When the time came, Brandt held out the torch to Rabbit, who lit it with a quick burst of fire magic and stepped away. But Brandt waved him in. “Get your ass in here. You’re part of the family.”
Rabbit’s quick surprise was followed by a rare smile. He nodded and stepped into the group as Patience, Hannah, Harry, and Braden all added their hands to the torch Brandt held. When Rabbit too was gripping the torch, they together touched it to the edge of the pyre. The fire caught and spread quickly, with Rabbit giving a little pyrokinetic encouragement. Within minutes the whole thing was ablaze, driving back the circle of mourners.
The gray smoke spiraled up into the sky, twining tendrils of gray amid puffy winter clouds. Two tendrils crossed, darkening for a moment. When they parted again, an eagle flew where there hadn’t been one before.
“Did you . . . ?” Patience trailed off.
“Yeah. I did.” Brandt glanced at his forearm as if just realizing that he was now the only person on the earth plane who wore the mark of the eagle bloodline.
“Oh.” Hannah’s soft exclamation drew their attention back to the sky, where a dozen other eagles suddenly winged out of a cloud and bore down on the lone eagle. They split to surround the single bird, and then the thirteen eagles flew together, arrowing up into the sky, into the clouds . . . and disappearing.
“That didn’t just happen.” Patience’s voice was thick. “Eagles don’t flock. They’re loners.”
Brandt slipped an arm around her waist and leaned into her. “Not today, they’re not.”
It was a long time before anyone said anything else.
Then, too soon, it was time for Hannah and the boys to hit the road. She had insisted on taking one of the Jeeps rather than having Strike ’port them, staying off the magical radar from the very beginning. She and Carlos planned to ditch the vehicle by night-fall; Sven would track the GPS the following day and retrieve the Jeep . . . and Hannah, Carlos, Harry, and Braden would be in the wind.
Gone.
Most of the teammates said their good-byes on the way back to the mansion, including Rabbit, who had to snuffle back tears as he hugged the twins good-bye. That left just Patience and Brandt to accompany Hannah and the boys out to the looping driveway at the front of the mansion, where Carlos was going to meet them with the Jeep.
While Brandt took the boys a few steps away and crouched down, talking to them earnestly, Patience threw her arms around Hannah. “Take care of them,” she whispered. “And you take care too.
Be good to yourself.”
“I will. I promise.” Hannah hugged her back fiercely. But when they parted, the winikin’s eyes glittered with a mixture of hurt and anger. “He didn’t say good-bye.”
Patience nodded. “I know.” For all that Jox had followed Hannah with his eyes when she wasn’t looking, he hadn’t spent any real time with her. Worse, he’d made only a brief appearance at the funeral, and he’d slipped away once the good-byes started.
Granted, the royal winikin had a heavy burden of responsibility to his blood-bound charges and as the leader of the winikin, and he’d had to prioritize those duties over Hannah. But as far as Patience was concerned, their situation might suck, but that didn’t give him the right to be cruel.
“You should go after him,” she said. “If nothing else, you could corner him, kiss the hell out of him, and have the satisfaction of imagining him pining after you for the next two years.”
One corner of Hannah’s mouth kicked up. “I tried that a long time ago. It didn’t help.”
The Jeep cruised around the corner of the garage then. Seeing the vehicle, the twins strangle-hugged Brandt and bolted for Patience.
Faced with the reality she’d been trying not to think about, she sat on the paved pathway as her legs practically gave out. She opened her arms to her sons and gathered them close, trying her best not to clutch too hard and freak them out more than they already were. When they drew away, faces solemn and swimming with tears, she said to Braden, voice cracking, “Promise me you’ll behave for Hannah and Carlos?”
He nodded. “I promise.”
“And you’ll look out for Harry?”
“Of course.” His look of offense cheered her immeasurably.
She turned to Harry. “Promise me you’ll get in trouble every now and then? Not big trouble, but some little, fun trouble.”
His too-serious eyes glinted. “I promise.”
“And you’ll look out for Braden?”
“Of course.”
“You’re sure you’ve got them straight, right?” Brandt asked from behind her. “I’d hate to think you mixed them up.”
Her laugh came out as a sob, but she was grinning through her tears as she held back a hand for him to help her to her feet. “I never mix them up.” Okay, almost never. But as Brandt pulled her vertical and urged her back against his strong, warm body, she felt better for having laughed, and the twins looked far less tragic than they had moments earlier. In fact, Braden was starting to glance at the Jeep.
“Okay, guys.” Carlos climbed down and pushed the driver’s seat forward so the twins could get into the back, where he’d installed a pair of kiddie seats. “Last one in is a rotten . . . er, something.”
Braden was the first one to break away and head for the vehicle. Harry followed soon, though. He shot several looks back at Patience and Brandt, but then faced forward and climbed in. Carlos strapped them in, then slid the seat back into place. Leaving the door open, he approached Hannah, looking distinctly wary.
“Do you have everything you need?” she asked diffidently.
“Change of plans.”
Hannah stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not going.” Carlos jerked his chin toward the mansion’s front door. “He is.”
Jox stood there with a knapsack slung over his shoulder and a resolute expression on his face.
“Oh,” Patience said as her heart thumped a couple of times and her eyes filmed with a new wash of tears at the thought of Hannah and Jox finally getting a chance to be together after more than twenty-
five years.
Hannah stared at him with an expression that bordered on horror.
After a long moment, she blurted, “Is that all you’re bringing?”
He lifted a shoulder in a casual, knapsack-burdened shrug. “I’ve always traveled light . . . except where it came to you.”
Her eyes filled. “You rat. I thought you weren’t speaking to me. I thought . . . damn it, I don’t know what I thought. But it wasn’t good.”
“I couldn’t say anything until I told Strike I wanted to leave. He . . . it wasn’t easy, not for either of us. Then I had to talk to Rabbit. And now . . .” He glanced back at the mansion where he’d been born, the one he’d renovated from top to bottom and run as his own kingdom for the past two and a half years. The one that represented humanity’s single hope for survival, even if humanity didn’t know it.
“Now I’m ready to leave. That is . . . if you’ll have me?”
“But, but—” Hannah went speechless for a few seconds as a tear tracked down her face. Her voice dropped to a disbelieving whisper. “What about the war? What about the other winikin? Who’s going to run things around here?”
Jox came down the rest of the pathway to join her in the semicircular drive, stopping a few feet away. “The war won’t be won or lost by a single winikin, but you and Woody already proved that one person can make a difference when it comes to protecting the next generation. As for the other winikin and keeping this place on an even keel, they’ll manage. If they can’t put together some sort of a workable democracy, with Strike as the buck-stopper, I’ve left instructions. One way or the other, they’ll be okay without me.”