Epilogue
EPILOGUE
David
THREE MONTHS LATER
Percy lifts his glass. “It’s been a year but feels like a minute. You’d kick my ass if I got maudlin, but I have to say, I miss you, Lily. I hope you’re getting some rest in the spiritual plane and preparing to come back and kick ass in your next life.”
“Kick ass, Lily,” we echo, and drink.
It’s just the six of us here right now, in the private dining room of Lily’s favorite restaurant, taking a few moments to remember her before the others join us for dinner.
Funnily enough, tonight was Alistair’s idea—he booked the restaurant, then told us all what he’d planned and that he and the others who never really knew Lily would arrive an hour later.
He’s so irreverent and offbeat most of the time that most people don’t realize how perceptive and empathetic he can be.
And here we are, a year to the day after Sam was kidnapped and Lily murdered. A year after we met Noah. A year after we realized the depraved depths Tish had sunk to.
So much has happened since then.
Sam clears his throat. “I didn’t know Lily for as long as any of you, but in just a few short months, she became one of my best friends.
And I really wish she’d been here for the past year, because we laid bets on whether David would ever find love, and she owes me money.
” A startled laugh bursts from me as he raises his glass. “To Lily!”
We all drink, and then I ask, “She didn’t think I’d ever find love?” That doesn’t sound like Lily. She was always after me to date more, determined that I would find love.
Sam shakes his head. “No, she did. We both agreed on that. But she bet you’d end up with someone who was just as addicted to scheduling as you are. I said you’d be corrupted by a wild child.”
“Caolan’s not all that wild,” Andrew points out, sounding amused. “Spontaneous, maybe. But he’s got the same dependability that David does.”
I purse my lips and consider. “No, I think Sam won. Caolan might be dependable, and he might be addicted to his phone—and Instagram—but he still doesn’t like keeping track of time.
” There’s no anxiety in me at the thought, because even though he’s consistently late or early to everything, never on time no matter how many reminders and alarms he sets, I know with everything in me that he’ll never let me down. Caolan is always there when I need him.
Things have been chaotic since The Showdown In Patagonia—and yes, that’s what it’s officially being referred to as.
Andrew said it as a joke (at least, I hope it was a joke) the day after, not knowing that at that precise moment, Rabhya and a group of journalists were behind him, walking through reception on their way to the boardroom for a press conference.
We’ve given up trying to convince people to call it anything else.
It’s going down in history as The Showdown In Patagonia.
In addition to dismantling Tish and éibhear’s cults and processing the people they’d roped in, many of whom had basically been brainwashed from childhood, there was the legal issue of Percy killing Tish to deal with.
Since Tish had not yet officially been convicted, some of his lingering supporters—the ones we’d never actually managed to connect to the CCA, but who were part of it nonetheless—declared it to be murder.
A few hundred witnesses saw Tish attack first, but to make sure there could be no question, Percy submitted to charisma and interrogation by a vampire judge.
His name was cleared—and another judge, who’d been running the inquiry into the CCA and Tish, ruled that there could be no doubt of Tish’s guilt even without the overwhelming new evidence we were uncovering. So that door was firmly closed.
Then, of course, there’s been the transition from Percy’s leadership to Sam’s.
There’s no question of whether he’s legitimately the lucifer, because we can all feel it, but he’s young and very new to the community, so some people still want to grumble about it.
Sam, thankfully, is proving them all to be whiners without cause.
And today was officially Percy’s last day at CSG.
It’s going to be weird without him.
If the new lucifer had been a stranger, someone we didn’t know, the team would probably have moved on.
That’s what’s always happened in the past. The idea is that this team is made up of people with whom the lucifer is comfortable, which is why it usually becomes a game of recruiting friends—Percy reached out to me and Lily and Andrew, and then I suggested Gideon, who I’d worked with before, and he brought Elinor into the group.
Lily introduced us all to Nadege, who was our admin before Sam.
We’re all eminently qualified for our jobs, but they’re not ever jobs that are advertised.
But since the new lucifer is Sam, things are different this time.
He’d probably hunt us all down with the pencil he used to stab Alistair if we even thought of leaving.
The first thing he did was recruit Noah to be our new admin (and boy, that’s an experience.
