EPILOGUE
With the last of my cooking pans packed up, Lunaris’s kitchen looked unnervingly empty, nothing like the place I’d called home for the past nine years.
My cousin and siblings had come to help me pack. I’d insisted Kessian rest because his back had been paining him lately. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit around while we all worked, but he hadn’t arrived yet, and I didn’t want to go through with the next bit without him.
Fae came out of the house, dusting their hands. “Heard from him yet?”
I’d been checking my phone for the dozenth time. “I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”
“You’re terrified he’s not going to show, aren’t you?”
They didn’t have to say it out loud.
Two weeks ago, when the deed to 37 Culpepper Avenue had finally transferred to my name officially, I’d asked Kessian if he wanted to move in.
I’d emphasized that he didn’t have to. I understood his need for independence, and his fear that living together would would once again uproot him if our relationship took a turn.
But we’d been together a year now. Living so close by, we spent most of our time together anyway.
And the new house was big and empty, except for all the ghosts and history and spiders that had moved in while it remained unoccupied. It would be good to fill it with somebody I loved instead.
He had gone very quiet and hadn’t answered.
I was not freaking out about this at all.
“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” Fae said.
“No. It’s just a big deal, moving in, staying for good. I’d want him here even if he decided not to move in together yet.”
“Just call and ask for an ETA.”
“Or I could have a quiet breakdown.”
“Who’s breaking down? I hope it’s not Lunaris, after she carted all your stuff and everything.”
Laurelie appeared in the doorway.
She’d surfaced from the strid nine years younger than me, an anomaly that would no doubt ensure we forever won any game of “two truths and a lie” we played.
In spite of her long absence and our sudden gap in age, we fell easily into conversation with each other, which made it seem as though love was another sort of time travel, connecting us across all the years we’d spent apart.
“Tal’s afraid Kessian’s ghosted him.”
Laurelie raised her eyebrows. “I’ll show him a ghost. Want me to drown him in the spring again? For old time’s sake.”
“No!”
As if to rescue me from my siblings, the garbled motor of Kessian’s beat-up Volvo announced his arrival. He parked up and started messing about with something in the passenger seat before getting out, awkwardly trying to balance whatever he was carrying with his cane hooked on his elbow.
I rushed over to help, only registering what he carried when I got closer.
It was his delphinium, taken from his garden, the root ball carefully wrapped in newspaper.
“Sorry I’m late. I thought I should bring a housewarming present, but then I wasn’t sure because it seemed weird to bring a housewarming gift when it’s going to be my house, too, but then I figured we’re sort of weird, and if I wanted to move the delphiniums today’s good weather for it, so— Why are you looking at me like that? ”
“Your house?”
He shifted nervously. “Well … our house?”
I pulled him into a kiss. Trying to crush him, but not the plant, in a hug was a difficult achievement, but I managed. Over his shoulder I saw the Golf had boxes stuffed in the back seats, too. “You’re really moving in?”
“Yes! Did you think I’d say no?”
“Well, yeah. You didn’t say anything, just did that quiet pensive thing that you do when you’re working something out.”
“Oh … I was trying to work out where I’d plant the hydrangeas. Your garden gets a lot of sun, and they need shade.”
I kissed him again, a little longer so he knew how in love I was.
An Eugh of disgust issued behind us.
“You know I saw him snort a gumdrop out his nose when he was five?” said Laurelie.
“You’ve never shown me that trick,” Kessian said.
“And I never will. It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Shoving the gumdrop up there in the first place was,” said Laurelie.
“I brought drinks!” Fae declared, appearing with flutes of sparkling wine sandwiched between their hands and elbows. They paused before giving one to Laurelie. “Aren’t you technically underage?”
“I was a thousands-year-old river.”
Amelia snatched a glass for her. “If anyone deserves to get wankered, it’s you, babes. I was in that pond-scum skin suit for twenty-four hours, and I felt like I needed to be exfoliated with steel wool.”
