had gone through, making her Anna’s daughter for real and forever. She’d taken to David’s cabin—and his family —instantly, yet she’d been equally intrigued by their flight back to the States, charming the attendants and chattering in a mix of Spanish and English, the latter of which currently carried more than a little of an outback twang.
The trip to the cabin had been a delight . . . and so was the small family they were building. Anna had tried to hold back at first, not wanting to assume anything or fall too quickly. She kept reminding herself that Rosa was hers, and that relationship needed to be separate from her and David’s budding romance.
On their third afternoon at the cabin, though, he had gotten a couple of cousins to babysit and took her out for a long ride to an Aboriginal site, where Anna delighted in the pictograms carved high on the weathered stones. They were painted in hidden clefts in colors that were still bright and vivid, and made her feel like the artists had just packed up their paints and moved on only moments before their arrival.
After exploring, they had camped and drunk homemade wine until they were giggling like little kids, then made clumsy love for the first time, in a sleeping bag that wasn’t quite built for two. Then, later, drunk only on each other, they had made love again, lying atop the sleeping bag, naked under the stars and moon. When morning came, there was no question that they were a couple, and that they were in it for the long haul.
As for the rest? They would figure it out as they went. For now, they were taking each day as it came, and enjoying the hell out of life. With David’s time off coming to a close, though, things were going to change. As much as Anna would’ve liked to go with him to every new outbreak, new adventure, she had Rosa to think about— school, friends, that sort of thing—so she had started looking around for a place to live, and had surprised herself by gravitating toward the Albuquerque area.
David had taken a laid-back “when I’m not off on assignment, home is where you two are” attitude about things, so he and Rosa were going to spend the next few days checking out the city and its ’burbs, and thinking about putting down roots there. He’d been curious about Anna’s trip into canyon country, but hadn’t pressed. He would someday, she knew. But not yet.
A year ago, if someone had told her that in twelve months she would be part of a mom-dad-kid trifecta and thinking about getting a job at one of the universities in the city nearest Skywatch, she would’ve laughed her ass off. Hell, she wouldn’t have believed it even if she’d seen it in a vision. But it was her new reality, her new life. And she was freaking loving every minute of it.
She’d earned this reprieve. They all had. For her—and, she hoped, for all of her teammates—it wasn’t about zapping from place to place anymore, wasn’t about training and prepping for the next equinox or solstice, the next attack. It wasn’t about saving the world—it was about living in it, and enjoying every moment.
And as she pulled through the wide-open gates of Skywatch, she was surprised to realize that she was enjoying the hell out of this particular moment too.
She’d been sad to leave David and Rosa behind, and had figured she would treat the ceremony more like a duty visit to her relatives than anything. But her spirits lifted suddenly when she saw the front of the mansion jam-packed with a dizzying variety of conveyances, and it hit her that she might be back at Skywatch, but it was nothing like it had been before.
The vehicles ranged from Harleys, Victories and other two-wheelers leaned up in the rock garden to the right of the main entrance, to a wide assortment of banged-up jeeps and random rentals, all the way up to the sleek black Jaguar that Leah had bought for Strike, partly as a joke on his bloodline name, and partly because she liked going fast. The narrow-nosed helicopter off to one side probably belonged to Nate, who’d always had a thing for techware and had undoubtedly needed to get back in the air. He and Alexis had loved flying together, after all.
Oh, and of course, there was Sven and Cara’s windsail, a flimsy wheeled surfboard thing that cruised along the hardpan at stupid speeds. They had surprised everyone by staying on at Skywatch when Reese and Dez relocated permanently to Denver, taking a goodly number of the winikin with them to found a bunch of nonprofits and see about spreading out the Nightkeeper Fund.
Despite Sven’s former footloose tendencies, he and Cara had decided Skywatch was the best place for Mac, Pearl, and their pups, at least for the time being. So they had stayed to oversee things, and were helping Jade and Lucius fully catalog the library and figure out how to keep the Nightkeepers’ records secure for the next twenty-six millennia or so. They all wanted to believe that Rabbit’s magic had barred the kax and the kohan from the earth for good, but they weren’t taking any chances.
No doubt Sven had parked his toy out front as a reminder that these were his digs now, a way of marking his turf that was a little more subtle than taking a whizz on the pillars that ran on either side of the covered overhang leading up to the front door.
Then again, Anna wouldn’t put it past him to have done that, too.
She was grinning at the thought as she parked at random amid the vehicular mob scene, killed the engine, and just sat for a moment, looking up at the mansion. It was the same white-trimmed stone as before, with its sprawling wings and low-maintenance landscaping, but somehow it looked different to her now, as if it had changed.
Or maybe—probably—she was the one who’d changed.
Then the door swung open to reveal Strike, Leah and Jox jammed into the opening, waving and shouting for her to get her ass inside already, looking like they were so damn glad to see her they couldn’t stand themselves.
She was out of the car in a flash, leaving her luggage behind, and dodging through the jammed parking area to meet them halfway.
Leah got to her first. “You look amazing!” Hauling Anna into an energetic hug, she whispered, “I’m so happy for you!” She broke away with a grin and a wink as Strike and Jox reached them, and passed Anna off for more hugs, more exclamations.
“Come in, come in.” They urged her up the walkway so quickly that she didn’t get a chance to hesitate, as she had done almost five years earlier, when she’d first come back after so long, and found only bad old memories.
Now there were new memories—not all of them good, granted, but enough good ones to balance off the bad. And, really, she couldn’t regret the things that had made her the person she was today, living the life she had now.
Better yet, as she walked through the front doors, past the engraved sign that showed the world tree and reminded her to fight, protect and forgive, she felt for the first time since she was a teenager that she really had come back to her childhood home, and she was safe there. And, better yet, she was happy to be there for a while . . . though she’d be happy to get back to her family, too.
Maybe, hopefully, the teammates would eventually find a way to bring their human families into the compound and include them in the Cardinal Day celebrations. Because gods knew there would be human families and more celebrations—there were too few of them to intermarry, and they had vowed to keep the traditions alive, one way or another. There would need to be changes, of course, ways of explaining the teammates and their gatherings so the humans wouldn’t find them too strange, but one day soon, Skywatch would be filled to its seams once more, would be alive once more, as it had been in their parents’ times.
For now, though, this was good. It was right.
And it was time to party.
As the quick spring dusk descended on Skywatch, the teammates gathered beneath the ceiba tree; they had decided to start a new tradition of meeting out there, at the center of their little village. Where once the area had been shadowed with the ashes of the fallen and packed hard by countless feet coming and going from the training hall, now it was softly carpeted with a faint, fuzzy green, suggesting that while the Nightkeepers’ magic might’ve ramped down, the earth magic that sustained their rain forest grotto was still going strong, keeping the ground unusually fertile.
And the grove apparently wasn’t the only thing benefitting from some fertility dancing, Myr thought with a sidelong look at where Sasha, Reese and Cara were sitting at a picnic table comparing notes; all three had announced their pregnancies at lunch, and gotten a raucous round of applause. Cara was the only one with a visible baby bump, suggesting that she and Sven had gotten a jump on things prior to the end date, intentionally or not. The other two weren’t showing yet, but they freaking glowed.
