by Angel Payne
I pace over, stopping when I’m directly by his side. “He’s right,” I state softly. “And there are times when I wish it weren’t so, either…but he’s right. Frail or strong, curvy or skinny, doubtful or fearless, powerless or even able to fly”—I smile through my awestricken tears as my kid hovers in the air between Reece and me—“we’re always going to want to go further, accomplish more, be more. And sometimes we’ll succeed, but at others we’ll fail. But that’s not going to stop us. Even perfection—or whatever it is that you perceive as perfection—isn’t going to be enough, Faline. Don’t you see? None of it will ever be enough.”
There’s more, so much more that I can say, but the fullness of my heart indicates that for now, it’s all right. Or maybe I know that because of Angie’s and Trixie’s affirming smiles. Or Reece’s electric magic of a hand squeeze. Or the matching hug my head receives once my son parks his backside on my shoulder and then leans in for the kid-sized clinch. It’s a moment I bask in because I know it can only be just that: a moment of a very minor celebration because we’ve still got so far to go. Faline still has both my daughters in ruthless chokeholds.
Until…she doesn’t.
My breath snags as she relents on the noose grips around Mis and Ira. But just as swiftly, she’s grabbing both of them by the hands, until I see their little fingertips glowing green from the pressure. Their stares have turned the same color, overflowing with moss-green terror. In so many ways, both of them have predicted what the bitch is going to attempt.
What I’ve been dreading since I got here.
“Well, bravo, Mistress Flare,” Faline sneers. “You get the day’s honor for the prettiest speech.” She forces the girls’ arms into victory pumps as she dips into a mocking bow. “Yet regrettably, it’s also the most ineffective.” Then rises up, a sinister smirk turning the weak scribble of her mouth into a swerving strand of spaghetti instead. “Because nothing from your pathetic little mouths have changed my mind—and now you’ll all have to simply live with the consequences!”
Yep.
Exactly what I’ve been dreading.
Down to every last syllable she utters. Every grand gesture she makes. Every sickening swirl of her head as she prepares to open up a new portal into the darkness of the world beneath us.
And does.
“No,” I rasp.
“Noooooo!” Mis wails.
“Madre! Madre! No!” Ira screams.
I yearn to shriek out with them. What’s the sound of a sun screaming? There has to be one. There has to be. And that sound has to be so hot and hateful that it shatters the air—and destroys a witch. But my throat is too dry. My senses are too weak. Soon, even my body is, as well. It takes everything in my being to melt down just three of Reece’s pillars and then to race forward, through the gap.
As Faline reopens her portal. The doorway into the dark world where she’ll banish the girls forever.
But once the wide round threshold is open, my mouth drops open in a matching shape. “What…the…” I finally manage to stammer, attempting to peer deeper inside the circle—only there are no depths inside there to be seen. Unlike the first time Reece and I ventured under the city, there’s no smell of earth, vibrations of traffic, or scurries of eternally nocturnal creatures. It’s a void. Literally, a blank space of nothingness.
“Oh, my God!”
But the Big Guy isn’t ready with any fast answers—and right now, that’s exactly what I need. I whirl back around, quickly locating the closest thing in my world to a living, breathing version of the Almighty. Except that right now, Reece isn’t looking all of anything or mighty in the least. He’s down on the ground, on all fours, with our son parked in the middle of his back. I blink in pure astonishment. And then again. Unless our son has had another wild and crazy growth spurt during the last hour, he’s now glowing with a lot more than just his light. There are defined streaks of blue in his energy streams.
Which are now aimed at the same hole that Faline sliced open in the atmosphere.
Or…did she?
I whip my focus back around, taking in the woman with new eyes. Okay, with the same eyes I beheld her with before but with a clearer jolt of understanding.
Her sunken eye sockets. The old mop hair. Her wan skin—which, now that I’m looking closer, seems to be the only thing besides her bones filling out her catsuit. She’s gone from being a sleek black Siamese to one of those weird breeds with all the wrinkles. While her aura still radiates nothing but bloodred, her actual energy and vitality are…
Gone.
