Imogen had always burned in a way that was impossible to ignore. While the rest of the Grays learned the language of the world around them one word at a time, Imogen had been born fluent, raw magic spilling from her fingers, slipped into the long pauses between her smiles. Imogen could set a blue stone at a girl’s feet and she would find herself unable to stay away from the water. When Imogen went to the beach and sat with her knees gathered, no matter what the tide was supposed to be that day, the waves would reach for her.

Imogen was powerful.

More important, Imogen was theirs.

“Maybe there’s someone at school who could help . . .” June said, breathless currents carrying her away from reality fast. The other Grays knew the truth about June. She was cursed with hope.

“If there was anyone else like us at school, we’d know it by now,” Hawthorn said.

“What if we’re ripping this new girl out of her life, though?” June asked with a shiver. “That feels wrong.”

“The spell is for someone who wants to come,” Hawthorn said. They knew the rules of using magic. No harm was the first. Stealing a queer girl from a happy life might not have been a cut or a bruise, but it was definitely harm. “We need to cast wide. We don’t know how far away she is.”

“What if we get, like, seventy of them?” June asked. “A whole army of new Grays?”

“She isn’t a Gray,” Hawthorn said, her eyes as sharp as June’s athame, which June had brought, of course, the dark blade waiting in its engraved sheath inside her flowered canvas backpack. “We have the perfect number already. We just need Imogen back.” Hawthorn looked up at the trees, which turned pure black at night, as though they’d been gulping the darkness. “Let’s start climbing.”

“You know that’s not happening,” Lelia said. “I don’t do up.”

June was the one who’d gotten hurt, but Lelia was the one who had decided that meant no more climbing. The fear that everyone assumed June would feel had skipped over her like a stone and landed in Lelia’s heart.

“I’ll do it,” June said, even though today was a six on the scale of one to barely walking. The pain in her leg had the cold, heartless glitter of snow. Hawthorn held out her hands and helped June to the lowest branch of a tree.

Lelia looked up into the ragged dark, where the tops of the trees sawed into the moon-blue sky. “Nope. Sorry.”

“We all need to do it or it doesn’t work,” Hawthorn said.

“Whoever this girl is, we need to bring her here,” Rush said. “It makes sense for one person to draw the spell back down. Lelia can ground us.”