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“I miss you, Mamá,” I started, my voice quiet. “I don’t know where you are, but if you’re here, please let me see you one more time before I leave Charlotte.”
I waited, but nothing changed. The portal’s smoke undulated as it always did, looking impotent now that it was so small. My mother wasn’t in that portal anymore. I felt no trace of her presence here. But just in case I was wrong…
“I hope you’ll come visit me some Samhain in the future. I love you, Mamá. Thank you for helping me when I needed you the most.”
Jax squeezed my hand. All of my companions remained quiet, as if still waiting for something. But I knew that my mother wasn’t here. I had felt more of a presence on Samhain, far from the infernal threshold.
I was thankful when Jax broke the awkward silence. “This is where it all began?” He turned toward Nim. “And you saw it expand the first time?”
She shook her head. “No, we saw no expansion then. It didn’t happen for a few more days. But I believe my birth-coven and I heard the devil’s voice, his first attempt at seducing someone into becoming his host.”
Lan gestured down at the few feet of featureless landscape between the portal and the containment wall. “Nim lost the rest of her family here.” Then he squeezed her close against his chest. “She avenged them later and killed the hellbull that killed her father and coven-sibling.”
Nim’s expression went hard. “With Lan’s help.”
Lan kissed her head. “With help from our entire coven, really,” he added with a crooked smile.
“So this was where you lost your coven-mother, who you saw on Samhain?” Jax asked.
“No.” Nim glanced at the portal’s shifting shadows. “This isn’t the portal that my coven-parents stepped across, yet it’s where you found their spirits.” She lifted her eyes to me. “Any idea why?”
“My mother also didn’t die anywhere near here,” I pointed out. “But I believe Andras ordered his demons to drag all the human spirits they could find back here. That’s what powered this portal’s rending. Ty mentioned that the infernal realms are not one but many, and there are doors between them. Maybe they snagged your coven-parents’ spirits through one.”
“At least I got to see them again,” Nim smiled. “To know that they’re okay.”
I nodded. “I’m glad, too.”
And I truly was. I’d gotten the chance to introduce my coven-mates to my mother after freeing her spirit, but Nim’s had faded before they arrived. Samhain had given her the chance to do the same.
She took a breath. “It looks so different here now.” She pointed outside of the new containment walls, across the reclaimed, blackened landscape. “There used to be a library over there.”
Lan said, “That’s where Nim killed the hellbull.”
Nim’s gaze grew distant. “It’s too bad the portal didn’t close entirely.”
Her coven-mates gave her a sharp look, as if wondering what she had in mind.
Rye hesitantly said, “There have been tears to other dimensions for as long as humankind has existed. That’s what gave us all our legends of vampires and demons to begin with.”
“They’ll never all be gone,” Lan added.
I nodded. “At least now we know how to prevent them from expanding. And how to shrink them back and steal away their power. That’ll have to be enough.”
Nim nodded, too, but said nothing. She didn’t really seem to agree. “So, do you need any help packing up?”
“My stuff is ready to go,” I said with a smile at Jax. He would teleport us and my things to California tomorrow morning, and we would begin our house hunt.
“Good,” Nim said. “That leaves us time for a final hurrah tonight.”
“Don’t make it sound so final,” I scolded. “You know we’ll be back to see you as often as you’ll have us over.”
But as I gazed down at the shadowy portal, it did feel final. This might be the last time I stood here. Vampires were finally safe here in Charlotte, as free as witches. Yet I couldn’t wait for a new beginning somewhere far, far away from here.
“Ready?” Nico asked, gesturing toward the steps that would lead us away from the shadowy rip in reality. It was time to take our first steps away from the past and toward our future.
I took his hand, and his eyes lit up, as though he still couldn’t believe it. Eventually, he’d get used to being in a coven, I felt sure of it. Together, we descended the stairs, with Nim and Lan right behind us, and the twins bringing up the rear.
We once again crossed the flat, broken lands we’d helped reclaim. It felt good to see how small the portal had become, but Nim was right… I would’ve liked to see it close entirely. I’d hoped killing Andras would be enough to do it, but we truly didn’t understand how portals opened into our world to begin with. If we knew that, we might find a way to close them.
