Eye of the Storm (45 page)

"It was her blood that allowed us to break the unbreakable," Gryfflet says, which stops me short.
 

"You used blood from a
baby
?" I can't help the volume, and heads turn to look at us.
 

Everyone else must already know, because no one looks surprised. How long was I out?

"No more than a doctor would take for blood tests," Asher assures me.
 

"So the first Mediators really were like Eve. The children of witches and shades." I look at my brother. There could feasibly be another Mediator born, but I don't think Evis would let that happen.
 

"That's the assumption I'm making. Asher's spell is still in effect," says Gryfflet.
 

Asher smiles at me as I open Nana's cage to scratch between her ears.
 
The witch's exhaustion seems to have been replaced with the quiet glow of joy. I don't know if she'll ever be able to tell us what she knows. But she found a way to help in spite of the limitations placed on her. I guess that's all any of us can do. Nana's fur is soft and warm, and seeing her alive makes me smile. The bunny's little red velvet nose twitches, and then I feel it again. The presence.

"I feel something," I say to them, but before I can explain, Miles walks through the door of the Summit.

The murmur of conversation goes still at the sight of him. He's still tall and well-muscled, with dark, dark skin and the same shade indigo eyes. But his right arm is no longer with him, only a stump remaining at his shoulder. Scars cover his body, though not quite as thoroughly as mine. Not quite.
 

And then something remarkable happens. Before Miles can get to me, a norm intercepts him. It's an elderly woman with curly white hair and skin as pale and thin as tissue paper. She reaches up and touches Miles's shoulder. One by one, the other norms in the room do the same. The Mediators follow, and even though I expect some of them to hang back, none of them do. Maybe it's that the norms could decide to turn on them at any moment. Maybe it's that they're thankful for what the shades did to help, after all this.
 

Or maybe facing the end of the world has made us all a little more human, whether we've got demon in us or not.
 

EPILOGUE

I can see them in the sunlight, when it hits my skin just right.
 

They dance across me, pale and almost silvery. They are the net that holds me here, that reminds me of what lies just beyond.

When I see her looking at them, I want to ask what it is she sees. Her eyes are unreadable, no matter how much love lurks behind them. I don't know if she sees Saturn or Mason or any of the others.
 

And then she looks up, and she meets my gaze. Violet to indigo, heart to heart. She is my true tether.

We both have to live with it, the knowledge that with my shade blood and my brother's and Miles's, we will one day have to choose death. To let this world live.
 

The fight isn't over. In some ways, it's probably just beginning. For me, though, things will return to whatever normal I ever had: fighting the daily fight. Holding off the demons when they come. Planning for whatever they might throw at us. Helping the Summits around the world through the growing pains that will come with Mediators who aren't bound by territory, trusting that the Mediators alive want to hold onto this world enough that they'll keep fighting for it and the right to explore it.

New normal.
 

It's a new normal with a little of old normal mixed in. Now that people have slowly made their way back to the city, Laura and Alice are back in the office, and Laura offered me that partnership again. I gladly took it, even though I could live off the money Alamea gave me for some time. Turns out helping save the world is good for business, too, because within a week of me starting back up at work, we were almost too busy to handle all the new clients.

It's nice to see Alice and Laura every day now. Alice's hair is back to its bleached blonde, but she stopped wearing lipstick, and her cheeks always have a natural happy glow to them now. Sometimes she comes over for supper.
 

Some things go back to the way they were, but others couldn't be more different.

This time I won't be alone.

I have a family now. A home in East Nashville next door to Asher. We built Miles and Evis a treehouse in the backyard. I even babysit Eve.

I think it troubles all of us, just a bit, having learned since that day at the Summit that Eve was the last Mediator to be born on Earth. That's a lot of weight for tiny shoulders to bear. But she won't be alone either.

Mira and I've made a pact not to think about the many ways we all might die.

We will live, until we don't. And when we don't, Earth will finally be free.

That day will come.

