Epilogue My Darling Clementine
The thing about nightmares is sometimes they end.
Sometimes dawn breaks across the sky.
Sometimes the sun rises over the ocean.
And sometimes, if you’re lucky, the girl you love finds you before you can lose yourself completely.
The wall that’s kept us penned up inside the school is rubble now, and I sink down on a pile of broken bricks and wait for a still-sleepy Clementine to make her way across the debris-strewn beach to me.
The night is my domain, and I spent it the way I’ve spent so many nights before—harvesting nightmares while she slept. But it feels fucking amazing to watch her walk down the sand and know that she’s come to find me. That she’ll always come to find me and now I have the right—and the privilege—to do the same for her.
She smiles at me when she gets close, and it lights up her whole face. Makes her blue eyes sparkle and her face shine in a way I’ll never take for granted. It was too fucking hard getting here—there’s no way I’ll ever not be grateful for her persistence, her kindness, her love.
Her scarred hand sliding into mine feels like a dream. And so does she when she settles next to me, snuggling into my side. Nothing in my whole fucked-up life has ever felt better than this moment, and I breathe it in—breathe her in.
“You okay?” she asks. Her voice is soft, but her body pressed against mine feels strong. Powerful. Real.
Ember’s death is an open wound in a sea of scars, but somehow holding my mate makes the misery a little less raw, the grief a little more bearable.
“I’m fine,” I answer, because it’s true, and I don’t ever want to lie to Clementine.
“Yeah,” she says with a sad sigh. “Me too.”
I pull her closer, try to give her back some of the strength, some of the shelter, she gives me.
I don’t know if it works, but I know that I feel her release a long, slow breath as her body relaxes against mine.
“I don’t want to see my mother today,” she whispers. “I’m not ready.”
“We’ll get through it,” I tell her, because I’ve got no fucking interest in seeing her mother, either. Between the way she hurt Clementine, what she did to Carolina, and the way she duped me into giving her the means to make monsters to sell as weapons on the black market, I’m good with never seeing her again.
But that’s not a choice I get to make. One of the many, many downsides of Calder Academy is there aren’t a lot we get to make. Mozart seems to think the last twenty-four hours will change that, but I’m not so optimistic.
As if just thinking about the headmaster has conjured her, a portal shimmers open just up the beach from us.
Apparently, the cavalry has arrived.
Clementine stiffens against me, and I squeeze her just a little more tightly. If I could take this from her, I would. I would take everything that hurts her.
But in a surprise move that none of us saw coming, it isn’t Clementine’s mom who walks out of the portal. Instead, it’s Caspian, arms laden with first aid kits and food. He’s followed by several Calder Academy teachers, and together they struggle their way up the beach as the portal closes.
Like everything else at this school, it’s a bargain-basement cavalry. “Clementine! Jude!” Caspian yells when he catches sight of us. He tries to speed up and ends up falling, face-first, into a massive bag of dill pickle potato chips. “We’ve come to save you!”
“Oh, is that what we’re calling this?” I ask softly.
Clementine elbows me in my ribs. “Behave, he’s trying.”
I roll my eyes in response, but I keep my sarcasm to myself, as requested. Besides, it’s not Caspian’s fault the last twenty-four hours have played out the way they have. If he wants to think he’s rescuing us, far be it from me to disabuse him of the notion.
We watch as he picks himself back up, walks two steps, and promptly falls over again. “Come on,” I say, pulling Clementine up. “Let’s go rescue the rescue crew.”
If left to his own devices, I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself—not to mention we’ll end up stuck here ’til the next hurricane. We make our way down the beach to her cousin, and while I help him to his feet, Clementine picks up all the supplies he’s dropped like breadcrumbs over the sand.
“I’m so glad you’re all right!” he gushes once we make it to the wall. “I know it’s been terrible for you being here with no electricity, but don’t worry. Everyone will be here soon, and we’ll get everything fixed.”
If what he means by fixing things is going back to the fucked-up way they were before, then they can stay broken. We sure as hell will.
“Who’s everyone? And where’s my—” Clementine’s voice breaks, but I know what she was about to ask.
And so, apparently, does Caspian. “Your mom’s totally okay. I swear,” he reassures Clementine. “She’d planned on coming, but some last-minute problems kept her and my dad back at the warehouse. But you’ll be seeing her soon enough. We just need to round everyone up and…”
This time it’s his voice that fades off.
“We’ve found as many as we can,” Clementine tells him, voice hoarse. “We’ve moved all the bodies we could into to the gym. Everyone else’s location is marked. Danson has the master list.”
She’s trembling now, and I know she’s thinking about Ember and all the others we couldn’t help.
