“What are you singing?” I ask.
The question breaks her song midnote. She presses her black-cherry lips together. “Imogen.”
I stand very still, waiting for her to explain.
“I took her name and turned it to music,” Rush says. “I used a cipher. Letters to notes. I picked the Mixolydian mode, because it’s hopeful, and added a few embellishments that . . . sound like her.”
I prickle with the heat of the Lillys’ sunny house, and a sudden rash of jealousy. I want someone to know me well enough to turn me into music. To melt me out of this body and pour me into pure notes and warm breath.
I work my way back to what matters. Rush’s songs are spells. “You’ve been trying to sing her back.”
“It was all I had until . . .”
Until I showed up. Until I failed to bring her back, too.
No point in pretending otherwise. Right now we’re on damage control, trying to keep any of us from following in the footsteps of Sebastian and Neil. We head in the opposite direction from Imogen, stepping into the slightly higher half of the split-level ranch. Three white doors in a row. I point to the one in the center. “Imogen’s?”
“You’re good at this,” Rush says, running a hand down my arm, giving me that hot staticky pressure between my legs. In another world, that would be flirting. But Rush and I live in a world where Imogen is missing, and no one can disappear too far into a good feeling.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the compliment and trying to leave the rest of my response behind.
As soon as we’re in Imogen’s room, the generic feeling of the house slips away. I’ve only seen Imogen wearing black and white, but her room is a violent splash of color. Loose-leaf drawings overlap on every wall, a lot of them probably done by Imogen. Rivers in deep red and royal blue — or maybe they’re veins. Cracked skies in livid colors, like birds’ eggs opening. And there are grave rubbings, the kind that kids learn to do in elementary school, only Imogen has hot-wired the idea, stolen it from its boring, humble beginnings and turned it into electric art. She’s as present in this room as she was absent from her body. Everything here looks like Imogen. Like she’s stamped her name on every surface.
And when I look at Rush, she’s part of the room, and Imogen’s name is stamped on her, too.
Imogen kept pulling away, and Rush couldn’t figure out why.
The rain gave way to a wickedly dry summer. Heat pushed the rest of the Grays into their skimpiest shorts and wafer-thin tank tops. June considered shaving her entire head. Hawthorn put contacts in every day because her glasses kept slipping off her nose. Imogen and Rush did their best to pretend that nothing had changed.
Heavy sweat and thick silence kept Rush and Imogen company on a drive to the movie theater, where they settled into a pair of seats with a huge soda wedged between them.
But halfway through the movie, Imogen couldn’t seem to keep her eyes on the screen. They left before the hero and the girl even managed to kiss. Rush drove Imogen back toward Tempest in yet more silence.
“Pull over,” Imogen said.
She walked through the weeds at the side of the road, all the way down to the Eel River, where she took off her clothes. She looked as if she were carved from a piece of moon. Rush thought she’d finally gotten it right, given Imogen the time she needed. She closed her eyes and waited for the waiting to be over.
When she opened her eyes again, she found that Imogen had left her behind to stare at her naked backside as she lowered herself into the water. Rush sat on the bank and pulled her knees up. The dry summer had come hand in hand with a drought, but the river seemed to inch up until it almost touched Rush’s sandals.
When Imogen came back, Rush asked her, “Why are we here?”
Imogen scraped up a smile. “I thought you liked night swimming.”
Day after day above a hundred degrees gave Imogen an excuse to slide away whenever Rush sat down next to her, to give them both a little breathing room when they stood side by side, working a spell.
This was why Hawthorn didn’t want any of the Grays to date each other. Most of them had kissed each other. Sometimes as part of their spellwork. Sometimes just to do it. When Lelia discovered she was on the ace spectrum at fifteen, she let everyone know that kissing was fun, as long as it wasn’t about sprinting to get to other bases. Hawthorn and June kissed every time Hawthorn brought June a good piece of rose quartz — her favorite. The Grays took each other to school dances, brought each other corsages, held each other tight on dance floors while people laughed. They ignored the whispers about orgies. They were in love with each other, and that was good.
