I remember the Grays even as I’m losing the rest of myself. Rush, Lelia, Hawthorn, June. I let myself believe, at least for a second, that I’ll get to keep them. That there will be other nights in the woods, howling and dancing and drinking and kissing. That there will be gold days soaking into us as we string together new spells.

I hear a voice lifting through the fog. Just a tiny sliver of it, half muffled like it’s pushing through the crack in a door. It’s sweet and wild and high, and it tastes like October sunlight cooked down until it’s as sweet as caramel.

It tastes like Rush.

I know this song. She was singing it in the graveyard when I pretended I wasn’t there and she pretended not to see me. This isn’t Imogen’s song. I couldn’t hear the truth before because there was too much in the way, but in this spirit-made world, the song comes clear. It scrawls a picture for me, a picture of a girl with her skirt caught in a strong wind, her hand to her forehead. She’s searching for something. Always searching.

Danny.

Rush has taken me into her lungs and turned me into music. She’s taken me into her mouth and melted me into song.

I hold on to Rush’s voice and pull myself along that rope. I drag Imogen with me, and she drags Emma. The dark mirror of the ground slips beneath us, grows treacherous. But I can see the faerie ring, and Rush is just outside of it, Rush is here, Rush is singing me home.

Emma and Imogen: Now

Danny takes a deep breath and inhales the wisp that is Imogen and the wisp that is Emma. They slide, loose and slippery, down her throat. They settle into her heart. Their weight changes the way Danny steps. Imogen feels how hard it becomes for Danny to keep moving, but she doesn’t falter. Danny learns how to carry them with her. She takes them through the door, into a strange, terrifying, beautiful world.

They emerge from the grip of the faerie ring, past the cracked branches. The moonlight hits Danny’s skin and goes deeper. Emma looks up at the trees with a dreadful sort of wonder. The woods killed Emma once, but it wasn’t their fault. She was alone then, and no one should come this deep into the woods alone.

Danny, a girl who hardly knows her, agreed to bring her back. To share an entire life with her.

Candles flicker near Danny’s feet, throwing unsteady shadows.