The Lost Coast

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “And now?” I ask. I’m shaking, too, like it’s contagious.

  “Now I want something new,” Rush says, her voice unfinished, unpolished, raw.

  I push forward and kiss her. I can feel every layer between us. Flimsy wet fabric. Clammy skin. Fear. And none of it matters, because I’m grabbing Rush and kissing Rush and I’m not stopping.

  Not for Imogen.

  Not for anything.

  She dances me backward. Even in deep silence, she has music in her bones. And then I’m pressed between Rush’s softness and the soft bark of a tree. My head knocks back, and my teeth clamp down on my tongue, drawing out blood. My mouth goes salty-hot.

  “Sorry,” Rush whispers.

  I don’t want sorry.

  “I want this,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says, kissing all along my collarbone. “I got that feeling.” Before embarrassment at how unsubtle I am sets in, her smile curves and she’s grabbing at her clothes, grabbing at mine. I feel like she would undress the tree and the ground and the night sky if she knew how. I tug at her hair, her hips, her thighs. I try not to think about her doing this with Imogen. I throw rocks at my thoughts, scatter them hard.

  Rush stands back from the tree, taking on a silver glow that comes back now that the clouds are parting. The thunder and lightning have finally given up and the rain is starting to die off.

  Rush’s naked body is like the world at night, moon-brushed hills and soft, dark shadows.

  “I’m ready,” Rush says.

  And I believe her.

  When I push my hand between her legs, they fall open like a book that’s been waiting to be read. She covers my hand with hers, gives me a guided tour of what she wants. I make circles to keep her safe. I make figure eights, tiny eternity symbols. I’m afraid, the whole time, that I’m on the exact edge of losing her.

  But she said this is what she wanted.

  And I believe her.

  I lift away from the tree because I can’t ignore how uncomfortable the bark is, all the places it doesn’t fit my body. I’m a mess of bark, and Rush quietly brushes it off me until I’m naked again.

  Then she lies down. And she waits for me, with a look that is patience and impatience in perfect tension, about to explode. I kneel, and the ground roughs up my knees. I remember that Rush hasn’t done this with anybody before (not even her), so when I take hold of her hips, bend low, and brush a kiss on the inside of each thigh, touch my tongue to the exact place I’ve been aching for, I keep it slow. Gentle and lulling and sweet. She is earthy and salty, she is the dark forest near the sea, and I want to stay here, live here, never come back. Soon she’s pushing against me.

  And then I find it.

  And she is flying. I slide my hands beneath her as her stomach rises, hips completely off the ground. She kept me safe when I was out beyond the trees, and now it’s my turn. I hold on to her as she strains. Rush makes noises that are pure sound, not even an attempt at words or melody.

  Then she blinks like she’s just woken up from a very long sleep. I ask if she’s okay, and she responds with the widest smile I’ve ever seen, shine moving over her face slowly as she reaches for me. She gives me a little nudge, moves me so I’m positioned over her, her body stretched long beneath me. Her hands move up and all over me, exploring unknown territory. She’s not the first person to touch me, but no one has ever mapped my skin like this.

  She pauses long enough to look up at me. “Hi, Danny.” Somehow I know that she’s tasting my name.

  Her fingers spread over my hips, and I tip forward slightly, anticipating the warmth but still not ready for how good it feels, sounds rushing out of my mouth before I can stop them. I don’t need to see Rush smile now. I can feel it. I can feel everything. It takes Rush a minute to find a beat that she likes, her hands pulsing on my hips. When Rush gives me a feeling so good that it’s like crying from relief, I stare up past the forever-trees, to the pinpricks of stars, shaking as I take in the light of long-gone places.

  I whisper her name — the one she chose — and try not to think of Imogen right there, helping her find it.

  The last of the rain comes in ragged drips as we pull on our clothes. I stop to kiss freckles of rain off Rush’s back, her shoulders, before she shrugs on her sweater, and all I can think is how strange the timing of that storm was. My thoughts are waterlogged. My skin is still soaked. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get dry again.