“I would have given her the drink,” Fae pouted.
“All right, all right,” I declared. “I think it’s time.”
A breeze of magic whispered on the air, making the fall leaves smell crisper. We all turned to Lunaris, from whom the magic emanated.
I stepped up to her and raised my glass. “A toast to Lunaris. My best and oldest friend. You gave me a home all these years. Now it’s my turn.”
Everyone echoed my toast. “To Lunaris.”
I took a drink and tipped some of the wine out over her bonnet.
It fizzled, droplets frying in the aura of her magic.
Glimmering, golden smoke rose in plumes, enveloping her in a slowly shrinking twister.
My heart tapped a rhythm to the sound of a tune she played on her radio for the last time, one I’d sung to on many road trips.
The smoke seemed to eat away at the camper van, becoming a single pillar, until that, too, dissipated in a sudden breeze, and in place of my house on wheels, a calico cat with crooked whiskers burst from it and tried to run toward me, though she moved the way animals did with booties on their feet.
“Oh, oh no. It’s so strange having legs after all this time. Wheels are far more straightforward.”
Fae awwed while everyone else laughed. I picked Lunaris up and the sheer familiarity of the way she smelled when I kissed her fuzzy head catapulted me into nostalgia.
It was strange to be reunited when we’d never really been separated in the first place.
She’d always been there, but I’d still missed her.
In the way of all cats, she put a paw on my face to push it away. “That’s enough affection. Put me down now. I must search the premises and ensure there are no vermin.”
I set her down and she sprang off into the house, pausing only briefly to weave around Kessian’s ankles. “This one is not vermin. I give him permission to stay.”
We could hear her claws clattering as she hunted spiders.
“What did she say?” Kessian asked.
“She’s given you her stamp of approval, though I think she made that fairly obvious when she was a camper van.”
We all took our drinks inside to start the chore of cleaning the house and unpacking. I marveled at how much dust could accumulate in a year.
It had taken all that time for Warwick to meet a meager justice. Legal proceedings being slow as they were, he had plenty of time and money to wrangle himself a lesser sentence despite his collusion in a mass murder and his possession of a dangerous artifact.
While the judicial system might have failed the people of Shearwater, those people had long memories, and Foxbury Manor now had a for-sale sign at the end of its drive, as did Shearwater Spa.
There was a silver lining. The contract he’d drawn up transferring ownership of 37 Culpepper Avenue had been officially voided, along with several others of questionable legality. Those legal costs had postponed his building plans for the caravan park where Kessian lived.
Marlowe had not been released on bail, and there was little doubt in the mind of the prosecuting barrister that he would get a life sentence for what he’d done.
He’d tried to run. It had been particularly hard on Amelia, who hadn’t spoken to him since, and the rest of us had done the same in solidarity, but as time passed, the scars he’d left had begun to fade.
Not completely, never completely, but enough that there were days we did not think about the monster he’d made of our home in Shearwater.
After a pizza party, more cleaning and unpacking, and a round of drinks in the garden, my family left us to settle in.
Kessian was still re-planting his garden when dusk fell.
I helped him with the last seedlings despite my aversion to dirt under my nails, and when the primroses were all lining the front flower bed, he finally stopped and sat back to rub a knot in his spine and say, “I think I’m going to regret trying to get it all done in one day tomorrow. ”
I slipped an arm around his waist. “The bathtub in this place is huge. I could run it for you.”
“Is it big enough for two?”
“We can find out.”
His eyes flashed bright blue. The magic of the strid had never quite left him, and it was particularly vibrant now. “Lead the way.”
“First, I have a gift for you, too.”
“A massage with a happy ending?”
“No. Well—Yes, ahem. If you wanted, that too, but I was referring to something else.”
Dusting my hands on my jeans, I helped him up off the grass. He winced, spine popping as he stretched. He followed me into the house, where I picked up a tin of paint from the cupboard under the stairs.
