Lucky Break

When they finished, I wiped the tears from my eyes. “Christophe’s ashes,” I quietly said, breaching the silence and looking at Vincent. “Where are they?”

It took him a moment to answer. “In our tomb, in the graveyard at the other end of the valley.”

“He should be with her now.” I glanced back at him, at Rowan. “After all this time, after all this misery, they should be together, in love.”

For a long and quiet moment, Rowan and Vincent looked at each other. The air was heavy with the weight of their anger, their regret, their fear, both of them waiting for the other to give ground.

To my relief and surprise, Rowan spoke first. “She should be in the ground, among the trees, so the cycle of her life can continue. Maybe . . . we can find a place that would work for both of them.”

One of the younger shifters opened his mouth to protest, but Rowan put up a stifling hand, and he was bright enough to quiet down.

“I would be happy to discuss it,” Vincent said.

It was a start.

***

We started back to the road, walked silently through darkness, grief still thick in the air.

“Look up,” Ethan said, and I tipped back my head.

The clouds had broken and revealed a masterpiece: the midnight blue of the universe, streaked by the scattering of diamonds that made up the Milky Way. Stars twinkled like brilliant stones in the darkness, as we flew through the universe on our blue and green globe.

“Beautiful,” I said, tears nearly blooming for the second time.

Beautiful, but sad. This had been a battleground and was a place of war and loss, where hatred had rooted, been sown, for generations.

I glanced back. Vincent and Rowan, vampire and shifter, stood side by side, their gazes on the glowing spectacle above us.

I wasn’t naive enough to think resolving the mystery of Fiona McKenzie’s whereabouts and solving Taran McKenzie’s murder would be enough to erase all the history that had happened here. There’d simply been too much strife, too much sadness, too much violence, and sups weren’t much for turning the other cheek. History couldn’t be rewritten.

But it could be accepted, acknowledged. It could serve as the foundation for something new. Something better. We’d done what we could here. The rest would be up to them.

And as for us . . . I thought of Catcher and Mallory, Luc and Lindsey. Of our apartments in Cadogan House, of the Hancock building and the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, the reflection of streetlights in the Chicago River.

Chicago wasn’t perfect. There was strife and violence that had proven difficult to overcome. But those trials and tribulations were mine to share, and mine to help heal.

I slipped my hand into Ethan’s. “That’s enough vacation for me. Let’s go home.”