  “Imogen was a water witch.” The words came out of my mouth unbidden.

  Rush doesn’t say anything back. She’s too busy pulling her boots, looping the silver laces and knotting them tight. When I look at her, I want to keep her safe. And all I can think is: What if Imogen caused the storm? What if she was the source of the salt water in the hermit’s tree?

  What if You’re going to get hurt wasn’t a warning, but a promise?

  Imogen saw the same thing June did when she fell, and she was on the hunt for Emma Hart. What if Imogen believed that the way to cut through, to get to Emma, was less about a knife than the fear that came from falling out of a tree?

  Near-death fear?

  She cast a ward to keep her friends safe. She didn’t really want to hurt them.

  She just wanted Emma Hart.

  With the Grays protected, she could have brought the wind, hoping that their fear and magic would open the way for her. But Sebastian was unprotected, and the widowmaker found his heart. She could have tried the same thing with the hermit — but Imogen’s magic was difficult to control. It got away from her sometimes, like the day she almost killed Haven on the Eel River.

  “What’s wrong?” Rush asks, putting a hand to my wrist, over the blue spot where veins sit too close to skin.

  “Nothing new,” I whisper. The pieces have all been there, even if I’m connecting them for the first time. Maybe I’ve brought Rush — all of the Grays — into the depths of the Lost Coast so they can see who Imogen really is. So they can finally let her go.

  I grab the dowsing rod. The bow with the athame strapped to it spins me in a vicious, dizzying circle, its magic stronger than I’ve ever felt. I don’t think I could deny the direction it wants me to take next.

  Rush grabs my arm. She’s fully dressed, but her stare hasn’t caught up. It’s still bare of everything but wanting.

  “I know where she is,” I say.

  Rush and Danny come back looking exactly as mussed and breathless as the Grays expect. They’ve been huddled together as the rain drips to a stop, trying to figure out how long they should wait before interrupting. But now the missing pieces of the group are back, and moving fast.

  “Come on, come on,” Danny says, pushing them all away from the tree she and Rush climbed. “Imogen is this way.”

  “How did you . . . ?” June asks, letting the question dangle.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Rush says, with the blush they’ve all been waiting for.

  “Ohh, sex magic!” June says, clapping. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”

  “Is it really so obvious?” Danny asks.

  “You might as well put a neon sign over your vagina,” Lelia says.

  Now it’s Danny’s turn to blush, a quick stripe across each cheek.

  Her steps are so confident that the Grays can’t keep up. They form a fraying string behind Danny, Hawthorn and Lelia first, Rush falling back to help June.

  June’s leg has announced that it’s done. “Please,” she says, holding her thigh as it stings and sparks with pain. A nerve block might help, but she can’t get one of those in the middle of the woods.

  “Slow down, please,” Rush yells ahead to Danny.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Danny says, lowering her pace from impossible to frustrating. June scrapes forward, one step at a time. She isn’t going to be left behind, not when Imogen is this close.

  “Listen, when we get to her, she’s probably still going to be . . . partial,” Danny says without turning back. The words float to them in dark wisp
s. “I think the rest of her is with Emma Hart.”

  “What do you mean?” Hawthorn asks.

  Danny spins to face the Grays. She keeps moving, walking backward at almost the same rate she was going forward, picking her way around obstacles without seeing them. The pull she’s feeling toward Imogen must be strong enough, clear enough, that she doesn’t even have to look. “When people get lost in these woods, when they die here, I don’t think they leave. Well, not completely.”

  June crashes forward a few steps, each one costing her a hundred quick-stabbing needles. “That place I saw with Imogen.”

  “Imogen told Rush she heard voices in the woods years ago. I think she’s always been able to feel that place. And now . . . I think she’s there. The part of her that’s missing. I’ve been able to feel her all over these woods since I got here, but it’s like feeling fog. It’s everywhere and nowhere.”