“You need to put a couple of the teachers on finding the Jean-Jerks,” I tell him as I rub a soothing hand up and down Clementine’s back. “They’ve holed up somewhere, but a lot of the deaths are their fault.”
“A lot?” Caspian’s eyes widen. “How many deaths were there? And what did they do?”
I don’t even know what the fuck to say to that, so I just shake my head. I know I’ll have to talk about it eventually, but not yet. Not when I can still see that fucking monster with Ember in its teeth.
Clementine shifts like she’s about to try to answer the unanswerable, but before she can, Henri’s voice travels across the air to where we’re standing.
“Oooh, breakfast!” I turn to see Henri and two other men—all in velvet smoking jackets and monogrammed slippers—shamble through the wall onto the beach. They’ve got bloody marys in one hand and old-fashioned paper fans in the other. “By any chance, did you bring any pain au chocolat, dear boy?” he asks Caspian. “I’m a bit peckish after all that oracle whist. Winning so many times builds up an appetite.”
The other men look deeply annoyed, and the one in the puke-green jacket snarls, “I’m beginning to regret searching for you so hard.”
“So hard? I feel like you took your time.” Henri sniffs.
“Oh really?” the one in piss yellow snaps. “Next time we’ll leave you in that rug. And make sure it finds a home with someone who has several incontinent dogs.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Henri says, looking very offended.
“Check your crystal ball,” Puke Green says. “That’ll tell you what we dare.”
Caspian’s eyes are huge as he looks back and forth between the three men. And I’ve got to say, if this is who the world is depending on, no wonder things are so totally fucked.
“What on earth is happening here?” Caspian demands, looking between us and them. “Who are you? How did you get here? And why would I bring you pain au anything?”
Henri looks offended at the questions, but before he can work up a retort, another portal opens just a few feet away. A puff of sparkly smoke explodes out of it seconds later, drenching Caspian with glitter.
Puke Green rears back in surprise. “What the hell is that?”
“Our biggest donor, of course,” Caspian huffs. “She insisted on touring the campus after the storm. I think she wants to assess the facilities and see how big her contribution needs to be.”
“Since when do we have donors?” Clementine asks, bewildered.
“How do you think we’ve been able to grow our beautiful menagerie so quickly?” Caspian asks. “Madame Z can’t wait to see it.”
Clementine glances at me out of the corner of her eye as if to say, “You want to break it to him or shall I?”
I nod at her to do the honors. But before she can break the news that the menagerie has menagered its last menager, an array of that fucking sparkly Z-shaped kibble we used to feed the monsters flies out of the portal.
“Come to Madame, my darlings!” says a low, rich voice. “Madame is so excited to see you!”
Out of nowhere, the three remaining Jean-Jerks come running down the beach and dive into the portal.
I’m not sure if she was trying to call them or some long lost dogs, but either way, I’m tempted to follow, if for no other reason than to kick their asses once and for all.
Only knowing the very special brand of hell they’re in for keeps me where I am. We’ll see what—if anything—is left when she’s done with them. “You mean all we had to do to find them was throw some kibble?” Clementine asks, bewildered.
“Were those the Jean-Jerks?” Simon asks as he and the rest of our friends come up behind us. “Should we go after them?”
“Something tells me they’ll show back up soon enough,” I answer.
“What’s going on?” Mozart asks.
“This island is finally getting someone with some class, obviously,” Piss Yellow answers, straightening up and smoothing a hand over his shiny, bald head.
“Maybe she brought the profiteroles,” Henri suggests hopefully, but I know better.
Because that very distinctive voice can only belong to one person, and she’s not the profiterole type.
I turn to Clementine. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.
She looks confused. “Sorry for what?” But she squeezes my hand in a very definite I-got-you-no-matter-what gesture. I don’t have a chance to answer before a tall woman in a silver sequin jumpsuit emerges from the portal.
Apparently, she’s currently known as Madame Z. But I used to know her by another name. Zelda, aka Mommy, aka my mother.
The very mother I haven’t seen or heard from even once in the ten years since she dropped me off at this place with the tapestry and instructions not to kill anybody else. It was exactly as awkward—and as awful—as it sounds.
I can’t say that I’ve missed her.
I look her over as she closes the distance between us. Aside from her blond hair going completely silver, she’s exactly the same, right down to the sequins and the self-absorption.
She pauses a few feet from us to get the lay of the land. Her gaze goes from me to Clementine to Henri. And the first thing she says to me in ten years is a very wry, “I didn’t realize it was time for the parents to meet.”
At first, I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about. But then Henri sighs and says, “Looks like the cat’s out of the rug.” He throws his arms open. “Come to Papa, my darling Clementine.”
