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“I am,” she said, and it came out too quickly. I wanted to shake her. Jess still had her phone in her hand and a look on her face I couldn’t read.

After that the silence felt different, like we were all busy with what lay beneath it. The road began to climb higher. The light had gone long and gold and low, the sun taking its time on the longest day of the year, indifferent to what we needed the dark for.

“It’s fucking weird to be back here,” Callie said. “Where it all started.”

“It seems like so long ago,” Priya said. “And the worst part is, I’m still single.”

I felt the quiet ache in her. And I realized how unfair the ending would be for us. Callie and I still had something real. Priya didn’t even know about Kai yet. And Jess? I got the feeling she was building an imaginary future for herself. Some reality where she could still be with him. I wondered if our friendship would survive it. What would hold us together when the pain and anxiety and fear were gone.

“How much farther to the junction?” Jess said.

“Ten minutes,” I guessed.

The grade steepened. The engine dropped a gear and growled. I turned off my headlights.

In the back, Priya had both hands wrapped around her bag like it was the only thing anchoring her to the seat. I came around the last long curve with my heart hitting the backs of my ribs like it was asking to be let out.

I caught sight of the junction. A shape in the trees that resolved into a parked car, lights off, and the world stopped.

Nothing.

No flashes. No jeep. Just fog moving through the trees like a creature with somewhere to be. Behind me, Priya said, very quietly, “Marlowe—”

“We keep driving. That’s what we agreed,” I said, in a voice that sounded like someone else’s, and took us past the turn at an unremarkable, law-abiding speed while my hands tried to crush the wheel.

It took us eight minutes to circle back by the fire road. It was the longest eight minutes of the summer. The second time, the headlights flashed twice the moment we crested the rise, and I let out a breath that fogged the windshield and took the turn.

I turned up the spur, fighting the muscle memory that wanted me to flip on my blinker, and the ferns brushed the side of the truck like feathery fingers. The road disappeared behind me in the mirror.

The dirt crunched under the tires. Ahead through the fir trees, for a few seconds between trunks, I caught the faint warmth in the gray where the fog met the headland, north of where we were going.

“Oh god, that’s it,” Callie said, staring at the light. “That’s them.”

“Don’t stare at it. Forget they’re there,” I said.

We climbed out of the truck. The sea air hit me, and a fine mist of salt coated my mouth as I took a breath. The ocean was a distant rumble.

We unloaded our bags in the last of the usable light, the candles rattling in their tin. A terrible realization caught up with me. I’d forgotten the flower for the ritual. I’d run out of the door, beckoned by Vivienne, and I’d completely forgotten to grab one from the backyard.

“Fuck!” I hissed.

“Oh Christ, what now?” Callie said.

“The flower! I forgot it!”

They all cursed at once. I wanted to slap myself.

“There has to be one around here,” Callie said.

We fumbled through the dark with a flashlight, frantically swatting at ferns and blackberry tangles, searching for a bloom.

“Here!” Priya hissed, triumphantly holding a sprig of sea thrift.

“Oh, thank god,” I whispered.

We picked up our bags and headed for the landing, which was an old log deck grown in at the edges, thimbleberry and fireweed reclaiming the gravel. Our footsteps sounded enormous on it. Callie kept turning in slow circles like the trees required watching. I pulled out the red headlamps that Damian had given me the day before and handed them out.

“The trail’s off the south edge,” I said, keeping my voice low, adjusting the lamp on my head. “Stay behind me. If you’re about to slip, stop and ask for help.”