by Horn, J. D.
“I should have realized,” he said when he first laid eyes on me, “that the little one was the key.” His eyes burned with both love and a passion I found hard to resist. Emmet pushed through those between us and held his hand out to me. I took a step toward him, and he toward me. We met in the middle.
He stared deeply into my eyes. I knew he wanted to touch me, but was afraid to, lest his hand pass clean through. I took his hand in mine. His chest heaved, and his eyes closed as his face smoothed with relief. He squeezed my hand gently and opened his eyes. “I know now is not the time for making decisions,” he said, whisking me up into his arms so that my feet couldn’t even touch the ground. He began carrying me down the stairs. “But when you get around to making those decisions, remember that I am the one who never left. I am the one who never forgot.” Yes, I would remember these things, but once, in another life, I had made a vow, and it was not one I made lightly.
Emmet carried me to our rarely used living room and sat me on a loveseat there. He sat down next to me, his frame taking up most of the loveseat, but I didn’t mind. I loved feeling him close to me. Confusion reigned as my newly extended family circled around us. All eyes were on me, and I watched as the sparks reignited in these eyes, as those who had known me recognized me, and those who hadn’t stretched their awareness to make room.
A handsome young man with more than a passing resemblance to Adam caught my eye. “You must be Jordan.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, but then seemed to find himself at a loss for words. His mother, Grace, so wonderfully alive, so not an angry spirit out for my uncle’s blood, stood next to him, a cautious look in her eye.
“I’m sorry for hijacking your party,” I said.
A smile broke out on Jordan’s face. “No, girl, that is more than all right. I became a doctor. You came back from the dead or whatever. You win.” He didn’t have Paul’s magic. He couldn’t see that he himself had pulled a kind of Lazarus. I for one did not feel the need to alert him to that fact.
A child’s squeal of delight caught my attention, and my eyes darted to the room’s entrance. Peter’s bright-red hair registered first, then the sight of my sister’s tearstained face. I would address her pain. I would. But now all that mattered was the ginger-haired little boy squirming in her arms. Colin reached both arms out to me. “Mama.”
“Let’s give them a bit of privacy,” I heard Oliver’s voice command. Whether it was his magic or just good manners, everyone obeyed. Everyone except Emmet. I placed my hand on his arm and nodded.
He looked at me with narrowed eyes and a tight mouth, but he stood. “I will be in the garden, waiting.”
“While you’re there,” Oliver said, “maybe you could do something about patching that pothole you left in the driveway.” Emmet pulled his shoulders back and glared at Oliver. Oliver threw his hands back in a gesture of surrender. “Just kidding. Just kidding. Grow a sense of humor, Sandman. Trying to diffuse a tense moment. That’s all.”
Emmet turned back and winked at me, then followed Oliver from the room.
Colin began fussing, straining with more force in Maisie’s arms, reaching out toward me. Maisie took a few reluctant steps toward me, looking for all the world as if she were heading to her own execution. Her head was held low. She wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I patted the seat Emmet had vacated, and she joined me. Colin escaped her grasp and pulled himself into my arms. I clutched him tightly to me, closing my eyes and breathing him in. I willed everything else in the world to go away, at least for an instant, so that I could take this experience in, engrave its memory on my soul. For this moment, he was mine and mine alone. Colin cooed happily, placing slobbery kisses on my cheek. Then it was time to open my eyes and learn how to share.
Peter hovered over us, standing nearly at attention. I smiled at him, and his eyes warmed. “God, it’s good to see you.” His eyes slid from me to Maisie and then back to me. “Especially together.” He raised his eyebrows and sighed. “What the hell happened? How did we get here?” I studied his face, wondering what, if anything, he remembered of his journey to the Fae.
“More importantly,” I said, tightening one arm around Colin and reaching out to him with the other, “where do we go from here?” He hesitated, casting a worried glance at Maisie, but took my hand. “I love you so much, Peter. I do.” He acknowledged my words with a bob of his head followed by tears that rolled down his cheeks. He let go of my hand and wiped away his tears. “I’m not trying to cut you out. Believe me. But I need a bit of time alone with my sister. Can you give us that?”
“Yeah,” he said, although I knew he was tapping into his deepest resource of strength to say so. “I’ll wait for you outside,” he said, then seemed to remember Emmet had claimed the garden as his own. “On the side porch.” I noticed his eyes had been on Maisie when he said this. It was Maisie he would be waiting for, and maybe that was right. He turned and exited through the house’s front door.
We sat together without speaking, searching for words, waiting for our feelings to settle enough to allow us to say them.