Love wasn’t the problem.
It was losing it that could hurt the Grays.
Rush still wanted to believe that this was going to fix itself, but as week after week went by, her hope dissolved. The worst part was that Imogen kept kissing her. Dull, dutiful kisses. Kisses that had so little of Imogen in them they might as well have been the wind against Rush’s lips.
And then she mumbled another girl’s name when she thought Rush wasn’t listening.
And then she disappeared.
Ipace in knotted lines around Imogen’s room as Rush tells me about her and Imogen. How it started. How it soured.
“That other girl,” I say. “Who is she?”
Rush goes into Imogen’s drawers and looks around. She pulls out a notebook. It’s not the leather kind that Hawthorn uses, adorned with stitching and stones. This is a plain book with a cardboard face. Inside, the pages are clouded with scribbles.
Emma Hart. Emma Hart. Emma Hart.
It’s the handwriting I saw pressed into the bark of the hermit’s tree. The handwriting stamped into the cover of Imogen’s school notebook.
Overwhelmed, I sit down on the bed, which dips under my thighs.
“Who is she?” I ask again, not meeting Rush’s eyes. She’s still giving off unhappiness like steam. I stare at the notebook, page after page scrawled and looped with the name Emma Hart, until it feels like my eyes must be broken. “Did you ask?”
Rush sits down next to me and touches the imprints on the page. Imogen used a black ballpoint pen, pressing hard. “I was too afraid to ask,” Rush says.
It’s not hard to understand what she means. At the time, she was only thinking about the kind of hurt that comes with being replaced.
Now there are bigger things to worry about.
“Do you think she’s . . . like us?” I ask.
“Queer?” Rush asks.
“A witch,” I say, laying out the words as carefully as I’ve seen the Grays lay out candles and herbs and polished stones. “It could explain some of this. What if Imogen knew someone else who had power? Someone who might be willing to use it in ways the Grays won’t?”
“You’re ignoring the obvious,” Rush says, picking at the neck of her sweater. “Imogen met someone else. Someone better.” Her voice fades until it’s nearly gone. “She was just . . . killing time with me.”
“That doesn’t sound like Imogen,” I say, although I don’t really know her. But I think they cared about each other. If they didn’t, I would have closed the space between us on this bed. I would have fistfuls of Rush’s dark hair running through my hands like water.
“You think this other girl . . . Emma . . . hurt her?” Rush asks. She twitches, shaking her head. “If Imogen knew another witch, she would tell the Grays.”
“Really?” It’s starting to feel like I could dig a grave and fill it with all of Imogen’s secrets. “Let’s find the wards,” I say. I rattle through the belongings in Imogen’s drawers, her clothes that only come in shades of black and white. Cream, snow, crow, coal. Rush checks the closet. The more she looks around, the more sharply I realize that she’s avoiding a certain spot — the far side of Imogen’s bed. I get the feeling it might be the spot where Rush’s most personal memories of Imogen are hidden.
I climb over the mattress on my knees, slow and clumsy, and dangle my ha
nd into the crack on the far side, where the bed doesn’t quite meet the wall. My fingers skim air until I feel something. I start grabbing and I don’t stop. Rush stares from across the room. I beckon her to come closer. I don’t want to do this alone. She sits down on the bleeding-sunset comforter. She crosses her legs. We’re stuck in the middle of Imogen’s bed together.
Staring at her magic.
Haven’s parents are home.
Mrs. Lilly parks at the end of the driveway. Haven expects Imogen’s friends to scatter and flee, but they’re the kind of stupid that passes for loyal. They stay right where they are on the front lawn. Lelia even waves at Haven’s mom, baring a smile. Haven watches from the shadows of the long, cracked-open window in the living room.
Mrs. Lilly snaps her car door shut. “Are you here to bother my daughters? They’re sick.”
Haven touches her clammy cheek. She smells like old sweat, like salt, no matter how many times she showers. It didn’t take much convincing to get her parents to keep her home. If she’s not at school, Imogen can’t go, either.
