June takes Danny by the arm, even though she’s the one limping, and says, “Magic tells you when it’s working.”

“So what was that?”

The Grays look at one another, trying to nominate someone to give Danny the bad news. But there’s no obvious choice this time.

“Blowback,” they say, tripping over one another.

“Sometimes it’s because you’re trying a spell you don’t have the power for,” Hawthorn adds carefully.

“But you don’t think that’s what happened,” Danny says.

Hawthorn touches the burn marks on the ground and winces. The Grays know that sometimes it’s a gift to be read and understood, but just as often, it feels curse-like. There is no hiding when someone truly knows you. The lies you can tell narrow down, and soon nowhere is safe.

The only way to keep a secret safe is to say nothing.

“We couldn’t do the spell because it had already been cast,” Lelia says.

“Imogen?” Danny asks. “She put a ward on you?”

The Grays nod. They should have known. They’d felt Imogen every minute since she left, but they thought that was just a natural by-product of her being gone. A missing so strong that it filled every minute.

“That means Imogen knew something dangerous was happening before she disappeared,” Rush says. She presses her lips together and casts a glance at Danny, a silent apology for not believing her in Imogen’s bedroom.

June touches the shaved side of her head, which is already growing out to a stubborn, prickly length. “It means Imogen was doing magic without us.”

“Is that really such a big deal?” Danny asks.

“Yes,” Hawthorn says. “It’s one of the most important rules. If you want to do little bits of everyday magic by yourself, fine. A ward for one of the girls at school to keep away an ex-boyfriend is one thing. But a spell to protect five witches from the entire world?” She shakes her head. “Way too dangerous.”

It’s more than being left out of Imogen’s spellwork, though. If Imogen was doing magic without the Grays — if she could spin something they were supposed to do together into a secret — maybe they didn’t know her as well as they thought they did.

The Grays push through anger, confusion, disbelief, as Danny stares into the dark sunbursts. Then she looks at her bare feet, already battered from last night’s walk in the woods. “I have to go. Sorry. You’ll be fine, I guess. Imogen is keeping you safe.”

Hawthorn shakes her head, the blink of her eyelashes bitter. “When we used her magic to set another ward, we negated the first spell.” There is a dark silence as everyone works out what this means. And then Danny says it, because, as the Grays have noted, she can’t keep anything important inside of her for long.

“So no one is protected.”