The girls who are going out of their way to help her really don’t need this kind of denial. “They did something to that new kid, Sebastian. They did something to Imogen. They’ll get you, too.”

“Someone is messing with Tempest,” Danny says, handing the girls their extra-hot lattes. “But it’s not the Grays.”

She waves her nails as she dismisses them. Sparkly. Black.

She really believes she’s one of them.

Her funeral.

Danny: Now

The Grays and I only have five minutes together before classes start. We gather at the end of the hallway, where it opens up into the lawn. Lelia is a walking haze of pot smoke. Rush looks too nervous to speak. June is standing on one leg and leaning the rest of her weight on Hawthorn as they frantically try to concoct a new plan to get Imogen back, to keep us safe. Nobody looks at me directly. Nobody blames me for not finding her.

But it’s there between us, thick as fog, even if I can’t touch it.

“Danny, when can we meet to . . . ?” June asks, letting the question dangle.

I shake my head. When I got home after the wards failed, Mom grounded me for the detention and the skipped class. There’s not going to be enough time for spells. Not for weeks.

“It’s fine,” Hawthorn says, lying through her supremely white teeth. “We’re all going to be fine.” June hangs her head and groans. Lelia kicks a locker, sending a horde of sophomores scattering down the hall. Rush’s silence, which is usually so deep and peaceful, turns malignant. She stares a hole into the ground, and I wait for it to open up.

If this is a preview of how the Grays will break up when Imogen’s gone forever, I have to stop it.

So I start searching.

In that sliver between day and night, between school and grounded, I go out with my dowsing rod, Lelia’s raven feather set against a long redwood stick I picked up in the woods.

I hold out the dowsing rod, the road and trees blurring into the background. I take step after step, but the rod doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe I’m just not used to it yet. Maybe it feels wrong to wield it without the Grays around me.

They said it’s dangerous to do magic alone, but I don’t have time to care about the rules. Of course, that might be exactly how Imogen felt right before she disappeared. I push those thoughts away, focus my entire mind to a point as small as the end of the dowsing rod, and look for the truth about what happened to Imogen.

I look for three days in a row.

Every day, I find Rush.