Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

“I guess.”

“Poor guy.” She patted his cheek. “You should borrow something to wear.”

“So they tell me.” He grinned though, and kissed her again, more thoroughly this time, until Ritchie ordered them both to get their asses out of the kitchen if they wanted to eat any time soon. Still, though, as Sven headed off, he was shaking his head and muttering, “Puppies. Seriously?”

Rabbit’s low chuckle vibrated through Myrinne, making her smile up at him in answer. He grinned down at her. “I guess the world really didn’t end, after all.”

“Nope,” she agreed with all the joy that was bursting in her heart. “In fact, it seems like things around here are getting going.”

Three months later

Spring equinox

Skywatch

Ninety days after the world didn’t end, the Nightkeepers, the winikin and their human allies met back at the training compound for the Cardinal Day ceremony. It took a while for everyone to get there, since they had to use human-normal transport now. Anna didn’t mind the long, storm-delayed flight or the dusty drive, though. In fact, she thought it was all pretty awesome.

It was funny how fast things could change.

Three days ago, she’d been in the Australian outback, eating flaky morsels of fish that she, David and Rosa had cooked on a campfire, simply because they could. The bulk of the meal had been made up of yellowbelly that she and David had landed using native-style handlines from the bank. The tastiest bites, though, had come from the little trout Rosa had caught in the shallows, using a trap she’d dug out with the help of David’s six-year-old nephew. Colin had become a fixture around the cabin, and fast friends with Rosa, who had adapted to the cabin and her new friend just as quickly as she’d taken to her new life.

Loud noises still made her duck and cover, and there were times when she got quiet and withdrew inside herself. But although some things would take time, she was a bright, cheerful kid who seemed ready to thrive in any situation. She’d wrapped most of the quarantine camp around her pinkie by the time the adoption paperwork had gone through, making her Anna’s daughter for real and forever. She’d taken to David’s cabin—and his family—instantly, yet she’d been equally intrigued by their flight back to the States, charming the attendants and chattering in a mix of Spanish and English, the latter of which currently carried more than a little of an outback twang.

The trip to the cabin had been a delight . . . and so was the small family they were building. Anna had tried to hold back at first, not wanting to assume anything or fall too quickly. She kept reminding herself that Rosa was hers, and that relationship needed to be separate from her and David’s budding romance.

On their third afternoon at the cabin, though, he had gotten a couple of cousins to babysit and took her out for a long ride to an Aboriginal site, where Anna delighted in the pictograms carved high on the weathered stones. They were painted in hidden clefts in colors that were still bright and vivid, and made her feel like the artists had just packed up their paints and moved on only moments before their arrival.

After exploring, they had camped and drunk homemade wine until they were giggling like little kids, then made clumsy love for the first time, in a sleeping bag that wasn’t quite built for two. Then, later, drunk only on each other, they had made love again, lying atop the sleeping bag, naked under the stars and moon. When morning came, there was no question that they were a couple, and that they were in it for the long haul.

As for the rest? They would figure it out as they went. For now, they were taking each day as it came, and enjoying the hell out of life. With David’s time off coming to a close, though, things were going to change. As much as Anna would’ve liked to go with him to every new outbreak, new adventure, she had Rosa to think about—school, friends, that sort of thing—so she had started looking around for a place to live, and had surprised herself by gravitating toward the Albuquerque area.

David had taken a laid-back “when I’m not off on assignment, home is where you two are” attitude about things, so he and Rosa were going to spend the next few days checking out the city and its ’burbs, and thinking about putting down roots there. He’d been curious about Anna’s trip into canyon country, but hadn’t pressed. He would someday, she knew. But not yet.

A year ago, if someone had told her that in twelve months she would be part of a mom-dad-kid trifecta and thinking about getting a job at one of the universities in the city nearest Skywatch, she would’ve laughed her ass off. Hell, she wouldn’t have believed it even if she’d seen it in a vision. But it was her new reality, her new life. And she was freaking loving every minute of it.

She’d earned this reprieve. They all had. For her—and, she hoped, for all of her teammates—it wasn’t about zapping from place to place anymore, wasn’t about training and prepping for the next equinox or solstice, the next attack. It wasn’t about saving the world—it was about living in it, and enjoying every moment.

And as she pulled through the wide-open gates of Skywatch, she was surprised to realize that she was enjoying the hell out of this particular moment too.

She’d been sad to leave David and Rosa behind, and had figured she would treat the ceremony more like a duty visit to her relatives than anything. But her spirits lifted suddenly when she saw the front of the mansion jam-packed with a dizzying variety of conveyances, and it hit her that she might be back at Skywatch, but it was nothing like it had been before.

The vehicles ranged from Harleys, Victories and other two-wheelers leaned up in the rock garden to the right of the main entrance, to a wide assortment of banged-up jeeps and random rentals, all the way up to the sleek black Jaguar that Leah had bought for Strike, partly as a joke on his bloodline name, and partly because she liked going fast. The narrow-nosed helicopter off to one side probably belonged to Nate, who’d always had a thing for techware and had undoubtedly needed to get back in the air. He and Alexis had loved flying together, after all.

Oh, and of course, there was Sven and Cara’s windsail, a flimsy wheeled surfboard thing that cruised along the hardpan at stupid speeds. They had surprised everyone by staying on at Skywatch when Reese and Dez relocated permanently to Denver, taking a goodly number of the winikin with them to found a bunch of nonprofits and see about spreading out the Nightkeeper Fund.

Despite Sven’s former footloose tendencies, he and Cara had decided Skywatch was the best place for Mac, Pearl, and their pups, at least for the time being. So they had stayed to oversee things, and were helping Jade and Lucius fully catalog the library and figure out how to keep the Nightkeepers’ records secure for the next twenty-six millennia or so. They all wanted to believe that Rabbit’s magic had barred the kax and the kohan from the earth for good, but they weren’t taking any chances.

No doubt Sven had parked his toy out front as a reminder that these were his digs now, a way of marking his turf that was a little more subtle than taking a whizz on the pillars that ran on either side of the covered overhang leading up to the front door.

Then again, Anna wouldn’t put it past him to have done that, too.

She was grinning at the thought as she parked at random amid the vehicular mob scene, killed the engine, and just sat for a moment, looking up at the mansion. It was the same white-trimmed stone as before, with its sprawling wings and low-maintenance landscaping, but somehow it looked different to her now, as if it had changed.