He’d never seen anything like this before. Never even heard of it. But he didn’t need to see more to know that if they stayed here for much longer, they would die.
He summoned all his strength, wincing, and sent the biggest shock wave he could manage through the roots, disintegrating most of them into ash. Then he reached upward and tried to rip the air open again, gasping—but as it opened wide, instead of relief, he felt something else.
Dread.
The world around him faded. Fog engulfed him like a second skin, and suddenly, he was gone.
Isaac floated, ephemeral, in a sea of static. His body was frozen; when he glanced down, he saw that he had turned as smoky and transparent as the vision of his mother. Roots twined around his arms and legs, crawling toward his nostrils, his ears, the corners of his eyes. They burrowed through his hair like centipedes, hooking around the edges of his mouth and pulling it open as they tried to snake down his throat.
Everywhere they touched hurt like nothing he had ever known. He could feel himself decaying, knew that when the roots finished growing over him there would be nothing left of him but bones.
And then something smacked against his cheek, hard, and his eyes fluttered open.
Above him was the familiar half-moon in Four Paths’ night sky. Violet’s face appeared in his field of vision a moment later, tendrils of red hair framing her small round face.
“That better be you in there,” she whispered. “That better not be the Beast.”
“My eyes are way prettier than the Beast’s,” Isaac said, coughing.
She broke into a relieved grin that made something warm flare up in his chest. “There you are.”
Isaac hauled himself up on his hands, the side of his face stinging. He could feel blood trickling down his cheek. “Did you… did you just punch me?”
“Not exactly.” She lifted her hand up to display the wriggling, sluglike remnants of a root. Just the sight of it dissolving in her fingers made him want to retch.
“It was trying to go under your skin,” she said matter-of-factly. “I yanked it out.”
“But the Gray,” Isaac said, gesturing weakly at the forest behind her. “How did we escape?”
“You opened the portal and immediately collapsed.” Violet shrugged. “You’re tall, but it was still pretty easy to drag you out.”
Now that he was no longer in immediate mortal danger, Isaac could feel a whole new host of aches and pains. He inspected himself, wincing; there were freshly singed holes in his jeans, and that strange iridescent liquid had dried into a hardened scab on his arm. He scratched it off and shuddered.
Isaac didn’t know what any of this meant—the way Maya had told him to run, that vision he’d had, this new weapon the Beast seemed all too adept at wielding. He just knew that none of it was good.
He saw now how reckless and foolish both of them had been. If they were going to kill the Beast, it would take a lot more than this.
“I don’t think our plan worked,” he said softly.
Beside him, Violet winced. “No. I don’t think it did.”
CHAPTER SIX
Harper had, technically, agreed to this meeting. But it was still hard for her to suppress the urge to get up from the Saunderses’ kitchen table and run.
It was an uncomfortable group of people who had come together to argue about her: Juniper and Violet in one corner, Justin and Augusta in the other. Harper was already tired of this, and no one had even broached the subject of her powers yet. Instead, Juniper and Augusta had argued over the quality of the coffee, while Justin and Violet made strangely hostile eye contact with each other across the room. As if Harper was beholden to any of them besides herself.
Violet had been somewhere the night before. Harper had heard her come home in the wee hours of the morning, when she was lying in bed thinking instead of sleeping, heard her curse and slam the bathroom door and run the shower for far longer than was necessary. Harper hadn’t asked, and Violet hadn’t offered any explanation. She’d been too busy trying to figure out what she wanted out of this meeting. Unfortunately, she still didn’t know.
“Things in town are worsening,” Augusta Hawthorne said grimly from across the table. “We understand why trusting us is a difficult proposition. But if you formally become part of our patrol roster, you would strengthen our forces. You would save lives.”
“The sheriff lies.” Juniper’s voice, from the opposite end of the table, was sharp. “She lied about your memories, to both you and your family. We’re perfectly capable of training you, too, and if you lend your power to us, we can change the problems plaguing Four Paths for good. We can protect the town far better than Augusta has.”
Augusta’s nostrils flared, her gloved hand clenching her coffee cup, but she said nothing.
They were all sucking up to her, Harper realized. It was absurd. Two months ago, the Hawthornes didn’t care if she lived or died, and now they were begging for her help. She imagined Justin on his knees and felt a pleasant twinge of satisfaction. She could make him do that, if she wanted. She could make them grovel for her—and maybe she should.
“What about the hawthorn tree?” she asked softly. “May seemed pretty upset about it.”
Augusta’s face twitched. “She is, and so I thought it best that May not be included in this discussion, due to her… rash actions the other day. But I assume that, should we become your allies, you will join us in our quest to preserve our power by restoring the tree—and we, of course, would be willing to forgive such an indiscretion if you prove your dedication to assisting us.”
“You can’t trust them,” Juniper said, her eyes narrowing.
Augusta stared at her. “This is a civil affair, June.”
“I am being civil, August.”
Harper did not know what to say to either of them. All she knew was that she didn’t want to let Four Paths twist her the way it had so clearly twisted both of them. It had turned her own father into a monster, turned her friends’ parents bitter and angry.
She wanted to believe it wasn’t too late for her, but she worried it already was. She’d attacked the Hawthornes. She’d estranged herself from her family. And now here she sat at a crossroads, unable to find her own voice even as the others around her grew louder and more agitated.
“Mother.” Justin’s tone was pointed. “You promised to stay calm.”
Augusta shot her son a glare. “Don’t push me.”
“You’re not listening to me either, Mom,” Violet said quietly, from the other side of the table. “We’re trying to prevent a war here, not start one.”
“We have always been at war with one another, Violet.” Juniper looked deeply sad as she stared Augusta down. “Our powers aren’t meant to be shared.”
Violet groaned. “You’re all missing the point.”
“And what point is that?” Augusta asked. “That you sheltered a fugitive?”
Violet didn’t miss a beat. “That you lied to our entire town?”
“Enough!”
The voice came from somewhere deep inside her—the same place her powers surged from, the same place that had helped her wake up before dawn each morning to practice swordplay, the same place that had allowed her to spend four days in the Gray and survive.