“You don’t banish ghosts, you turn them into warships, or whatever you need them to be.” Pisces fixed Caledonia with a pointed look, conjuring the ship Caledonia’s mother had named and they had rebuilt. “After that you have to let them go.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Caledonia admitted.

The thought of letting go sat uncomfortably. She’d spent so much of her life holding on, clinging to everything she had and fighting to keep it. Even her anger. She clung to her anger because it kept her alive. She clung to her hurt because it kept her resistant. She clung to her ghosts, she realized, because they were her family.

Pisces stepped in front of Caledonia, stopping them both in their tracks. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she cocked her head to the side as if Caledonia were a question in need of answering. Then she reached forward, and her fingers closed around the hilt of the black blade tucked snugly into Caledonia’s waistband. She tugged and the blade pulled free.

“I think I know where to start,” Pisces said.

Caledonia’s eyes fell immediately to the push dagger. It sat in Pisces’s palm, no longer than the length of her hand, its worn wooden handle narrow enough to fit between two fingers, allowing the dagger to protrude like a third, deadly one. She didn’t need it anymore, but it had become a part of her. Against her will at first and then because she’d grown used to the sensation of it at her hip, like a bullet lodged into the trunk of a tree.

Together, they unlaced their boots and waded into the surf. Waves pushed and pulled at their legs as they moved out beyond the break. The water was warm and welcoming, the sand soft beneath their toes, and before them the islands of the Bone Mouth tumbled across the horizon like scattered stones.

Pisces held the dagger out for Caledonia to take. She closed cold fingers over the blade and held it to her chest. For so long, the dagger had been a strange kind of comfort. It had connected her to her past and her future. Now it was only a relic. It had nothing more to give her, so why was letting go of it so hard?

She looked to Pisces, unable to speak. It was as if the ocean were filling her up, swelling inside her and roaring in the back of her throat. She was crying. And her fingers trembled.

Pisces nodded. “It’s time, Cala.”

With a scream that had been building in her chest for turns, Caledonia threw the dagger into the sky. It soared long and far before it fell against the sea and vanished beneath the waves.

It felt good. And terrible. And absolutely right.

“What comes next, Pi?” Caledonia asked.

And with a smile, her friend answered, “Whatever it is, we get to choose.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS