The Lost Coast

by Amy Rose Capetta

  As weeks went by, and Imogen remained blank, it became clear that Haven was the only one who had this effect on her. When anyone else talked to her or asked her to do things, they got the Nothing Show. At first, their parents thought this was a new brand of defiance. But soon they noticed that Haven could get Imogen to do chores around the house, to take out her homework at night, even if she left most of the spaces for her answers snowy white, untouched. Mr. and Mrs. Lilly liked the newer, blander version of Imogen. They also liked that they could put Haven in charge of her, like reverse babysitting. It was completely unfair. Imogen had taken up every breath of air in the house, every bit of attention at school, every inch of Tempest. Now she was mild and boring, and Haven still wasn’t free to do what she wanted.

  Every once in a while, when Haven was sitting at the end of Imogen’s bed or walking her home after school, Imogen flickered through whatever was holding her back, like a moth struggling toward a candle.

  Every once in a while, Haven missed her sister.

  But most of the time she hated having to take care of Imogen after all of the years of living in her shadow. She was Imogen’s shadow, flimsy and quiet, always where people expected her to be.

  And then Haven got an idea. If she was going to be in charge of Imogen, she might as well have a little fun. She asked her sister to take her to the Grays.

  Haven put on shadow clothes — quiet sneakers, a dark-green sweatshirt. She told Imogen to do the same. Haven moved like she would never be seen. Imogen had always moved like everyone was looking at her, and they usually were. But that night her sister was a murmur in the woods, leading Haven to the clearing filled with witches.

  All Haven wanted to do was scare them. She wanted to punish the weird girls of Tempest, just a little bit. They did what they wanted, kissed who they wanted, called on magic like that was something you could just do. Like there would be no consequences.

  Haven had seen what happened if you said you were a witch.

  If you lost control.

  You know what happened,” Haven says, her voice so thin it has an edge that I could easily get cut on.

  Imogen vanishes behind the monstrous redwood. It feels like she’ll never come around the far side.

  It’s just me and Haven.

  I keep one hand on the dowsing rod, afraid to move closer to Haven. Afraid to turn my back on her and run. “I need you to tell me what comes next, Haven. Because my guesses right now don’t look very good.”

  “I’m not bad,” Haven says, the words shivering out between locked teeth.

  “I never said you were.”

  “A person can’t spend every minute trying to be good and then turn out to be bad,” Haven says, but the words are muttered, and they sound like they’re mostly for her own benefit.

  “You can fix this,” I say, feeding her a lie and a truth at the same time. There’s no changing what happened to Sebastian and Neil. She can let me walk away, though. She can bring her sister back. “Don’t you want to help Imogen?”

  Haven turns even paler than before, her freckles standing out darkly, her breath coming harder and harder until I think she’s going to have a massive panic attack. “Imogen. Imogen. Imogen,” Haven says, each repetition more biting. Haven points at me, one skinny finger straight at my face. “The storm was supposed to stop you. You didn’t pay attention. That makes it your fault.”

  “That was you?” I ask. “The storm?”

  “No,” Haven says, twitching under the weight of my accusations. She locks her arms across her body. “No no no.”

  But I know now. She’s been using her sister’s magic.

  Imogen comes into sight from behind the monstrous redwood, ringing toward us on her endless loop. Haven grabs her sister around her waist, hugs her tight.

  “Tell her to come back,” I say. “She’ll listen to you.”

  “You’re fucking wrong,” Haven says, swearing in a way that reveals how little practice she has, the word exploding from her as if it’s been waiting forever. She hardens her hold on Imogen, pale fingernails digging at her. “She ran away from me.” Then she whispers in her sister’s ear.

  The ground that is supposed to stay under my feet rises up, inch by inch, a dark tide crawling up my legs. It froths like the edge of a wave, delicate-looking, but when I try to walk, to break away, the earth wraps tight. It holds me in place.

  Haven takes a step back from Imogen. She walks around me in the same direction that the earth is wrapping me like dark, smothering cloth. “You were nice to me. No one is ever nice to me. I don’t want this to happen.”