Completely.
“Oh, my God.” I can’t avoid the repetition, though this time it’s twice as thick with my bewilderment. “Then wh-wh-what…or h-h-how…”
“Mama! Hey, Mama!”
I wheel around, frantic about locating my son now. I don’t expect to find Lux in the same place, but I do. There he is, riding my fine but weary husband like a champion buckaroo. I clamp a hand over my mouth for a second, barely muffling my overwhelmed sob. Can it really be true? Are we truly on the brink of ending this wild ride, once and for all?
“Yes, my incredible light?” I’m finally able to answer him.
“Holy shit, Mama!” Lux points excitedly at the portal. The strange opening that leads…nowhere. Even Faline has caught on to the anomaly and scrambles backward from the opening through which she was eager to leap before. “You see, Mama?” he yells. “You see the magic door? The door that sissies and I made?”
The sissies.
Oh, God.
Mis and Ira!
“Emma!” Reece snaps together the same connection at exactly the same time. While he roars it, I’m already maximizing the moment. In one lunge forward, I whisk the twins away from the woman’s distracted grip. In one sweep back, I funnel every ounce of my attention down my free arm and across the patch of terrace we’ve just crossed. I almost close my eyes, not able to fathom what will happen if my powers—pushed to perform at speeds and across spaces to which they’ve never been challenged—let me down.
“Mama!” The exclamation comes from one of the twins this time. Swaying as if I’ve just given three quarts of blood, I don’t have the capacity to determine which one. All I know is that hearing her refer to me by that name, and with such joy, feels like my butt’s just landed on a cloud in heaven instead of a cement sidewalk. “Mama, look at the magic of you now!”
Slowly, I peel open my gaze.
And look out over what appears to be the four-story drop into the bottom of the Music Center’s parking garage.
A whoosh of breath escapes from me.
Holy crap. I did it. I made a huge chunk of the terrace disappear.
An illusion that, thank God, Faline believed enough to jump back from.
Stumbling, fumbling, and toppling.
Until losing her balance altogether.
And then falling sideways—into the big scoop of noiseless, odorless, bottomless black air.
Before I even know if she screamed on the way in, Reece shouts, “Now, kids! All together! Now!”
And before I can blink again, the huge circle—and its new occupant—have vanished.
Gone.
Completely gone.
Vaguely, I’m aware of Mis’s and Ira’s ecstatic leaps. I’m not as able to hold back my stunned oof as they come back down, piling over my chest until I’m the bottom layer of a Richards girls pile-up.
And this time, I can truly mean the expression.
The Richards girls.
Can I actually hope to mean it? For real this time?
Still flat on my back, with dust blowing up the chiffon layers of my skirt, I roll my head to the right when a distinctive chuckle rumbles the air there. Sure enough, the stunning sight of my husband fills my sights. Reece, having flipped onto his back and then slithered over, takes my shaking fingers inside his own. I squeeze back with as much strength as I can, which isn’t much. I’ve had my powers “cranked to eleven” for close to an hour and
a half with no breaks or rest stops. It’s been the longest and most intense test of my strength. I desperately hope I passed, but a lot of me is too tired to care.
There are more important things for my concern right now. And my gratitude.
“Did anyone get the license plate on that cataclysm?” I summon enough vigor to actually laugh that one out. “Starsky? Hutch? Hondo?”
Reece snorts and rolls to face me. “Nobody here by that name, ma’am,” he murmurs while propping his head in a hand. “But if you’ll settle for a guy named Richards, who can’t wait to get his wife off the ground and into a real bed…”
“Hmmmm.” I get it out before he dips in past the kids, claiming my lips in a kiss that perfectly matches the swell of the Swan Lake overture, now drifting across the plaza. I sigh against his mouth, feeling as light and flimsy as a ballerina, surrendering myself to passion that’s as new as it is familiar, as beautiful and blinding as it is comforting and safe. “If you completely insist, Mr. Richards.”
