Epilogue
Epiphany
“Come on!” called Stephan, aiming his voice at an open window behind which Rowan was hopefully getting ready to leave. “If you want to come with us, you’d better get your ass down here.”
He stood at the base of an old brick building in downtown Elk Ridge.
Somewhere above a cheesemonger and a shop selling Santa ornaments in every shape and size, Rowan and Zaide lived in a perpetually messy apartment.
Hayleigh had been there once and already decided she and Stephan would host the next time there was a gathering.
It had been impossible to relax in such overwhelming clutter.
Stephan lobbed a snowball at the window. It was a long drive to the small town in central Washington where the Vasyks had settled, and they needed to get on the road.
It was the final day of the winter festival, and already the town had started to pack away decorations.
There was a feeling of settling in for a long winter’s nap that Stephan promised would last for the next couple of months, though ski traffic would still bring in a trickle of business for as long as the snowpack lasted.
The spring festival would hopefully deliver a new bump in business, but it had been the most lackluster of the new festivals. There’d even been talk of canceling both it and summer and focusing only on autumn, since of the three Fall Fest had bombed the least.
But Hayleigh had stepped into the middle of one of those arguments and made her case, and it looked like they’d be giving it one more shot.
“Hayleigh!”
She turned, doing a double take as none other than Naveah Byrne waved at her from down the sidewalk. A gawky boy stood to the side, hands deep in the pockets of a glossy black coat.
“Naveah!” Hayleigh gasped, walking their way. “And is that Jayce?”
The boy grinned, pleased. He had his mother’s light brown skin and thick, dark hair, but bright green eyes that must have come from his father.
“What are you two doing here?”
Naveah jabbed her thumb toward an empty commercial space with a FOR LEASE sign in the window. At that moment, Stephan walked up, and more greetings were exchanged before the green witch got around to explaining what was going on.
“This place doesn’t have a nursery, and well, ever since you guys came by…I haven’t been able to shake the feeling you need one.” And with a hesitant glance at Stephan, she added, “And maybe you’re right—maybe it’s time we gave having a coven another try.”
“We?” asked Stephan.
Naveah slid an arm around her son’s shoulders. “My son’s probably the most naturally talented witch I’ve ever met.”
“We’ve got a kid genius here who might take issue with that,” said Stephan. “But…welcome, both of you.”
Two witches. Two spots in the coven. She watched as a wave of emotion rolled over Stephan—a complex hybrid of relief and grief. He’d been confident that after she refused the open space in the coven, someone else would come along soon, but he hadn’t counted on two.
It seemed the magic was pushing him from the nest.
As well as delivering a green witch. Just in time for the spring festival.
“Did you see the news?” asked Stephan.
“Of course,” said Naveah, “I’ve been telling anyone who’d stop long enough to listen.”
The state’s attorney general had opened an investigation into the Goshen Group. Eucharist wasn’t the only subject. It seemed like once they had sufficient reason to believe there’d been malfeasance there, they’d opted to investigate more complaints.
There had been a viral video of her father walking into a high-powered law office in downtown Seattle that had appeared on her social media over and over again.
He was cooperating. No one knew yet exactly what it would mean for him or the family, but she had absolute faith it was better than if he hadn’t.
“Thank you, by the way,” said Naveah, meeting Hayleigh’s eye. “I know you risked a lot, doing what you did.”
“I appreciate that,” said Hayleigh, “but you know, I feel more like I should thank you.”
Naveah squinted and tilted her head. “Really?”
“Yes, I…” She looked back over the past three weeks, fully taking in the details of this new life she already called hers and felt nothing but gratitude.
The day after Christmas, her scammed money had returned.
It’d been stuck in a transfer limbo, and when the account it was bound for vanished, the money reverted to her.
“Everything I ended up losing, I needed to let go of anyway. And I gained…” She slipped a hand into Stephan’s. “So much.”
“Your horse is okay, then…?”
Hayleigh’s smile tried to slip the boundaries of her face as she said, “Yes. His biopsy came back negative. He’ll be fine.”
She didn’t know when, or even whether, she would get to see or ride Red again, but receiving the “all clear” call from Gordon left her crying big, ugly tears of relief.
With the green witch there, something bubbled to the surface. A question she’d asked herself so many times over the last few weeks—ever since she’d started thinking about the limits of what the Wild Hunt could do that day in the blizzard.
“Something’s been bothering me. The spell brought the Wild Hunt, and the Wild Hunt was responsible for everything that went wrong, right?”