  “Then stop,” I say as the earth grabs for my waist.

  “It’s too late,” Haven says. “I can’t stop it.” As if she isn’t the one who made this happen. As if she has no power at all.

  I’m up to my chest already, being buried standing up. When I fight back, the dirt just crumbles toward me and fills in faster. It edges up to my chin. I have thirty seconds, maybe, before I can’t speak. The dowsing rod is buried at my side, but I can still feel its power humming.

  I look at Haven and I dowse, searching for the hidden words that will keep her from hurting me, but I can’t find them. All I see is her paleness, her pain.

  The dirt reaches my bottom lip. The smell of rich, potent soil fills my nose, drowning out the salt of the far-off sea. I’ve only seen the Pacific once, the day I got to California, when Mom and I walked all the way down to Ocean Beach.

  Mom. She’ll never know what happened to me.

  The Grays will split apart, one of them gone and three people dead in their wake.

  These aren’t hard truths to find.

  I can’t talk now, can barely breathe through my nose, pulling in the last of the air as everything fills in, dark. This is the last thing I’ll ever see, a tiny girl with red hair staring death at me. Dirt bricks over my eyes. Everything in me wants to scream, but I fight to keep myself silent. To control it. Keeping it in is almost as hard as dying.

  This is over,” Hawthorn says, stepping into the clearing, using her most commanding voice, borrowed from Ora. She doesn’t mind being her mother’s daughter in a moment like this one.

  The Grays emerge from between the trees, each one winding a piece of string around their forefinger, the tips as white as roots until they turn blood-choked purple.

  “You can’t kill all of us,” Rush says.

  “Someone will find out,” Lelia adds.

  “You won’t be able to stand it,” June finishes.

  Haven cries out. She crumples to her knees. “I didn’t kill anyone. I’m not a witch. Imogen is the one . . .”

  The dirt covering Danny’s body loses its hold, falling away. Danny breaks from it, collapsing. She slumps to the earth, breathing too hard, but at least that proves she’s breathing.

  This moment has the peace of an ending — but as it turns out, the silence and stillness are only the eye of the storm.

  Haven crashes forward, her hands tossed out in front of her, palms to the ground. Dirt covers her. It swarms over her back, binds her to the earth. “No,” she says, the word muffled, almost lost, as the earth presses her down. “No, you can’t do this to me.”

  The Grays look at one another, trading strength.

  “All we’re doing is telling you the truth,” Rush says, soft as lullabies, mild and sweet as warm milk.

  “We’re binding it to you,” Lelia says.

  “So you can’t forget,” June finishes. “Or look away from it.”

  Hawthorn crouches so she’s right there in front of Haven, staring into the darkness this girl has gathered. Hawthorn takes Haven’s chin in her hands. “So sure you’re the victim that you won’t look at the harm you’ve done, can’t even name it. You let it loose on the world, though. You used magic — your sister’s magic. You’re not a witch, but the rules hold true. Whatever you do comes back to you threefold.”

  “Stop hiding, Haven,” Lelia says.

  “Stop hurting people,”
Rush whispers, cold.

  “Make a new choice,” June begs.

  The look on Haven’s face wavers, and for a moment there is a chance that she’ll come back to the Grays, that she’ll stop pretending she has no power here, that she’ll change her ways and do no harm. The magic might still change its course, if she can face the truth of what she’s done.

  Haven’s eyes pierce theirs with perfect sincerity. “I can’t control it. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t —” Her voice stops like a snuffed candle, starved of air. The earth pulls so hard that it slips out from under the Grays’ feet, swarming over Haven until she is a lump in the earth.

  A burial mound.

  The Grays unwind the strings from their fingers, letting their blood return to its normal flow. Silence brushes over the scene, and the only sound left is the soft drum of Imogen’s feet, dragging her around the faerie ring.