Until then, we live, and this is home.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing one book is hard enough. Completing a series is a whole other thing entirely.
 

This series germinated in Nashville, Tennessee (shocker) when I was a member of the Nashville Writer's Meetup and had started an off-shoot of the group for the zany speculative fiction writers among us. Once upon a time when I finished the first chapter of STORM IN A TEACUP, I brought it in to them. This was in 2008, and I was busy cutting my teeth on my first novels at that point. The group loved the chapter, but I put it aside to finish the other projects that, alas, will likely never see the light of day unless you pull off all my fingernails and beg whilst you're dressed as a rainbow-farting unicorn.

Anyway!
 

I'd like to thank the lovely people of that meet up group, several of whom I'm still in touch with: Hunter Eden, Nikki Nelson-Hicks, Vincent Yanda, and Mandi Lynch (Fly). The four of them read a lot of my early work, and they're great writers and delightful humans themselves.
 

I finished STORM IN A TEACUP in 2012 after writing a couple other novels (SHRIKE: THE MASKED SONGBIRD being one of them), and I was very pleased with how Ayala took on her own life.
 

Writing this series over the past four years has been a constant for me. I wrote ANY PORT IN A STORM, TAKEN BY STORM, and EYE OF THE STORM in about nine months. While typing on keys is not the same as hacking and slashing through hordes of hellkin, writing that much (along with other projects) whilst working a full time job for most of it did help me get into Ayala's headspace.
 

Which is to say, writing is often exhilarating, exhausting, and existential.
 

Like Ayala, I needed people around me to remind me to take a breather, to bounce ideas off of, to hold me while I panicked on occasion, and to keep telling me to always keep fighting. As someone on the autism spectrum who also has anxiety, that support system was absolutely necessary for me.
 

The Ayala Storme series is now complete, and I have a large number of people to thank for being there throughout.

To my partner John: you've been there through half this series and are my biggest cheerleader every damn day. I trust you like Ayala trusts Mira, and sometimes I think your mind and mine are linked.
 

To Julia Hein, Kristin McFarland, Tamara Mataya, Lyra Mulhern, KT Hanna, Ashley Ludman, Kevin Klein, Adam Jury, Laura Hughes, Dan Swensen, Samantha Joyce, Sam Foster, Kelly Ashcraft, and John Abramowitz — you lot are the best damn friends a humanoid could ask for. I love you and your radness and full spectrum of badassery.
 

To the DFQ and all the minions — you deserve all the wombats and huggles.
 

To Osric Chau, whose encouragement and kindness has meant all of this world and many others to me, thank you for showing me what is possible. Proud to be unique, my fellow alpaca friend.

I'm fortunate to have absolutely fantastic partners in the publishing world. I could not have gotten here without the tireless work of my agent Sara Megibow, Jes Negrón for the drop dead gorgeous covers you see on the Ayala Storme and Shrike books, my editor at Audible Lee Jarit, and the amazing Amber Benson who has done such a fabulous job bringing Ayala's voice to life. I'm absolutely in awe every time I think of you all. Go team! (Also go buy
Amber's books
! DO IT.)

And to you readers who keep devouring these books, thank you. No matter what you think of my writing, thank you for giving me a chance. I try to make each book better than the last, and there are many more to come.
 

Writing is hard. Thank you for giving me an audience to share mine with.
 

I think we all know that our demons are never truly vanquished, but together we can keep them at bay.
 

Thank you all.

Always keep fighting.

About the Author

Emmie Mears is an author, actor, and person of fannish pursuits. She knows enough Polish to impress locals with tongue twisters and enough German to tell you her anteater is sick. She's lived in Scotland, Poland, and currently makes her writing cave in Frederick, Maryland. Emmie is open to bribery in the form of sushi and bubble tea.

She may or may not secretly be a car.

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Want More?

Shrike Series

Shrike: The Masked Songbird
 

Shrike: Rampant
 

Ayala Storme Series

Storm in a Teacup
 

Any Port in a Storm
 

Taken By Storm

Eye of the Storm