Haven’s dad grabs grocery bags from the hatchback. “Do you mind . . . ?” he asks, breaking up the cluster of Grays, his arms full. He passes through the front doorway, and startles when he sees Haven watching.
He nods, his dark-dark eyes — Imogen’s eyes — already moving on to something more interesting. They used to hug every time they saw each other. Now Haven’s dad is polite, as if she’s a stranger who wandered into his house.
Haven turns back to watch Mom through the window. At least she’ll put on a show. Her face has tightened; her hands are two tight coils. “Shouldn’t you be at school?” she asks the Grays, the threat in her voice as polished as her freshly done, peachy-pink manicure.
“Is Haven okay?” June asks.
Haven swallows painfully. The Grays don’t care if she’s okay. That’s not part of the story.
Mom wedges her way past the Grays. “She just needs a few days at home.”
“Because of Imogen?” Lelia asks.
Mom blanches, almost white enough to match her platinum hair, dyed twice a month. She’s been covering the dark red roots for so long that they seem almost shameful now. Haven inches forward, not sure what her mom will say about Imogen. She’s lost in the house somewhere. She doesn’t care what anyone says about her — not that she ever did.
Dad passes through again, coming back with more groceries. He might as well be in a different dimension.
But before Mom can decide how to take on the subject of her older daughter, Rachel and that other girl, the one with the off-kilter haircut, slither out of Imogen’s room, their faces down. The new girl is carrying a bag.
Haven leans over as they pass through the living room, looking down into the depths of the bag. Knots of string. Knives and wax. And the vials of water. Always, those vials, clinking in Imogen’s pockets, glaring at Haven. Their mom used to pour them down the drain like she’d caught Imogen with alcohol. When Imogen got more, Mom would break them on the decorative stones in the backyard.
But more would always surface.
Imogen was unstoppable.
Rachel and the new girl emerge from the side door into a standoff between the Grays and Haven’s mom. When Mom sees the obviously stolen magic crap, her throat turns into a tight cable. Haven inches forward so she can hear what’s happening outside, waiting for the moment when someone loses it.
“I could bring the police into this,” Mom says.
Haven smiles for the first time in days, and it feels warm on her face, like the sun finding her after being gone forever. Punishing the Grays is only fair. They shouldn’t be able to walk into this house and take whatever they want — including her sister. Even Mom and Dad know there’s something wrong with Imogen, and her nonresponsive ways, and her sea-glass eyes, and that the Grays must have something to do with it.
Mom looks at the bag again, shaking her head. “You’re lucky I didn’t want any of that in the house to begin with.” She steps inside and slams the side door. Haven’s disappointment closes in on her.
Mom was supposed to do something.
“Haven,” Mom says, slipping out of her shoes and walking to the living room in her peach-colored socks. Haven is still bingeing on the sight of Imogen’s ex-friends like a bad television show. “Come away from that window.”
“But they’re not leaving, Mom,” Haven says, pitching her voice just so, to make sure Mom understands.
They’re the victims of the weirdest girls in Tempest, California.
Imogen appears in the background, still wearing her dirty old nightgown, hair unbound. Haven pulls hers up into a neat bun as she watches her dad put away the groceries and her mom weigh the options.
Mom picks up the phone and calls the school.
Danny is shaking by the time the Grays gather in detention. The teacher in charge, Ms. Lefevre, settles behind her desk, one eye on the possible panic attack in the third row, the other on a thick detective novel she clearly wants to read.
“It’s just detention,” Lelia says to Danny, but Danny’s breathing stays jagged.
“The school has a red flag planted in my behavioral issues,” Danny says. “They called my mom already. She left me a message. I’m in trouble, but she wants to talk about how much.”
Rush has been in so many forms of trouble with her own parents that she remembers that feeling, even if it’s a little dusty. She stopped caring a long time ago. She puts one finger on the spiky bone of Danny’s wrist and rubs.