  The Grays gather near Danny, curled on her side. They help her up to sitting, and she looks confused that they are bothering with her when Imogen is right there. But she’s not there, really. Imogen’s eyes are still as misted over as sea glass.

  Whatever happened to her is bigger than Haven’s betrayal.

  That night in the woods, with the Grays so close, only the body of a redwood kept Haven and Imogen concealed. Haven went up on tiptoes, chanted into Imogen’s ear. “Make them scared. Make them wish they hadn’t come out here. Make them want to take it all back, run screaming out of the woods.” Haven’s mouth went dry. She stole glances around the side of the tree, watching the Grays.

  Imogen flickered into her body for a second, looking down at Haven through a fog of confusion, which quickly burned off. “What are you doing, Hav?” She’d always been afraid her sister would snap. That’s why she’d tried to brew a little recklessness in Haven, but the more Imogen tried to help her, the harder Haven recoiled.

  And Imogen couldn’t stop her from snapping now, because a second later, Imogen was gone again.

  But her magic wasn’t.

  A storm stamped all over the grove where the Grays were meeting. It didn’t hurt them. But the wind grew way past what Haven had imagined, and Haven didn’t whisper for Imogen to stop it. She didn’t want to stop it. Once Haven got started, once she broke those tight tight bonds inside her, she couldn’t force everything back into place.

  The next day at school, she heard about Sebastian. About the widowmaker. She learned she was a murderer from some junior who flung gossip around like it was free candy.

  Haven told herself that she was safe. They couldn’t trace the storm back to her. It was an accident, anyway. A mistake. She would never use Imogen’s magic again. Haven didn’t want to play this game anymore.

  You came back,” I say. I can believe the Grays are here, but maybe I don’t quite believe that I’m here. Like if I blink hard enough, this might turn out to be a really nice hallucination right before I die, smothered by dirt.

  “Lelia found Haven’s footprints in the woods,” Hawthorn says, standing in front of the little rise in the earth that covers Haven thoroughly. It looks like a lump caught in someone’s throat.

  Lelia smudges at the dirt with the toe of her boot. “Simple tracking stuff. Haven had a tight gait, size-six feet. Her shoes were smooth on the bottom. All of Imogen’s shoes have decent tread — she wants to be able to hike around at a moment’s notice. Her strides are huge. So are her feet.”

  I spit out clear strings flecked with dark earth as June rubs my back. I look up at them, eyes and throat stinging. “I shouldn’t have said that about Imogen —”

  Hawthorn waves a hand, her tourmaline rings catching the harsh moonlight. “You were right.”

  “And wrong,” Lelia adds with an edge, not quite willing to let it go.

  “It was Imogen’s magic,” Hawthorn says, setting the argument to rest. “Haven was using her.”

  Imogen comes around the tree again, wandering even though the Grays are right in front of her. She looks tattered to the point that I’m surprised she’s lived so long in the woods on her own. But that’s the least of it.

  Her sister stole her magic, and two people died. When the wards broke, Imogen must have felt it. So she ran away, afraid that Haven would use her power to mess with the Grays again. I can’t imagine knowing that someone you love could do that. Take your power. Use it to hurt your friends. Use it to kill.

  The Grays wanted me to use magic to help them, but they never forced me. I made every choice myself, including the bad ones.

  Especially the bad ones.

  Some of those are the choices I’m most proud of.

  I look over at Rush, standing directly in front of the girl she loved, the girl who’s gone. Imogen doesn’t blink. Rush takes a step to the side and lets Imogen pass in her endless rounds. I get up, brushing dirt from every part of my body.

  I walk to the place where the faerie ring opens. It’s a tight, tiny corridor of sticks and shadows. I can barely see a few feet in before it curves. The secret inner ring is a place that would be slightly terrifying even if it didn’t open onto another world.

  Rush joins me, our hands sliding toward each other, knotting loosely. Rush whispers, “I can do this part.”

  I shake my head. “It’s why I’m here. Besides, you saved me. I’ll save her. Then we’ll be even, right?”

