“I know why you actually want to be friends again,” he said aloud. “You just want me to do your homework.”
Justin shot him a tired smile. “You got me.”
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not doing my homework anymore either.”
“Perfect,” Justin said. “We can fail senior year together. Get held back.”
Isaac snorted. “We can’t graduate with May. She’ll never let us live it down.”
“You’re right,” Justin said, swinging down from the bed and sidling over to the dresser. He picked up their history textbook and swung it open, the spine cracking in a way that suggested he had never actually done so before. “Guess we’d better get started.”
Isaac didn’t leave the Hawthorne house for another two hours, and although the textbook was open between them that entire time, they didn’t read a single word.
Harper had not been home in a long time. She’d known that this would hurt, but seeing the Carlisle cottage come into view for the first time in weeks was still unbearably painful. The sloping red-brown walls had once held her entire life inside them. Now they held far too many memories for comfort. Her eyes moved to the workshop behind the house, where her father’s hands had closed around her throat, and she froze. Again, she felt that swell of phantom pain from her residual limb.
Maybe she wasn’t ready for this. Maybe she would never be.
“Steady,” Violet murmured gently from beside her. “You’ve got this.”
It was enough to keep Harper walking. She forced her legs back into action, and together, they rounded the edge of the lake. Corruption laced through the trees around it, but it had yet to sink into the water the way it had in the Gray, and there were no buds on the trees like the ones extending from the hawthorn or hanging in the Sullivan ruins. Harper was grateful for that small mercy as they approached the statue garden in front of the house.
“Those are terrifying.” May gestured at the watchful eyes of dozens of half-crumbled stone animals. She looked extraordinarily out of place in her fuzzy pink jacket and her shiny platform sneakers, like a flamingo that had wandered into a herd of geese.
“They’re heirlooms,” Harper said. True Carlisles were supposed to be able to control those animals, but Harper couldn’t control anything. Maybe nobody would ever make them move again. She sighed and led the way up the front steps, her hand skimming the splintered wooden railing. A few of Nora’s and Brett’s toys were scattered across the porch.
The moment she knocked, she heard the familiar thump of running feet, and she knew who would be waiting for her when she pulled the door open. Not the father she had fled, but the siblings she had left behind.
“Harper!” Nora didn’t wait for a hello before she rushed at her, wrapping her spindly arms around Harper’s knees. Harper knelt in the front hallway and hugged Nora back, fighting down a sob. Her sister was so achingly familiar—the way she smelled like Play-Doh and soap, her wispy red pigtails, the freckles etched across her nose.
“Hey, kid,” she said softly. “I missed you.”
“Mom said you were sick,” Brett piped up from beside her. It was her turn to hug him then. Harper was pretty sure he’d grown taller in the last few weeks. “Are you better now?”
“Mostly,” Harper said. “I’m… working on it.”
“Can you come home?” Nora asked hopefully. “Mitzi doesn’t know how to make oatmeal the way I like it. And Seth taught me some new words that Mom says I’m not allowed to say—”
“Mom is probably right.” Now that Harper was here, the thought of leaving again felt as if it would split her in two. It was why she’d stayed away in the first place. “I’ll come home soon, okay? I promise.”
It was a promise she had no idea if she could keep or not, but it seemed to make Brett and Nora happy. They were both clamoring for her to play with them when she saw a familiar pair of work boots appear in the far corner.
Harper rose to her feet as if in a dream. Her body stiffened on instinct; the man in front of her might not remember what he had done to her, but she did. His hands around her neck. The bruises on her throat. The pure, unrestrained violence in his eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Maurice Carlisle said, his words ringing across a hallway that had suddenly gone silent. “We have a lot to talk about.”
The Carlisle kitchen usually had at least five or six people in it at a time, but with the four of them it suddenly felt too small. Harper sat anxiously between Violet and May as her father pulled out the chair directly across from her.
“We understand that coming into your powers so late has been a shock to your system, Harper,” he said. “We’ve given you time to come to terms with that. But it’s been long enough, don’t you think?”
Again, Harper was frozen. He was acting so normal. He didn’t know the terrible things he’d done in the name of the Beast. He didn’t know why she’d left. It hurt her more than she could articulate that her family believed her to be selfish and undisciplined, that they blamed her uncontrolled powers for her abandonment of them all.
She’d left for her own safety, but as she sat in her kitchen, Harper realized how messed up it was that she had been driven away from her own home by someone else’s mistakes. She was not the one who deserved to be punished.
“I’m not here to talk about coming home,” Harper choked out. “Can you please respect that?”
“All right.” Maurice’s brow furrowed. “Just know that we love you, Harper. No matter what.”
Harper shuddered. Beside her, May and Violet looked deeply uncomfortable. She couldn’t believe she had to do this in front of other people. In front of a Hawthorne.
“Uh, Mr. Carlisle.” Violet’s voice was the most formal Harper had ever heard it. “If we could switch the focus of this meeting to the matter at hand.”
“Right, right.” Harper’s father knitted his hands together atop the table. “You said there was something you needed to discuss with me, about the corruption?”
“Yes.” May reached into her quilted cream purse and pulled out a familiar wooden box with an all-seeing eye etched into the front. “We believe you may be able to help us provide clarity on a potential solution. Would it be all right if we did a reading with you?”
“I don’t see why not,” Maurice said hesitantly. “You really think this old man could help you?”
“Oh, I really do.” May pulled out the Deck of Omens. Instantly, she looked much more relaxed. Harper envied the peace on her face as she clutched the cards. Her powers were part of her. She understood them, she loved them, while Harper could only think about the stone spreading from her fingers with a latent feeling of dread.
She began to shuffle them, the cards disappearing one by one. Maurice hesitated. “Aren’t you supposed to ask them a question?”
“I have,” May lied smoothly.
The cards disappeared until only a few were left, and then May held out her hands for Maurice’s. “Go on.”
He grasped them across the table, and Harper watched, her stomach twisting, as May shut her eyes and screwed up her face in concentration.