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"Ummm, not yet, okay? Hold on for a minute. I'm still trying to figure out how to escape."
"You don't need to escape, Jaime," he said gently. "It's all over. I can untie you now."
"Oh, I know, and you can, just as soon as I figure out how I could have done it. It's humiliating enough to be kidnapped, tied up, and need rescuing. At least I have to be able to say, 'Thanks for setting me free, but I was actually just minutes away from doing it myself.'"
A low chuckle. "I see."
"What do you think of lip gloss?"
"In general? Or as an instrument of escape?"
"Escape. I have some in my pocket and I can almost reach it. What if I'd smeared lip gloss on the ropes? Could I have slid out?"
As Jeremy answered, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Benicio. As I stood, he embraced me.
"Well done," he whispered in my ear.
"I've just called the Cabal, Papa," Lucas said. "They're sending an extraction team."
"Oh, I don't believe that will be necessary."
Benicio pulled back from me. As Lucas and I exchanged a look, Benicio headed for the end of the alley.
"He's quite secure, Papa," Lucas called after him. "Perhaps--"
Benicio lifted a finger, and kept walking. His voice floated back to us, barely above a whisper. Lucas frowned and jogged after him. I followed, trying to hear what Benicio was saying. Then I caught a few words of Latin and knew he was casting. Lucas realized it at the same moment and broke into a run. When we reached the corner, though, Benicio had stopped the incantation. He was leaning over Edward, who lay on his back, staring up, cold-eyed and defiant. Benicio's lips curved in a small smile.
"Vampires are indeed the race of arrogance, aren't they?" he said, his tone pleasant, even congenial. "And perhaps not without reason. You did manage to kill my son once. Almost managed to do it twice. Did you really think you'd get away with it? If you had, I'd have pursued you through every level of Hell to wreak my revenge. As it is, though, things are a bit"--his smile broadened, showing his teeth--"easier."
Benicio lifted his hands and said the last three words of the incantation. As his hands flew down, a lightning bolt severed Edward's head from his neck.
No one moved. We all stood in shock, watching Edward's head roll across the alley.
Benicio lifted his hands again. This time, his voice boomed down the alley, as he cursed Edward's soul for eternity.
Full Circle
FOR ME, THE CASE TRULY ENDED ONLY WHEN IT RETURNED to where it had begun: with a teenage witch named Dana MacArthur.
While we'd been tracking Edward, Randy MacArthur had finally arrived in Miami to see his daughter. When the initial flurry of activity over Edward's execution died down, we admitted to Benicio that Dana was gone. Of course, the Cortez Cabal wasn't taking Jaime's say-so, but their necromancers tried to contact Dana and confirmed that she had indeed passed over. So, two days later, Lucas, Savannah, and I stood in a Cabal cemetery and said good-bye to a girl we'd never known.
Since I'd now seen what lay on the other side, Dana's passing pained me less than it might have. Yet I still felt the full weight of the tragedy her death brought for her father and her younger sister, and maybe even her mother. Even for Dana herself, there was tragedy here. She'd gone to a good place, and I was sure she'd be happy, but that didn't mean her life hadn't been cut short, that she hadn't missed out on so much. And for what? To avenge the death of a vampire who had herself killed so many, gone so far beyond the needs of her nature? As I stood in that cemetery, listening to the minister try to eulogize a girl he'd never met, I looked out across the graves and thought of all the other fresh graves in other Cabal cemeteries. I glanced over at Savannah, and thought about Joey Nast, the cousin she never knew. On the other side of the group of mourners, I could see Holden Wyngaard, a plump red-haired boy, now the lone survivor. I thought of the others. Jacob Sorenson. Stephen St. Cloud. Colby Washington. Sarah Dermack. Michael Shane. Matthew Tucker. All gone. And how many tombstones would it take to commemorate the lives of everyone else Edward and Natasha had killed, the scores of humans they'd murdered trying to become immortal? I thought of that, of all those lives, and I couldn't for one second disagree with what Benicio had done. No matter what kind of hell Edward now faced, it was no less than he deserved.
I looked out at the small crowd gathered around Dana's open grave. Her mother wasn't there. I still wondered what had gone wrong in that woman's life to make her abandon her daughter, and I couldn't help but wonder whether having a Coven would have helped. I'm sure it would have, at least for Dana. If she'd had other witches to turn to, she would never have ended up on the streets of Atlanta, and now here.
Yet, as bad as I felt for Dana, I had to accept that the responsibility for starting a second Coven did not lie squarely on my shoulders. I was willing to start one. I would always be willing, and I'd make that willingness known, but I would no longer actively try to convince witches that they needed a Coven. They had to come to see that for themselves. In the meantime, I certainly didn't lack for work. I had an interracial council to reform and a new partnership with Lucas to pursue. Yes, I would have been more comfortable pouring my energy into a dream that started with me, but I think part of growing up is realizing that everything doesn't have to be mine. It could be ours, and that wasn't a show of weakness or dependence. I liked what Lucas did. I believed in it. I wanted to share it. And, if he wanted to share it back, well, that was damned near perfect.
When the service ended, Benicio leaned over and whispered an invitation to lunch, before we left for Portland. We agreed, and he slipped away to offer final condolences to Randy MacArthur.
The others had all gone their separate ways. The werewolves left Miami the morning after the showdown with Edward. Cassandra and Aaron had followed later that day, after they'd met with Benicio and the other CEOs to discuss possible fallout between the Cabals and the vampire community. Jaime had done her Halloween show in Memphis the night before, then zipped back to attend Dana's morning memorial service before returning to Tennessee for her next show.
As the mourners drifted away from the grave site, I glanced back one last time. Lucas took my hand and squeezed it.
"She'll be okay," he said.
I managed a smile. "I know she will."
"Mr. Cortez? Ms. Winterbourne?"
