The Lost Coast

by Amy Rose Capetta

  “Let’s focus on the rest of Danny’s dowsing rod,” Hawthorn says. “That’s what she really needs.”

  “Yeah,” Lelia says. “We got sort of interrupted yesterday.”

  They’ve been doing a decent job of not mentioning Neil, but the idea of him keeps gnawing at the edges of the conversation.

  “Could Danny use a redwood branch?” June asks. “For the dowsing rod? I mean, it makes sense, if our magic is tied to Tempest.”

  “But the branch can’t be just some random chunk of redwood,” Hawthorn says. “It has to mean something.”

  The parking lot ripples as someone moves upstream through the crowd. Danny comes into view, and at first the Grays are proud — she must be using her dowsing sense to find them. Then they notice how deeply sunk the lines in her face are, how hard she’s gripping the strap of her bag, how lopsided her breathing is. Big inhale, very little exhale. She’s holding something in.

  “We were just talking about you,” June says too brightly, overcorrecting.

  “What happened?” Rush asks softly.

  Danny looks down at her feet, then snaps her neck back up with force, like she’s decided not to hide from this particular truth. “I woke up in the woods.”

  The Grays hover around her with concern, not sure what she needs. They don’t know Danny well enough to rush in and take care of her, and the slight distance between her and the rest of the Grays is almost as bad as knowing that Danny is terrified.

  “Are you okay?” Lelia asks, her voice tight as fists.

  “It was a bad night,” Danny says, her voice split open at the seams. “The hermit took me for a spin.”

  Ididn’t fall asleep, even after Mom’s soft snore blanketed the cottage. The moon rose in the window, through the bottom square and then the top one. I flipped slowly from one side to the other like I’d trained myself to do when I felt restless. The feeling had vanished when I first got to Tempest, but it was coming back night by night. Waxing into fullness, like the moon.

  My feet worked lightly against the thin standard-issue hotel sheet until I thought I might wear straight through it. I wondered how many miles I would have gone by now if I’d let myself stand up. I didn’t stand up. I didn’t let my thoughts wander through a forest of vanished girls and dead boys. I pulled darkness and nothingness over my mind like a blanket, like ten blankets.

  That’s when the hermit, or what was left of him, slipped into me. He didn’t wait for an invitation, as if letting him share my mind once meant that he could do it again. I didn’t know what he wanted or where he was taking me as my limbs swung toward the edge of the bed, heavy as wet sand.

  I had worked so hard to stay put, and now I was passing Mom’s bed without really meaning to. I was walking out through the screen door to the porch, down the steps, gathering splinters in my feet.

  The woods greeted me with a forgiving bed of pine needles. I felt myself swell back into the proper place, shoving the hermit to the edges of my body, my mind, and I almost turned around and walked back to the cottage. But the fog breathed toward us, and the hermit pushed me forward. His fear slid through my mind like a shadow of my own. He knew where he was going, and he was afraid to lose this chance.

  I was afraid to lose everything. My control, my mom’s trust, my life. An ocean of panic rippled inside me, but the hermit didn’t feel it, or the hermit didn’t care. He believed he was doing something that needed to be done.

  The fog closed in around us, and it would have smothered us, but the hermit wouldn’t let it, and he wouldn’t let go. He pushed me until I was running. He pushed me until I couldn’t take a full breath.

  And then, blackness.

  At first I thought I had passed out.

  Then I saw every shade of darkness, and light coming in through an enormous scar.

  I was inside the hermit’s tree, on the damp ground. It hadn’t dried, was saturated in a way that brought me back to the ground beneath Sebastian’s blood-soaked body. I held myself as I shivered, still in my tiny shorts and bralette, the T-shirt peeled off when I was sweating and not-sleeping. I was alone in the woods at night, wearing dangerously close to nothing.

  The hermit wasn’t in my mind anymore, but his presence stayed close, sticking to me like cold sweat. He had brought me here, which left a single question throbbing through me, like it was trying to pass through a too-small door.

  Why?

