Chapter Twenty-Three
“Well,” I said, my voice coming out faint and a little hysterical. “This wasn’t on my Bingo card for the week.”
Elira’s mouth curved. “You don’t keep a Bingo card for the week, Maeve.”
“That you know of,” I muttered.
She took a step toward me, hand lifting in the same familiar gesture she’d used a dozen times in the Academy, about to brush my hair back, or pinch my chin, or tap my forehead. Her fingers reached the edge of my shoulder and then… slipped.
Her hand went through me like cool mist.
She froze.
Then she laughed, soft and rueful. “Sorry. I keep forgetting I’m a little ghostly.”
A bubble of wild laughter rose in my chest, then popped as a sob. “You…are you?”
“Complicated,” she said gently. “Still. But less dead than you feared.”
“Oh, that clears things right up,” I said, swiping at my eyes.
Footsteps thudded behind me on the stairs.
“Maeve?” Keegan again, closer now. “Talk to me. If you don’t talk to me, I’m assuming the worst, and—”
He reached the bottom step, took in the room, took in the glowing pedestal, then the silver-haired woman in front of me.
I heard his breath leave him, like someone had punched it out.
“Is that?” he began, but stopped.
“Elira,” I said, still half disbelieving it myself. “Grandma Elira.”
She lifted her hand in a little half-wave, more solid this time, though still edged in light.
“Keegan,” she said. “You look awful. I’m glad you’re here.”
He huffed out something between a laugh and a choked sound. “That tracks.”
“Might want to work on your compliments,” I whispered.
He edged closer until he was at my side, shoulder bumping mine.
“She gets a pass,” he murmured back. “On account of being… less dead.”
“Thank you,” Elira said dryly. “You’re both speaking out loud, by the way.”
Heat flooded my face.
“Excellent,” I muttered.
Above us, the cottage groaned softly, but it was the good kind of groan, like the beams were letting out a long-held breath. The hum of magic settled a shade, no longer rising, just… present.
“Oh stars,” Miora’s voice floated down faintly from upstairs, thin but there.
She could speak again.
“Elira?” she called. “Elira, is it—?”
“Yes, my sweet one,” Elira called upward, louder. “It’s me. You can come down. The stairs won’t eat you.”
Miora made a sound I’d never heard from her before—a half-sob, half-laugh that made my throat ache in sympathy.
“Might need help,” she added weakly.
“I’ve got her,” My dad said, his voice thick.
Heavy footfalls, careful ones, creaked on the stairs. Keegan moved aside to make room. I held my breath.
Miora appeared first, one hand white-knuckled on the rail, the other clinging to my dad’s arm. She looked small and ancient and fierce all at once, like a tree that had outlived too many storms. Her eyes were already brimming.
Behind her, Karvey ducked down enough to peer in, staying on the last few steps where the ceiling was highest. The light traced along his stone shoulders, making him look like he’d been carved out of moonrock.
Miora’s gaze swept the chamber once and then locked on Elira.
For a heartbeat, both women just stared.
Decades of separation, wars, curses, sealed doors, closed secrets compressed into that single instant.
“About time,” Miora croaked.
Elira’s face crumpled into a smile that nearly broke me.
“You look terrible,” she said fondly. “Come here.”
Miora tottered forward. For a second, I thought irrationally that the ghostliness would stop them from touching.
It didn’t.
Elira’s hands were solid enough when they closed around Miora’s. Their fingers laced, old knuckles bumping. Light flickered where they met, not harsh, just a soft nimbus, like a memory made visible.
Miora let out a breath that sounded like forty years of grief leaving her lungs.
“I told you,” Elira said, voice shaking now too. “I told you I’d find a way.”
“You always did,” Miora whispered. “Usually the most annoying way possible.”
“True,” Elira said. “You see this one?” She tipped her head toward me without looking away from Miora. “She’s worse.”
“Rude,” I said, though my voice was cracking. “I am right here.”
“Good,” Grandma Elira replied. “You should hear it.”
A heavier step sounded. My dad emerged from the stairwell and just… stopped, hand still braced on the wall.
For a moment, he didn’t look like my middle-aged, half-cursed father. He looked younger, eyes round, shoulders not yet bowed by guilt and bulldog years. A boy, seeing his mother.
“Mom?” he said.
It was small. Raw.
Elira turned. The light softened around her.
“Oh, Frank,” she breathed. “Come here, my love.”
He crossed the room in three strides and swept her into a hug that somehow worked, despite her edges being made of light and his being made of stubborn human grief. For a second his arms went through her, then her form thickened, condensing, making itself match him.
He clung, burying his face in her shoulder like he was eight again.
