. The town’s eyes had made her cautious, because she knew that in many ways what happened next would be a kind of first impression. And the Hawthornes’ attention had made her most cautious of all.
“You’re right. I just don’t know how to make the Hawthornes see me as anything but a threat. And we both know what they do to threats.”
Violet paused. “I’m not entirely sure it’s true that the Hawthornes do see you as a threat. Not all of them, anyway.”
“Sure they don’t.”
“No, seriously.” Violet hesitated, as if considering something, then exhaled and continued. “You remember when I had my memories taken away by Augusta?”
Harper nodded, unease stirring in her gut. “Of course.”
“Well, May’s the reason I got them back.”
Harper gaped at her. “That’s not possible.”
May Hawthorne was a perfect blond automaton, an extension of Augusta with shiny teeth and an endless supply of pastel bomber jackets. She was the last person Harper would expect to defy her mother.
But if what Violet was saying was true, then she had, in a major way.
“I know how impossible it sounds,” Violet said. “But it’s true. There’s… more going on there than you might think.”
On the nightstand, Harper’s phone had finally come back to life. Blinking on the screen were dozens of unread texts. She didn’t have to look at the number to know who most of them were from.
“Maybe you’re right.” She turned away from Violet to stare at it more closely. If her friend was telling the truth about May, surely it stood to reason that Justin couldn’t be as mad at her as she’d imagined. Surely there was some way to work all of this out. “I… I need to make a call.”
* * *
Violet met Isaac Sullivan in the foyer of the town hall that evening, as planned. The familiar echo of her feet on the marble floors agitated her. This was the third time they’d met in the past week, all with the same goal in mind, and she had no reason to believe this excursion would be any more successful than the others.
Unfortunately, the only other idea she’d brought up had just gone to shit.
“The hair’s new,” Isaac said, detaching himself from the shadowy corners of the foyer like a lanky wraith. He was fond of making dramatic entrances, although he’d been careful to avoid startling Violet after she’d cursed him out the first time he emerged unexpectedly from a dark hallway. “Is it part of an early Halloween costume or something? Because you know Four Paths doesn’t celebrate that.”
The hair was indeed new. It had taken Violet all afternoon to get from her natural color—a brown so dark it was almost black—to this new one. Bleach, toner, box dye, and one blow-dry later, though, she was finally done.