  I looked around at the dull black everywhere. Lelia’s nature lessons came back to me — this tree was dead on the inside. A curl of coldness tugged at the back of my neck, and I tilted it back. Above my head I saw words that hadn’t been there the night of the fog dance. They had been cut into the tree, more like a scar than a secret message. Thin, black on black, barely there. But the pale scrap of moon cast enough light to reveal a phrase carved unevenly in the same handwriting I’d seen on Imogen’s notebook.

  You’re going to get hurt.

  The Grays look at one another, trying to decide who has to say the obvious thing. June sets her coffee cup down on the asphalt lip of the parking lot and steps toward Danny. “Imogen sent you a message?”

  This should be good news.

  If Imogen warned Danny that she was in danger, it means that she knows at least part of what’s happening. She’s still with them, even if it’s in tiny chopped-up pieces instead of her whole self. But the message hovers around them like smoke.

  You’re going to get hurt.

  The bell rings, and everyone else scatters. The parking lot is dead water in thirty seconds flat. Danny starts to move toward the buildings, but Hawthorn grabs her by the hand. “We can’t wait until after school.”

  “Should we go right now?” Rush asks.

  “It’s worth skipping Econ,” June says, Danny’s schedule committed to memory. “I promise.”

  Lelia picks up her feet and starts them running. “And if you only want to skip one class, we’re leaving now.”

  “I don’t really want to be taken somewhere without my knowledge or permission again,” Danny says, trying to sound sarcastic, but her voice crawling toward tears.

  Hawthorn twists her hands together, wanting to touch Danny on the arm or shoulder — some comforting, nonthreatening place — knowing that she has to wait for Danny’s okay. “If Neil wasn’t dead, I would ruin his life.”

  “Really?” Danny asks. “I thought he was your . . .”

  “Nope,” Hawthorn says, clapping her hands clean. “I didn’t know him. The Neil I thought I knew would never do that.”

  “Witches before bitches,” Lelia announces, her voice taking over the empty parking lot.

  “I hate that word,” June says.

  Lelia ruffles the long side of June’s hair. “Please let me reclaim it. I’m a bitch. I’m proud to be a bitch. Besides, you say cunt every day.”

  “And twice on Tuesdays,” June informs Danny with a smile.

  Danny looks grateful for the distraction of Lelia and June — which is exactly what they were going for.

  Rush edges forward, holding out the hazelnut latte she bought for Danny when she thought this was going to be a standard morning. It seems like a meager offering all of a sudden. “We want to take you to Imogen’s house.”

  Danny takes a few desperate sips as the Grays break away from the parking lot, away from the stores, toward the residential parts of town. They stagger down a little gully and over the spittle of a stream.

  June gasps at how much her leg hurts — a nine on the scale, maybe a nine and a half. It never healed after she went climbing with Imogen, or the original break healed but her nerves didn’t really get the message. There’s no painkiller that can dull what she’s feeling. Any worse and she’ll have to sit down right where she is. Her ankle turns in the mud, and she has to bite her arm to keep from crying out.

  Danny lags, forcing them to a stop. They’re safely off the school grounds now, and no one will come after them. Not that getting detention is their main concern right now. “Tell
me what we’re going to Imogen’s house for. I . . . I don’t want to get hurt.”

  “That’s why we’re going,” June says.

  “We’re going to Imogen’s house because she has spell makings there. You’ll be able to find them. We’ll show you how to use them.”

  “We’ll all use them,” June adds.

  Danny looks around at the Grays, slow and suspicious. “What kind of spells?”

  “Wards,” Rush says.

  Danny infuses her hazel-brown stare with a question. She is part of this now, the way they get their points across without speaking. She has been pulled into everything about them. Folded into their lives. The light and the dark. The gray swirl of storm winds that has been growing ever since Imogen disappeared.

  “It’s protection magic,” Hawthorn says.

  “Why didn’t you lead with that?” Danny asks, grabbing Hawthorn’s hand. Now the Grays are the ones running to keep up.