“You, I thought you,” he started.
“I know,” she soothed, fingers threading through his hair exactly the way I’d dreamed she might have once. “I’m sorry for that part. But there was no good way to say ‘I might become part ghost, part Ward, part rumor or worse of all, part nothing.’”
He gave a wet, choked laugh. “You always were a drama queen.”
“Runs in the family,” she said. Her gaze flicked over his shoulder to me. “Clearly.”
My eyes burned. “I’m offended and honored.”
Karvey cleared his throat, with a stone-rasp sound.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he said gravely. “But from a structural standpoint, this is impressive.”
Elira pulled back from my dad, one hand still on his cheek, and looked up at the gargoyle. Her smile widened. “Karvey. You’re looking… eroded. In a dignified way.”
It had been years since she’d stepped foot outside of the Academy, and while she might not be in the form I expected, this felt magical in an impossible way.
He inclined his head.
“I held,” he said simply. Which, for a gargoyle, translated to I did the job you gave me.
“I never doubted it,” she said. “Thank you, old friend.”
He shifted, uncomfortable with the praise. “The stone under this cottage was always… unusual,” he admitted. “I did not realize you’d tied yourself into it.”
“Backup plan,” she said. “Every good warder has at least three.”
Miora snorted. “You had fourteen.”
“Exactly.”
Above us, I heard My mom’s voice float down, breathless. “Is she—? Can we—?”
“Come,” Elira called, laughter in her tone now. “The floor won’t collapse. I made sure of it myself.”
Mom descended the last few steps, gripping the rail as if it might transform. Her eyes were huge, already wet. She’d only known Elira for a relatively short time, compared to Miora and Dad, but the shadow of her had haunted my mother’s choices for years.
“Elira,” she breathed. “I don’t know if I should hug you or yell at you.”
“Both,” Elira said. “In either order. Preferably with tea at the ready.”
“You left,” my mom accused. “You let me believe I was walking away from a dead woman.”
“I was dead,” Elira pointed out. “Mostly. There was a… loophole. Which I exploited. Badly.”
Keegan’s lips twitched. “You really are her grandmother,” he murmured.
“Rude again,” I repeated.
Elira turned to me then, fully, all the teasing dropping from her face for a moment.
“You did it,” she said. “You opened the Academy. You held the Luminary and walked into the Hollows. You got these fools organized.” Her eyes softened even more. “You even brought my son back from cursed dog-form. I’m proud of you, Maeve.”
The words hit harder than any spell.
“Don’t,” I said, swallowing hard. “I will cry and then Twobble will narrate it.”
“Already scripting it,” Twobble called faintly from upstairs.
“Stay up there!” I yelled.
Elira laughed. “Bring them down,” she said instead. “We don’t have much time before whatever’s pressing on the Ward outside decides to try harder.”
That sobered the room.
“Right,” I said. “About that.”
She patted the pedestal, the light brightening briefly in answer.
“This,” she said, “is why I’m here and not… gone-gone.”
“The Stone Ward?” I guessed.
She nodded. “A branch of it. The cottage is built on an old anchor point—one I reinforced when your father was little, before things went sideways. When I made my choice after Malore—” Her expression flickered.
“The Luminary offered me a path. I could dissolve fully into the Academy, or I could split what was left of me between its heart and this anchor.”
“And you chose here,” I whispered.
“And there,” she corrected. “I’m greedy.
But I put more of myself here. The Academy needed its ghosts, but Stonewick needed…
another keeper along with Miora. Someone to keep an eye on the Stone Ward’s roots.
Someone who could nudge the cottage, nag Karvey, annoy Miora, and make sure the magic stayed leaning toward joy whenever possible. ”
“Joy,” Miora wheezed. “You call all this joy?”
Elira’s eyes crinkled. “You cannot tell me it hasn’t been more interesting since Maeve arrived.”
Miora’s gaze slid to me. Her mouth pressed into its familiar disapproving line, but her eyes were warm. She squeezed Elira’s hand.
“Infuriating, more like,” she said. “But I suppose… yes.”
“So all those times the cottage seemed… alive,” I said slowly. “The way it nudged me toward certain drawers, or made the kettle shriek at convenient moments…”
“That was you?” My dad asked.
Elira’s smile turned sly. “I prefer to think of it as a collaborative haunting. The house was already half-awake. I just gave it better taste.”
Mom huffed. “You could have told us you were here.”
“I wasn’t until recently,” Elira said, gesturing upward vaguely. “Once I got interrupted by the Priestess when I was trying to talk with my granddaughter, I knew I needed to speed up the inception. I didn’t have a year to wait. I needed to transcend here immediately.”