“Emma’s name,” Hawthorn says. “Imogen charged it like atoms in a storm, gave it power.”

“We don’t have time to build up to that.” I slip my hand back into my pocket to make sure the flimsy page from the visitors’ center is still there. I rub it between two fingers, in circles, the way you’d rub a charm. “But I have Emma’s picture now. And . . . I might be better at this kind of spell. Imogen isn’t a dowser.”

It feels like blasphemy, admitting that there might be something I’m capable of that Imogen isn’t. But whatever doubts the Grays are feeling, they bury them under six feet of longing.

I jump the metal bars onto the hiking trail and walk into the dark welcome of the woods. The massive trees seem more like living creatures at night, not just scenery. They stay awake and vigilant while the rest of the world sleeps.

I hold out my dowsing rod and chant, “Emma Hart, Emma Hart, Emma Hart.”

The dowsing rod pulls me with a certain, almost vicious wrenching. A mile later, I’ve been keeping up an impossible pace, and I don’t know how much farther this hunt will take me. I look back at the Grays, catching slips of them in the fog.

I’m leading them to Emma, but she could be the one who killed Sebastian and Neil. Who stole Imogen. She could be stealing us now. I do desperation math, hoping that five witches against one will keep us safe. That the Grays will forgive me if I’m making every wrong call.

The dowsing rod pulls until I’m breathless and my calves want to snap with the effort, but eventually dullness arrives in my chest, and I stop. I’m standing on the verge of a bowl of earth, shallow and wide, a place where a great tree used to stand.

“Death,” Lelia says coldly. “This is where things come to die.”

My heart suspends all beating.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“Believe me,” Lelia says, and I remember her mother. She knows the rough texture of the quiet here.

Lelia drifts away from the Grays and curls up in the basin. Her stillness scares me.

“Lel,” June says. “Lelia, come back.”

I’ve been sticking close to a tree with a thick, alive smell, loam and lemons. I step into the basin. I take out the thin sheet from my pocket and press it to the earth. “June, can I use your knife?” I ask.

She’s behind me in a wordless second. “Pin it there,” I say. “Please.” She spears the page through the center, leaving Emma’s picture untouched beneath the blade.

“Are you there, Emma Hart?” I ask. “Can you hear me?”

Fog moves in fast, rolling over the lip of the basin. The Grays disappear into it, one by one.