Clementine stiffens against me, her gaze going back and forth between Henri and my mother like she’s watching a ping-pong match.
“What are you talking about?” she finally squeaks out. She’s grabbed onto my hand and is squeezing hard enough to cut off circulation, but I don’t blame her. We thought all the shit ended with the storm, but it looks like we need to brace for another whole round. But then suddenly a look of understanding comes over her eyes. “Wait a minute…”
He sighs heavily. “That’s right, Clementine. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I had planned on being more delicate, but some people”—he shoots my mother a dirty look—“don’t have a delicate bone in their body.”
Henri holds out a hand to Clementine, but instead of moving toward him, she backs up. Not that I blame her. She still hasn’t had time to deal with everything she just figured out about her mom. This is the last thing she needs.
It’s my turn to squeeze her hand. “It’s going to be okay,” I say for her ears only. “We’ll get through this.”
She shakes her head, like she’s not so sure. But she stops retreating.
“How could you possibly be my father?” she asks. But I can tell she believes him—as do I. Being the daughter of an oracle definitely explains her ability to see the past and future.
“It’s pretty simple, really. Your mother—your real mother, not Camilla, obviously—and I had a…” He pauses, at a loss for words.
“Fling,” Puke Green says, taking another sip of his bloody mary. “They had a fling, she got pregnant, it didn’t work out between them. And here we are.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Henri shoots him a dirty look, too. “Once I knew I had a daughter, I came looking for you. Camilla refused to let me see you, and when I told her I would fight for access to you, she imprisoned me. Your mother died giving birth to you because her mind exploded under your power to see the past and the future. Camilla has been terrified ever since that if you left the island and got your powers, the same would happen to you. I’m pretty sure you know the rest.”
Clementine makes a low sound in her throat as she sags against me. I hold her tight, keep her on her feet when I think she might have otherwise gone down.
“Get me out of here,” she whispers to me.
“Already on it,” I answer as I propel her up the beach. Our friends follow, Luis falling into step with us on Clementine’s other side. He looks about as pissed as I feel.
“Aren’t you even going to say hello, Jude?” Madame Z or whatever the fuck she’s calling herself these days yells after us.
I don’t bother to answer. Because fuck her and whatever she hopes to achieve by this little farce.
“I guess we’re doing this the hard way, then.” She claps her hands, and the sound of a couple dozen feet hitting the sand echoes down the beach.
We turn around just in time to see more than a dozen fae guards storm out of the portal.
“What the fuck?” I step in front of Clementine, braced for a fight.
But apparently, we’re not the targets. Instead, the guards seize Henri and his two friends—none of whom look exactly surprised. Then again, they probably saw it coming.
“Hey!” Clementine shouts, pushing past me. “Let them go!”
“Now that I have a matched set?” my mother asks, brows raised. “I don’t think so, dear.”
A wave of her hand has the guards dragging the oracles toward the portal. “So nice of you to find Henri for me, Giuseppi and Fernando. And kudos on your little storm—I did so enjoy the waves. Now, if you will excuse me. This sand really is wreaking havoc on my pedicure.”
I lunge for her, but she disappears into the portal before I can even get close.
“No need for violence, dear man!” Henri says to the guard dragging him along. “I just want to say goodbye to my daughter first.”
When the fae pays him absolutely no mind, I grab him by the arm—and get several fists to my face and body for my trouble from the other fae guards.
In the confusion, Henri reaches out as if to grab Clementine. But the guard jerks him away at the last second, and his hand bumps Simon instead.
“I’ll be fine!” he calls as they shove him into the portal. “But remember! The future is just a flip of the coooooooooin.”
His voice echoes as he disappears.
I race toward the portal—we all do—but the last fae guards beat us to it, and just like that, it closes.
“What the fuck just happened?” Izzy asks, looking as bewildered as I feel.
“Nothing good,” Clementine answers.
“You want me to build a portal?” Remy asks. “We can follow them.”
“We don’t even know where they went,” Izzy tells him. “Just because they have the Fae Guard with them doesn’t mean they returned to the Fae Court. And if they did, they’ll definitely be waiting for us when we get there.”
“She’s right,” Clementine says grimly. “We need to figure out what’s going on before we do anything else.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you can start with me,” Simon says, and he sounds stranger than I’ve ever heard him.
Mozart must think so, too, because she whirls around. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I have a problem,” he answers. “Everything suddenly looks really weird. And I’m pretty sure it’s because Clementine’s dad left me a gift.”
“What kind of—” Clementine breaks off in horror as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a large gold coin and holds it up for us to read.
One side says Loves Me, the other side says Not.
“What do you think that means?” he asks.
I’m not sure what the words imply, but I do know what the coin means. “That we are totally fucked.”