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Tess sighs and gives Isaac to Dustin. She catches Luca’s wrist before he can suck his finger. “Third time this week.”

From the centerpiece, she pulls a sprig of rosemary and presses it between her palm and his skin. Her eyes lose focus, and she whispers a few short words. I watch as the rosemary turns a deeper shade of green and a warm herbal smell blooms over the room. When she lifts her hand, the cut has closed over into a faint pink line.

Luca flexes his fingers, unbothered, and reaches for a bread roll. “Thanks, Tess.”

I look around the table. A miracle just occurred and no one has stopped eating. Tess tucks the sprig behind her ear and goes back to her plate.

One more impossible thing in a town full of them.

“Merry Christmas.” Marthe raises her glass.

Everyone cheers. Eggnog on one side, blood on the other.

Isaac gets birch toffee in Anna’s hair, and nobody tells her for ten minutes.

Epilogue – Nick

Four Months Later

It’s breakup season. The creek came up over the low path by the gazebo last week and went down again, and there’s black water moving under the plank bridge. February and March were a rush of tours and paying back Kendall. Now there’s too much light, and the aurora season is done until August. For the first time in four years, I’m not locked into an endless cycle, grinding on with no hope at the end of it. This year, spring feels new.

Tonight, we’re at the cafe after closing, playing Settlers of Catan, and Luca is losing his mind because I’m winning.

“This is because you live with a journalist now,” he says. “She’s taught you to be devious.”

“She moved in four weeks ago.”

“Four weeks is plenty.”

He’d badgered me for a month to stop screwing around and get on with it. I asked, and it turned out he and Ellery had been plotting a swap well before that. He took her apartment above the cafe, formally handing over the custody of me with the fanfare of a royal coronation.

“Dustin’s out at Monroe’s delivering a goat,” Tess says. “He’d have wiped the floor with you.” She glances down at Isaac, asleep on our coats. “He’ll be here soon.”

Anna sips blood from a wineglass, contemplating her turn. She learned the rules an hour ago, and she’s holding the longest road, two ports, and a trade agreement with my mother that I don’t like the look of.

“I sold the ring,” she says to Tess, concentrating on the board. “Last month. Guy at the pawn shop in Fairbanks offered me nine hundred.”

“Good.” Tess scoops a spoonful of pecan pie into her mouth.

“Yeah.” Anna rolls the dice. “Traded it for a pearl-handled revolver instead.”

Ellery comes out of the storeroom with Mom, talking excitedly about a kitchen garden. She’s been obsessed with growing a pumpkin for the state fair since Pete told her what the long days do to a cabbage up here. She’s never seen this place in the summer. Sun still up at midnight, the creek warm enough to swim in for about nine days, Luca burning things on a grill. She’s going to complain about the mosquitoes, and I’m going to enjoy it.

Isaac makes a small noise in his sleep, and every candle in the cafe lights, one after the other.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Tess doesn’t get up. “He’s dreaming about birthday cake again.”

Mom licks her fingers and pinches the flames out as she passes.

Ellery sits beside me, and I pull her close with a kiss as she stifles a yawn. “Want to go home after I win this thing?”

“That’s mighty presumptuous.” She looks across the table. “Anna is coming for you. I might be curling up with Isaac on the floor before you win anything.”

Her appointment at town hall finally came around in February. She went looking through the earliest record book and came out with a photocopy of a stub. Somebody cut a page out of it a long time ago. Hazel said she couldn’t tell her when, or who, or what was on it. It’s been on the kitchen table since she moved in and I find her studying it most nights.

The velvet box has been in my sock drawer for a month. We’re both sitting on something, then. Mine needs a day with nothing else in it.

There’s a knock at the back door, and I get up with a stretch. “I’ll get it. Anna is taking all night to make a move.”