Violet wore a glass-like and dazed expression on her face. She was already forgetting, I could see it, and soon she would be little more than a shell of her former self. The whirl and whipping noise of a time-traveling tunnel roared out around us, ready to swoop us away again.
I closed my eyes, holding tight to my Zinny as we whirled through the fabric of time and space. I had so much to tell her, and I didn’t have the first clue where to start.
But she was safe, and I hoped we were finally going home. At the moment, that was the only thing that really mattered. We were safe, and we were together.
But my heart was heavy with words left unsaid.
Epilogue
Zinnia Rose
WE WERE BACK IN BLUE Moon Bay, our Blue Moon Bay. But neither of us seemed capable of moving off the hilltop we’d been set upon. Just a few yards away sat the Haunted Boot with lights on in several of the rooms. From our vantage point, we could see Glenda and Edward moving through the garden. She was harvesting the first lighted tulips of the season.
In her garden was a spectacular bloom that was speckled not with dark spots but with beams of brilliant golden light that shone from within and caused the entire bloom to glow dimly in the night. Any good fae home was surrounded by them. They always led the way to a friendly door.
Edward was laughing, running his hands over the petals, causing their stamens to drop their gold dust. The gleaming pollen scattered to the winds and made the night dance with shining orbs that looked like fireflies in flight.
Glenda was tutting after him, shaking her head and showing him over and over with an endless amount of patience how to properly snap the dead heads off so that the vine could generate more.
But she wore an indulgent grin on her face when he wasn’t looking at her. She’d never had a child, and the affection with which she stared at Edward brought a lump to my throat.
In such a short amount of time, he’d managed to wedge himself into her heart, into all our hearts really. Edward and others like him were the promises of hope for our cursed town. It was people like Zane and Edward that made us smile even now, even after all these years of being forced into a curse that we’d all believed a heartbroken man had cast over us.
Yes, I’d learned a lot traveling through time, but I was fairly certain I didn’t know everything yet.
I knew who would, though.
My aunts.
My surrogate mothers.
They’d lied to us all. Malachite was the boy. Sage was Bláth. Tinker was Bás. And my own aunts had been the one to cast the curse over Blue Moon Bay and had blamed the whole thing on the actions of a heartbroken man. Was Bás even still alive? Had he returned to fae? So many truths had been uncovered tonight but with it a plethora of more questions had cropped up.
And if they’d lied about Malachite’s true origins and the fact that he had a sister, then what else had they lied about? My aunts had started the township three hundred years ago, and everything we knew of Blue Moon Bay was what they’d taught us. But was any of it even true?
The worst of it all, though, was that the true ringleader, the true originator of the entire scheme to save Malachite no matter the price that had to be paid, had been my own mother.
I looked at Zane, feeling heartbroken to my very core, and shook my head. “I don’t even know what to do now, Zane. Tell me what to do. Do I seek out Malachite? Do I find Sage and tell her that I know who she really is? That it was her love of someone so forbidden to her that has brought such tragedy into our life now? Or do I renounce my aunts to the whole town and tell everyone what they did?” I sniffed, my voice cracking as I thought about doing that, of turning them in.
They were icons in our town, respectable citizens, leaders that we all looked up to. We all aped them. If they told us to do something, we did it without question, without thought. And now I couldn’t help but see everything twisted up and so very wrong.
I looked down at my feet, feeling stuck and unsure of myself.
They’d knowingly lied to protect something that I wasn’t even sure they should have. True, Bláth was life, and she needed to exist so that life could persist, and yet what darkness was wrought by those actions?
Even now, Malachite roamed free, and now that I knew who the true dark witch was, I also knew how to undo the curse... somewhat. First, Malachite would need to return to boy form—he would have to become Xavier again. But doing so might also mean unleashing the full weight of his madness upon all of us. Could we survive it? I’d seen what he could do in cat form, and I loathed thinking about how much worse it could be as an intelligent sorcerer of fae blood.
I looked at my hands, and at the pinky that he’d bitten, wondering just how it was that I’d managed to survive his bite when none of the others could. Zane had told me that my mother had said I was special, but what did that mean exactly?
I exhaled deeply.