“Oh, I insist. And a hell of a lot more.” His growl curls through me like a mix of sawdust and fairy sprinkles. The roughness of his lust is more vibrant than ever but possess a new enchantment that I still can’t figure out—and perhaps don’t want to. Maybe with Faline finally absent, this is some of his old bad-boy side emerging. Or maybe I’m seeing a whole new Reece Richards. A man of unleashed confidence and unhindered joy.
A man of ultimate freedom.
Of untethered love.
“Okay, wait.” I issue the command as the kids spring away and he moves in for a new kiss. I stress the point by pushing the man over, pinning him to the breezeway again. Reece gapes with mock outrage, but his pleading look to the kids only gets him another rousing round of “We Are Family” from them. I have no idea when or where they learned it, but the tune actually blends quite well with the ballet’s overture. The three of them are now leaping and twirling to both melodies, though Lux interrupts his rhythm for his karate kicks and ninja moves.
“I guess…I’m waiting, then?” my man finally murmurs against the pad of my index finger. I run my adoring touch up and over his nose and then back down until I’m tracing the bold angles of his sexy, stubbled chin. “Or other things?” he suggests, cranking his smirk until his dimples are gorgeous craters. “Like blatantly worshiping? Endlessly Adoring? Eternally loving?”
I hold his face in place for my fierce stamp of a kiss. “Oh, that’s my favorite one.”
His grin spreads wider. “Mine too.” He scoops a hand around the back of my neck. “It’ll always be my greatest superpower, Bunny.”
I give him another hard kiss, this time lingering to push my tongue between his lips. We both moan from the instant—and much-needed—charge the bond brings, along with the flow of other emotional energies. Connection. Inspiration. Completion.
But as we drag apart, I admit the difficulty of believing that last one. Completion. “Can it really be true?” I challenge in a fervent whisper. “Zeus? Are we really done with her now? For good?”
Reece hitches up onto one elbow. “I’m torn between keeping it to a whisper and ordering a hundred skywriters to blast it across the sky.”
I nod. “It feels…pretty weird,” I confess. “Maybe very weird.”
“But you know what would feel even weirder?” he returns.
I tilt my head, instantly mirroring the new gravity behind his gaze. While I’ll never be able to translate his thoughts as he does mine, his new intent is pretty damn clear. “Watching Faline bust out of that hole and then go back with our daughters in her arms?”
“Nooooo!” Ira tears away from her sister and Lux and sprints back over with terror reclaiming her face. “Not back in ground! Not with Madre Faline!”
By the time the girl is done with her sobbing protest, Lux and Mis have joined to embrace her from behind. Reece pushes toward her, tenderly thumbing her tears away from her face. “Hey, hey, heeeyyy,” he croons, finally drawing her in for a strong and comforting clutch. “Nothing like that is ever going to happen again, sweetness.” He pulls back and ducks his head, securing her gaze with the soft strength of his own before shifting his hold to the side of her head instead. “But you already know that, don’t you, Ira?” He grunts in satisfaction as she nods with skittish bobs. “Now tell me why you know it—because I think your mama wants to hear this part too.”
Before I can voice my concurrence to that, or even before Ira can pull in a preparatory breath for her account, Lux stabs his arm into the air like he’s practicing New York cab hailing. “Ohhhhh! I know, I know, I know!”
“Lux Mitchell Tycin.” Reece wags a rebuking finger. “I asked your sister this one, not you.”
And I’m silently snickering, watching the man walk right into that one, as Ira bounds around and grabs my forearm with both of her steel-strong hands. “Luxie talked to us!” she chatters. “In our heads! Both of us at the same time! Even when Madre Faline had us in the trap, we could hear him. And he told us to stop sucking out her anger and her fear. He told us to push our powers at the big round door he opened up!”
She stops as soon as I jolt. With a whip of motion, I impale my son with a wide-eyed gawk. “Lux. Th-That portal was…yours?”
For a second, the poor kid looks worried. “I only wanted to do good, Mama. Honest.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” I ruffle his thick, soft hair. “I know that. I really do. But…”
“But what, Mama?”
