Possession

EPILOGUE

I wrote it off to adrenaline, but I didn’t feel as sore and ragged as I’d expected to on the way home. But it turned out I really wasn’t hurt. When I went to shower, although my clothes were torn, filthy, and bloodstained, I wasn’t. My injuries had vanished except for the mildest pink traces on my legs and arms. My shoulder was fine, too. I’d certainly been in a bad way when I’d arrived at the office, but sometime between then and getting home again, the hurts had been wiped away. I never did find out how, though I suspected it was something to do with the brightness that had lurked in the corner of my office.

Lily Goss said it was the work of an angel. She claimed to have felt it standing over her shoulder. Or maybe that had been her sister, Julianne. Of the identity she wasn’t sure, but the presence of something that radiated goodness was not a point she would argue. It had been there and that was that. And that was why she wasn’t upset that while I had been chasing Limos and the rest of them had been holding tight to Hazzard and the souls of their loved ones, Julianne Goss had slipped out of the world. Of the three patients, only Julianne didn’t wake up. She died quietly and with no fuss at 10:27 p.m. Lily seemed relieved and even happy for her sister and I suppose that’s the best we could have hoped for. Her doctor said he didn’t know how she’d held on so long. He didn’t use the word “miracle”—it didn’t seem appropriate in the face of death—but it seemed to hover in the air nearby.

Kevin Sterling and Jordan Delamar both improved at remarkable speeds, though even the most optimistic doctors weren’t sure how much their lives would return to normal—they’d been injured and bedridden for a long time and it’s slow, hard work coming back from such a state. The Sterling family seemed to take the news well and it appeared that Labor and Industry was going to settle Kevin’s case without more fussing about the details, so the house might finally get finished, too. Olivia’s scars had faded to dim lines and the pain from her surgery vanished completely. She talked about possibly going back to dance class, but she wasn’t ready to make that decision yet—she wanted to spend some time with her family first.

Westman and Delamar exercised their legal right to marry as soon as Jordy was able to speak and write steadily enough to sign the paperwork and say “I do.” Westman sent me a copy of the wedding photo with a note of thanks, which I thought was very sweet of them. I declined the invitation to their party, held at Pike Place Market, since I couldn’t face the ghosts there again so soon—if ever.

The Great Wheel had to be shut down for two days to be inspected, but eventually it was declared mechanically fine and as safe as ever—how safe that was would be open to interpretation. The bizarre winds along the waterfront had caused some damage to parts of the new tunnel construction zone and the dismantling work on the viaduct and a few people had been injured, but none of them worse than a broken arm suffered by a woman who’d fallen down the stairs by the Great Wheel’s loading platform. The rest of the Independence Day celebrations hadn’t been affected by the wind or the localized downpour and the freaky weather was written off as just the usual sort of Seattle summer weirdness.

A month later I had dinner with Phoebe’s family again. I reveled in being around them and their unconditional love for one another. Even when one of them was being foolish or bad, the rest stood by them or cajoled them back into line and generally acted . . . well, like family. My own family was small, fragmented, and fragile, but if Carlos was right that the ties of affection are as strong as the ties of blood, then I was, in my slow and often makeshift way, creating my own family from what I had with Quinton and by the Masons’ example.

Though, on the family front, I wasn’t seeing as much of Quinton as I wanted to. I hadn’t expected to as the situation with his father deteriorated, but it was still a sharp little thorn in my side that just as I was starting to get into the idea, my tiny family was being put under considerable strain by his father. But one thing I was learning from the Masons was that you work with what you have. Quinton was spending a lot of his time preparing to leave the country and fix what his dad had broken—the more we found out, the worse it looked, and that wasn’t even considering the hurt and betrayal that was now irremediable between them. I hadn’t heard what the final extent of James Purlis’s injuries was, but I assumed I’d find out eventually.

I had said I’d go with him, but Quinton asked me not to.

“Why not?” I asked, puzzled more than hurt.

He pulled me close, wrapping me in his arms. I could hear his heart beating steady and calm, the warmth of him enfolding me like a cloak. “Because you are the one and only Harper Blaine and you can’t just disappear. I’m already nobody. I can slip through holes in the system. But he’ll see you coming. He’ll track you and I can’t stop that. I don’t want him to know you’re a threat until it’s too damned late for him to stop us.”

“What about you? Won’t he know you’re out there, hunting him down?”

“He might think it, but he won’t be sure. He knows I don’t want to leave you—he counted on it before and I think he’ll count on it again—and so long as you are here in Seattle, doing what you normally do, he’ll be unsure where I am and what I’m doing. It’ll puzzle him and then it will bother him, and eventually his uncertainty will trip him up. I know him better than he knows me now. And I’m going to use that against him.

“It’s a lot to ask of you, I know. I’m sorry,” he continued, “but will you play along and remain here until I let you know it’s time?”

“It’s going to be hard to pretend you’re here when I’ll be wishing all the time that you really were.”

“I’ll always be here,” he said. He pressed his finger to my chest between my breasts. “I’ll always be right here.”

“Where?” I asked, teasing and ruffling his hair. “Here?” I kissed him.

He laughed and kissed me back, then kissed my neck and worked his way lower, saying with each kiss, “here . . . and here . . . and here . . .” until we were giggling, and then gasping and not talking at all. . . .

I knew I’d do what he asked when the time was right—I had no choice. There were forces beyond the normal at work and it is, after all, my job to fix that sort of thing. And there is also that other strange thing at work: love.

For now, I was going to treasure what I had and do my best with it. I’d fix the rest of the world later.