Life isn’t all darkness. I may have broken magic, but I fixed it too. And now I live a life where Mabel studies with me in the library and my students make me little handwritten cards for every holiday.

In September, as the leaves start to turn, I enroll in an art history class at Barnard just to see if I can do it. If my transcripts are the result of magical forgery, so be it.

Lena is often in the city now that every art collector in New York seems to want one of her pieces. When I see her, we sit on the Great Lawn in Central Park and we paint. She says I’m getting better, and it’s kind of her to lie to me.

Maxine comes home in October sporting trousers she purchased in Constantinople and bearing a stack of black-and-white photos of her and Anais. She’ll be back in Paris for Christmas, but Haxahaven is still her home. If Anais’s constant letters are any indication, she misses Maxine exactly as much as Maxine deserves to be missed.

On the weekends, Oliver comes to Forest Hills and lounges by the fire as we both study, or I meet him in Manhattan and he continues my waltzing lessons. His mother wants us to get married at the Plaza. We’re holding her off for now. I think we’ll probably sneak off somewhere upstate, have Lena and Maxine by our sides at the first courthouse we run into on the road. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it, a wedding. I wanted a home, I wanted to be loved. I have that now, white flowers in a ballroom won’t change anything. We’re in no hurry. At night, when his dorm room is dark and quiet, his hands wander up my spine and he whispers, “Forever?” His breath is hot against my collarbone. He doesn’t need to ask, but I’m always happy to affirm. “Forever.”

There are so many things left to do and be and learn in the world. And now I have the time to explore all the people I could become.

I live enough for two people, collecting experiences and sights for my brother, too, wherever he is.

It’s a life I’ve earned, a good one.

Except for the dreams.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Three months after returning from France, after a grueling day of preparing the garden for fall, I sink into bed and let the waves of sleep pull me under like a shipwreck.

I’m used to the silence now. I don’t fear sleep like I used to, nothing waits for me anymore.

But then—for the first time in months, something ripples in the dark, silvery gray like the light I once saw in the tunnels of the catacombs.