Danny closes her eyes, looking relieved. But then a desk screeches as Hawthorn drags the Grays into a circle. The other students seem determined to ignore them. Two skinny freshman boys are eyeing each other like they’ve recently indulged in a fight, and there are three sophomores who, judging by how vigorously they’re texting under the desks, probably got in trouble for taking out their phones in class.
Lelia hovers her fingertips over a girl’s hair, thick and gold and rippled. It’s probably what hers would look like if she didn’t chop it with kitchen scissors and dye streaks with Sharpies. “Don’t worry,” she says with a cartoon witch–worthy cackle. “We won’t eat you.”
“Stop,” June whispers. “They don’t need any more reasons to treat us like we’re going to cause trouble.”
“You worry too much about people treating you like shit,” Lelia says.
Hawthorn gives Lelia a bored glare. “And you don’t know what it’s like to be treated that way without even trying.”
“No talking,” Ms. Lefevre says without looking up. “And sit down, Lelia.”
Lelia sits cross-legged on top of one of the desks instead of sliding into the attached chair. June takes a water bottle out of her flowered backpack. She faces the back of the room, steals a sip, bars a cough with her dimpled elbow. She holds it out to Danny beneath their desks and shrugs when Danny gives her a confused look. “It’s gin. As long as I’m in trouble, I might as well roll around in it,” she whispers. “Otherwise it’s like building a leaf pile and not bothering to jump in.”
“Ms. Ocampo,” the teacher snaps. “No. Talking.”
June takes out a sheet of paper and writes, in sweetly looping cursive, At least she didn’t say no drinking. She takes another tiny swig.
Hawthorn grabs the paper, spinning it with her long fingertips, and adds: What now?
She nudges the bag full of Imogen’s spell makings into the center of the circle with her foot. It makes a soft clinking sound. Rush watches the teacher, who seems on the verge of looking up and confiscating everything in sight.
Ms. Lefevre licks a finger and turns the page.
The bag in the center of the circle gapes open slightly, revealing Imogen’s collection of bottles and pitchers and vials.
Lelia grabs the pen out of Hawthorn’s hands. Can’t do wards here. The school is like a sinkhole for magic.
June takes a turn. Woods? Tomorrow? Her handwriting has a hopeful bent to it. It’s also slightly wobb
ly, as if just a few sips of alcohol have gotten her drunk. Lelia swipes the water bottle, and when June opens her mouth to protest, Lelia drinks the rest in a single, throat-bobbing gulp.
Danny takes the sheet and scribbles with a vengeance. Today. Before sunset. The hermit isn’t stealing me from my bed again.
Hawthorn’s lips twist. She does not like the notion that Neil could still be out there — it means he’s not at rest. Considering what he did to Danny, he doesn’t exactly deserve rest, but even so, a restless spirit is not a good sign. She sits down and rubs her fingers at her temples, a slight trace of coconut oil coming away on her fingertips.
Rush grabs the paper, and her long brown hair swishes against the desk as she writes. Everyone’s eyes stick to her. That’s the power of being the quiet one. When Rush is finally ready to talk, the Grays listen.
She pushes the paper forward.
I’ve got a way to get us out. If it doesn’t work, I might be in bigger trouble.
Danny scowls at the paper. Hawthorn is unwilling to sacrifice one of the Grays, even if it’s just to more detention. They need to stay together. It’s one of the only things keeping them safe. Witches are always in greater danger when they work alone.
But they don’t have anything else.
Rush opens her mouth and starts singing. The sound rises, smudged and warm as smoke from a chimney. And suddenly the room that was soaked in October sunlight becomes even warmer, the air wrapping around them like a blanket.
“Last warning,” the teacher says. “No talking.”
“With all due respect, Rush isn’t talking,” Lelia says.
Rush’s voice fills the air as the teacher turns back to her. Ms. Lefevre’s neck wilts. Phones drop to the linoleum as the muscles of the students go slack. Eyes closed, breath slow.
Rush picks up the bag of Imogen’s spell makings from the center of the circle, careful not to break anything as bottles slide and settle. Rush knows they don’t have much time. She crouches in front of Danny’s desk to wake her.
The Lost Coast Page 12