“I think my arms will snap off like toothpicks if I try to get painting done after all that gardening.”
“You don’t have to do it, but look.” I showed him the color label. Baked cherry. “I figured we could paint our bedroom door with it. Maybe a different color for every room in the house?”
His smile melted into something more secretive and fond, and he didn’t have words, but he linked our pinkies together and ducked his head into my shoulder.
He made us drinks while I ran the bath, conjuring a few rose petals and lighting a candle.
Kessian and my combined possessions could not begin to fill the house, but he’d had enough suncatchers to put one in every window.
The study still needed renovations from the fire, and after clearing nearly everything out, we’d discovered even more clocks in the loft.
I’d kept a few reminders of Grandad, but I was ready to call the place my own rather than linger in the past. In the year to come, I wondered what colors we’d paint each room, what kind of art would go on the walls, how many hobbies Kessian could collect in the room I’d set aside for his crafts.
Would I open a ceramics shop, maybe next to Witches and Stitches?
I found that I didn’t know for certain what the future held, but for the first time in a long time, I liked dreaming of it.
Kessian came in with our drinks on a tray balanced on one arm. I took it from him and set it on the windowsill.
“How romantic,” he said of the rose petals.
I started undoing the buttons of his shirt. “It’s our first night living together.”
“We practically lived together already.”
“Yes, but now it’s official.”
He looked at me with a queer vulnerability, fingers hooked in the belt loops of my jeans.
His shrugged out of his shirt. I peppered one shoulder with a kiss while sliding off his trousers.
While he climbed into the water, I shed all my clothes and got in behind him.
He took my arms, looping them around his shoulders like a scarf, leaned back and let out the longest, most contented sigh.
I trickled water over his chest, leaving a trail of goose bumps. I kissed his nape and kneaded the knot in his shoulder with my thumb. I’d sink my hand below the rose petals later. For now, I wanted to scrub out every weary line of tension in his muscles.
“Did you really think I was going to say no?” he murmured.
“Mm?”
“To moving in together. Did you think I wasn’t coming today?”
I hesitated. “I knew it was a big step. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you needed time.”
“When I arrived today, you looked …”
“Stressed?”
“Up a notch from stressed. Freaked out.”
I sighed, drawing swirls in the fine, damp hairs at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Scared is the last thing I am right now.” He tilted his head back so he could look at me.
“Maybe if we’d met six years ago when it had all been fresh, I’d have second-guessed moving in with anyone.
But after knowing you, I doubt it. I meant what I said at Fae’s wedding back then.
I’d want to know how this story goes regardless of how it ends, because every day with you has been worth it. This is the safest I’ve ever felt.”
He kissed me, slow and blooming into something more.
His tongue danced with mine, the water whispering against the lip of the tub as he shifted to get a better angle, and when his legs spread as wide as the bath would allow, I followed my impulse from earlier.
It wasn’t long before we were getting water and rose petals on the floor.
When he’d finished, he turned, took me in hand, and the glide of his tongue against mine made me see stars behind my eyelids.
There was something awkwardly endearing about watching him get out of the bath after that with his legs shaking.
“Should we upgrade your cane to a walker?”
“Shut up. You made me cum so hard I’ve got jelly legs.”
I helped him dry off. Really, it was just an excuse to keep touching him. By the time we’d navigated around all the boxes we had yet to unpack and collapsed into bed, the house had settled into its night sounds—creaks and bumps and peculiar hissing in the eaves.
But no ticking clocks.
Lunaris appeared as we were drifting off to sleep to tell me proudly, “I have dispatched no less than two dozen spiders.”
“Thank you. It wouldn’t be home without your dedication.”
“Or without me.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“And him,” she added, looking at Kessian tucked against my side. “Some days I worried you would run forever.”
I looked at the man in my arms, counted the stars on his cheeks, and felt no need to make any wishes at all.
“I think I’m here to stay.”