“You didn’t hate or fear,” she said. “You opened your home, then your life, to a stranger, a witch, and one who was being hunted. You could have turned her away, and me inside her, but you didn’t. Why?”
So many answers, Simon thought. He settled on one. “She was a miracle, and so were you, inside her. The world needed miracles.”
She smiled at him. “It’s going to get them, ready or not.”
She rode into town with him, taking Grace to give her mare some attention and exercise. The hills rolled around them, green with summer and surging wildflowers. She smelled earth freshly turned and planted, heard the shouts, the clang of metal from the barracks where recruits trained.
A small herd of deer slipped out of the trees to crop their way along a steep ridge heavy with trees. Above, the sky held soft and hopeful blue after the night’s storm.
The road, cleared of abandoned cars and trucks—all laboriously towed to an outlying garage for repair or dismantling, wound toward New Hope.
Houses, she thought, most in good repair now, and most occupied. Those that couldn’t be salvaged had been—like the vehicles—scavenged for parts. Wood, pipes, tiles, wiring, anything that could be used. On the reclaimed land, beef cattle, milk cows, goats, sheep, a few llamas, more horses grazed behind carefully tended fences.
At a bend in the road, the pulse of magick thrummed from the Tropics her mother had helped create. There grew groves of citrus trees, olive trees, palm, coffee beans, pepper, and other herbs and spices. Workers on harvesting detail paused to wave.
“Miracles,” Simon said simply.
After passing the security checkpoint, they rode into New Hope, once, at the height of the Doom, occupied only by death and ghosts. Now it thrived with more than two thousand people, and a memorial tree honored the dead. The community gardens and greenhouses, a site of two vicious attacks, continued to bloom and grow. The community kitchen her mother had established before Fallon had been born served meals daily.
The Max Fallon Magick Academy, named for her sire, the New Hope schools, the town hall, the shops open for bartering, the homes lining Main Street, the clinic, the library, the life reclaimed through sweat, determination, sacrifice.
Wasn’t all this, she wondered, another kind of miracle?
“You miss the farm,” she said as they guided the horses to the hitching posts and troughs.
“I’ll get back to it.”
“You miss the farm,” she repeated. “You left it for me, so every time I come into New Hope I’m glad you left it for a good place with good people.”
She dismounted, gave Grace a stroke before looping the reins around the rail.
She walked with him to what had once been the elementary school and now housed the New Hope Clinic.
They’d made changes over the years—Fallon had gone back through the crystal to see how it had all begun. The entrance hall held chairs for those waiting for an exam or checkup. A section held toys and books collected from abandoned houses.
A couple of toddlers played with blocks—one had wings fluttering in delight. A pregnant woman sat plying knitting needles and yarn over the mound of her belly. A teenager sprawled in another chair, looking bored. An old man sat hunched, his breathing a rattling wheeze.
As they turned toward the offices, Hannah Parsoni—the mayor’s daughter, Duncan and Tonia’s sister—hurried down the right corridor, a clipboard in one hand, a stethoscope around her neck.
She had her luxurious mane of dark blond hair pulled back in a long tail. Her eyes, already a warm brown, deepened with pleasure at the sight of them. “I was hoping to see you both. We’re swamped,” she added, “so I’ve only got a minute. Rachel has me working with the scheduled patients and walk-ins, but I helped with the first triage on the wounded. We haven’t lost anyone. Some of the people you freed…”
Compassion rolled off her, so deep Fallon felt the waves on her skin.
“Some of them are going to need extended treatment, and counseling, but none of them are critical now. Lana—she’s amazing. How’s Colin?”
“Sleeping,” Simon told her.
“No fever, no infection,” Fallon added.
“Make sure to let your mom know. She does know, but it would help her to hear it.”
In the way she had of offering care, Hannah reached out to touch them both. “You look so tired, both of you.”
“Maybe I should do a—”
As Fallon lifted a hand to her face, Hannah took it. “A glamour? I wish you