Epilogue
Jeremy Bracker sat alone on his large back patio, a dark house at his back, a perfectly curated garden in front of him, except for a wild vine of white pumpkins crawling and spilling over the black wrought iron fence.
He wasn't sure where his parents were. He never was when they were gone, which was often.
But tonight he couldn't face the loneliness of the house, so he'd come home after a Halloween party one of his friends threw, grabbed a glass of iced water, which was now tepid, and sat in one of the expensive outdoor chairs his family rarely used.
He had been hoping to see a certain black-haired girl at the party. Three hours of pretending to enjoy menial conversation with people, looking over their shoulders for her and around corners as he went to and from the kitchen.
His mind played over every moment with her for the last three months.
He knew who she was, of course. Before.
He frowned as his mind still tried to make it over that fence of impossibility.
Before.
Before the hex.
He closed his eyes and sighed, trying to work out what he believed. What was possible?
When he opened his eyes again, the solar lights perfectly placed around their perfect garden were alight.
She had been just a girl in his class, the girl who had a drug-addicted mother and had taken on a don't mess with me aura with her black hair, edgy style, and often straight face.
It was a pretty face, though.
He had felt drawn to her, and it had been sudden. Like he fell into a sinkhole.
He couldn't go an hour without thinking about Bess.
He was consumed with wanting to learn about her, and then wanted to see what would make that straight face not so straight.
Turns out the straight face turned annoyed far before it went to smiling.
And it turned out he liked all of it.
But did he?
He raked a hand over his face and sighed again.
He had gotten a message, a handwritten note delivered from the beak of a bird.
It had tapped on his window while he was doing homework, and when he opened it, confused and then shocked, what looked like a hawk smoothly jumped through the open pane.
He stared with open mouth as it dropped the note on his desk.
He couldn't speak, but he felt something outside of this world fill his mortal bedroom. The bird grabbed his apple, then with a kik kik sound that made him startle again, it jumped off and back into the night sky.
It had taken him a few moments to move. But when he finally had, when he finally unfolded the paper and read the words, something in him knew.
Magic is a powerful thing. But it does not hold the power to make one fall in love.
Though, it can make a suggestion.
A kiss will bring you back to your reality.
You have to let her go.
For now.
It had been a kiss he feared would haunt him, much like the words on a note delivered from a bird. His eyes closed as he reveled in a moment of torture, remembering her lips, the way that she sighed, how his chest tightened. Curiosity to fear to desire.
The desire that lingered and confused him as apple-spiced air danced around him and the pumpkin vine stretched a foot before his eyes.
For now.