Epilogue

Eleanora Eames sat at the station waiting for her train. She’d bought the ticket that morning and now she was nervous as a cat, wanting to be in California already without having to sit up on the train for days on end to accomplish the feat. Her excitement soon wore through her worry, and then she found that she was giddy with unbridled energy. She couldn’t believe she was actually doing it, she was actually leaving Massachusetts and starting her life.

It seemed like a dream.

“I bought us some coffee.”

Eleanora looked up into her savior’s eyes. She didn’t know how or why it happened, but Desmond had changed his mind. He’d seen that the men he was aligned with weren’t doing the Lord’s work. Instead they were torturing and terrorizing young women, trying to get them to confess to witchcraft. He’d helped Eleanora escape and now he was joining her on her trip out West.

Nothing had occurred between them, but she knew he liked her. Liked her the way a man liked a woman . . . and strangely enough, she was starting to think that maybe she had similar feelings for him. But she wasn’t going to jump into anything. There was a whole world she wanted to see, and he was going to join her on the adventure.

Their first stop would be Echo Park, California. In her mother’s Bible—the most cherished possession Eleanora owned—she’d found the address of a woman called Hessika. She didn’t know how this woman knew her mother, but Eleanora aimed to pick this Hessika’s brain, find out anything she could about her long-dead mother.

“I think it’s time,” Desmond said, interrupting her thoughts.

She grinned up at him and waved their tickets in the air.

“I’m glad you decided to come with me,” she said—and, darn it if she didn’t blush.

“Me, too,” he agreed, looking embarrassed but happy.

He reached down, picked up their luggage, and then offered her his arm.

“Shall we?”

She slipped her arm through his and, together, they walked to the train that would take them away from Massachusetts and on to their destinies.