Epilogue
Maggie was gettingready for her wedding.
Again.
It wasn’t exactly a second wedding—it wasn’t like they’d been divorced, or whatever. Separated, maybe? Social media apps didn’t have a button for what they had been. Either way, what they were now was much simpler.
Together.
A do-over. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Ally was fussing over her makeup in a mirror on the other side of the room, grumbling about how the artist Maggie had hired to help them had put on far too much eyeshadow for her tastes.
Maggie chuckled. “You look fine. Bridesmaids are supposed to be colorful, aren’t they?”
“I look like a succubus!” She wiped at her eyelid with a tissue.
“You don’t.”
“How do you know? Have you ever met one? I have.” Ally switched eyes, wiping off some of the bright blue tones. “And that’s exactly what I look like.”
She couldn’t help but laugh again and reached down to pick up a white gold bracelet from the table. Gideon had given it to her a few months prior. It was a colonial style death’s head—her favorite—bound up in vines. An hourglass perched over its head. On the back, there was an engraving. Memento Mori. Remember that you must die.
Except she never would again. Oh, well, that wasn’t true. She’d die plenty of times, she was certain. She was accident prone already, and being immortal made a person a little bit reckless. But the important part was that she wouldn’t stay dead.
Strangely, that made her feel more connected to death, not less. She was a necromancer. By all accounts, from what she could figure out from the other supernatural freaks she had met over the past two years, she was the necromancer.
Two years. It’d been two years since she sat down with Gideon in Boston and told him she wanted to try again. And it had been the two happiest years of her life that she could remember. With everything out in the open—with no more secrets, no more lies, no more games—she quickly found that they were just as inseparable as their souls.
She touched the hourglass on the bracelet. Tempus Fugit. Time Flies.And it really, really did. It had felt like just the blink of an eye, before Gideon was on a knee before her, offering her an emerald engagement ring, asking her to marry him.
The word “yes” had come out of her before she really even processed what was happening. A few months of planning, another month postponed because an old acquaintance of Gideon’s who “had to meet her” couldn’t make the original date, and here they were.
Getting married.
Again.
Kind of.
The first time didn’t really count. They had chosen new rings—the old ones felt tainted to them both. There was a knock on the door, and the wedding coordinator, who was a lovely werewolf from Scotland, poked her head in. “Are you ready?”
“I’m not getting any younger.” She snickered. Someday she’d give up all the childish immortality puns.
Today was not that day.
* * *
Maggie walkedout onto the balcony of the reception hall, desperately needing a little bit of fresh air. That, and a bit of a break from all the commotion. She was just a little drunk, and sad she hadn’t had a chance to eat any of the fantastic food it looked like was being served to the guests. She’d been warned that she wouldn’t have time to eat, but she hadn’t quite believed it.
Now she believed it.
Leaning against the railing, she looked out at the autumn hills of France and smiled. France would always be her home. And being married here made her feel more connected to the people she wished could have attended. Even if they wouldn’t approve of the man she was marrying, she knew they would at least be happy for her.
“Ms. Valard? Or is it Mrs. Raithe, now?”
Turning, she blinked in surprise. She didn’t know the man who had followed her out. She didn’t recognize him from the reception, either. A long gray peacoat hung from a form that was on the thin side of average. He had light brown hair that fell across his forehead in a style that said he neglected it. He had razor-sharp blue eyes behind thin-framed glasses. He was handsome, in an average kind of way. Everything about him would look nondescript to a normal person. Almost too nondescript. But something about him made her hair stand on end. There was a tiredness to him. No, not a tiredness. An oldness.
Whoever this man—this creature—was, he was ancient. And ancient meant dangerous. She straightened, squared her shoulders, and braced herself. “Can I help you?”
When he smiled, her concerns faded. There was a warmth to it that made her think of a cozy blanket on a cold night. “Sorry to interrupt your night. But I’ve been waiting to talk to you for some time. You’ve caused me a great deal of headaches over the years, you know.”