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“We’ll help you,” Ivy said. “As soon as I can get Bliss out of here.”
Meanwhile, Bliss was staring at Bo, wiggling her little finger. Suddenly, the fish on the front of his hat was gone and was replaced by a sailboat.
“Baby steps,” she snickered, and held up her coffee mug for a refill.
Esme kissed her daughters and left the diner, and as Willow was leaving, Ivy promised they’d only be a few minutes behind her.
She slogged along the sidewalk, not entirely enthusiastic about going back to the Moonstone. The exterior showed no signs of a massive magic battle, but once she walked through the door, she’d be hit by a melancholy beyond words.
But upon entering the shop, there were no broken chairs or books stuck in the ceiling. There was no splintered wood or shattered glass. It was completely clean and restored back to its original condition. Actually, it was better. And Willow felt a pang in her gut. Esme must have done this on her way to the Bickford Mansion.
Filled with gratitude, she ventured further into the shop. How had her mother known the exact way she liked things arranged? All the tables and chairs were restored, the bar was in order, and all the bookshelves were put back with all the books set as before.
Then again, there was something new there. Stretching high from the floor to the tip of the highest of her bookcases was a sturdy wooden ladder hinged on a sliding rail. Willow approached it reverently, gliding her fingertips along the sides, noting the intricate carvings and embellishments.
“It’s just what I wanted,” she whispered to herself. And she held on to her heart lest she begin to cry again.
“Do you like it?”
The voice behind her was deep and smooth, like chocolate poured over silk. She closed her eyes, wishing he was not the ghost she bickered with, but the man she fell in love with.
“I love it,” she said, and her voice was almost completely lost in a breath.
Gathering the courage, she turned to face him. Montgomery stood in the middle of the shop, looking every bit the handsome man she was head over heels for. But there was something… changed about him (other than his clothes—and thank the Fates that 70s tuxedo was gone). He was a little bit broader, a little bit tanner, and his skin had the healthy glow of a person who worked and lived and aged heartily to a robust thirty-one years.
And something else. His eyes were brown. A lovely, earthy shade of brown with a sprinkle of gold flecks in them.
“How?”
Montgomery closed the distance between them and produced a cloth handkerchief seemingly out of nowhere and dried her tears.
“Well, I had to look up what aBeauty and the Beastrolling ladder was, but then I figured it out from there.”
Willow laughed through the tears. “Thank you. But I mean… how are you here?”
He smiled softly, dabbing her mascara with the handkerchief, then kissing each cheek.
“When I fell, there was no bottom, no dark abyss… not even cherubs playing harps. I was just existing, feeling nothing. But then, it was almost like my spirit shed off the skin and the bones… but it wasn’t the same as when I died a century ago. It was more like how a butterfly sheds its cocoon. And before I knew it, I was standing here but you weren’t. And I thought for a second that I was doomed to wander inside this shop—forever a ghost. But then, I felt it. My heartbeat.”
Willow threw her arms around him and held on tight, unable to even comprehend this feeling of solace and elation.
Montgomery gathered her face in his strong hands and kissed her reverently. Willow sensed a familiar magic in his touch and knew in her spirit that Montgomery’s new body was quite different than before. He was whole, and could only have been fashioned by the energy and magic of the Nexus.
“Wait a minute.” She shook her head, trying to understand fully. She’d had a rough night with no sleep, and she probably wasn’t thinking straight. “I was gone less than an hour. When we left here, it was in shambles.”
Montgomery shrugged. “I looked around and thought to myself, ‘what a dreadfully horrid mess’ and then everything shifted into order as though by sheer will of thought.”
“So,youdid all this? With magic?”
“I don’t really know what to call it,” he said. “Not science, probably.”
Willow had always known that being a witch was hereditary. One didn’t just become a witch one day. Whatever magic Montgomery could now wield, it was much purer and potent than witchcraft.
“So…” Montgomery slid his hands down to her waist. “What do you want next? Mrs. Harland.”
Willow liked the sound of that and moaned at the feeling of his hands on her.
“Regrettably, I don’t think the wedding vows were valid,” she said.
