Jessica Andersen - Spellfire

Or maybe—probably—she was the one who’d changed.

Then the door swung open to reveal Strike, Leah and Jox jammed into the opening, waving and shouting for her to get her ass inside already, looking like they were so damn glad to see her they couldn’t stand themselves.

She was out of the car in a flash, leaving her luggage behind, and dodging through the jammed parking area to meet them halfway.

Leah got to her first. “You look amazing!” Hauling Anna into an energetic hug, she whispered, “I’m so happy for you!” She broke away with a grin and a wink as Strike and Jox reached them, and passed Anna off for more hugs, more exclamations.

“Come in, come in.” They urged her up the walkway so quickly that she didn’t get a chance to hesitate, as she had done almost five years earlier, when she’d first come back after so long, and found only bad old memories.

Now there were new memories—not all of them good, granted, but enough good ones to balance off the bad. And, really, she couldn’t regret the things that had made her the person she was today, living the life she had now.

Better yet, as she walked through the front doors, past the engraved sign that showed the world tree and reminded her to fight, protect and forgive, she felt for the first time since she was a teenager that she really had come back to her childhood home, and she was safe there. And, better yet, she was happy to be there for a while . . . though she’d be happy to get back to her family, too.

Maybe, hopefully, the teammates would eventually find a way to bring their human families into the compound and include them in the Cardinal Day celebrations. Because gods knew there would be human families and more celebrations—there were too few of them to intermarry, and they had vowed to keep the traditions alive, one way or another. There would need to be changes, of course, ways of explaining the teammates and their gatherings so the humans wouldn’t find them too strange, but one day soon, Skywatch would be filled to its seams once more, would be alive once more, as it had been in their parents’ times.

For now, though, this was good. It was right.

And it was time to party.

As the quick spring dusk descended on Skywatch, the teammates gathered beneath the ceiba tree; they had decided to start a new tradition of meeting out there, at the center of their little village. Where once the area had been shadowed with the ashes of the fallen and packed hard by countless feet coming and going from the training hall, now it was softly carpeted with a faint, fuzzy green, suggesting that while the Nightkeepers’ magic might’ve ramped down, the earth magic that sustained their rain forest grotto was still going strong, keeping the ground unusually fertile.

And the grove apparently wasn’t the only thing benefitting from some fertility dancing, Myr thought with a sidelong look at where Sasha, Reese and Cara were sitting at a picnic table comparing notes; all three had announced their pregnancies at lunch, and gotten a raucous round of applause. Cara was the only one with a visible baby bump, suggesting that she and Sven had gotten a jump on things prior to the end date, intentionally or not. The other two weren’t showing yet, but they freaking glowed.

She was a little surprised to feel a harmless tug of envy—look at that, maybe she had a bio-clock, after all. Down girl, she told herself with a grin, tamping down on her link with Rabbit so he wouldn’t catch the direction where her thoughts were going and do a deer-in-headlights impression.

At the moment, he was over with Dez, Sven and Michael, stacking wood for the bonfire, their efforts overseen by two adult coyotes and their perpetual-motion puppy pack.

Even that tugged, making her laugh at herself. Really, it wasn’t like she wanted to do the home-and-baby thing any time soon. For one, she and Rabbit had a few things to knock off the to-do list between now and then. Like finishing up their degrees—something environmental for her, engineering and physics for him, along with some business courses and international relations, with the plan of heading up the emerging Nightkeeper Foundation’s interests in the Mayan highlands. They both loved it down there, and wanted to help the locals recover from the outbreak. At least that was their current game plan.

And that was the awesome thing. They didn’t need to know for sure right now. They could explore for a bit. Or, heck, for the rest of their lives. Because, hey, howdy, they had a future now. A beautiful and totally blank-slate future. The only thing they needed to know for sure was that they were going to be spending it together. Period. Full stop. She didn’t care if the gods had meant for them to be together, or that they hadn’t ever gotten their mated marks. Okay, she cared a little, but only because it had once been important to him. Now, though, he seemed content for them to go on as they were, living together and loving each other while they started really figuring out what their lives were going to look like for the next few years.

And after that? Marriage, she hoped. Kids. The family neither of them had gotten when they were growing up, but could give to the next generation.

“Gather round!” Dez called, tossing a last few sticks on the huge mound of pallets, kindling and other flammables he and the others had built. “It’s time.”

The former residents of Skywatch formed a horseshoe, with the open end facing south, the direction the wind was blowing, leaving room for the gods to join them, at least in spirit if not in practice.

What do you say? Ready for some action? The words formed in her mind, accompanied by a phantom brush of warmth across her lips, stirring her blood.

She looked up to find Rabbit standing at the center point of the horseshoe, with an open spot beside him. Her spot. With her head up and her eyes on him, she swaggered over, feeling good in black jeans and a tight black top, with high black boots that had a glint of silver at the edges. When she reached him, she leaned in and kissed him with a little nip of his lower lip that had him sucking in a breath.

Then, as the magic gathered in her head and heart, making her feel like she could do almost anything, she took her place beside him, and grinned around the horseshoe at the others, at her friends and teammates. “Okay. Now I’m ready for some action.”

That got a chuckle, the loudest from Rabbit, as Dez cleared his throat. “Then by all means. Let’s link up!”

She and Rabbit could’ve lit the bonfire on their own, given the magic that was zinging through them, reawakened by the equinox. But the ceremony belonged to all of them, so they joined hands—Nightkeeper, winikin, human—and opened themselves to the magic. Where before the uplink would’ve been a huge, roaring upswell of power, now it was a softer, mellower heat. Still, though, it was magic. And it was beautiful.

He squeezed her hand. “Do you want to do the honors?”

“You do it.” She didn’t need to prove anything, not anymore.

Nodding, he spread his fingers toward the stacked wood and said, “Kaak!”

A soundless shock wave detonated from them both, and red and green fire exploded from his fingers and curled around the beehive-shaped stack. It whirled around once, twice and then a third time—and whoomp!—the bonfire lit with a crackling roar, sending a pillar of red and green flames twenty feet in the air, then thirty.

Heat drove everyone back a couple of steps, but nobody seemed to mind, given the show.

“Whooo!” Reese called, bending back to watch colored sparks swirl up on the breeze, and the others joined in with a chorus of oohs and aahs.

Getting into it, Rabbit made the flames spiral and then curl around themselves. Myr laughed and added a little more blue to the mix, dropping fire bursts that looked like flowers on the curling vines of flame.