  As it turns out, the reason I couldn’t picture Imogen’s house is that it’s so intent on being nondescript. It comes into view at the end of a shaded cul-de-sac, small and green and sunk into the woods. The house is split-level, not big or small. No path of stones leads to the front door.

  There doesn’t seem to be a front door.

  As soon as I’ve taken it in, I blink and forget the whole thing. I have to start looking at it all over again.

  Green, split-level, no door.

  I keep the facts firmly in my mind, but even as I stare right at the house, they start to drift. If someone asked me to describe the Lilly house, I would let out a mouthful of nothing.

  At first I think maybe Imogen’s parents are so boring that they chose the world’s least exciting house without meaning to. And then I wonder if Imogen’s magic did this, made my eye keep slipping away.

  Is this what protection looks like?

  Learning to be invisible?

  Once we reach the yard, I let the Grays take the lead. Hawthorn knocks on the side door, and we all wait.

  A small version of Imogen answers the door. “Hey,” she says. “Imogen’s not here.” She’s the kind of pale that looks sickly, the kind of pale that shines. She has the same curly red hair as her sister, limbs so skinny they look ready to break at the slightest suggestion. She must be thirteen or fourteen, though something about her skews younger.

  “Hi, Haven,” June says in a slightly cute version of her voice. It’s probably how she talks to her own brothers and sisters. “Can we come in?” She eyes the inside of the house. We’re one tiny girl away from getting what we need.

  “Why?” Haven asks.

  “We have to find something,” Hawthorn says. “Homework. It’s due next period. Rush left it, but she can’t remember where.”

  “Why are there so many of you?” Haven asks, narrowing her eyes. “I mean, if it’s just Rachel’s homework?”

  Rachel? I’ve never heard anyone use that name, not the other students at school, not even the teachers. Her nickname seems to have dug in, like a thorn, and stuck. I never even wondered if it was made up.

  “There are this many of us because we travel in a pack,” Lelia says. “We’re called Bel’s Hells.”

  “I thought you were the Grays,” Haven says with a few hard blinks.

  “Oh, we are. Unless we’re cracking skulls,” Lelia says. “Then we’re definitely Bel’s Hells.”

  Haven’s eyes flit upward. She clearly wants to roll them but can’t quite manage — as if she’s too afraid of the Grays to give them a full eye roll.

  “Why aren’t you at school?” I ask her.

  Haven looks at me for the first time, like I wasn’t even there until I interrupted.

  “I’m sick,” she says, and I take in her intense pallor, the scrapes of darkness beneath her brown eyes. In a quick swerve, she turns to the Grays and adds, “Mom and Dad don’t like it when you’re here.” She looks at me for a wavering second, like she’s not sure if I’m included in this statement.

  “Yeah,” Lelia says. “But are you Mom and Dad?”

  “Leave her alone,” I say. She doesn’t have her own set of Grays at her back. She doesn’t even have her sister.

  Haven looks at me differently now that I’ve stuck up for her. “You can come in,” she says, pointing at me, one pale finger hovering. “And Rachel. Since it’s her homework. The rest of you have to wait outside.”

  Lelia groans. Hawthorn looks between me and Rush like we’re the last two people she would have sent in.

  “Hey,” I whisper. “Dowser? Remember?”

  “Yeah, and Rush knows Imogen’s bedroom better than anyone else,” Lelia says.

  Rush turns an ungodly shade of red. June smacks Lelia in the chest with the back of her hand. Everything is clawing its way back toward normal, and then I remember why we’re here. Wards. Protection.

  Rush must be able to see how close I am to falling into a panicky abyss, because when Haven turns to lead us in, Rush grabs my hand. “We’ll find it,” she says, her thumb circling my palm. Heat fills a hundred unexpected places in my body.

  Is this another thing the Grays do for each other? A scrap of magic? Or is this something Rush came up with just for me?

  She pulls me into the house, and when Haven turns the corner toward the kitchen, she reveals a figure with the same red hair standing in the arch of the living room, watching Rush work circles into my hand.

  Imogen.