“As far as I understand it,” said Naveah.
Her brow knit. “I only really started seeing them pop up a few weeks ago.”
Naveah shrugged lightly. “Oh well, that makes sense—that’s when I cast the spell.”
Her suspicions crystallized. “When?”
“Um, December fifteenth? Sixteenth?”
“So everything that happened before that…”
Naveah didn’t have to say it, because it was only the confirmation of what her heart had already known.
The rest had been purely a curse of her own making.
“Dill! Borscht must have dill!” called Baba Milana from where she was removing strips of herring and bulb onions from a jar of heavy brine to lay them out on a plate. A sea of family moved in constant motion, weaving and bouncing off one another as they prepared to feast.
Kelsey was somewhere in all that, even though, in her words, she had “taken a host job because no one in their right mind would let me cook.”
“Dill,” Hayleigh murmured, seeking the green fragrant bunch within a heap of piled ingredients. As she sorted, she stole a peek into the living room, where Stephan was wrestling a group of five children all at once.
One of them clung to his back, and he had two dangling from his arms. The final two clung to his legs, and he roared playfully and spun in circles to shake them free.
The children knew him immediately for a mark and had been forcing him to play rambunctious game after rambunctious game, all of which he bore with good humor.
Rowan was in the living room, listening to her grandfather tell folk tales and pass on insights into Slavic magic.
Apparently, the many bags of herbs Hayleigh had been given before her mother went no-contact hadn’t just been potpourri.
Stephan caught her watching him and sent her a twinkling smile that caused her heart to do a little dance in her chest. She still couldn’t believe that every time she reached for him, he would be there.
That he was hers, and she was his, for as long as they both wanted it.
Something solid and wooden smacked her on the shoulder. Baba Milana wielded a wooden spoon and hissed, “Time for cooking, not for courting.”
“Sorry, Baba,” she said, weaving back to her spot and swiftly chopping the dill into tiny bits. She sprinkled it into the soup, gave it a hearty stir, and then took a deep breath. It was funny how things could smell like home, even if they’d be forbidden in the house you grew up in.
The doorbell rang. One of her cousin’s children screamed that they’d get it and bolted for the front even as the adults chased after, telling them not to.
Someone walked in, and wherever their steps fell, silence followed.
The chatter in the trailer died as everyone turned to see who was coming.
Hayleigh looked up last, only after she had taken a sip and was content with the seasoning of the soup.
She came face-to-face with her mother. Luda twisted a silk scarf in her hands. Her eyes kept darting to the floor and then back up again.
Stephan stepped into Hayleigh’s eyeline, giving her a look of Is everything okay? to which she could only shrug.
“You came,” she said.
“I did,” said Luda, lifting her chin high for a moment, but then lowering it back down with a quiver.
“I’m glad.”
Luda nodded stiffly. “I understand that you won’t be coming back to the house, but if you would like to ride together sometime, or to visit Red on your own, the stables are still open to you.”
“I’d like that,” said Hayleigh, her voice coming out just above a whisper.
“Also…” Her mother handed over a folded piece of paper. Puzzled, she opened it.
It was Red’s ownership papers. Transferred into her name.
“Now no matter what happens with your father…” Luda’s eyes flashed. “You won’t lose him.”
Hayleigh rushed forward and threw herself onto her mother, and then Kelsey was tackling them, joining the hug.
When they finally let each other go, Luda turned to Baba Milana, who was staring at her with hands affixed firmly to her hips.
They exchanged sentiments in Ukrainian that Hayleigh couldn’t understand, but from the wry chuckles of her great-aunts, she assumed her grandmother had dropped more than a few choice critiques.
Luda bore the lecture with her head held high, but finally bowed it with a “Yes, Mama,” and then moved on to help wrap varenyky.
Strong arms slipped around her waist, and she was pulled close to Stephan. He nestled his face in the crook between her neck and shoulder. “What do you think, then? That curse gone for good?”
“Without a doubt,” she murmured, spinning in his arms to rise on tiptoe and press her lips to his. Over his shoulder, her eyes caught a figure through the window—an old woman in a thick red head wrap.
Baba Yaga nodded Hayleigh’s way in approval, then backed into the woods, disappearing for good.
Yes, Hayleigh Gray was no longer cursed, but more than that, when she looked back at her life last Christmas and compared it to where she was at this moment—here in this room, full of love and laughter—it felt as though she never truly had been.