Sam could get cranky, but usually only if we asked stupid questions.
Noah, on the other hand, is just cranky all the time.
He’s giving Gideon a run for his money. Andrew loves it).
The second thing Sam did? Try to find a way to convince Percy to stay in a consultative capacity. We all knew it wasn’t going to happen, but Sam’s clingy when it comes to his chosen family, so we let him have a shot. He’s finally accepted that Percy needs to move on and live his own life.
“I can’t believe this is the eeeeeeeeeeeeeend!” he wails suddenly, putting his glass down and burying his face in his hands.
Well… he’s mostly accepted it.
Gideon pats his back gingerly with one hand and eyes Sam’s glass with the other. We’ve been toasting Lily for a while, and Sam’s always more emotional when he’s been drinking.
“It’s not the end,” Percy assures him, smiling wryly.
“I’ll be back to visit a lot. And you can call me anytime.
” He’s decided that he doesn’t want to stay here, where his continued presence might be viewed as a crutch for Sam, but he definitely doesn’t want to go back to England—he came to the States so long ago to put some distance between himself and his father, and nothing’s changed in that regard.
So instead, he’s going to travel for a while, see if he finds somewhere that feels homey to settle in.
First stop: Argentina. Apparently he liked the scenery and fresh air the day of the showdown.
While Percy mollifies Sam, Andrew leans over and asks, “Have you told him yet about your vacation?”
My eyes go wide and dart toward Sam, who fortunately didn’t hear. “Not here,” I hiss, and Andrew chuckles.
“That’s a no, then.”
I shrug. “It’s not for another eight months.
I thought I’d give him time to get past Percy going and then ease him into the idea.
” Caolan and I decided we need some time for just us: no CSG, no king, no constant demands on us.
We both love our jobs, but since taking on the additional duties as official intermediaries between our respective governments, we haven’t had any time to enjoy each other.
We come home every night completely exhausted, and the only time we see each other during the day is when we’re sitting across a table negotiating the latest fracas between our people.
If we want things to last between us, we need “us” time.
Three months. Part of it, we’ll be traveling—he wants to see the world, and I want to show him.
But we’ll also spend some of it at home, deciding what we want our future to look like and watching dumb movies from the twentieth century.
We might even finally decide if we want to stay where we are or find a bigger house.
Three months isn’t a lot of time for all that, but it’s as long as either of us is comfortable taking off work, and even for that, we had to first agree that we’d wait for things to settle back into normality—or as close to it as it would get.
“Don’t let him guilt you out of it,” Andrew warns. “You need this.”
I look over at Sam, barely forty years old and suddenly responsible for the well-being of so many.
“He won’t guilt me,” I say confidently. He might be flustered at first, but he’s been hinting that I need a vacation since he first joined the team and found out how long ago the last one was (hint: never).
Sam stands, his chest rising with a deep breath. “You all are the best , and I’m so lucky to know you. Now let’s get the rest of the family in here!”
It’s going to be a looooong night.
But a good one.
“No, I really want to try it,” Caolan insists, following me into the apartment and closing the door behind us. I drop the keys in their designated bowl and turn to face him.
“You’re not going to like it,” I warn for what must be the fiftieth time since we first started talking about this a week ago.
“Alistair says I will. He says it’s a guilty miracle.”
I sigh. I knew he’d insist, so I prepared for this moment, but… “I haven’t done this for about fifty years,” I warn. “It becomes addictive, even though you know it’s wrong. It took me a long time to stop.”
“I want to try,” he insists stubbornly.
How can I refuse? “Okay. Let’s go into the kitchen. I cleaned in here this morning and don’t want to make a mess so soon.”
He follows me, anticipation lighting his face. His hair is slightly mussed from the breeze outside, and that, combined with the alcohol earlier, is making me horny.
Of course, I’m usually horny for Caolan. It doesn’t take much. I guess that’s part of the reason I’m so willing to help him with this.
In the kitchen, I get what we need and put it on the counter. He looks at it.
“So I just…?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“It doesn’t need any preparation?”
“Nope. Just unwrap and shove it in.”
He takes a deep breath and does just that.
“So what do you think?”