I grab the dowsing rod. The bow with the athame strapped to it spins me in a vicious, dizzying circle, its magic stronger than I’ve ever felt. I don’t think I could deny the direction it wants me to take next.

Rush grabs my arm. She’s fully dressed, but her stare hasn’t caught up. It’s still bare of everything but wanting.

“I know where she is,” I say.

The Grays: Now

Rush and Danny come back looking exactly as mussed and breathless as the Grays expect. They’ve been huddled together as the rain drips to a stop, trying to figure out how long they should wait before interrupting. But now the missing pieces of the group are back, and moving fast.

“Come on, come on,” Danny says, pushing them all away from the tree she and Rush climbed. “Imogen is this way.”

“How did you . . . ?” June asks, letting the question dangle.

“I’ll tell you later,” Rush says, with the blush they’ve all been waiting for.

“Ohh, sex magic!” June says, clapping. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”

“Is it really so obvious?” Danny asks.

“You might as well put a neon sign over your vagina,” Lelia says.

Now it’s Danny’s turn to blush, a quick stripe across each cheek.

Her steps are so confident that the Grays can’t keep up. They form a fraying string behind Danny, Hawthorn and Lelia first, Rush falling back to help June.

June’s leg has announced that it’s done. “Please,” she says, holding her thigh as it stings and sparks with pain. A nerve block might help, but she can’t get one of those in the middle of the woods.

“Slow down, please,” Rush yells ahead to Danny.

“Sorry, sorry,” Danny says, lowering her pace from impossible to frustrating. June scrapes forward, one step at a time. She isn’t going to be left behind, not when Imogen is this close.

“Listen, when we get to her, she’s probably still going to be . . . partial,” Danny says without turning back. The words float to them in dark wisps. “I think the rest of her is with Emma Hart.”

“What do you mean?” Hawthorn asks.

Danny spins to face the Grays. She keeps moving, walking backward at almost the same rate she was going forward, picking her way around obstacles without seeing them. The pull she’s feeling toward Imogen must be strong enough, clear enough, that she doesn’t even have to look. “When people get lost in these woods, when they die here, I don’t think they leave. Well, not completely.”

June crashes forward a few steps, each one costing her a hundred quick-stabbing needles. “That place I saw with Imogen.”