She digs in her bag and grabs her athame, feeling the lines of the labyrinthine pattern carved into the handle. “Here. Try this.” When she sets it to the bow and the raven feather, it becomes a sort of handle and a point all at once. It gives the dowsing rod a focus, but also a dangerous edge. June can feel potential along the edges of the knife. It looks as if it could work its way through anything.

The other Grays are giving her a collection of doubtful looks. “Unless we’re completely off base here, we’re dealing with spirits,” June says. “And spirits are somewhere else. Well, a somewhere else that overlaps with here. An athame can find where the worlds are thin and cut through to other places.”

“Theoretically,” Hawthorn says, the snag in her voice betraying that she doesn’t really believe this — that her understanding of magic has clean lines. Boundaries.

Danny steps closer, closer, tugged into the circle of June’s nervous breath. “Tell me everything.”

June tells her about climbing and falling, slicing and seeing. About towers of fog where there used to be trees. She touches her leg as she talks, feeling it all over again. She hears Imogen say It’s okay. I saw it, too, her fascination as sharp as June’s athame. “I know there are ways in. I cut a window, but there have to be doors.”

Danny: Now

As Tempest loses its grip on us, it’s like a hand that’s been around my throat eases up for just a second. Which isn’t fair, because I love Mom, and that same hand is probably closing around her throat instead.

Tighter and tighter, for every hour that I’m gone.

I look to Rush for some kind of comfort — or even just to share this new sense of fear — but her face is darkly shuttered. She closed up shop, and I don’t know when she’ll open up to me again. If she will.

I know she hates the idea of following Emma Hart, of messing with this spirit who messed with Imogen, but it’s the best chance we have. Sometimes what you want and what you don’t are knotted like that. Sometimes there’s no real undoing them. I could explain that to Rush. I could tell her how I’m falling for her, and how Imogen is bound up with that whether I want it or not.

The closer we get to Imogen, the farther away Rush feels. For one foul pit of a moment, I think about turning back. Preserving what I have with Rush, even if it’s almost gone. They’ll never find Imogen without me. If I leave now, they’ll wander in circles all night and trail back into Tempest by morning.

I would never do that, though.

I would never leave them.