  Hawthorn picks up the dowsing rod and hands it back to me. “You need us on this side,” she says. “To keep you anchored.”

  Rush hums a single note, and then she does something new: she instructs Hawthorn and Lelia to hum two others. Together they form a single, dissonant tone. A haunted sound that hangs in the air.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “Locrian mode,” Rush says, breaking out of the chord for just a second. “It’s for opening up doorways.”

  June pulls black candle stubs from her backpack. She sets them around the outside of the faerie ring, three steps between each, kneeling to light them. A tear slides down her face, drops into a sunken cup filled with shiny wax. At first I think it’s only the pain from her leg, but then she whispers, “Imogen didn’t let us do this for her. She might have made it out safely.”

  “She was trying to keep us safe,” Lelia argues.

  “That’s not how things work,” Hawthorn says, threading her arms across her chest. “She should have known better. If you want to do big magic, you don’t mess around, even if you think you have good reasons. You trust your friends, your coven.”

  “Imogen should have told us about wanting to find Emma,” Rush says, tightening her grip on my hand. I watch her chest rise as she takes a deep, filling breath and adds, “She should have told me.”

  I twist my fingers in hers, finding a stronger way to lock them together. I don’t want to leave Rush behind.

  She nods me into the faerie ring. I take the first step, and then I can’t help glancing back. The look that Rush gives me isn’t a smile, but it has the seed of a smile in it.

  “Don’t forget to come back,” she says as I disappear.

  I leave the Grays and Imogen in the grove. As I step deeper into the faerie ring, branches leave tiny all-over scratches on my arms, whispers of touch, each one telling me to turn back. I push forward, giving myself over to the faerie ring’s stifling dark. I hold the dowsing rod out like a weapon.

  I think about Sebastian, and how scared he would have been if I had asked him to go into a faerie ring for our second date. I touch my lips. I should have kissed him while he was still here.

  The air feels trapped, old, a musty sort of wrong. I try to convince myself that I’m not afraid of the next step, and the next. But the lies I tell myself are as thin as the space between worlds.

  I walk in a wide curve, wondering how long it can take to wrap around fully, even if this is the widest tree in existence. I try to look up, but between the thicket and the tree all I get is a snatch of stars, like stealing one last good breath before dying.

  I know what that feels like now.

>   I push forward with the dowsing rod, and June’s athame catches on something. Then it slides through clean, sharp, fast, stabbing this midnight and spilling its gray blood. The world doesn’t just fill with fog; it becomes fog, overwhelming my senses without giving me a single solid thing to hold on to.

  I step out of the faerie ring. I should come out in the same place I entered — there was only one opening. But it’s different here.

  For one, the redwoods are gone.

  Instead, there are towers of fog, each one the sum of the fog that a tree would need to breathe over hundreds of years to stay alive. They form a forest of wispy columns that stretch from ground to sky.

  I’ve been holding my breath, and when I let it out and take in a new one, I learn that this place has secrets instead of air. I pull in regrets and partial truths, betrayals and hopes that never came to pass, wishes that never left anyone’s lips, so thick that they go down like syrup, making me cough. None of these feelings have names or lives attached to them. They’re in pure form — floating — everywhere.

  I think I would choke if it wasn’t for the joy.

  The falling-star plummet of first love, a slow wade into a long warm friendship, babies cracking the secret of how to smile, art being coaxed out of hiding places, hope brewed from nearly nothing, and stories brought to life, told on dark nights around a candle or a fire or any kind of beautiful glow.

  The spirits in the fog of the Lost Coast are here with me. But even as these spirits wander, lost, I feel them tugged toward the towers of fog that, in my world, are trees. The redwoods have found ways to carry the dead, to invite them into their skin, to offer them rest.

  But Emma Hart isn’t resting.

  I leave the tower of fog that used to be the tree with the faerie ring, walking farther into a land that I have no way of mapping. And all of a sudden now feels like a lonely place to be, without the past reaching out to hold my hand and keep me company, no future glinting with promises that keep a person walking forward.