  “We need to bring Imogen back,” Hawthorn says. “The whole Imogen. That’s the point.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a fantastic idea,” Danny says, her feet catching on a branch. It clacks like teeth biting down. “There’s still someone causing problems. Someone who killed Sebastian and Neil.”

  “Right,” Lelia says. “Imogen knows who. When we find her, she’ll be able to fix things.” She can feel, even as she says it, that her reasoning is thin, but she doesn’t want to admit that. She tugs at her jacket as if it’s armor against more than the damp night.

  Danny stops walking. She looks at Rush and makes some kind of decision. A no turning back look. “Remember how upset you got about Imogen keeping secrets?”

  “Yes,” Rush says.

  “I’m not going to do that.” Danny talks directly to Rush, even though the rest of them are there. “This is going to be different.”

  Rush nods, but it’s choppy.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.” Danny looks around at all of the Grays now, giving them a stare that they recognize, because they know Danny. She’s asking them to banish their doubts and believe her. “I don’t want any of you to get hurt.”

  “Of course not,” Hawthorn says, urging Danny toward the point. She can’t let Imogen’s trail to go cold while they stand here.

  But Rush needs more time.

  Rush isn’t ready.

  She tries to tell Danny that without saying anything. She tries to spin a connection as strong as the one she has with Imogen, but that takes long-stretched years and the tiny stitches of moments.

  “Danny —” Rush says, desperate.

  “I think Imogen wanted to get to Emma Hart,” Danny says, cutting her off. “The only way she knew to break through was for someone to be in danger. Falling-out-of-a-giant-redwood danger. Almost-dying danger. So she used her magic to . . . scare people. I don’t think she meant to hurt anyone. It must have gotten out of control. It’s happened before. She almost killed Haven once. And . . . I heard Imogen in the hermit’s vision. She said I’m sorry, Neil.”

  The silence of the woods feels so deep that the Grays could dip their hands into it, like dark water.

  “How do you know it was her?” Hawthorn asks at last.

  “She’s the one with the water magic.” Danny waits, clearly wanting someone else to lend their own belief to her theory. The Grays give her silence. “I mean . . . can you really not see this? Not even think it might be possible?”

  The Grays would never think that. They would definitely never say it. Especially not Rush. Imogen killed Sebastian and Neil. Rush clenches, confused and angry. She can’t believe that Danny would kiss her, touch her, take things so beautifully far — and then follow it up with those accusations.

  Danny takes a step forward, and Rush takes one back, a reflex as deep as breathing.

  “Why are you trying so hard to find her if you think she’s a murderer?” Lelia asks, crossing her arms.

  The Grays close ranks. June staggers over to Rush, who puts an arm around her waist. Lelia drapes one of her long skinny arms across Hawthorn’s shoulders. They don’t leave a space. Not for Danny. Not for Imogen. Not for anyone.

  It keeps getting them hurt.

  Danny finally slows down, stumbling toward an apology. “I wish there were another explanation. I thought you should know in case . . .”

  Lelia and Hawthorn and June turn and walk away from Danny. They don’t even have to discuss it.

  “Where are you going?” Danny asks, her voice groping after them.

  They don’t turn back. They can’t go soft.

  “We’re going to find Imogen ourselves,” Hawthorn says.

  “How?” Danny asks. “That’s why you brought me here. That’s why you need me.”

  “Maybe we only needed you to get this far,” June says, picking up a walking stick and stabbing it into the ground.

  Rush runs after Hawthorn, Lelia, and June. “We can’t leave Danny in the woods alone.” That word, alone, tastes hard and sour, an apple that will never ripen.

  “She’s a dowser,” Hawthorn says with certainty. “She’ll find a way out.”

  The trees close in quick, sew up the space where the Grays used to be, make themselves into one dark quilt.

  I walk faster. The dowsing rod pulls me across the woods until I’m running, mindless and breathless to match. I don’t know how many miles I am from the sea, but it’s close enough that the air prickles with salt. Through the fog, I get a flash of what’s going to happen next.

