It’s a mystery I have to live with now, not knowing if Shira is alive or dead. It is my promise to keep looking for her.
I haven’t heard from her in this world or the other ever since Luke and I made it out of that warehouse barely alive. I’ve tried to reach her endlessly, tried to reach out mentally and otherwise.
She’s gone.
I reached out to Roxy in Marfa. Luke and I went past there to see if Jack was still alive in this world. If he is, we don’t know. His house was abandoned, no sign of him or Sirvana. And when we asked the locals about him...
Well, no one remembers him leaving. No one hardly even remembers him as such. Just as he had been a mystery in his arrival, he remained one in his exit.
Except for Roxy.
As soon as he left, her powers started to return. She told me everything he had done to her. Everything.
It was not a pretty tale.
She is a powerful witch, a powerful one. And she remembers now. And there are others like her in Marfa, a small coven of friends she had formed over time and who also never remembered what they were, but who are remembering now. Not even the hunters knew they existed. Maybe witches can unite.
Other hunters have gained the ability to remember the dreams as well, not only Luke. Slowly, the battle transmutes from one we have fought inside our minds, to one being fought right now in the real world.
Two hunters stand guard with Roxy in Marfa now, two hunters waiting for the man who calls himself Jack to return. If he returns.
I met Luke’s friends. Eddie, Nancy. And I met many of his...achievements...over the years. He’s been a busy man. He never introduced me to any of the girls, of course, especially not the blonde who flaunts her tits at the Tiki-Licious and gives me the evil eye when she thinks I’m not looking. But there’s little he can hide from me, it’s the drawback he suffers at having a girlfriend who can read minds.
Then again, he’s getting better at it as well. There’s magic inside him, and I’m helping him develop it, just as Shira helped me.
There’s magic inside Eddie as well, deep magic, untouched.
And Nancy. I confess that I felt a pang of jealousy when I met her. Silly, I know. But there’s a bond between Luke and her, a deep bond that I can sense but that I don’t yet fully understand.
Of course, I know about Dania’s advances to him. But she and I have become good friends. I kind of owe her for helping save my life.
It’s been only a month since my miraculous appearance in his bedroom after the warehouse battle. I didn’t have a lot of stuff in LA, but it was a bitch to get it shipped over here to Florida. My landlady wasn’t impressed.
But as my own body traveled through space and time, so did that of many others: Shira, Karolyna, the other witches. They are gone.
Ronald contacted me. He is not the zombie he once was, and Shira had left him with instructions to protect me if anything ever happened to her, to give me access to her house and her funds if I needed them. He had no memory of the violent night that he and the others had almost taken me on. Zombies, slaves—they had been completely under Shira’s mental control on that night. But he did have some slight memory of the times he and Shira had been together, something she was probably unaware of.
He loves her. And he’s always loved her. And love is probably the only thing which cannot overwhelm memory.
I sense the demon energy in the air here in West Rocks, the soft whispers of darkness from the Gulf breeze that none of the humans can hear.
Luke hears them, too.
I know Nancy does as well, in some portion of her mind, but she hasn’t acknowledged her powers yet.
When she does, we’ll be here to help her cross to the other side.
Luke is surrounded by magic, by beings related to his duties in the other world, duties now slowly being relegated to this world. As with me, little in his life has been coincidence.
I hold his hand under the table at Ally Joe’s. Eddie’s our waiter today. Luke has the day off. I rub his muscular leg and can’t help melting when I look into his eyes.
There’s a warmth around him, a kindness underneath the killing machine that he is.
Like a typical man, he asked me once to show him some of the “kinkier” aspects of magic.
“Kinky?” I had asked.
He blushed, not wanting to elaborate.
I don’t know any kinky magic. But Luke’s touch needs no magic; it is magic in itself; the way he finds me and slides upwards so sweetly between my folds that I’m gushing by the time his touch leaves me. The way he whispers in my ear as he enters me, chants of power and darkness as his mind fills mine during our acts of love. There’s magic in how he turns me, presses his chest down on my back while he maneuvers himself inside me.
And there’s magic in his eyes, his lips, his tongue.
Kinky? No. So much more.
So much...better.