Page 123 of Magic Claimed
Which was what we all had, now that Blake had finally been taken down. The question was…
“Is Blake…”
“Not dead,” Callum said. “But he may never walk again. Once he shifted back, shapeshifter healing couldn’t help him, and his neck is still broken.”
I dared to hope that after all of this, he would eventually have to face justice. For all the lives, all the pain, all the shattered city streets and traumatized kids.
“Do we know what happened to Heather?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But we won’t stop looking.” He reached out, took my hand, and laced his fingers with mine. “Just as long as you’ll do it with me, because I’m never doing this separation thing again. Not ever.”
I leaned against his arm with a grateful sigh of agreement. “I’m with you. And that being the case… I need to check on my family. Will you come with me to make sure Ari and Kes are okay?”
“To the ends of the earth,” he said with a smile. “Or even just the post office or the grocery store.”
“Let’s try the grocery store tomorrow.”
He bent down and dropped a kiss on my lips. “Deal.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
We knewthe aftermath would be chaotic, and that healing would be a difficult road. And by the end of that day, we began to see just how steep a climb awaited us.
Four streets had sustained major structural damage. At least two dozen buildings had been set on fire or partially demolished, and would need to be rebuilt. Forty-three protesters had lost their lives, along with twenty-four of Blake’s followers. The rest had been caught fleeing the scene, taken into custody, and would eventually be tried for crimes we could only begin to enumerate.
And yet, there were bright spots too. The teens being reunited with their families. The nearly eight thousand people who would return home safely thanks to Faris’s planning and the heroic efforts of their Idrian defenders. The mayor and the governor actually both met with Faris, thanking him for defending the city and laying the groundwork for a far different level of cooperation and integration thanany seen before.
We were all feeling grateful to be alive—and clinging just a little bit closer to the ones we loved—but we were also feeling decidedly anxious until just after dark that night, when a beat up black pickup truck pulled up outside the draped and scaffolded front of The Portal where all of us had gathered.
It was cold, but someone had brought in a propane fire pit and hung string lights from the ceiling. Seamus had found several unbroken bottles of fae liquor, and Irene had managed to scrape together enough ingredients to whip up a few trays of her signature appetizers.
We had nothing to sit on but a motley array of benches, camp chairs, and a broken-down couch, but it was enough. Faris and Morghaine sat side by side, her head on his shoulder, his arm holding her close. Kira was perched on Draven’s lap, her eyes bright as they murmured to one another in tones too low to hear, while Kes and Shane tucked themselves in a corner, content simply to be together in silence.
Behind us, Ryker and Angelica sat on the bar, legs swinging, eyeing one another with a sort of amused resignation as they passed a bottle back and forth. Ari, Hugh, and Ethan sat in the lone unbroken booth—my Bug hard at work on some as-yet-unnamed Lego creation—while Hugh observed indulgently, and Ethan occasionally offered a suggestion.
Only Deverin sat alone, watching with an almost lost expression as we turned to family, all of us thankful, and yet also wondering whether anything would ever be the same.
Perhaps because he was alone, he was the first to notice the sound of tires outside. The first to rise in anticipationwhen we heard doors slam, a whimper of pain, and then a pair of familiar voices approaching.
But by the time they ducked through the plastic sheet covering the empty doorway, everyone in the room was on their feet.
“I should have known,” Tairen-li-Corva grumbled as she looked around the room. “Leaving us to clean up your messes while you started the party early.”
Logan stood beside her looking exhausted but proud, and for once, I didn’t hold back. I just walked up and hugged him fiercely while tears ran unchecked down my face.
“You did it,” I whispered.
“Yeah.” He was crying too—this boy who was so quickly becoming a man. “I did. I really did.”
I pulled back, my hands still on his shoulders. “Now you’d better not ever complain again that I don’t let you help. How did you get back?”
He grinned at me. “The gateway disappeared, but when we found a way out, we realized we were only a few hours away. The whole time we were in an abandoned hospital just outside of Tulsa. I think the truck belonged to one of Blake’s people, so we just… took it.”
I had so much more I wanted to say, but then Ari flew out of nowhere to hug him, and the squishy moment was over all too soon.
I turned to Tairen, ready to hug her too even if she punched me, but all impulse to levity died when I realized that they’d brought a third person with them.
She knelt on the floor, head down, wrists bound, her hair hanging loose and her shoulders slumped forward.
