But I’m not a singer like Rush, and I can’t read the world like Lelia. I don’t have a dark knife like June or a lifetime of magical knowledge in my pockets like Hawthorn. I’m not Imogen with her bottomless well of power.

All I have is the ability to follow bizarre whims. To dance after people I barely know. To reach for what I need most and hope I don’t come up holding air.

I touch the bones. Palm to the place where a palm goes.

I hold a hand that isn’t there.

A fleshed-out feeling comes. I am in the woods, dancing with a girl. Her wide brown cheeks spotted with a blush.

My hand pressed to her hand.

June.

This is a memory.

I come back to the High Point, dizzy with what I’ve figured out, nervous at how much I still don’t know. The Grays are a blur around me, moving to get a better view of what I’m doing, Hawthorn writing it all down in the chronicle. Her pen scratches and scratches at white paper.

I feel pressure, like a hand at my throat.

I need the Grays. I can’t go back to a world without magic, a world without them.

I stand over the body. I touch my foot to the bones of feet. Some of the toe pieces, the little white stubs, are missing.

I get a glimpse of bare feet on dark earth.

I look down at the feet from above, an angle that means mine. They’re planted wide and confident, settled into the dark space of a burned-out tree. They might feel like they’re my feet, but they clearly belong to someone else. The toes are long and squared, the nails half-mooned with dirt.

I come back to myself again, the Grays all around me, murmuring. Rush sings a full-throated song. The same one she was singing the night I first saw her. Or maybe that was morning. It’s all a dizzy blur.

I get on my knees at the foot of the skeleton and crawl my hands out, careful not to disturb the bones. The heels of my hands catch on prickly pine needles and imprint with sharp stones. I lower myself over the slender cage of ribs, the birdcage of bones. I hover, holding myself up.

My heartbeat triples.

I hear someone saying a name. It’s blurry, under water. It must be raining. I smell the release of the woods, a deep green sigh unlocked by the rain.

“Neil.” The voice is so washed out by the sound of water that it’s almost not there at all. “I’m sorry.”