I kissed him again, a little longer so he knew how in love I was.
AnEughof disgust issued behind us.
“You know I saw him snort a gumdrop out his nose when he was five?” said Laurelie.
“You’ve never shown me that trick,” Kessian said.
“And I never will. It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Shoving the gumdrop up there in the first place was,” said Laurelie.
“I brought drinks!” Fae declared, appearing with flutes of sparkling wine sandwiched between their hands and elbows. They paused before giving one to Laurelie. “Aren’t you technically underage?”
“I was a thousands-year-old river.”
Amelia snatched a glass for her. “If anyone deserves to get wankered, it’s you, babes. I was in that pond-scum skin suit for twenty-four hours, and I felt like I needed to be exfoliated with steel wool.”
“I would have given her the drink,” Fae pouted.
“All right, all right,” I declared. “I think it’s time.”
A breeze of magic whispered on the air, making the fall leaves smell crisper. We all turned to Lunaris, from whom the magic emanated.
I stepped up to her and raised my glass. “A toast to Lunaris. My best and oldest friend. You gave me a home all these years. Now it’s my turn.”
Everyone echoed my toast. “To Lunaris.”
I took a drink and tipped some of the wine out over her bonnet. It fizzled, droplets frying in the aura of her magic. Glimmering, golden smoke rose in plumes, enveloping her in a slowly shrinking twister. My heart tapped a rhythm to the sound of a tune she played on her radio for the last time, one I’d sung to on many road trips.
The smoke seemed to eat away at the camper van, becoming a single pillar, until that, too, dissipated in a sudden breeze, and in place of my house on wheels, a calico cat with crooked whiskers burst from it and tried to run toward me, though she moved the way animals did with booties on their feet.
“Oh, oh no. It’s so strange having legs after all this time. Wheels are far more straightforward.”
Fae awwed while everyone else laughed. I picked Lunaris up and the sheer familiarity of the way she smelled when I kissed her fuzzy head catapulted me into nostalgia. It was strange to be reunited when we’d never really been separated in the first place. She’d always been there, but I’d still missed her.
In the way of all cats, she put a paw on my face to push it away. “That’s enough affection. Put me down now. I must search the premises and ensure there are no vermin.”
I set her down and she sprang off into the house, pausing only briefly to weave around Kessian’s ankles. “This one is not vermin. I give him permission to stay.”
We could hear her claws clattering as she hunted spiders.
“What did she say?” Kessian asked.
“She’s given you her stamp of approval, though I think she made that fairly obvious when she was a camper van.”
We all took our drinks inside to start the chore of cleaning the house and unpacking. I marveled at how much dust could accumulate in a year.
It had taken all that time for Warwick to meet a meager justice. Legal proceedings being slow as they were, he had plenty of time and money to wrangle himself a lesser sentence despite his collusion in a mass murder and his possession of a dangerous artifact.
While the judicial system might have failed the people of Shearwater, those people had long memories, and Foxbury Manor now had a for-sale sign at the end of its drive, as did Shearwater Spa.
There was a silver lining. The contract he’d drawn up transferring ownership of 37 Culpepper Avenue had been officially voided, along with several others of questionable legality. Those legal costs had postponed his building plans for the caravan park where Kessian lived.
Marlowe had not been released on bail, and there was little doubt inthe mind of the prosecuting barrister that he would get a life sentence for what he’d done. He’d tried to run. It had been particularly hard on Amelia, who hadn’t spoken to him since, and the rest of us had done the same in solidarity, but as time passed, the scars he’d left had begun to fade. Not completely, never completely, but enough that there were days we did not think about the monster he’d made of our home in Shearwater.
After a pizza party, more cleaning and unpacking, and a round of drinks in the garden, my family left us to settle in.
Kessian was still re-planting his garden when dusk fell. I helped him with the last seedlings despite my aversion to dirt under my nails, and when the primroses were all lining the front flower bed, he finally stopped and sat back to rub a knot in his spine and say, “I think I’m going to regret trying to get it all done in one day tomorrow.”
