“What did I just see?” Kiki said. “Were you humping in the middle of the road? Did I just see something coming out of the asphalt?”

“What do you think you saw?” Fiji said, and took a step around Kiki. “Go home, Kiki, and don’t come back.”

She walked over to her house, finally locating Mr. Snuggly. He was sitting on the little wall around the porch next to a planter, and he looked proud—which meant he looked like all cats. But he nodded to her in a congratulatory way, and then set about cleaning his paws.

For a moment, Fiji hesitated at the door, looking back. She could see a shadow surrounding the cat, a shadow that didn’t match the domestic shorthair feline outline at all.

But Fiji had opened the door an inch, and she could hear the water of the shower running. She could imagine the warmth of the water and the clean smell of her soap and she knew Bobo was waiting for her to join him. She hoped Lemuel had healed his leg. If not, there was bandaging to do. She even looked forward to that. Fiji stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

38

The next morning, Fiji woke feeling like a new woman. The crisis was over. The demon was imprisoned. Bobo was asleep beside her. She had saved the world! She had had sex! Bobo loved her!

She tried to track down the essential difference she felt in herself. She was still Fiji, still the least important person in a contentious family, still a witch in a society that did not like witches, still round as a honeydew in a nation that revered stiltlike women.

But now, she thought, I am powerful. It was a fact. Her feeling that she was transforming had begun before last night—in fact, when she had frozen the gunmen the day of the assault on Olivia. The day she had killed McGuire. Arthur Smith would never stop asking questions about that day, and she would never be held responsible for any of it. She knew that. And despite the fact that everyone was always talking about how nice she was, she didn’t feel guilty for having killed Ellery McGuire. It had been the only way to prevent the deaths of people she knew—people who were in her care.

She wondered if Sylvester Ravenwing would stay, and she rather hoped he would. She wondered if Olivia would decide to become a vampire. She wondered if Joe and Chuy would ever be able to re-attain heaven. And what would Teacher and Madonna do, now that Olivia’s father might come talk to Olivia directly? There was no need to protect her from Ellery McGuire any longer, Fiji figured.

It felt good to have a future in which to contemplate all these things.

She felt a little movement beside her and knew Bobo was awake.

“Hey, beautiful,” he said. Another thing she knew was that he meant it.

Joe and Chuy had gotten up at their usual time, but instead of Joe going for his run and Chuy preparing breakfast, they’d jumped in their car and driven to the kennel where Rasta had been boarded. The Peke was bathed and groomed and ecstatic to see his people. Everyone who worked at the kennel agreed that if all gay people were as nice and modest and normal as Chuy Villegas and Joe Strong, they wouldn’t mind having them around.

Joe and Chuy drove back to Midnight. “If we can’t ever go back home,” Joe said, “at least we have a dog.”

“‘God’ spelled backward,” Chuy said. It was an old joke, but they always enjoyed it.

Joe gave a silent sigh. Sensing the near-emergence of the demon had activated a hunger in him, a deep need he had suppressed for decades. He had wanted to fly, to defend heaven.

But they had promised each other not to fly, and he was shackled to Midnight.

“So you got to see Fiji buck naked,” Madonna said, apropos of nothing, to her husband.

“Me and everyone else in town,” Teacher said cautiously. “How’d that make you feel?”

He’d been folding laundry, and he kept on folding, though he also felt her eyes on him. “Sorry for her,” he said promptly. “She didn’t want to do that, and she’s no kind of exhibitionist.”

“You didn’t think you’d like to get a piece?”

“Madonna!” He was genuinely shocked. “You know I haven’t touched another woman since we’ve been married.”

“Uh-huh. But I also know you like women with curves, and that Fiji has got ’em. And they’re not as jiggly as mine.”

Teacher said, “Fiji has got nothing that you haven’t got, and I love you.”

Which was absolutely the right answer, if it wasn’t exactly accurate on all counts.

Later, Madonna said, “You think Mr. Wicklow will keep us here? Let us stay?”

“Now that McGuire is dead? Well, I hope so. I like it here, to tell the truth. You?”

“I’d like to try to make the restaurant a real concern,” Madonna said. “I’ve been kind of playing at it, because I knew he’d keep us solvent, no matter what. But if we really work, advertise, and get us a hook—maybe we’ll have the best pie in Texas, or something— maybe we can really make some money. Grady can have a car in high school.” Madonna had always envied the teens in her area who could afford that luxury. That was her idea of the best you could hope for.

“He could learn the value of work that way,” Teacher said. He tried not to sound excited.

“We wouldn’t be beholden to anyone,” Madonna said. “Of course, we also wouldn’t have a pension plan or health insurance.”

“Let’s see what the man says.” Teacher said. “Might be he has a plan we’d love.”

“Might be,” Madonna said. She was already thinking of new things she’d like to put on the menu.

Buying the house next to Fiji’s had been the quickest real estate transaction in the history of home sales. The sole heir had been delighted to get thirty thousand for a property he hadn’t thought about in ten years. Today, Quinn and Diederik started work on their new home. Quinn had some carpentry knowledge, and he enjoyed teaching his son what he knew.

“Marina broke up with me,” Diederik said suddenly, just as he’d finished prying up the old tile in the bathroom. “By text.”

“How do you feel about that?” Quinn continued on his way to the front door, where he tossed the old kitchen cabinet into a rented Dumpster.

“I liked Marina,” Diederik said. “But I liked having sex with her more than I liked her, I think.”