Besides, Imogen was out all summer, plus every other season, and apparently having one daughter who did that was enough. Imogen had filled the wildness quota, leaving nothing but boring old good behind for Haven.

“Mom and Dad think your new friends are a problem,” Haven said, letting her toes touch the water. Not really wanting to jump in.

“Did you know the Eel River flooded once?” Imogen asked, ignoring what Haven had actually said, as usual, and talking about whatever she wanted to. “At that elbow ten miles up, the one with the bridge. It swept away everything. People and houses and horses and cows. You can go to the Tempest visitors’ center and ask the historians if you don’t believe me.”

Haven curled her toes away from the bitter cold water. “You tell me that story at least once a year.”

“Yeah, and Mom and Dad decide something’s a problem at least once a year. It’s part of the life cycle.”

“You should be careful what you say about them.”

Imogen’s scowl hardened into a threat. “How would they know unless you tell them?”

“They always know,” Haven muttered. “They look at my face and figure out everything I did wrong.”

“That’s bullfuck,” Imogen yelled, filling the whole landscape with her voice. She was experimenting with swears that summer, taking them apart, putting them together backward and inside out, trying to see which ones got the biggest reaction.

That one just made Haven snort.

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about Mom and Dad,” Imogen said. “Maybe you should be careful what you say around me.” She leaped off the rock and just missed the bite of another one in the water. She came up sleek and smiling. “I’m a witch.”

Danny: Now

Rush drops my hand. Of course.

Imogen gives us a look like a guttered-out candle, and for a moment I imagine it’s because she caught the two of us holding hands, because she’s jealous of me or she cares so much about Rush — or both.

But there’s nothing inside that stare.

“Why isn’t Imogen at school?” Rush asks.

“Ask her yourself,” Haven says, pulling out her phone and thumbing through messages. “She’s standing right there.”

Imogen wears a creamy nightgown with lace at her knees and the thinnest black pinstripes. Her red hair collects in whorls on her shoulders and then spills over her back, her chest. I avoid her eyes because I don’t want more evidence that she can’t see us, when we’re forced to see her, over and over, even when she’s not there.

Purple darkness has gathered beneath her eyes, brutally obvious against her pale skin. I wonder if she was out last night, wandering through the woods to leave a message in the hermit’s tree.

Or was it there already? Waiting?