“I’m not exactly a relationship expert,” said Violet, “but I don’t think that’s how it works. It doesn’t have to be life and death all the time. And it doesn’t have to be about keeping score.”
“You’re right,” Isaac said. “Shit, Violet, I don’t want you to feel like I’m putting too much on you. I feel like I’ve already asked you for too much.”
“We’re friends.” Violet remembered in a rush just how recently Harper had said those same words to her. “Friends ask each other for help. Don’t apologize for that.”
His mouth quirked up at the corners. “Fine.”
She could feel a tether stretching between the two of them. Not like the one that connected her to the Beast—something different. Something far more complex. A friendship was its own type of ritual, she realized, one where people bound themselves to one another not with blood but with words. And it had a power all its own, that belonging, that incalculable internal chemistry of choosing to let someone in.
So she stayed with him until his eyes fluttered shut and sleep claimed him, until she could tiptoe out the doorway and make her way home.
When May came to, she was faced with a corrupted hawthorn tree, a killer hangover, and an irate mother.
“You felt it, too,” Augusta said. Not a question. May nodded, exhausted.
“Did you pass out?” she asked.
Augusta shook her head, curiosity lighting her eyes. “It affected you very… severely. I wonder why.”
May thought about mentioning the fog, the voice, the blood seeping from her lifelines. But her mother had made it very clear that she did not care to think about the possibility that May might be stronger than her, so she kept her mouth shut.
Augusta coped with the damaged hawthorn tree by increasing patrols and spending even longer hours at the station. May coped by scheduling another meeting with her father as soon as possible. She wanted to talk through what she’d seen and ask about what Harper had told her—that she didn’t think the corruption was the Beast’s fault. That the Gray had seemed infected, too. May found Harper’s theory almost impossible to believe. Whenever something went wrong in Four Paths, it could be traced back to the Beast.
Ezra was back in Syracuse again, trawling through the university’s special collections library in person for more information that might help. But he’d traveled back at May’s request. He wanted to see the tree in person, which proved difficult, but after a few days May found a morning when Justin was at a cross-country meet and her mother was tied up at the station.
The late-October air was harsh and blustery when May met Ezra outside the Hawthorne house. She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets as she led him around the side of the house, wishing she’d brought gloves. Ezra looked unbothered by the weather, professorial and unruffled in a tweed jacket and a plaid scarf. He adjusted his glasses and peered at the hawthorn tree from the edge of the woods, as close as May could justify bringing him to the site of the corruption. She didn’t want him to get sick.
“The pictures you sent didn’t do it justice,” he said quietly. “The hawthorn is changing.”
Her palms itched as she stared miserably at the silver veins snaking along the back of the tree, cutting sharply into its broad trunk. “It’s not changing, it’s dying. I watched it happen and I still couldn’t stop it.”
“You mentioned seeing something odd as the tree fell, some type of vision,” Ezra said, the curiosity in his voice evident. “Tell me more about that.”
May launched into what she could remember of the voice in her head, the fog, her bleeding palms. Since the initial outbreak, the veins had settled somewhat, the same buds she’d seen on the trees at the Sullivan ritual site, unopened but also refusing to go away.
“Interesting,” Ezra said. “Do you think it’s a vision brought on by your connection to the Deck of Omens?”
May hesitated. “I guess I didn’t think about it like that.”
“Perhaps you should. You’re strong, May—your ritual has allowed you a level of connection beyond that of the other founders.”
“Yeah, about that.” May had been thinking a lot about the conversation she’d had with Augusta right before the party. “I talked to my mom about my powers, like you asked me to. And she said nobody’s been able to change the future since Hetty Hawthorne.”
Ezra’s eyes lit up with interest. “So that truly is a power that only the original Hawthorne ever possessed—until you.”
“I’m not sure I do have that power, though,” May said doubtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe I imagined things when I changed the cards.”
“No, you didn’t. Don’t sell yourself short.” Ezra looked as if he could barely contain himself. “When I bound you to the Beast, I had hopes that it would re-create the process of the original founders’ bindings. I was unsure what the effects of it would be, but if what your mother said is true about your ability, then it gave you the original founders’ powers. Which means that perhaps you can succeed where the other founders have failed to make a difference in this fight.”
A shock wave coursed through May as this sank in. The thought that she could be as powerful as the woman who had locked away the Beast itself was almost unfathomable. “Does that mean I might actually be able to change the future in a way that ensures we defeat the corruption?”
“Potentially.” Ezra sighed thoughtfully. “It’s risky. What you’ve described seeing when the hawthorn was corrupted distresses me. It means that, bound as you are, you could be killed if your efforts backfired. We can’t mindlessly risk your life—we must find a way to proceed safely. I’ll need to return to the university library, see if there’s anything more there I can use to help you.”
“They don’t have a digital archive you can check?” May didn’t like the idea of him leaving her again, alone with all of this worry to sort through.
“I’m afraid not,” Ezra said. “But I will be back, May, I promise. In the meantime, I urge you not to do anything rash.”
“All right,” May said, although she itched to do something, anything. She hadn’t known how to bring it up on the phone, but now that she was face-to-face with her father, there was something else she wanted to talk about. “Um. I also wanted to mention that when I talked to Mom… she said some things. About you.”
“Ah.” Ezra adjusted his glasses. “Allow me to guess—they were less than kind.”
“You could say that.”
“Well, I suppose I should have expected it.” Ezra rapped his knuckles absently against the nearest tree trunk, as if contemplating what to say next. “Your mother is… quite set in her opinions of what happened between us.”
“She said you studied us. Is that true?”
“Certainly.” His lips pursed. “It’s an old argument of ours. She felt that my interest in the founder mythology and customs was prying. I merely wished to find ways to help my family. It took me longer than I’m proud of to realize that her resistance came from the worry I would uncover the truth about her abilities.”