If I kept these truths from the town, did that make me no different from my aunts? It meant I was knowingly deceiving my friends, yet I wasn’t sure I should break my aunts’ trust in this way either. They had clearly had a reason for doing what they’d done, even if I didn’t quite understand it all yet.
“I’m so conflicted,” I whispered, screwing my eyes tightly shut.
Zane grabbed my shoulder and squeezed gently. “Look at me, Zinny.”
I did, even as his image became blurry from my tears.
He scraped his thumbs down my cheeks. His handsome face was set in a determined mask. “They do love you. They did the only thing they knew how to do.”
I sniffed, rubbing my nose into my shoulder as I shook my head. “You say that because you know how much I love them. But do you really believe they didn’t have any other choice?”
“Save the children but curse the town, or save folks they didn’t know, didn’t love, and couldn’t possibly know were coming, and kill children who they did know, they did love, and who did deserve another chance. I don’t know, Zinny. I think it would be wrong to judge them too harshly here. I was shocked by what I learned too, but the more time I have to think about this, the more I think that maybe I’d have done the exact same thing.”
I swallowed hard, crushing the grass at my feet in my hands. “When you put it like that, it sounds so simple.”
“Zinnia, it’s because it is. They did what was best at the time. Maybe I’d feel different if I wasn’t an outsider here, but the truth is, I think being an outsider keeps me unbiased. They made the right decision based on their knowledge of the day. They made the right choice. Could you kill a child? Could you really do it, knowing that there might... might be a slight chance that it would actually change anything? Think hard now and be honest.”
I pursed my lips. My knee-jerk reaction was a resounding yes because I saw what the curse had done to us all. The curse, of course, had been the veil that had fallen over Blue Moon Bay, the inability for us to bear male children. The cost had been steep indeed. Our menfolk were slowly dying out, which meant that soon our town would wither and perish along with it. Most of us were long-lived, but very few of us were actually immortal. That only meant our end would be unbearably long and excruciating as we were forced to witness one friend after another leave us behind.
So much pain and heartache had been brought on us, all because of a curse that went back long before any of us had ever been born.
I looked up at the hill, at Glenda, and my brows dropped. There were some among us who were longer-lived than most. My aunties were considered ancient, but there was another in Blue Moon who went even further back than them—a fae with a fae’s memory.
I went absolutely still, my eyes growing wide as I watched Glenda and Edward play beneath the fae lights, and an idea began to take root within me.
I wasn’t as powerful a hearth witch as my aunts, or so I’d always told myself. But what if I was? My mother’s blood ran through my veins, and she’d been the strongest of them. What if I was just as powerful? What if I was even mor
e so?
I cut my eyes toward Zane, and he was looking at me through narrowed slits. “I know that look. You have an idea.”
I grinned. “I have an idea.”
A ghost of a smile wavered over his handsome Paul Newman features. “Care to share?”
“There is a fae here, Zane, an old and powerful dream fae. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Time dropped us off here or that you and Edward wound up at the Boot when you first came. I think many of the answers I still need are with the wee fairy.”
He looked over his shoulder, at Glenda and Edward still deadheading in the fairy garden, and immediately came to the same conclusion I had.
“If she knows, why hasn’t she said anything?” he asked, turning back to look at me.
I shrugged. “Maybe she doesn’t know she knows. But she walks in dreams. Somewhere among us, Bás still roams, and I have to believe whether in the dead lands or in the living, he’s still looking for his family. But what if he’s not out there, Zane? What if he’s right here and has been all along? To fix them, we need them all here.”
“What do we do now?”
I grinned, feeling lighter in spirit than I had for many days. “We find the first child. We find Malachite’s twin. And we find Bás.”
“And when we do what?”
I stood, dusting off my cape, amazed at how calm I suddenly felt about everything.
“We break their curse, Zane. But we don’t just break their curse.”
He blinked, taking a second to think. I liked that so much about him, how thoughtful and articulate he was, how patient he was to think before he spoke. I knew the second he understood fully what I meant because his long lashes fluttered like a bird’s wings in flight, and when he looked at me, the whites of his eyes were large, almost glowing orbs in the moonlight.
“The veil,” he said slowly. “You’ll break the veil. You’ll break Blue Moon’s curse.”
