Epilogue
Winter
Many years had passed since the day I'd accidentally touched a prophecy scroll and turned a Bureau security guard into a ferret.
I stood at the kitchen window, watching Horrace chase a butterfly across the yard.
Not just any butterfly, the kind that existed slightly sideways from normal reality, wings leaving trails of silver light in the afternoon air.
He moved with that particular grace he'd developed over the years, all twelve eyes tracking the insect with joyful intensity, his colors cycling through warm golds and soft pinks.
Beside him, rolling through the grass with absolute shameless joy, was a werewolf pup.
She was eleven months old, silver-furred and enormous already, with paws like dinner plates and the same eyes as her favorite person.
She'd been brought over by her parents that morning while they handled Bureau business, and Rook had accepted responsibility for her with the exact solemn expression he used when taking on things that actually made him happy.
He'd been watching her from the porch for approximately forty minutes before the pup had lured him into a game of chase, and now both of them were involved in something that involved a lot of rolling and one of Horrace's tentacles occasionally acting as an extremely patient referee.
Rook was losing. Badly. On purpose.
I could tell by the way he kept slowing down just enough for the pup to catch him.
At the grill, the debate had reached what I recognized as its peak stage.
"The wood chips go in before you seal the lid," Zane explained, using the patient tone of someone who had been having this conversation for the better part of an hour. "That's the whole point of the wood chips."
"The lid should not be sealed at this temperature," Fenric replied, without looking up from the small tablet he'd brought outside, which I was quite sure contained a spreadsheet about optimal grilling conditions. "The smoke redistribution is insufficient."
"I'm just saying," Milo observed cheerfully from where he was sprawled in a lawn chair with a glass of lemonade, "that Jeffrey could help. He has excellent spatial awareness."
"Jeffrey is not touching the tongs," Rook called from the grass without looking up. The pup had gotten her teeth into his sleeve.
"Jeffrey has handled more delicate magical artifacts than your tongs," Milo pointed out.
"That was different."
"That was a prophetic relic of cosmic significance."
"And those are my tongs."
I pressed my hand flat against the window glass for a moment, watching them.
Watching all of it. Horrace had given up on the butterfly and was now gently herding the pup away from the grill and its heated argument, a task he'd taken on without being asked, because that was just who he was. Rook watched amused.
The Oracle's mark on my forehead had faded almost entirely over the years, just a faint silvery line now, visible only in certain light.
The blue prophecy markings had quieted too, settling into something soft and steady rather than the flaring, reactive chaos of the early days.
They were part of me now the way freckles were part of some people, present without demanding attention.
I still had no magic of course. I liked it that way.
I turned slightly sideways and looked down.
I'd known for three weeks. I'd been carrying it quietly, until the perfect moment.
I rubbed my thumb across the fabric, slow and wondering.
Outside, the pup finally succeeded in stealing Zane's tongs.
The resulting chaos pulled all three of them into the yard.
Milo fell out of his lawn chair laughing.
Fenric's tablet slipped from his hand into the grass.
Zane threw his head back, his laughter carrying across the yard and through the window glass, and the afternoon light caught the silver in his hair in a way that made my chest ache with something that had no name except home.
I pressed my palm flat against my stomach.
Hello, I thought.
Horrace, from across the yard, went very still.
All twelve eyes turned to the window. Found me.
His colors shifted, slow and certain, into the particular gold he reserved for things he considered sacred.
"I know," I told him quietly, through the glass, though he couldn't possibly hear me.
He trilled once, soft as a secret.
Above us, the ordinary sky stretched out in every direction, full of nothing more dramatic than clouds and birds and the late-turning leaves of autumn. No tears in reality. No shimmer at the edges of things. No sense of held breath.
Just an afternoon in a yard where four men I loved were arguing about tongs and losing a game of chase to a puppy.
I tilted my face up toward the kitchen ceiling, toward the sky beyond it, toward whatever was listening.
Thank you, I thought. For all of it. Even the ferret.
My knee ached with the turning season, same as always. Damn thing.
I smiled.