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The day Colton Price died, he’d been playing hockey with his brother. From the shore, the icy white of Walden Pond had looked frozen all the way through. Deceptively solid. He’d felt it crack beneath him seconds before he fell. It was the subdural snap of a bone cleaving in two. Down he went, without even time to scream. The icy needle of rushing water stole the breath clear out of his lungs.

All these years later, stepping through the sky felt very much the same—like a great, icy fist had driven directly into his gut. He came out the other side gagging, or trying not to, his lungs full of water and his hands at his throat.

He’d sworn, not very long ago, that he’d never do it again.

He’d always been something of a liar.

“Okay, thank you,” said Mackenzie Beckett into her phone. Delaney’s former classmate paced along the gutter like a red-maned lion. Back and forth. Forth and back. Colton ground his teeth to keep from remarking on it. “That’s perfect, thank you. You’re amazing, I love you, goodbye.”

They were somewhere just outside Connecticut, parked on the side of a winding woodland road. Colton leaned idly against the hood and checked his watch. Already, he could feel it—the slipping of the earth out from beneath his feet. The funny quiver of shadows rearing back. Like even the darkness knew he was readying himself to return.

Directly across from him stood Lane—a spot of pale white against the dark stretch of forest behind them. Malum Navis , his port in a storm.

“That’s five,” she noted.

He humored her, sliding his hands into his pockets and arching a brow. “Five?”

“Five times you’ve checked your watch within the last minute.” It came out accusatory, but he saw worry in the deep jade of her eyes. She knew he was watching the minutes to see if they’d slowed. It was a bad habit. One he tended to slip back into, the tetchier he became.

“I’m fine.”

Her smile was unconvincing, but she let him get away with the lie. “I know.”

“Adya saw her,” said Beckett, appearing suddenly between them. “Vivienne.”

Adya Dawoud, Lane’s freshman-year roommate, had a helpful tendency to see things most people didn’t on the inside of a looking glass. She’d spent the last several hours dubiously staring into a mirror in search of Vivienne Farrow. Or, at the very least, Vivienne Farrow’s reflection, which Thomas Walsh insisted had gone missing.

It’s just not there anymore , he’d snapped into the phone, when Colton asked for clarification. I don’t know how else to explain it. Delaney’s friend is a witch, right? Can’t she find it?

Like it was perfectly normal to go rattling about the astral plane looking for a missing reflection. In any case, Beckett hadn’t known precisely what to do, but Dawoud—home for the summer in Kings County, New York—did.

It’s kind of a strange ask , she’d told them over the phone. But I can try.

Standing in his personal space, Beckett had gone breathless with anticipation. Colton peered at her down the bridge of his nose. He waited.

“Ask me what else,” she finally said.

“There’s no need to build suspense,” said Colton. “Just say it.”

She huffed out a breath that sounded like fine . “It’s not Vivienne’s reflection that Adya saw in the mirror. It was her.”

Lane’s eyes met Colton’s. He knew what she was thinking. The last time Adya had seen someone in a mirror, he’d turned out to be dead. If Vivienne Farrow was in the astral plane, it meant she’d slipped between the skies. The moment Colton had the thought, the dark recoiled. It quivered at his feet, like some wretched proletariat.

“Colton,” said Lane, drawing his gaze. “You don’t have to go in after her.”

He thought of Liam sinking out of reach beneath him. Of the cold, interminable press of water, the painstaking plod of time in the bottomless dark. He turned his face toward the sky, one eye pinched shut against the bald yellow sun. Finally, he sighed.

“Don’t I?”

A weighted pause followed. He could feel Lane studying his profile. He held still and let her do it, ignoring the parts of him that spun and squirmed inside. He felt the most human this way, pinned beneath her scrutiny. He supposed it was because she refused to see him as anything but.

Finally, she said, “I can go with you.”

“No.” He dropped his gaze to hers. “Out of the question.”

“But—

“I need you out here,” he said. “So I can find my way back to you when it’s done.”