Epilogue

“Any ending where you’re still standing on your own feet is a happy one.”

—Alice Healy

A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village

Three days later

WITH THE COVENANT out of Manhattan, it was safe to return to my apartment . . . and with the apartment’s actual owner returning from her year-long sabbatical at the end of the month, it was also time to start packing my things. It was time for me to go home.

Uncle Mike was already on the way back to Chicago. He’d taken Grandma Baker and Sarah with him when he left, promising to drop them in Columbus, where Grandma would be able to focus on nursing Sarah back to a reasonable facsimile of normal. Sarah was still asleep when they left. As far as I knew, Grandma was planning to keep her that way all the way home. I didn’t question it. She knew better than I did what was safe for cuckoo biology.

Kitty had accepted my resignation with a minimum of argument once I explained that I was leaving the city. New York was too dangerous for me, at least for a little while. My parents and I were both right when we said that my time in Manhattan would determine my future. I was just wrong when I said that my future was going to be in ballroom dance. That was a good world. It was one that I enjoyed visiting, and would probably be a part of for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t my world.

I was a Price. I was a cryptozoologist. I needed to accept that, with all the good things and bad things that it included, and that meant that I needed to focus on my training. If I was going to be a serious cryptozoologist, I needed to get better. I needed to make sure that I would never be caught flat-footed again. It was time to approach my real calling the way I had always approached dance: with total dedication, and my whole heart.

Well. Most of my heart, anyway. I could save a few bits out for special purposes.

The mice scurried around my feet, carrying small items and articles of my clothing to the appropriate boxes. The Sacred Ritual of Packing All the Crap was one that they knew well, and they were surprisingly good at not getting stepped on.

I was packing my collection of perfume bottles filled with holy water in sheets of eggcup foam when there was a knock at the front door. I straightened. I’d been waiting for that knock all day, but my hands still shook when I heard it. Slowly, I walked to the door, and called, “Who is it?”

“Let me in, you infuriating woman,” said Dominic.

Smiling, I undid the locks and opened the door.

Dominic De Luca was standing in the hall, wearing his oh-so-classic black duster, holding a paper sack of what smelled like fried chicken in one hand. He held it up. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“Starving,” I said, and stepped to the side. “Come in.”

He did, stepping past me before turning to look in my direction. “Verity—”

“I would have called, but I didn’t have your number.” I closed and locked the door. “That’s going to have to change, you know. You can’t be the mysterious disappearing boy anymore if we’re going to do this thing.”

“Do what?” he asked. There was a hopeful note in his voice that told me I was doing the right thing. I’d already been almost sure, but it was still nice to hear it confirmed.

I turned to offer him a shrug and a smile. “I’m leaving for Oregon in the morning. Renting a U-Haul and everything, since I can’t exactly ship the mice across the country via FedEx, and it would be nice to have a little time to just drive. I thought you might want to come with me. There’s a lot more to America than New York, you know.”

“You would want me to come with you?”

This was it, then: this was the moment of truth, for both of us. I reached out and carefully took the bag of chicken from his hand. He let it go without resistance, and didn’t look in the least bit surprised when I chucked it into the kitchen. A river of mice followed the bag, cheering. I stepped closer to him, closing the distance between us.

“You said you loved me, before,” I said. “Did you mean that?”

“With all my foolish heart,” he said.

I put my arms around his shoulders, offering him a very small smile. “Then yes. I want you to come with me. I want you to come to Oregon; I want you to meet my family. You chose me over the Covenant of St. George, so I guess that means I need to show you that you did the right thing.”

“Really?”

There was something I hadn’t said to him yet, even though he’d said it to me. Realizing that I was doing this all out of order—who invites a guy to come meet their parents before they tell him whether they love him or not?—I leaned in close, and whispered, “I love you.”

Dominic didn’t say anything. He just tilted his head to close the distance between us and kissed me, hard and desperate. He was shaking. I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but so was I. I clung to him, returning his kiss with all the force of my own fear behind it—the fear that I had lost him when the Covenant came and made him choose between us, the fear that I had lost everything when they took me. There was so much fear, but some things are stronger. Like love, and like the knowledge that sometimes, you can win.

The scorching-hot kisses don’t hurt, either. Dominic wrapped his arms tight around my waist, literally lifting me off the ground as he started walking backward down the hall. I pulled my mouth away from his long enough to shout, belatedly, “Food for privacy! Food for privacy!”

The cheering of the mice accompanied us all the way into the bedroom, shutting off only when Dominic kicked the door shut behind us. We could finish packing in the morning and still be on the road by noon. There was a whole country out there for us to cross before we got to Oregon . . . and for once, I had a guy I wouldn’t need to warn about my family. Maybe I’m naïve, but if that’s not a happy ending, then I don’t know what is.