She had been. She wasn’t anymore.
And now she’d found this. The extraordinary gift of someone choosing to come back, to stay.
EPILOGUE — THREE MONTHS LATER
The apartment smelled like coffee and summer and something slightly burnt, which meant Kashvi had been baking again and had gotten distracted.
“Are you sure the streamers aren’t a fire hazard?” Kashvi asked, eyeing the purple and gold decorations Felix had strung across the ceiling. Percival sat on the kitchen table, watching with curiosity.
“Ramona can put out fires now,” Felix said cheerfully. He was standing on a chair, hanging a banner in glittery letters that read CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR FOX. “Her magic works. It’s fine.”
“That’s not how fire safety works.”
“It’s howourfire safety works.”
Gerald assisted by holding one end of the banner in his beak, hovering with the focused dignity he brought to all official coven functions.
Ramona stood in the doorway, taking it in. The banner. The tower of cupcakes Posey had made, each one topped with a tiny frosted fox. The party hats Cammie had apparently purchased in bulk.
“This is ridiculous,” she said.
“This is acelebration.” Felix hopped down from the chair and adjusted his hat — purple with gold stars. “You’re bonding with your familiar. That deserves a party.”
“It’s just a ritual?—”
“It’s your first formal magic since breaking the curse,” Posey said in the gentle tone usually reserved for correcting someone who was being deliberately obtuse. She was wearing a green party hat with actual flowers growing out of it. “That’s significant.”
“And I love a party,” Cammie added. She had her camera ready and her hat at a jaunty angle. “Let us have this.”
Zara emerged from the kitchen with a tray of champagne glasses, wearing a black party hat with purple trim that somehow looked elegant, because of course it did. “I made mimosas. Or, I poured a drop of orange juice into champagne. Is that the same thing?”
“Sounds perfect,” Ramona said.
The fox sat in the middle of the living room watching all of it with amber eyes that had always, from the very first day, looked like they knew something she didn’t. His tail swished.
Felix held out a purple party hat. “Put it on.”
Ramona put it on. It sat crooked on her purple hair. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” Felix said. “Now, let’s do this. I have confetti.”
“Please don’t—” Kashvi started.
“So much confetti,” Felix said gleefully.
They gathered in the living room, a grimoire open on the coffee table.
Three months since the curse broke. Three months since Zara had handed back her immortality and shown up at the Ostara Gala. Three months of magic and a coven and a girlfriend who still occasionally forgot she needed to eat, and a fox who hadbeen following Ramona around since before she had any right to be followed.
She’d woken up about a week ago and realized it was finally time to do the formal familiar bonding ceremony.
She knelt in front of him. He stepped closer.
“Ready?” Felix asked. His confetti hand was already raised. Cammie had her camera up.
“Ready,” Ramona said.
She placed her hand on the fox’s head and felt his warmth, his presence, the particular quality of his attention that she’d been aware of for months without being able to name it.
