Older now, maybe wiser. She was smiling.

Pam turned and saw her face in the mirror. She was herself but not herself, confident and relaxed, red hair loose down her back. Everything was easy

now. Getting up in the morning, showering, choosing what to wear, what to tackle next. She moved through the world with grace. She had cooked this meal for her guests. She had published. She could teach. Every day would be like this one, a series of tasks accomplished instead of an endless loop of indecision. The possibilities had been ruthlessly pruned, leaving a single, obvious path to follow.

She drank deep from her glass. All is well.

“You did good,” said Esau.

Turner threw an arm around his brother. “We did good. And we’re going to do more.”

They were standing in Jocelyn Square Park, gazing out at a cheering crowd—cheering for him, for the jobs he’d brought to their city, for the possibility of a different future.

He lifted his arm above his head, pumped his fist. His mother was weeping with joy. His father was alive beside her. His people were around him. He wasn’t the hall monitor anymore. He was a hero, a king, a damn senator. He was allowed to love them and be loved by them in return. His wife stood to his left, her smile radiant. She caught his eye, and the look they shared said it all. Better than anyone she knew how hard he had worked, how much they’d sacrificed to get to this moment.

There were no mysteries anymore, no monsters but the ones you had to have lunch with in DC. He would take a little rest. They would go down to Miami, or they’d treat themselves to a trip to the Caribbean. He would make up for every moment he’d been absent or distracted in pursuit of this goal.

“We did it,” she whispered in his ear. He

drew her close. All is well.

Darlington sat in his office at Black Elm, looking out at the borders lush with flowers, the neatly trimmed hedge maze. As always, the house was full of people, friends who had come to visit, scholars staying to make use of his

extensive library or give seminars. He heard laughter floating through the halls, lively conversation from somewhere in the kitchen.

He knew everything he wished to know. He need only touch his hand to a book and he grasped its contents. He could pick up a teacup and know the history of anyone who had ever held it. He visited travelers and mystics on their deathbeds, held their hands, eased their pain. He saw the scope of their lives, absorbed their knowledge through his touch. The mysteries of this world and the next had been revealed to him. Not because he’d undergone some ritual, not even through rigorous study of the arcane, but because magic was in his blood. He’d almost given up hope, abandoned childish wishes. But it had been there all along, a secret power, just waiting to awaken.

He saw Alex in the garden, a black-winged bird, night gathered around her like a silken shroud shot through with stars. His monstrous queen. His gentle ruler. He knew what she was now too.

He returned to his writings. All

is well.

Alex stood outside of a freshly painted bungalow—white adobe, trimmed in blue. Wind chimes hung from the porch. A stone Buddha held court in the garden, lush with lavender and sage. Her mother sat sipping tea on a daybed heaped with colorful cushions. This was her house—a real house, not a lonely apartment with a balcony that faced the wall of another lonely apartment.

Mira rose and stretched and went inside, leaving the door open behind her.

Alex drifted after her.

The house was tidy, cozy; crystals crowded the fireplace mantel. Her mother rinsed her cup in the sink. A knock sounded. A blond woman stood at the door, a rolled yoga mat slung over her shoulder. She looked familiar, but Alex wasn’t sure how.

“Ready?” the woman asked.

“Just about,” Mira said.

They couldn’t see her.

“Do you mind if my daughter joins us? She’s home from school.”

Hellie stood behind the woman in the door. But not a Hellie Alex had ever known. She looked brave, utterly confident, her arms lean and muscled, her bright hair in a neat ponytail.

“This place is so cute,” she said with a smile.

Alex watched as Hellie and her mother idled in the living room, waiting for Mira to change and get her mat.

“That’s her daughter,” Hellie’s mother said, gesturing to the photograph Hellie was peering at. A photo of Alex in a denim jacket, leaning against their old Corolla, barely smiling.

“She’s pretty,” Hellie said.

“She wasn’t a very happy girl. She passed a few years back. Only seventeen. A drug overdose.” She passed.

Incense had been set before the photo, a white feather tipped in black.

Another photo stood in a frame tucked behind the picture of Alex. A young man with curly black hair that tumbled over his tan face. He was standing on the beach, arm around the surfboard propped beside him. There was a pendant around his neck, but Alex couldn’t make out what it was.

“That’s so sad,” Hellie said. She’d moved on to a deck of cards set out on the coffee table. “Ooh, does Mira read tarot?”

She plucked a card off the top deck and held it up. The Wheel.

For the first time, Alex felt something other than love and regret well up in her at the sight of Hellie, perfect Hellie with her ocean eyes.

“You shouldn’t have let them kill Babbit Rabbit,” she said. “I wouldn’t have let him die.”

Alex watched the Wheel spin, alight with blue fire that consumed first the card, then Hellie’s hand, then Hellie, her mother, the room, the house. The world swallowed by blue flame. All is well.

She was standing on the steps of Sterling, surrounded by fire, and the others were looking at her with pity in their eyes. Alex wiped her tears away, her gut twisting with shame. She’d felt no sorrow at her own death, only relief to see the world wiped clean. She knew her mother had wept over her, but how many more tears had she wasted on a living girl?

And Hellie? Well, that was the worst of it. If Alex hadn’t been with Len that day on the Venice boardwalk, maybe Hellie never would have gone

home with them. Maybe she wouldn’t have stayed as long. She would have made the trip back from hell and returned to the world of softball games and college transcripts and yoga on Saturday morning. She never would have died.

“I’m going to make this easy for you,” Anselm said gently. “Take your place here, Galaxy Stern. Live in splendor and comfort, never want for anything, and see all the damage you’ve done in the world erased. Everyone gets what they want. All will be well.”

What would it mean to become a ghost?

Darlington grabbed her arm. “It isn’t real. It’s just another kind of torture, living with something that isn’t real.”

He wasn’t wrong. She’d known Len’s love wasn’t real. She’d known her mother’s protection wasn’t real. That knowledge ate at you every day. You lived on a tightrope, waiting for the moment the rope would vanish. It was its own kind of hell.

“I can make it easier still,” said Anselm. “Stay or your lovely friend dies.”

In the shimmer of the fountain that would have been the Women’s Table, Alex caught a flicker of movement.