For the Love of Magic

Epilogue

"Shut UP, Rowan!" she yells at her brother.

"Nate who? Should I get my shotgun out?" I ask.

"I'll get it for you," Carter says with a glare at Gracie. "That kid's bad news."

"He's kind of sweet," Gracie defends him.

"He's a jerk," Carter argues.

"Someone jealous?" Rowan asks, looking from Carter to Gracie. They both stare at Rowan open mouthed before they both shout and lunge at him. He laughs, grabbing a Twinkie and taking off away from him. I chuckle at the kids' antics and set my stuff down on the table.

"Honey, you home?" I hear my beautiful wife ask.

"Yeah, I'm in the kitchen," I tell her. Rose comes in the kitchen with a smile on her face and I walk over to her and give her a kiss on the lips. We pull back when there's a crash upstairs.

"ROWAN YOU IDIOT!" Gracie yells.

"QUIET DOWN UP THERE!" I yell upstairs to them.

"THEY STARTED IT!" Rowan defends. Rose and I laugh quietly between ourselves.

"Were we like that when we were their age?" she asks me.

"I think we were much worse," I say and kiss her again. Everything is so much different than things were when we were their age. I can't begin to forget it, especially when I relive it every night when I close my eyes.

'I stand next to Rose by Melissa's sad excuse for a car, watching a closed steel door for it to open and my best friend and his dead-but-not-really-girlfriend to walk out of it.

We wait outside of Ryan's abandoned building for an hour... then two... then three. Nothing happens. Nothing. The magic surge doesn't happen (I don't think). I ask Melissa. She says we'd know for sure if it had. Rose anxiously watches the exit of the building. But no one comes or goes. I walk over to her and drape my arm around her shoulders. She leans into me and gives me a half-hug in return also.

"They're not coming out, are they?" she asks. She's bruised and bloody from the fight as we all are but I want to make sure whoever touched her is finished off by me, personally.

"I don't think so," I admit to her. She turns and hugs me tightly, tears running down her cheeks.

"W-What do you mean?" Jaz chokes from behind us.

"Faye, Ryan and Dominico....? They're not dead! They can't be dead!" she shouts. Will, even in his confused state, tries to comfort her. I look to Melissa.

"Melissa? What should we do?" I ask her, being the resident wizard and all. Her eyes are teary too, not sobbing but as filled and hurt as mine are. Not that I'd admit it.

"We should go," she whispers.

"NO!" Jaz protests, breaking away from Will and sprinting towards the building.

"JAZ!" Will yells after her, I break from my hug with Rose and we both sprint after her. We could have caught her easily, of course, but I think we both wanted to see inside because we don't reach her before she swings open the heavy metal backdoor and rushes down the wire-floored hallways.

Our sprint breaks immediately when we come into the dome. The bodies of Ryan's cronies are still scattered around the floor, out cold. My eyes travel across the dome to the center. Wires are loose, like a giant picked them up and rolled them into a yarn ball and then let go. In the center is Ryan. His skin is burned, almost past recognition. This hair is on end and smoking, sticking out in all directions. He jolts every couple seconds like a ghost was trying to save him with an AED.

Rose starts sobbing when she sees two other bodies a couple of yards away.

Dominico and Faye lay side-by-side, turned to each other. Their hair is on end as well and they jolt around, even more violently than Ryan every couple seconds. But they're not burned at all. Rose takes a step towards them but I grab her back.

"Don't, Rose," Melissa says, examining two of my best friends and her ex. Her eyes go wide after a second.

"What?" Jaz asks, in shock. "What happened to them?" Melissa kneels down next to Ryan's half-burned away body, looking like her mind was just blown.

"The-They took the energy into themselves. Instead of the blast dispersing through the world, they condensed it into themselves. Looks like they made Ryan help them too," she adds the last part quietly.

"Are- are they...?" I trail off with my question. Melissa looks at the bodies again with her Healer abilities. She passes a hand over all of them, closing her eyes.

"Ryan's gone," she says, sounding slightly hurt. Jaz and Will choke up. After what he did to my friends, I can't bring myself to be sad.

"Dominico's..." she starts. Then her eyes pop open. She goes over Faye's form. "They're alive!" she shrieks.

"YES!" Rose and I cry. I kiss Rose's cheek in excitement, making her eyes fly open and her mouth to open wordlessly, before I go over to Melissa who is by Dominico's body.

"Can you make them...well...not like this anymore?" I ask her as Faye's body jolts again. Melissa nods but frowns.

"Yes, but it will take a long time," she says.

"Like a week?"

She shakes her head.

"A month?" I try again.

She shakes her head again.

"A couple years?" Rose asks, quietly.

"There's an unbelievable amount of power between the two of them, enough to power entire countries for years. But if we extract it too fast, their life sources will also be drained. Hearts need electric pulses to beat. Their hearts are beating so fast right now, their bodies don't know what to do and put them into this coma. Their functions have all but stopped." Melissa says.

"What does that mean?" I ask her.

"It means that it's going to take over a century to wake them up," she states. I stare blankly at Melissa.

"B-but...over ONE HUNDRED YEARS?! THEY'LL BE DEAD BY THEN ANYWAY!" I can't help but yell at her. Melissa shakes her head.

"They'll be the same age," she states. "Or their bodies will seem like it. The excess energy is doing all the work for them. They're practically frozen in time," she says. I look at Rose to see how she's taking this.

"Remember how we used to tease him that he'll be an old man by the time we're twenty?" she asks me, covering her true feelings. I smile a little.

"Yeah. I think he's just doing this to shove it in our faces. We'll be old by the time he wakes up," I say, joking to cover up the hurt of not being able to see my best friend for over a hundred years! I feel like punching something.

Dominico jolts violently again.

"We have to get help. You two can call Lady Fairchild, right?" Melissa asks us.'

"ALEC!" I jolt up at the sound of Rose's voice. I'm lying in bed and next to me on the night stand, the phone is ringing. I glance at the clock. 4 A.M. Who would call now?

"Hello?" I ask in a groggy voice.

"Alec?" Melissa's voice comes through.

"Yeah. Melissa, what's going on?" I ask.

"I think it might be time." She says. I look over at Rose and we both jump out of bed.

Finally.