“I feel like I am Colin’s mother,” Maisie said after a long and uncomfortable silence. I knew Ellen was right. Maisie was bound to be conflicted in her emotions. She finally raised her eyes to meet mine. I could read in them that she was genuinely happy to the root of her soul to have her sister back, but she was worried about the costs. “I feel like I am Peter’s wife.”
“That’s because you are both those things.”
“But you are too.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
I placed a lingering kiss on the top of Colin’s head, and then shifted him over toward her. “Here,” I said, fighting the urge to hold tightly on to my boy.
She reached out for him, and he did not resist. His bright eyes, one green, one blue, filled with laughter. Laughter and knowing. Maisie pulled him into a desperate grasp and cried till she could cry no more.
“I don’t know how,” I said, stroking her hair, “but we will work this all out. There is room in Colin’s life for more than one mother.”
“And in Peter’s life?”
The way Peter’s eyes had remained fixed on Maisie as he spoke led me to think his heart had already made its choice. Still, I decided not to respond right off. It would take a while for things to settle, for us to figure everything out. Peter and Maisie and I, and yes, Emmet too, we would need to have some very honest conversations to decide how we fit now within each other’s lives. But we could start with what we had in common: our shared love for Colin.
In time we would figure everything out. We would find a way to adjust as the two warring timelines, the two sets of memories, settled and made peace with each other. All that mattered now was that we were together. Everything else would eventually fall into place. All I really cared about today was spending time with the most important man in my life, my son.
EPILOGUE
September brought blue skies and bearable temperatures. It also brought a special delivery in a large cardboard box. I ventured into our garage, where my battered old bike, perhaps my first true friend, leaned against the wall waiting for me. I oiled the chain and wheeled it out into the drive, where the box was still sitting. Just for the heck of it, I pointed my finger at the box and willed it to open. I was delighted when it remained sealed and sitting exactly where it was.
When I was returned to this reality, I had been separated from magic. Perhaps that was the price of my return ticket. I was completely and utterly powerless, no longer a magical being. I had come back to this world as an ordinary person, and I couldn’t have been more happy about that.
I went back to the garage and dug out a box cutter and a wrench. The sharp blade cut through the packaging to reveal the neon-orange trailer I had purchased for my boy. It clashed with the pink bike even worse than Jilo’s chair had clashed with her cooler, but we were certain to be visi
ble. I wheeled the trailer around to the back tire of my bike and after a cursory glance at the instructions attempted to connect the two. Then, realizing I had done it all wrong, I went back and read the instructions. Everything by hand now. No more magic, and that made me feel so good I very nearly broke down and cried with relief.
But I didn’t cry. Instead I bundled up the cardboard and put it in with the rest of the recycling. I hopped on my bike and did a quick circle around the block to make sure everything worked right, then returned to the drive. I went inside to wash the oil from my hands, then made my way upstairs to the nursery where Colin sat happily waiting for me. He clapped his hands and laughed as I came through the door.
“We are all set,” I said, reaching into the playpen to lift up my boy. I kissed his cheek, then the top of his head. I pressed my nose against him, breathing him in. Cherishing his realness. My realness.
“Okay, little man,” I said and planted another kiss on his forehead. “Mama hopes you are ready, ’cause she is going to take you on a tour and tell you some black and wicked lies about the people of our dear home.” He squealed happily in response. “Now, you might ask why your mama would make up lies about a city with so many interesting true stories to tell.” I gave his round tummy a gentle poke. “Go on, ask . . .”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my spouse, Rich Weissman, and my wonderful stepdaughters, Rebecca and Madeline, for their continued loving support and encouragement, my agent Susan Finesman of Fine Literary, and the amazing team at 47North, especially Jason Kirk and Nicci Jordan Hubert who stepped in to edit the conclusion of the trilogy and ended up walking me through at least nineteen nervous breakdowns. Thanks also to my literary midwife, Kristen Weber, who’s been with me since word one. A very special thank you to David Pomerico for signing me for the series, and to Angela Polidoro for her work on the first two Witching Savannah books. Finally, no list of acknowledgements would be complete without a heartfelt thank you to my furry co-authors, Duke and Sugar.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHOTO © 2013 LEVY MOROSHAN
J.D. Horn was raised in rural Tennessee and has carried a bit of its red clay with him while traveling the world, from Hollywood to Paris to Tokyo. He studied comparative literature as an undergrad, focusing on French and Russian in particular. He also holds an MBA in international business and worked as a financial analyst before becoming a novelist. Along with his spouse, Rich, and his furry co-authors, Duke and Sugar, he divides his time between Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, California.