“Of course.” Isaac’s voice sounded strange even to him. “I’m fine.”
He wasn’t, but he forced himself to flip through the rest of the archives, eyes blankly scanning over every page. The world swam around him, blood rushing in his ears. His heartbeat was too fast and his brain was stuffed with cotton, filtering everything around him through a muffled, blurry lens.
He hadn’t hurt anyone, and that was what mattered.
You’re hurting yourself, said a voice that sounded suspiciously like Violet’s. He pushed it aside.
And so Isaac hovered just outside reality for hours, until the ruins were far away and he was back in his own apartment, staring blankly at the ceiling and wondering why he had forgotten how to breathe. Wondering if he would ever remember how to settle back into his own skin.
Catching Augusta Hawthorne at the right moment was no small feat. May spent a full day biding her time. She had a lifetime of experience watching her mother’s temper ebb and flow, figuring out exactly when to ask Augusta for permission or forgiveness in order to maximize her reward and minimize her punishment. But the building tensions in Four Paths had made finding that kind of opening exponentially more difficult.
She got her chance on the afternoon of Justin’s birthday party. Her mother arrived home from work early that day in a strangely good mood, something May realized could be attributed to Juniper Saunders’s new cooperation with their efforts to contain the spread of the corruption. May watched carefully as Augusta poured herself a whiskey on the rocks and situated herself on the front porch, the dogs napping at her feet. She was the most relaxed May had seen her in days.
Part of May felt bad for what she was about to ask her. She knew it would stress her out again. But it was too important to avoid. She needed to know more about her new power if she had any real hope of changing the future to take the corruption away, and Ezra had made it clear that her mother was the only person in town who might actually be able to tell her something helpful. So she walked out onto the porch and gave Augusta her best impression of a carefree smile.
“You’ve been working late so much these days,” she said. “It must be nice to have one normal day.”
“I’m not finished,” Augusta said, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. “I’ll be back at the station tonight. I just wanted to take a few hours’ rest.”
“Oh.” Already, they were off to a less than encouraging start. “Well, I was wondering if there was anything more I could do to be helping with the patrol efforts?”
Augusta set her drink down on the porch railing and fixed her with a deeply annoyed stare. “Do you want to be assigned to more patrols?”
“That’s not it,” May said hastily. “I mean, um, with my powers. Because you know, if I could look more closely into what’s causing the corruption—”
“It’s an imprecise art.” Augusta waved her hand dismissively. “Just focus on completing your patrols and reporting back to me, all right?”
“But people are still getting sick.” Two more cases had been reported that morning, bringing the total number to five. May had assumed this would make her mother furious, but instead she seemed calm about the entire thing. Too calm, maybe.
Augusta looked sharply at her. Brutus, the larger of the mastiffs, raised his head, his black eyes blinking open. “You think I’m not aware of that?”
“I’m just saying,” May said, eyeing Brutus nervously. She loved the dogs, but they were unquestionably her mother’s. And they might not have been companions like Orpheus, but they knew when their master was upset. “I want to stop it. And I think I could.”
“How?” Augusta sounded utterly uninterested. It was worse than if she’d yelled.
“Um.” May shifted uncomfortably back and forth. She wasn’t usually at a loss for words, but she had no idea how to say this correctly. Most likely her mother would dismiss her outright, and she would prove to Ezra that this had been a useless endeavor. “I guess I was just wondering. There are Hawthornes who have had the power to read the cards for generations. But has there ever been anyone who could alter a reading?”
Augusta’s face, apathetic a moment before, changed instantly. Her jaw hardened; her gloves braced themselves on the arms of the chair as she leaned forward.
“Alter a reading?” she repeated. “You mean, change what will come to pass?”
May nodded. “Something like that.”
“Then, yes,” Augusta said quietly. “There was a Hawthorne who could do that. Our founder.”
“Hetty Hawthorne could change the future?”
“Supposedly.” Augusta pursed her lips. “May, don’t tell me this is your grand idea.”
“I’m just saying.” Hurt welled up in her chest. “It could work.”
“Hetty created the cards. No one else has ever been able to wield them the way she could.”
“Have they tried?” May asked.
“As a matter of fact, they have.” Augusta had a particular way of looking at her daughter that made May feel as if she was being measured for adequacy and had been found wanting. “The Gray swallowed them whole. Do you understand?”
Well, that made it clear. Even if May told her what she’d done, Augusta would never believe her. She could tell Augusta saw her as nothing more than a child full of silly ideas.
“I understand,” May whispered.
“Your father was inordinately interested in her,” Augusta continued, reaching for the whiskey. The ice cubes clinked together as she took a swig, seemingly unbothered by the chilly October air. “He was endless with his questions.”
May’s heart caught in her throat. This she had not been expecting. Augusta never spoke about her father. Perhaps this wasn’t her first glass of liquor after all.
“Dad wanted to know… about Hetty?” She tried to ask the question as carefully as possible. She did not know if this chance would come again.
“He wanted to know about all of us.” Augusta’s smile was rueful. “You know, we only got together because of his research on occultism. I should’ve known then that all he cared about was studying us. Trying to figure out how I worked like I was some goddamn machine.”
May had never heard this side of things before. “Why was he so curious?”
“I’m not sure.” Augusta paused. “I don’t know what he was looking for, I just know he never found it. No matter how many interviews he did. But that’s all done now, anyway. Can’t ask any questions when there’s no one willing to answer them.”
She looked at May, a little glassy-eyed, and shook her head, as if trying to dislodge something between her ears. “So. Do you still have a plan for how to fix the corruption?”
“No,” May lied softly, stepping away from the porch. “Not anymore.”
She’d come here for answers. Instead she’d found doubt and more questions. She let the door shut behind her and walked back up to her room, her mind racing.
How could she possibly have the same power as Hetty Hawthorne? And what, exactly, had her father been looking for that had upset Augusta so much?