  They went to the Eel River every summer when the water was high and the temperature broke ninety, because otherwise it was basically an icy wading pool with a current that stung their ankles like a billion hornets.

  Imogen took Haven to the same swimming hole every year. That was what sisters did. They broke up the world and picked which pieces belonged to whom. They looked around and pointed and said Yours. Mine. Ours.

  This trip was a secret one, because Haven’s parents didn’t want her to go out too often, especially in the summer. They said she was too pale. They hated dealing with it when she got overheated, as if it reflected poorly on their parenting skills. Haven’s mom and dad treated her like she might break if she got breathed on the wrong way.

  Pretty much every way was the wrong way.

  Besides, Imogen was out all summer, plus every other season, and apparently having one daughter who did that was enough. Imogen had filled the wildness quota, leaving nothing but boring old good behind for Haven.

  “Mom and Dad think your new friends are a problem,” Haven said, letting her toes touch the water. Not really wanting to jump in.

  “Did you know the Eel River flooded once?” Imogen asked, ignoring what Haven had actually said, as usual, and talking about whatever she wanted to. “At that elbow ten miles up, the one with the bridge. It swept away everything. People and houses and horses and cows. You can go to the Tempest visitors’ center and ask the historians if you don’t believe me.”

  Haven curled her toes away from the bitter cold water. “You tell me that story at least once a year.”

  “Yeah, and Mom and Dad decide something’s a problem at least once a year. It’s part of the life cycle.”

  “You should be careful what you say about them.”

  Imogen’s scowl hardened into a threat. “How would they know unless you tell them?”

  “They always know,” Haven muttered. “They look at my face and figure out everything I did wrong.”

  “That’s bullfuck,” Imogen yelled, filling the whole landscape with her voice. She was experimenting with swears that summer, taking them apart, putting them together backward and inside out, trying to see which ones got the biggest reaction.

  That one just made Haven snort.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t worry so much about Mom and Dad,” Imogen said. “Maybe you should be careful what you say around me.” She leaped off the rock and just missed the bite of another one in the water. She came up sleek and smiling. “I’m a witch.”

  Rush drops my hand. Of course.

  Imogen giv
es us a look like a guttered-out candle, and for a moment I imagine it’s because she caught the two of us holding hands, because she’s jealous of me or she cares so much about Rush — or both.

  But there’s nothing inside that stare.

  “Why isn’t Imogen at school?” Rush asks.

  “Ask her yourself,” Haven says, pulling out her phone and thumbing through messages. “She’s standing right there.”

  Imogen wears a creamy nightgown with lace at her knees and the thinnest black pinstripes. Her red hair collects in whorls on her shoulders and then spills over her back, her chest. I avoid her eyes because I don’t want more evidence that she can’t see us, when we’re forced to see her, over and over, even when she’s not there.

  Purple darkness has gathered beneath her eyes, brutally obvious against her pale skin. I wonder if she was out last night, wandering through the woods to leave a message in the hermit’s tree.

  Or was it there already? Waiting?

  Rush’s breath sticks halfway through an inhale. I want to run my hand up and down her back, free whatever is caught inside her. But I don’t touch her. Not in front of Imogen and her sister. “What are you doing?” Rush finally asks in a smoky rasp. “Why aren’t you . . . where you’re supposed to be?”

  Imogen doesn’t respond.

  I think Rush is going to choke up, to visit the verge of tears, but her eyes turn to liquid fire.

  “Ouch,” Haven says. “Looks like someone isn’t interested in giving you the time of day.” Haven walks over to her sister and goes up on her tiptoes. “Imogen, you don’t have to stay. Rachel’s leaving soon.”

  Imogen turns and drifts out of the room. Rush and I share a questioning look. Imogen clearly just responded to what Haven told her, even if she didn’t speak to us. Maybe she can follow directions, as long as they’re simple enough.

  Haven gives us another glare, and then she leaves, too.

  Rush closes her eyes, and the pain on her face is so clear, I feel like I could gather it in my hands. A song simmers on her lips, the song that I heard pouring out of her that first morning in the woods.