I nodded, biting my lower lip and fighting a smile that I was sure would make my cheeks ache from straining too long. Once I smiled, I would never be able to stop.
“We’ll break Blue Moon’s curse. So tell me, Zane, you think you’re ready for one last adventure?”
He took my hand in his and gently pulled me into the curve of his body. I moved into him willingly, shivering with delight, as he rubbed the back of my head with his large, callused palm.
“I’ll follow you anywhere, witch.” He breathed the words, his tone reverent, husky, and full of warmth.
I leaned up on tiptoe just as he moved his mouth over mine, and I saw stars when he kissed me.
I knew how to break the curse over our town now. Soon, soon, we would all be free again. But for now, kissing was nice.
Kissing was really, really nice.
There will definitely be more Zane and Zinnia and, of course, Blue Moon Bay. So stay tuned to my FB page for updates on the final book that will crack all the mysteries of Blue Moon wide open.
Also, if you’d like to bake Zinnia’s killer cupcake make sure you keep turning the page for the recipe.
Remember keep an eye on my FB page for further updates! Want to know when the next Blue Moon book releases? Make sure to sign up for my newsletter!
More Books!
Blue Moon Bay
Cookies, Curses, and Kisses, Book 1
Holly, Curses, and Hauntings, Book 2
Cupcakes, Curses, and Spirits, Book 3
The Kingdom Series written as Marie Hall
Her Mad Hatter, Book 1
Gerard’s Beauty, Book 2
Red and Her Wolf, Book 3
Jinni’s Wish, Book 4
Hook’s Pan, Book 5
Moon’s Flower, Book 6
Huntsman’s Prey, Book 7
Rumpel’s Prize, Book 8
Hood’s Obsession, Book 9
Her One Wish, Book 10
A Pirate’s Dream, Book 11
The Kingdom Series written as Jovee Winters
The Dark Queens
The Sea Queen, Book 1
The Passionate Queen, Book 2
The Ice Queen, Book 3
The Magic Queen, Book 4
The Dark Queen, Book 5
The Fairy Queen, Book 6
The Centaur Queen, Book 7
The Dark Kings
The Mad King, Book 1
The Jaded King, Book 2
The Magic King, Book 3
The Wolf King, Book 4 (Coming Soon)
Zinnia’s Killer Cupcake
BLACKBERRY CAKE INGREDIENTS:
Prep Time
20 mins
Cook Time
25 mins
Total Time
45 mins
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole buttermilk
1/4 cup blackberry compote
TEQUILA-LIME CREAM Cheese Frosting aka Margarita Frosting
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice
1 1/2 teaspoons silver tequila
pinch of salt, don’t use table salt for this, the best taste comes from coarse sea salt or salt flakes. And a LITTLE BIT goes a long way, trust me
1 3/4 cups confectioner's sugar
3/4 teaspoons lime zest
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line 18 muffin cups with paper liners.
In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar using an electric mixer until creamy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, scraping down sides of bowl after each addition. Add vanilla and beat to combine.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Add flour mixture to butter mixture in thirds, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat just until smooth.
Gently fold in ¼ cup of muddled blackberries to make a swirl. Divide mixture evenly between muffin cups.
Bake until wooden pick inserted in center of cupcake comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Let cupcakes cool in pans for 10 minutes.
TO MAKE YOUR BLACKBERRY compote I like to dump them into a pan, add a squeeze of lime juice and some honey to taste, just so that it doesn’t lose that sweetness. Then I set it to low heat and cook just until the berries start to release their juices. Once done, you can either strain the seeds out or just leave it and let it cool, it will create a nice sauce to gently fold into your cupcake batter.
For the frosting:
In a large bowl, add the room-temperature butter and cream cheese. Mix together until completely smooth using a mixer.
Add in the vanilla extract, lime juice, tequila and pinch of salt. Mix together for about 30 seconds.
With the mixer on low add the powdered sugar in three separate steps. Blend until smooth, then add more, so on and so forth.
Frost the cupcakes and garnish with some more lime zest and a slice of lime if desired.
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Jovee Winters, Cupcakes, Curses, and Spirits
(Series: Blue Moon Bay # 3)
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