We enter the hall of the church just as eight p.m. Mass is beginning. We walk through the crowds of people, looking so nice in their church clothes, the five of us covered in dirt and blood and bone shards. Sister Evangeline stands near the pulpit watching with silent, understanding pity.

We stumble out of the church onto the street and heave in deep breaths, letting the fresh air soothe our aching lungs.

I look up into the sky, seeing the stars for the first time in a world without him. Gone.

“What now?” Lena asks.

“We go home, I guess,” Maxine answers.

Together we walk down the block, turning down a much quieter side street, freckles of starlight glinting in shop windows as the sun sinks below the horizon.

I tilt my head up at the sky and try to calm my racing heartbeat. It’s over. But I can’t help but feel some part of me is dead too.

I may not have killed Mrs. Vykotsky with my own spell, but her death is still my fault. But I don’t believe I am irredeemable. I am not even fully myself yet. I am still finding me, tucked away in people and places. In Lena and Maxine and Oliver. In the kitchens of Haxahaven and the steps of the Sacre Cœur and in an apartment on Hester Street. I wonder where the other parts of me lie? I look forward to finding them in all the people I have yet to meet and places I have yet to see.

There is comfort in that. I don’t like myself very much right now, but this version of me is not a forever, stagnant thing. There will be a new Frances eventually, and maybe she won’t hurt this badly.

If I’m going to become a version of myself that I like, I have to stop hating the person I’ve been.

Because life is long. If you’re lucky, it is long.

And I might be lost, but there is so much of me left to be found.

Was Finn truly irredeemable? I’ll never know now.

My father turns to me and reaches a hand up to wipe the tears from my swollen face. I recoil from his touch.

“I am sorry,” he says. “But if it wasn’t that, the Sons would have had him killed soon enough.”

I remember back to the gunshot the night of the Louvre.

“Was it you who tried to kill him last week?” There’s no real accusation there, just resignation.

“He killed my son… Boss Olan, my friends. It’s for the best he’s gone. You’ll see that in time.”

I can’t yet picture a future version of me that feels better. But I pray she exists.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

My father and mother return to Saint Bosco’s for the night while Lena, Maxine, and I go to Maxine’s flat together.