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“He is.”
“And your sister is back.”
He leaned away from her just enough so that she could tilt her head up and look at him. He smiled down at her. “And I have you to thank for all of this.”
“I feel the same way. I wouldn’t be here, with your arms around me, except that you helped me save those girls two months ago.”
He caressed her face. “Emma, I could wait for weeks, even months to ask you this, but somehow this feels like the right moment and definitely the right place. You have come to mean everything to me, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
~ ~ ~
Emma would never have predicted that the night she fought and helped slay such a powerful wizard as Loghry, would end with a marriage proposal. It might not even strike the most romantic note. But with all that, it somehow seemed perfect.
She stroked Vaughn’s face with the back of her fingers. “Of course I will. I love you, Vaughn. We’re a team now, you and I.”
He kissed her, a long lingering kiss, with his strong arms around her and his lips warm and full of tenderness.
The embrace only ended when a strange ghostly shouting had Vaughn pulling away from her. “What the hell was that?”
He turned her in the direction of the sideboard that held all her glass canisters, and there the triplets were, lifting the lids up and down and making what sounds they could from their ghostly voices.
Emma laughed. “They’re celebrating our engagement.”
Vaughn turned to her chuckling as well. “Love you, Em.”
“Me, too.”
He kissed her again, despite all the racket.
EPILOGUE
Three weeks later on a Saturday night, Emma sat outside with Vaughn and Beth. Vaughn had fired up the barbeque ready to cook some ribeyes, Emma had prepared potato salad and corn on the cob and Beth had made sangria.
Beth was staying with them indefinitely while she received intensive therapy from a good-hearted witch who specialized in long-term abuse situations. Having been imprisoned by Loghry for years would take time to overcome, as would the second-hand addiction to amethyst flame. The flame drugs were notorious for requiring extensive recovery periods.
As part of her healing process, Beth had taken a part-time job at the Tribunal, working the tip line for abducted teens.
Vaughn had quit the Crescent Border Patrol. Though Connor had wanted him to become a TPS officer, Vaughn felt compelled to go a different direction entirely.
Just a few days after Loghry’s death, he’d presented Emma with the idea that together they could establish a safe house for human teens in Five Bridges. This would be a place where any teen, having escaped his or her captors, could come to seek shelter.
The organization would keep a high profile to make sure the word got out. Vaughn would also use his experience as a Border Patrol officer to provide round the clock security for an endeavor that was sure to enrage the unsavory elements in all five territories.
Emma knew it was the right thing to do. For the first week, she’d even hoped she could purchase Loghry’s mansion to use as their safe house. But Donaldson blocked those efforts, and shortly afterward, it became the headquarters for a powerful cartel lieutenant.
One of the more positive repercussions of Loghry’s death was that without his charismatic presence and dark wizard ability to control those around him, his organization disintegrated. Of course, others took over his clubs, and the places were back in business in a short period of time.
Fortunately, the new owners didn’t have Loghry’s taste and refused to offer up fresh teens to their patrons. In that sense, she knew she and Vaughn, with Beth’s help, had disrupted a truly vile part of the Elegance Territory club scene.
After the meal, Emma had taken the leftover potato salad into the house, when the triplets suddenly arrived in a distressed state.
What is it, Becca? She put the salad in the fridge, then headed back to the living room where the girls flew around erratically.
The oldest of the girls by two minutes opened her mouth to speak, then rolled her eyes when nothing came out. She switched to telepathy. My parents will be here soon, though you should send them away. I don’t want to see them, none of us do. Emma, they’ve done something terrible. I mean really, really bad.
What did they do? Emma knew Samantha and Davis. They were good people and Emma couldn’t imagine what they might have done that could ever be characterized as ‘terrible’.
You’ll see. It’s disgusting. We didn’t want this to happen.