  I’ll find Imogen.

  I’ll drag her back to Tempest with me.

  I’ll show the Grays that I was right.

  I’ve been running with my eyes closed, which I realize only when I trip. I have a red palm, a turned ankle. I get up, keep going. Pain distracts me and I lose my way. I focus on Rush, let the memories burn through my body, giving my magic something to run on.

  I wonder how long it will last before it fades.

  How long I’ll last.

  The dowsing rod tugs me hard and fast. And then, after all of those days I burned up looking for her, those nights I fell asleep with her red curls spilling into my thoughts, I break into a clearing and find a girl moving in a slow, vague circle around the most massive redwood tree I’ve ever seen. It could swallow all of the Grays. It would flatten stars if it fell.

  Around the base, sticks have collected in a feral tangle. The thicket is a dark crown of branches, cracked and broken. I remember Lelia’s words — a faerie ring. People thought it was possible to walk around one and find a way into a very different sort of place. A world of mist and trouble.

  Another world. An overlapping truth.

  Imogen’s feet drag on the ground, caking dirt on her toes, as she walks around the faerie ring. She isn’t traveling the secret inner circle between the tree and the ring. She must have gone in once, though, and wandered out like this. I don’t know why she came back to the tree, leaving Tempest behind. But I do know one thing. This is Imogen’s doorway. She found a way in that had nothing to do with hurting people.

  The truth gets both hands around my lungs and squeezes.

  The Grays were right.

  Imogen didn’t attack them or kill Sebastian or drown Neil in the hermit’s tree so she could reach Emma. But I know her magic troubled the sky, summoned the water.

  “Imogen,” I say. “Imogen.”

  Her muscles stay slack, the red whorls and eddies of her hair streaked with mud.

  “Imogen.” I run to her, the dowsing rod between us, pointed straight at her long white throat. “Imogen, come here. Come back. The Grays need you. I need you.”

  Imogen blinks her way to the surface, dark eyes gathering force and personality. She points past me, at a spot behind me. I can’t turn away from her, not while she’s staring at me for the first time, truly seeing me. Pain slides over her face. “Danny. You brought her with you.”

  Then she’s gone again.

  And I know, completely and truly, that her voice is the one I heard in the vision. The tone was the same, blurry and afrai
d.

  “Danny,” says a second voice, and it’s like someone held up a strange mirror to Imogen’s.

  You brought her with you.

  I turn and find Haven standing in the negative space between two trees. She is wearing a dark-green hooded sweatshirt that makes her skin look viciously pale. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen her before. She was walking under the tree I climbed with Sebastian that first night in the woods.

  “Thank you for finding her,” Haven says. She approaches Imogen and parts the red mess of her sister’s hair down the middle. “Nobody would have done that for me.” Haven’s pain is clear and shimmering, almost something I can see.

  “Haven,” I say, taking a step closer when I should probably run. “You know what happened, don’t you? With the boy who died?” It’s not just my stubborn heart pulling me toward these questions. It’s my dowsing sense. My magic tells me that the way to the truth is giving Haven a chance to tell it.

  While Haven was making a bowl of cereal and spattering it with blueberries, she asked Imogen questions about what she’d done with the Grays, what big spell she’d been planning, and got no answer.

  That was normal. Imogen had a policy of blackout silence when it came to magic. She pretended it was about Mom and Dad, but Haven knew Imogen was still punishing her for that day on the Eel River. Haven only knew about what the weird girls of Tempest did through the whisper-chain of other kids at school.

  Haven put her bowl into the sink a little too hard, on purpose. She thought it might get Imogen’s attention. She kind of wanted the bowl to break. It stayed frustratingly whole.

  “Can you at least put the rest of the groceries away?” she asked as Imogen stared at the patterns in the marble on the breakfast bar.

  Imogen stood up and did it, without hesitation or a single complaint, as if Haven had stuck a hand up her back.