“I don’t know yet,” I say, still supercharged from the combination of dowsing and Rush’s soft kiss. “But this is important.”

We get back into Rush’s car and she drives north, following the curves of the highway as slowly as she can so we don’t miss whatever is calling my name.

“There,” I say, and she spins a sharp turn into a gravel parking lot. There’s a low building on one side with a massive cross section of a redwood in front of it. I’ve never been inside it before, but I’m pretty sure this is the Tempest visitors’ center.

The same one Haven mentioned when she told me that story.

I’m out of the car before Rush can bring it to a full stop, running to the door. The hours stenciled in white on the glass are 9–5. I don’t need to check my phone to know that we’ve missed the cutoff.

Rush leaves the Deathmobile in the middle of the lot, right next to the ancient chunk of redwood, not even bothering with a real parking spot. She runs up and starts knocking on the door.

“What . . . ?”

“You know how to dowse,” Rush says. “But I know Tempest.”

A woman in a woodsy-green polo looks out with a frown. “Closed,” she says, muffled by the glass.

“Please,” Rush says. “We have to do this research project and we both had work. . . .”

There’s a long pause, and then a longer sigh as the woman comes around the desk and unlocks the door. “I’m not turning the lights back on. Close the door behind you when you’re done, Rachel Downing.”

Rush’s lips tighten with a fake smile as the woman disappears behind the desk and then through a door into some back room. Rush gives me a real smile, gathering dusk along her lips. “Small towns do have their benefits.”

I almost kiss her, but she turns away.

I wonder if that’s something I get to do again, or if it was a one-time deal. All the certainty I felt in the graveyard is gone. Except, of course, for knowing that I want to be closer to her, touching if at all possible.

I follow Rush through the metallic trees bearing T-shirts and sweatshirts in green and purple and red. The colors look different in the low light, as if their cheerful daytime saturation was a lie.

I bring out the dowsing rod and spin a circle in the center of the space. It pulls me into a nature room for kids — a table covered with redwood pinecones, another bearing sculpted leaves from various native plants. A table filled with very real bones that belong to the animals that live here, and a little game to match them up to species names.

What does this have to do with Imogen? I want to ask.