Page 85

“What do you want?” Mack asked.

For once, no one told me what was safest, smartest, or required. They waited for my choice.

“I want them to know I didn’t leave because I stopped loving them.”

I wrote a letter to my mother without mentioning fangs, curses, or the fact that her supposedly dead son lived above a laundromat with a witch. I told her the accident hadn’t been her fault. I told her my final thoughts had been of home. I told her I loved them.

Mack enclosed it with a note explaining that the letter had been recovered among my belongings. He arranged for it to arrive without a return address. I hated adding another lie to their grief, but telling them when I’d really written it would raise questions I couldn’t answer.

A week later, Mack brought me another photograph for the file. My mother stood beneath the oak, holding my letter to her chest. Beside the red scarf, she’d tied a green ribbon, the color of my eyes.

It wasn’t a reunion.

It wasn’t enough.

But grief rarely offered perfect endings.

Sometimes it offered a ribbon and the knowledge that love had reached home.

Two months after the curse was removed, Second Chances opened its doors.

Carolina had rented the narrow storefront between the bookstore and Mrs. Chen’s grocery. The sign above the door featured a gold crescent wrapped around a chipped teacup because, according to her, perfection was terrible branding.

The opening morning smelled like rosemary, beeswax, and fresh paint. Shelves held practical charms for sleep, protection, luck, and convincing laundry to fold itself. The last one cost twice as much and came with a warning that socks remained morally opposed to matching.

I was adjusting a display of anti-nightmare sachets when the shelf tilted.

“Don’t,” Carolina warned.

“I have vampire reflexes now.”

“You have vampire confidence. Different condition.”

The shelf lurched forward.

I caught every jar before it hit the floor, stacked them in my arms, and grinned. “Grace.”

The wooden shelf detached from the wall and hit me on the head.

“Karma,” Carolina said.

Audrey arrived carrying a contract thick enough to stun a troll. Mack followed with Muffin tucked under one arm and the expression of a billionaire bear shifter who had lost an argument to a twelve-pound cat.

“She got in the car,” he explained.

“You own a security company,” I said.

“Muffin breached the perimeter.”

Audrey placed the contract on the counter. “Kingston Security officially orders two hundred equipment wards, fifty emergency concealment charms, and whatever you sell that keeps Mack from growling during budget meetings.”

“That last one requires dark magic,” Carolina said.

“Bill us.”

The bell above the door rang again.

Jacqueline entered wearing navy silk and a hat only slightly wider than the doorway. Conversation stopped. Two months of reforms had not made anyone forget what she could do.