Hawthorn told them to wear candle-flame colors. Clothes that swayed and beckoned and would call someone else like them closer. June showed up in a flimsy moth-white dress cut barely to the tops of her thighs, silver sparkling at her neck and wrists, everywhere her heart sang against her skin. One side of her thick dark hair was freshly shorn, and she kept touching it, remembering how Imogen had freehanded the razor over her scalp and then kissed the velvet patch when she was done. Lelia arrived on June’s arm, an unbreakable link. She was wearing boys’ dress shorts and nothing else. The rest of the Grays were so used to it that they didn’t blink. They did stop to compliment Lelia’s makeup, the rings of smoke around each eye that summoned gold from her green irises. Rush wore a yellow tank top and ancient jean shorts, the blue rubbed to bone-white strings. She didn’t feel like she’d been able to find the right outfit, but she couldn’t borrow from the rest of the Grays — they wore smaller sizes than she did. Only June had a few things that might fit her, and June’s style was very specific, spilling with ultra-femme flowers and prints. Rush had done the best she could with her limited wardrobe. Then she wrote the last twelve things Imogen had said to her on her body, in places the other Grays couldn’t see.

Hawthorn gathered the Grays at the center of the clearing, around the mother tree. The tiger lily shade of her dress blazed against her dark skin, and everyone told her how good she looked. She decided not to mention that she’d borrowed the dress from Ora’s wash line. Sometimes Hawthorn felt as if all the best parts of her were borrowed from her mom, and it messed with her head.

It was getting dark, and the Grays gathered in a circle like it was the most natural thing to do.

“If we want Imogen back, we’ll need someone with a special ability,” Hawthorn said. “Scrying is too vague.” What she meant was that she’d been scrying for days, scrying until her mind folded over with pain and her eye muscles refused.

“Did you try the trees?” Rush asked.

Hawthorn nodded. She only scried patterns in the redwoods when nothing else worked. She didn’t want to take too much from their store of years and wisdom. But the bark had been stubborn. All it gave her was what she already knew — the shape of a girl, twisted, trapped.

“I even tried tea leaves,” Hawthorn said. The rest looked at each other in a way that meant So it’s really that bad. Hawthorn always said tea leaves were for old aunties and complete hacks.

“How can she be gone?” Rush asked. “We should be able to find her.”