Epilogue — Three Months Later
The apartment smelled like coffee and summer and something slightly burnt, which meant Kashvi had been baking again and had gotten distracted.
“Are you sure the streamers aren’t a fire hazard?” Kashvi asked, eyeing the purple and gold decorations Felix had strung across the ceiling. Percival sat on the kitchen table, watching with curiosity.
“Ramona can put out fires now,” Felix said cheerfully. He was standing on a chair, hanging a banner in glittery letters that read CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FOX. “Her magic works. It’s fine.”
“That’s not how fire safety works.”
“It’s how our fire safety works.”
Gerald assisted by holding one end of the banner in his beak, hovering with the focused dignity he brought to all official coven functions.
Ramona stood in the doorway, taking it in. The banner. The tower of cupcakes Posey had made, each one topped with a tiny frosted fox. The party hats Cammie had apparently purchased in bulk.
“This is ridiculous,” she said.
“This is a celebration.” Felix hopped down from the chair and adjusted his hat — purple with gold stars. “You’re bonding with your familiar. That deserves a party.”
“It’s just a ritual—”
“It’s your first formal magic since breaking the curse,” Posey said in the gentle tone usually reserved for correcting someone who was being deliberately obtuse. She was wearing a green party hat with actual flowers growing out of it. “That’s significant.”
“And I love a party,” Cammie added. She had her camera ready and her hat at a jaunty angle. “Let us have this.”
Zara emerged from the kitchen with a tray of champagne glasses, wearing a black party hat with purple trim that somehow looked elegant, because of course it did. “I made mimosas. Or, I poured a drop of orange juice into champagne. Is that the same thing?”
“Sounds perfect,” Ramona said.
The fox sat in the middle of the living room watching all of it with amber eyes that had always, from the very first day, looked like they knew something she didn’t. His tail swished.
Felix held out a purple party hat. “Put it on.”
Ramona put it on. It sat crooked on her purple hair. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Felix said. “Now, let’s do this. I have confetti.”
“Please don’t—” Kashvi started.
“So much confetti,” Felix said gleefully.
They gathered in the living room, a grimoire open on the coffee table.
Three months since the curse broke. Three months since Zara had handed back her immortality and shown up at the Ostara Gala.
Three months of magic and a coven and a girlfriend who still occasionally forgot she needed to eat, and a fox who had been following Ramona around since before she had any right to be followed.
She’d woken up about a week ago and realized it was finally time to do the formal familiar bonding ceremony.
She knelt in front of him. He stepped closer.
“Ready?” Felix asked. His confetti hand was already raised. Cammie had her camera up.
“Ready,” Ramona said.
She placed her hand on the fox’s head and felt his warmth, his presence, the particular quality of his attention that she’d been aware of for months without being able to name it.
“I claim you,” she said, not in any of the seven dead languages she’d spent her academic career parsing. It was simple, it didn’t need translation. “As my familiar. My companion. My partner in magic. I offer you my protection, my power, my loyalty. In exchange for yours.” A pause. “Do you accept?”
The fox pressed his head more firmly against her palm.
The bond formed — nothing like the tether, which had been external and imposed and a bridge between two separate things. This was different. More like water settling into cracks. She felt his presence move into her magic like it had always been meant to be there, like the space had been waiting.
And with it came his name. Not one she gave him. His actual name, the one he’d always had.
“Wick,” Ramona said.
The fox — Wick — made a sound low in his chest. Yes. That’s me.
“His name is Wick,” Ramona said to the room.
“Like a candle wick?” Zara asked.
Like a flame, Wick corrected in her mind, with the particular patience of someone who’d had to clarify this before. Like the thing that carries fire. That transforms fuel into light.
Ramona translated the meaning to the room.
“That’s perfect,” Posey said softly.
“Now,” Felix announced and threw the confetti.
Cammie threw hers at the same moment — purple and gold stars cascading through the air — and Zara flinched hard, stepping back fast with her hands coming up, pressing herself against the wall.
The confetti settled. Harmless. Festive.
Zara lowered her hands. “Sorry,” she said and laughed, though it came out a little unsteady. “Three months and things being thrown at me still — In Hell, projectiles are generally less celebratory.”
“No more surprise confetti,” Felix said immediately. “New rule. All confetti is announced in advance.”
“Agreed,” said Kashvi, scooping Percival up into her arms. He closed his eyes, content as she pet his translucent head.
Zara crossed back to Ramona and took her hand, and Ramona felt Wick lean against her ankle from the other side, the bond already doing what bonds do.
“You okay?” Ramona asked quietly.
“Fine.” Zara squeezed her hand. “Genuinely. Still adding things to the list of what startles me now. Confetti goes on the list.” She looked down at Wick, and her expression softened. “He chose well.”
Wick’s tail swished. Obviously.
“I understood that one,” Zara said.
Felix raised his champagne glass. “To Wick.” Gerald performed a twirling dance, party hat miraculously intact.
“To Wick,” everyone said.
They drank. Wick’s tail continued swishing with the energy of someone receiving their due recognition.
Your coven is so strange, he observed. I approve.
“He approves of us,” Ramona told the room.
“High praise,” Cammie said seriously.
“The highest,” Ramona agreed.
They ate the cupcakes, and the afternoon went soft and warm around them, full of the particular noise of people entirely comfortable around one another. Zara’s hand found Ramona’s under the table. Wick stayed at her feet.
“How does it feel?” Zara asked quietly, under the general noise of Felix trying to get Gerald to wear a second party hat. “The bond.”
Ramona thought about it. “Like something that was always supposed to be there,” she said. “Like I’d always been waiting without knowing it.”
Zara looked at her for a long moment. “Yes,” she said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
From across the table came the sound of Felix negotiating with a pigeon about a party hat, and Cammie saying just let it go with the weary authority of someone who’d given up trying to predict what normal looked like in this apartment.
Ramona leaned into Zara’s shoulder. Wick stayed at her feet.
It was, she thought, a very good afternoon.