space below the fighting women. Then he bent slightly, cupping his hands.
And then Meredith sprinted, putting everything she had left into the short run, leaving her just enough energy to leap and place one foot into Matt’s cupped hands, and then she felt herself soaring aloft, just within distance for the stave to slice cleanly through the snake of hair that was choking Theo.
After that Meredith was in free fall, with Matt trying to catch her from below. She landed more or less on top of him and they both saw what happened next.
Theo, who was bruised and bleeding, slapped out a part of her gown that was smoldering. She held out a hand for the silver bullwhip and it flew to meet her outstretched fingers. But Inari wasn’t attacking. She was waving her arms wildly, as if in terror, and then suddenly she shrieked: a sound so anguished that Meredith drew in her breath sharply. It was a death-scream.
Before their eyes she was turning back into Obaasan, into the shrunken, helpless, doll-like woman Matt and Meredith knew. But by the time this shriveled body hit the ground it was already stiff and dead, her expression one of such unrepentant malice that it was frightening.
It was Isobel and Mrs. Saitou then who came forward to stand over the body, sobbing with relief. Meredith looked at them and then up at Theo, who slowly floated to the ground.
“Thank you,” Theo said with the faintest of smiles. “You have saved me — yet again.”
“But what do you think happened to her?” Matt asked. “And why didn’t Shinichi or Misao come to help her?”
“I think they all must be dead, don’t you?” Theo’s voice was soft over the roar of the flames. “As for Inari — I think that perhaps someone destroyed her star ball. I’m afraid I was not strong enough to defeat her myself.”
“What time is it?” Meredith abruptly cried, remembering. She ran to the old SUV, which was still running. Its clock showed 12:00 midnight exactly.
“Did we save the people?” Matt asked desperately.
Theo turned her face outward toward the center of the town. For nearly a minute she was still, as if listening for something. At last, when Meredith felt that she might shatter from tension, she turned back and said quietly, “Dear Mama, Grandmama, and I are one, now. I sense children who are finding themselves holding knivesand some with guns. I sense them standing in their sleeping parents’ rooms, unable to remember how they got there. And I sense parents, hiding in closets, a moment ago frightened for their very lives, who are seeing weapons dropped and children falling onto master bedroom floors, sobbing and bewildered.”
“We did it, then. You did it. You held her off,” Matt panted.
Still gentle and sober, Theo said, “Someone else — far away — did much more. I know that the town needs healing. But Grandmama and Mama agree. Because of them, no child has killed a parent this night, and no parent has killed a child. The long nightmare of Inari and her Last Midnight is over.”
Meredith, grimy and bedraggled as she was, felt something rise and swell inside her, bigger and bigger, until, for all her training, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. It exploded out of her in a yell of exultation.
She found that Matt was shouting too. He was as grubby and unkempt as she was, but he seized her by the hands and whirled her around in a barbarian victory dance.
And it was fun, whirling around and yelling like a kid. Maybe — maybe in trying to be calm, in always being the most grown-up, she had missed out on the essence of fun, which always felt as if it had some childlike quality to it.
Matt had no trouble in expressing his feelings, whatever they were: childlike, mature, stubborn, happy. Meredith found herself admiring this, and also thinking that it had been a long time since she’d really looked at Matt. But now she felt a sudden wave of feeling for him. And she could see that Matt felt the same way about her. As if he’d never really looked at her properly before.
This was the moment…when they were meant to kiss. Meredith had seen it so often in movies, and read about it in books, that it was almost a given.
But this was life, it wasn’t a story. And when the moment came, Meredith found herself holding Matt’s shoulders while he held hers, and she could see that he was thinking exactly the same thing about the kiss.
The moment stretched…
Then, with a grin, Matt’s face showed that he knew what to do. Meredith did too.
They both moved in, and hugged each other. When they drew back, they were both grinning. They knew who they were. They were very different, very close friends.
Meredith hoped that they always would be.
They both turned to look at Theo, and Meredith felt a pang in her heart, the first since she had heard they’d saved the town. Theo was changing. It was the look on her face as she watched them that gave Meredith the pang.
After being young, and while watching youth at its peak, she was once again aging, wrinkling, her hair going white instead of moonlit silver. At last, she was an old woman wearing a raincoat covered with bits of paper.
“Mrs. Flowers!” This person, it was perfectly safe and right to kiss. Meredith flung her arms about the frail old woman, lifting her off her feet in excitement. Matt joined them, and they boosted her above their heads. They carried her like this to the Saitous, mother and daughter, who were watching the fire.
There, sobered, they put her down.
“Isobel,” Meredith said. “God! I’m so sorry — your home…”
“Thank you,” Isobel said in her soft, slurred voice. Then she turned away.
Meredith felt chilled. She was even beginning to regret the celebration, when Mrs.
Saitou said, “Do you know, this is the greatest moment in the history of our family?
For hundreds of years, that ancient kitsune — oh, yes, I’ve always known what she was — has been forcing herself upon innocent humans. And for the last three centuries it has been my family line of samurai mikos that she has terrorized. Now my husband can come home at last.”
Meredith looked at her, startled. Mrs. Saitou nodded.
“He tried to defy her and she banished him from the house. Ever since Isobel was born, I have feared for her. And now, please forgive her. She has trouble expressing what she feels.”
“I know about that,” Meredith said quietly. “I’ll go have a little talk with her, if it’s all right.”
If ever in her life she could explain to a fellow traveler what fun having fun was, she thought, it was now.
Damon had stopped and was kneeling behind an enormous broken tree branch.
Stefan pulled both girls to him and caught them so that they all three landed just behind his brother.
Elena found herself staring at a very large tree trunk. Still as big as it was, it was nowhere near as large as she had been expecting. It was true; the four of them certainly couldn’t have held hands around it. But in the back of her mind had been lurking images of moons and trees and trunks that were as tall as skyscrapers, in which a star ball could be hidden on any “floor,” in any “room.”
This was simply a grand oak tree trunk sitting in a sort of fairy circle — perhaps twenty feet in diameter on which no dead leaf had strayed. It was a paler color than the loam they had been running on, and even sparkled in a few places. Overall, Elena was relieved.
More, she could even see the star ball. She’d feared — among other things — that it might be up too high to climb, that it might be so entangled with roots or branches that today, certainly after hundreds or even thousands of years, it would be impossible to chop out. But there it was, the greatest star ball that had ever been, fully the size of a beach ball, and it nestled freely in the first crutch of the tree.
Her mind was racing ahead. They’d done it; they’d found the star ball. But how much time would it take to get it back to where Sage was? Automatically, she glanced at her compass and saw to her surprise that the needle now pointed southwest — in other words, back to the Gatehouse. That was a thoughtful touch of Sage’s. And perhaps they didn’t have to go through the trials backward; they could simply use their Master Key to go back to Fell’s Church, and then…well, Mrs.
Flowers would know what to do with it.
If it came to that, maybe they could just blackmail Her, whoever She was, to go away forever in exchange for the star ball. Although — could they live with the thought that she might do this again — and again — and again to other towns?
Even as she planned, Elena watched the expressions of her comrades: the childlike wonder on Bonnie’s
