The Beast had taunted Violet with Rosie. Now it was taunting her with him.
Very good, it said, its lips moving, although the words still rang out inside Harper’s head. You shouldn’t be here, little stone.
“You’re corrupting this town,” Harper said hoarsely. Something was bubbling up in her throat; she thought it might be blood but she didn’t look away. If she was going to die here, it would not be with her back turned. “And we’re going to stop you.”
The Beast raised its hands in plaintive surrender, such a human gesture that it made Harper ill to watch.
I’m sick, just like your town.
The words were sent so vehemently into her mind that Harper coughed violently, blood dotting her sweatshirt. Except it didn’t look like blood. It looked exactly like the same gray, oily liquid at the Beast’s feet.
“But you’re possessing people,” she said, stepping forward. “What do you mean, you’re sick? How could this be anything but you?”
I am trying to find a way out, the Beast snarled. Look around. Why would I do this to the only place I have left?
And then it was gone, and Harper felt the world around her dissolving. She whirled around, brandishing her sword, as Four Paths rushed around her once again.
When she gasped in another breath, she was still standing beside the lake, but it looked normal this time. Harper scoured the trees beside it for the glimmers of corruption, but found none. She sighed with relief and traipsed back through the forest.
She found Isaac and Violet back at the founders’ seal, both staring anxiously at the place where she had disappeared. At the sight of her approach, Violet rushed up to her.
“You’re okay!” Violet’s voice was light with relief. “You’re—you saw something in there, didn’t you?”
Harper nodded, exhausted. “Yeah.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Isaac asked.
Harper hesitated. She’d thought about this the whole walk back. Maybe it was a trick, but she didn’t think so.
“I don’t think this corruption comes from the Beast,” she said softly. “I think it’s hurting it just as much as it’s hurting us.”
She explained as best she could to Violet and Isaac, watching both their faces pale at the descriptions of what she’d seen. And on the excruciating walk back to the Saunders manor, all she could think of was the Beast’s face laid over Justin’s, until she could not quite remember whose smile was whose.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The burned-out husk of the place Isaac had called home until he was fourteen had begun to return to nature. Gabriel had asked Isaac to meet him there once he got off his shift at the clinic—he’d had an idea, he said, about how they might be able to find some more answers about the corruption. Violet had told him the corruption wasn’t his fault, but he knew they both wanted to fix it anyway, so he’d invited her here to help with whatever this was before heading to Justin’s birthday party that evening. But he’d beat them to the ruins he’d made, which was unfortunate. It meant he had time to stew, time to remember.
Underbrush crackled beneath Isaac’s boots as he retraced the route he’d done every day after getting home from school: through the front archway, now two crumbled stone pillars, into the kitchen, where the old fridge was turned onto its side, blackened with dirt and moss. He paused at the edge of the downstairs den—while all the bedrooms were long destroyed, turned into ashes and smoke, there were still too many remnants of the room his brothers had claimed as their own.
Weeds grew thickly here, twining around the legs of a maroon couch that had been split open; rotted stuffing spilled out from the sides like entrails. Isaac walked closer to it, a thousand memories tugging at every piece of him. His brothers laughing, his brothers fighting, his brothers dead, dead, dead—
“It must have been quite an undertaking.”
Isaac turned around. Gabriel was standing in the place where the archway over the front doors had once been, waiting for him. “Destroying our house like this,” Gabriel continued. “I’m shocked it didn’t kill you.”
“Disappointing for you, I’m sure,” Isaac said dryly. “Then you’d be free to murder our mother all by yourself.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“I don’t need to argue about Mom like this,” he said. “I made my case.”
“And I made mine. She’s all the family we have left.”
“It’s not her in there,” Gabriel said softly. “You know that.”
“You’re talking about her like she’s one of your corrupted patients.”
“My patients are still themselves when the Beast isn’t tormenting them,” Gabriel said grimly. “Our mother…”
Isaac wanted to hit him. “I’m not talking about this anymore.”
“Fine.” A beat of uneasy silence passed between them, and then Gabriel spoke again. “I want you to know that I don’t want you dead, even as a joke. Look at this.” He shrugged out of his jacket and gestured to the tattoo that spilled across his shoulder behind his thin black tank top: four blades tangled together, roots winding around their hilts. “It’s a family tattoo.”
“Let me guess,” he said, unwilling to think about the fact that Gabriel had chosen to include him even after everything that had passed between them. Four of them, together, like they weren’t all just as destroyed as the house they’d once lived in. “You told the artist to make one of the daggers a little longer so you could tell girls it was yours?”
Gabriel’s smile widened into something more genuine, and Isaac saw a flash of the people they had both been, before everything, standing in this same room when it was a home instead of a ruin. “You’re still a smartass, huh?”
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a no.”
Gabriel turned his head to the side, clearly suppressing a laugh. Isaac realized how much he looked like Caleb now, stocky and broad-shouldered, dark curls clipped short along his head, stubble dotting his jawline in a way that Isaac was trying to work on.
“Sorry I’m late.” The voice was Violet’s. Isaac turned to see her at the edge of the trees, her cat trailing at her heels. She was dressed simply in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a fleece-lined corduroy jacket, and she looked exhausted, her red hair pulled back in a thin ponytail at the nape of her neck. At the sight of Gabriel the tiredness on her face disappeared, replaced by a far more alert stare.
“I don’t think we were formally introduced,” she said slowly. “You’re Gabriel Sullivan.”
“And you’re the daughter of that Saunders lady who ran away.”
Violet shrugged, the shadow of a smirk dancing around her lips. “Seems like you and my mother had running away and crawling back in common.”
“Fair enough.” Gabriel jerked a head toward Orpheus. “The hell is that thing?”
“He is my companion,” said Violet, frowning. “He goes where I go.”
Orpheus yawned in Gabriel’s general direction, then walked up to Isaac and rubbed his head against his leg. Isaac leaned down to pet him, grinning as Orpheus licked his palm with a sandpapery tongue.