Ollie Vance - Book Two: Ashes and Smoke

Chapter Twelve

The leaves were starting to turn yellow, orange and red, casting Willow in an enchanting swirl of colors.

It was mid-September, a little over a month after we won the fight of our lives.

The rest of the summer was spent cleaning up and rebuilding after the war. 

The bakeshop re-opened, better than ever, and business kicked right back in. Willow, since then, has been calm and peaceful with no surprise visits from menacing otherworldlies anymore. 

The Stellars did a stellar job of transitioning everyone into the changes, pun intended.

The surviving demon lords have agreed to expand and offer their welcome to any of the followers left behind by the kingdoms that Remus had conquered. There was an understanding that there would be no reformation of new kingdoms to replace those that were lost. 

Remus’s surviving loyalists were prosecuted and punished properly—most of them banished into the darkest and deepest pits of the Underworld where there was no escape.

I fully embraced my legacy as a Phoenix and had gotten commitment from everyone involved to keep my identity a secret as much as possible until we knew what else I was here on earth for. As a token of their appreciation and loyalty, the demon lords pledged confidentiality and made arrangements with to eradicate the knowledge from their people. I wanted to live as normal a life as I could possibly have and having Phoenix-hunters come at me from all directions was not the way to go about it.

Scott was never found and proclaimed officially missing although to those who knew the truth, he was gone and there was nothing we could do about it but hope that we had found him justice.

We left Heather with her memories. She had pleaded to remember despite the ugly facts, saying that it was better than to be left with a gnawing emptiness that would drive her crazy. Arabella compromised by putting a binding spell on her which disabled her ability to communicate the truth of what had happened.

We became sort of friends.

She was about five months along in her pregnancy now and I visited her ocassionally. I’ve already agreed to become godmother to her baby.

Stigger has healed fully from the injuries he received from Tiya. Jenny was fortunately on her way to meet up with us at Heather’s house when all that happened and got to him in time. They have been dating officially and Stigger has announced he was staying in Willow.

I dragged in a shaky breath as I drove my pick up truck down the familiar gravel road that led to the Mansion.

That’s right. 

The gang’s leaving town and heading back to Las Vegas where their main residence and business headquarters were, now that the Mansion was operating in full swing again with Stigger at the head of it.

I swallowed hard, running through some lines I’d practiced with since the news was announced a week ago.

We were having a big group dinner out when Irina mentioned just how excited she was with heading back to Las Vegas where she could finally be with civilization again.

Arabella just rolled her eyes at her, Cage snorted, Stigger joked he’d be glad to have all of them out of his hair at last and Tristan just smiled mysteriously and nodded in confirmation.

I was so shocked I knocked over my glass of wine and to prevent myself from any more possible humiliating reaction, I hastily retreated to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror quietly for an eternity, trying to rein my emotions in.

Since our ordeal with Remus concluded, life with Tristan had been nothing short of glorious.

We spent every night together, whether it was at the Mansion or at my house.