Epilogue
It was his idea to go to Cassie’s New Year’s Eve party.
She wanted to stay in, for their now-defunct deadline.
But he did a good job of talking her into it.
We’ve stayed in every night for the last week.
If we stay in anymore, my dick will fall off , he said.
And the words had made Popcorn look up, with hopeful eyes.
Then he slumped back down, grumbling about disturbed sleep as he did so.
They left him watching reruns of Frasier , her in a gauzy black dress and a pointy hat and stripey stockings. Him in all his ordinary clothes, with a jaunty set of devil horns peeking up from his thick thatch of hair.
He looked so gorgeous she could have cried.
And Cassie seemed to agree. She welcomed them warmly, and when he offered his hand, nervously, she drew him into a hug. Then once he’d walked past her into the house, Cass turned her head and mouthed, oh my GOD . With a fan of her hand over her face, for good measure.
It made her wonder what Seth would think, but when she saw him handing a drink to Marley from the Gazette —who Nancy now knew for sure knew—he was somehow fanning himself, too.
He gave her a thumbs-up as she followed Jack to the living room.
A little worried about losing him amidst people he was nervous to be lost amidst—sometimes the fountain incident and the loser stuff still loomed a little large in his mind—but a lot less so, once she saw who he was with.
A Minotaur.
He was shaking the hand of a Minotaur.
Like none of that mattered, anyway. He had more now than just wanting to be completely human. He had the reassurance of everything around him that he didn’t need to be. He didn’t need to fit in. He didn’t need to worry about not being good enough. She and everyone here thought he was.
And honestly, she knew he did, too.
It was in the way he had said to her, that morning, as they laid in bed: I think I’d like to try it the other way.
Almost absentmindedly, like it wasn’t a big deal.
But it had been, because she’d known what he meant.
He wanted to be the demon with her. He wanted her to call out that name—the one she could still hardly say, but said anyway.
She whispered it in his hear, as the party glittered and sparkled around them.
People danced on the ceiling.
Fairies fluttered everywhere.
Cassie was out in the garden, showing everyone how she flew.
But all Jack saw then was her. He turned and took in her mischievous face, his own full of delight and awe.
Then they slipped away, into the night. Into the woods, now safe.
Right to the heart of it, where all her dreams of being a girl in a fantasy world began.
And as he kissed her, she felt the curl of something around her waist.
His arrow-tipped tail, like a little test.
Followed by everything.
Followed by all the rest.
The light and the dark, the good and the bad, the very best:
Her demon lover, come to her at last.