“Um. Let’s get started,” he said gruffly, kneeling in the grass and gesturing to an outline in the dirt. It was the founders’ symbol, the circle with four lines spearing through it, nearly meeting in the center. “This is where they did the ritual.”
The police had done a reasonable job clearing the bones away, but fragments of ivory still shone beneath the glow of his phone’s flashlight. Unease prickled down his spine as Violet knelt beside him, her brow furrowing. Her cat lurked behind them, his tail twitching.
“The Church did the ritual by singing outside the circle. But if we want to lure the Beast here, I should probably be inside it. Like my mom was.”
Isaac swallowed hard. “Then I’m going inside, too. I can open the Gray for you.”
Violet sighed and stood up, her toes poised at the edge of the circle. “When I teamed up with you, I really thought you’d help me figure out something logical and reasonable—”
“Do you have a better plan?”
She rolled her eyes and stepped over the circle’s edge. “Obviously I don’t.”
They stared at each other nervously, but nothing happened. So after another moment, Isaac stepped over the line and joined her. Violet’s cat waited outside. Isaac figured Orpheus was the only smart one here.
Everything felt normal. So normal that as they sat down on the grass, Isaac spared a moment to wonder if this would even work at all.
“Okay,” Violet muttered, pulling out her phone. Isaac did the same. They’d gotten the song lyrics from the Church’s confiscated papers, and the picture he’d taken of the words made his chest feel tight with worry. “I can’t sing for shit, you’ve been warned—”
“I actually can,” said Isaac, feeling a little self-conscious.
Violet glared at him. “Of course you can.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” She cleared her throat. “On three?”
He nodded. “One, two—”
Sinners who were led astray,
Wandered through the woods one day,
Stumbled right into the Gray,
Never to return.
Hear the lies our gods will tell,
The prison the Four wove so well,
But listen to us when we say:
Branches and stones, daggers and bones,
Will meet their judgment day.
At first, their voices were awkward and strained. But Violet had warned him that the Church had chanted the lullaby again and again, so when they finished, they merely started it over, their voices unsure and cautious in the night. Isaac did not know when he realized something had changed, only that it had. The words were no longer voluntary; they poured from his throat like water, smooth and clear, blending with Violet’s voice until it felt as if something else were singing through them both.
The founders’ symbol around them began to glimmer, the fragments of ivory oozing iridescent liquid. Isaac had never seen anything like this before, and it made his voice falter slightly, his heartbeat speed up. He watched uneasily as the liquid ran through the grooves of the dirt lines, carrying with it a choking scent of decay. Isaac raised his hands, still singing, and concentrated.
The air around his hands grew warm as he summoned his power, light fragmenting across the entire clearing. His power always hurt. Made a dull ache rise beneath his skin, turned him flushed and feverish. Use it for long enough, push it hard enough, and he’d pass out. But Isaac was used to the pain.
He set his jaw, curled his fingers in the air, and tore a hole in the world.
It didn’t always work, opening the Gray. But it did this time. Isaac held his hands out, widening the gap, as mist poured into the circle. He’d opened it on his left so both he and Violet could stare through it, and as the fog thickened and their singing continued, he sensed her stiffening beside him.
The entire circle seemed to shift around them, and Isaac had the sense that they had been flung through the door he’d opened. There was no Four Paths anymore, just grayscale, the iridescence still oozing ever closer. Around them, trees crowded into his peripheral vision, their branches undulating grotesquely, and the sky was an undying, staticky white.
They stared at each other, no longer singing. Violet’s face was grim. They hadn’t just called the Gray—they’d gone inside it. He’d expected this to happen after what Violet had described, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving. Humans weren’t supposed to be here; that was impossible to forget.
“It’s here,” Violet whispered, the words ringing out through the circle a moment after her lips moved. Isaac shuddered. He’d never entered the Gray for longer than a few seconds, and already every bit of him wanted to leave. He didn’t belong here.
He was opening his mouth to ask Violet how she knew the Beast was close when a voice spun around the edges of his mind, cruel and cold. It hissed, tinny and hollow, and Isaac gritted his teeth against the sound. The fog around him began to thicken, until it had become a humanoid form that Isaac recognized all too well.
“You need to leave,” Maya Sullivan whispered. She wore a hospital gown that could not quite hide the ritual scars snaking across her shoulders. Tubing wound around her arms and legs, puncturing her flesh. “Now.”
Isaac had steeled himself for the possibility that the Beast would show him some sort of vision designed to throw him off. But it was still hard to look at his mother like this: awake but trapped by the medical devices that kept her alive, her face animated with fear. It sent a chill through his entire body, a bone-deep fear that took him back to his fourteenth birthday. He could hear the faint sounds of his brothers screaming. A memory, he told himself—it was just a memory.
Beside him, Violet looked confused. “Who is that? I don’t understand.”
“It’s a trick,” Isaac whispered. “You know it’s a trick.”
He forced himself to look away. There was nothing the monster could show him that was worse than the images that played in his own mind every night as he tried to sleep. The knife. Blood dripping onto the leaves. The smell of charred flesh, the distant sound of screaming.
“Run,” his mother hissed, her hand outstretched, fright contorting her features, and then a gust of wind rushed through the Gray, blowing her away into smoke.
The smell washed over them again, decay so strong it nearly made Isaac gag. He had just enough time to remember what others had told him about the Gray—that there was no smell in there at all—before he felt something twining around his legs.
He glanced down and gaped. The iridescent liquid from the founders’ symbol had become roots, and they’d snaked forward, viscous and oily, to wrap around his thighs. Isaac summoned his power and gripped the roots, shuddering at the way they felt against his palms—warm and soft as human flesh, almost like he was touching someone else’s hand. He concentrated as best he could and burned the roots away. But they grew back faster than he could destroy them, encasing the tips of his boots in bark. He shook them off and stumbled backward.
“Isaac!” Violet’s voice was shrill and panicked. He glanced up and saw her struggling to kick more roots away. Tears snaked down her cheeks, the same iridescent gray as the liquid that pooled around them. “Get us out of here!”