The Grays stare at me. Was this the way I looked at them when we first met? But it’s not that bizarre. I’ve seen how the Grays carry the ones who came before them, the ones who looked and felt and fell in love like us.

“So is this like the hermit all over again?” Lelia asks. “He . . . controlled you.”

“No,” I say. “She can’t control me. She’s just with me.” It’s a truth that I can feel all the way through my body.

Imogen kisses my cheek. “I’m so glad it worked,” she says, and the words seem to travel deeper, all the way to Emma.

Her spirit flutters.

Rush is still holding my hand.

“Are you okay?” I ask Rush.

She nods. Slowly. Carefully.

“I wanted to tell you about Emma a long time ago,” Imogen says, and now she’s reaching out, one hand on Rush’s shoulder. Seeing them touch doesn’t have the sting I thought it would. We stand like that, all of us joined for a long, awkward minute.

I don’t know how this is going to work: me and Rush and Imogen and Emma. I don’t know where this will lead us, but I’m the one who finds things. Hidden things, desperately needed things, paths no one else would notice. I can find us our way.

Water rushes in fast, covering our feet, breaking the moment. Imogen gives us a smirk, and I wonder if that was her magic at work.

We head down the beach, a long thin line that follows the bottom of the cliffs. The sand is gritty, harsh, and Emma loves the way it scrapes against my toes. We all strip down to our underwear, and the rest of the Grays run straight for the water, but I stand at the exact spot where the waves can’t quite reach. I sink my feet into the sand until I hit water. And then Lelia comes up behind me and shoves me into the ocean, and I’m stinging in places that I didn’t know were bloody, where the sticks of the faerie ring must have bitten into me.

I feel a soft tap on the chin. It could be the wind, or it could be Emma asking me to look up at the moon. I do, falling backward until I’m floating. I let the water carry my body, the words of the Grays breaking around me.

Rush swims over, slicked with water and coated in starlight. Her drenched camisole clings to her in all the same places I want to. The flush that fills my body is only mine. It doesn’t belong to Emma or the Grays or anyone else.