Page 148 of The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium

Again, Talula floated in cerulean eddies of magic that stretched on and on.

“See?” Her watercolor reflection appeared—identical and ethereal, familiar and strange. “I said I’d see you soon.”

“You’re me, aren’t you?”

The Talula that was not Talula smiled.

“Are you me, from the future?”

“Not quite.” The other Talula shimmered. “I like to think of myself as Volta Talula. I can tell you about it, if you’d like.”

“Yes, please.”

“This story—our story—had a different ending. When the hunters came, I tried some big time-manipulation magic that I wasn’t ready for. Things went badly. I should’ve been obliterated from existence.” Volta Talula looked around her with a wistful smile. “But all those years I spent growing up with the Volta, breathing its magic, getting to know it, changed me. Changed us. I was more like the Volta than I wasn’t. So the Volta took me into itself. I became magic and time and space and consciousness. I can see every possibility, every potential outcome.”

“Did you write the cookbook?”

“Nope.” Volta Talula shook her head with a knowing smile. “You’re going to write it.”

“How can I write something in the future that exists now? Especially when I couldn’t have known that stuff until I had read the book in the first place? Isn’t that a time paradox?” She’d watched enough Marvel movies to know that much, at least.

“I’m making the paradox possible.” Volta Talula shrugged. “Physics and the laws of reality don’t always apply to time magic when you actually are time magic. But even breaking that one rule requires the entirety of my power. My existence allows me to hold together this one small snag in the fabric of time so that the book and its knowledge can exist before you write it.”

Talula’s head spun. “Why?”

Volta Talula’s eyes darkened. “Because if it didn’t, the consequences would have been cataclysmic.”

“Damien would’ve hunted magical beings into extinction across time.” Talula shivered.

“It would have been a horde of butterfly effects that would have undone all of reality.”

Talula let out a shaky breath. “One cookbook really stopped it all?”

“One cookbook and one half-human sorceress.” Volta Talula grinned. “I spent millennia trying to find the right morsels of knowledge and precise moments to ensure this timeline would come to pass. But honestly, the cookbook didn’t matter as much as the people it connected you to. Because—and trust me, I’ve seen every possible version of this story—we couldn’t have done this without Pine Hollow and our magical friends together. And definitely not without Dahlia.”

Talula felt warmth blossoming in her chest. “I think I knew that.”

“I know you did,” Volta Talula replied cheekily.

“Are you okay? Do you need rescuing?”

Volta Talula shook her head. “I had to be destroyed and remade so that everything could happen the way it did for you. This is what I am, was, and will be. There’s no going back.”

Talula let her heart absorb that. It hurt to know. It hurt to be the recipient of such an immense sacrifice. But she honored it as well. “Thank you.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

And she would have.

Talula stared up at the swirls of magic above her like she was stargazing. “What’s it like? Being this.” Talula opened her arms at the eddies of power around them. Talula turned her head to watch her mirror-self’s reaction.

Volta Talula became opalescent with joy and awe.

“It’s like living every possible moment of every possible world. It’s like being in love with every atom in existence. Like being magic.” Her smile sparkled, and Talula realized, with a start, that she was beautiful. They both were.

“So, now what do I do?”

“Do you really want me to tell you?” Volta Talula asked, a wry note in her voice.