“Son…where’d you make the portal lead to?”
Reece jabs a contemplative fist under his jaw. “Well, shit,” he mumbles. “Didn’t think to ask that.”
I wink quickly his way before Lux takes a messy belly flop into his lap. “Well, well, well. This mere-mortal-husband stuff is kind of fun.”
As I chuckle from the brunt of my man’s irked scowl, Lux supplies, “The lady Faline was sad and angry. She even pretended to be you ’cause she didn’t like her own self.” Abruptly, he stops his absentminded kicks and the itsy-bitsy spiders of his fingers. “I just made her a place that’s quiet and peaceful. Where she can rest now—and not be so mad and sad.”
Ira drops to the ground at Reece’s side. With a matching amount of innocent abandon, she burrows her head against Lux’s tummy while her lavender-tights-covered legs dangle off to the side. “Being mad all the time makes you tired.”
Not one to miss the cue on the cuddle fest, Mis crawls into my lap and then lolls with the same comfortable abandon. “And sad too.”
“Well, nobody’s going to be mad or sad around here for a long time.” As I declare it, using every queenly inflection in my repertoire, Reece stretches a hand out for mine. “You amazing miracles saved the day because you used the power of love. No matter what you do or where you go with your powers from now on, the three of you have to promise me that you’ll remember the lesson of this day forever.”
Lux tilts his head, cracking a rogue’s grin so similar to his father’s that my heart flips over a couple of times. He knows this answer already, and he thoroughly plans on beating his sisters to the punch with it this time.
Proudly and clearly, my son calls the sentence out like the perfect truth it is. “Love is the greatest superpower!”
Mis and Ira scramble to join their hands with his. As the three of them form their bright, bold triangle again, the girls echo, “Love is the greatest superpower!”
They remain that way, watching with endless giggles, as Reece pulls my fingertips to his lips and then runs lingering kisses across my knuckles. Our gazes meet, and my belly pings in a million places, zapped by the silver lightning in his irises. My breath hitches. My blood turns to fire. My sex turns to magma. He’ll never stop doing this to me…and I’ll never stop thanking him for it.
We’re snapped out of our seductive reverie once more by our son. “Dada?” he prompts with the soft uncertainty he gets when bringing up confusing subjects.
Reece leans in over Lux, conveying the kid has his full attention. “What i
s it, buddy?” he murmurs.
“If love is the greatest superpower, why was the Faline lady so scared of it?”
I suck in a huge breath along with my husband—and shoot him half a grin along with the silent snark in my head. Oooohhh, I’m so glad this one went to you and not me, Zeus.
His answering glower, filled with a whole bunch of thanks a fucking lot, precedes his reply to Lux—and makes me really, officially glad that the man got to field the query instead of me.
“Well, buddy…a lot of times, love isn’t always the easiest answer. It takes courage and bravery, especially if someone doesn’t understand it and then uses it to hurt you instead of heal you. But when you decide to trust in its power…” He squeezes the juncture of our hands once more, sending heat through every inch of my body. The good kind of heat this time. For the very first time… “And when you find someone who believes in it the same way you do…there’s nothing like the very real power of true love.”
Lux lets out such a long and savoring laugh, it’d sound outright dirty on a man twenty years his senior. To us, it’s just the perfect magic of our boy, living out loud in the beautiful freedom of his existence. “And that’s what you and Mama have!”
Reece joins him—and now Ira and Mis too—in their joyous, full laughter. In the light that will always captivate me, electrify me…and bolt me into the stars with everlasting love.
“Always,” he answers our boy in an adoring whisper. “And forever.”
Epilogue
Reece
The sun disappears over the waters of Dana Point Harbor as my best friend kisses his new bride. The small crowd gathered on the island overlooking the breakwater claps like crazy as Sawyer and Lydia, the new Mr. and Mrs. Foley, turn beneath the little arbor that’s dripping with too many fluffy white flower breeds for me to name. I simply take Emma’s word that her mother has picked out the best stuff and leave it at that. Besides, the best part of the day is yet to come.
