Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Epilogue Demon Queen By Amethyst

Christmas Eve, fourteen years later…

I gazed out the window at the city where I had lived almost my entire life and let out a sorrowful sigh. Toronto… no, the entire world had changed a lot since we returned from Heil almost fourteen years ago. Despite holding out hope all this time that we had saved a world worth saving, most of those changes weren’t positive.

I’m not talking about Demons or other magical threats. No, the only magical threats we had to deal with these days were the odd Sorcerer or Sorceress who had stumbled on knowledge they shouldn’t have and let power go to their heads, or tried to make the existence of magick public knowledge. The only time I had to put any Demons down was when one broke the law and showed up on Earth or Tír na nÓg or thought they were tough enough to challenge the Demon Queen.

In the past decade and a half, Heil has changed for the better, with me keeping an eye on their progress. The Demons were mostly self-sufficient and doing well thanks to some trade deals I’d worked out with my troupe in Tír na nÓg. Law and order were mostly adhered to, especially after Kisha and the rest of the Council of Heil convinced me to make the occasional public visits to show that the Demon Queen wasn’t just some story to scare their children. Without fail, every time I did so, there was at least one troublemaker from the old guard who thought they could take me down and return Heil to ‘glory’ and, in the end, there would be one or two less of those troublemakers to worry about.

No, the unsavory changes on Earth were entirely local in origin. Every year, every month, the state of the world only seemed to get worse. Increasing tension and outright wars between nations and religions, corporations that valued money over the health and safety of the public, new man-made epidemics, people in power who seemed to want to watch the world burn, and weapons of war that were becoming increasingly terrifying and devastating.

It made me think of the Sanori, the once people of Nhekar who had doomed their world and caused their own extinction, and the monument that they had left behind. That monument hadn’t only been to preserve the knowledge and memory of their people, but to act as a warning for those who would dare play with forces beyond their comprehension. We had kept the existence of magick from the rest of humanity to spare our species such a fate, but it seemed that humans don’t need magick to march down the path to obliteration.

It might not be today or tomorrow, or even this decade, but the writing was on the wall if humanity couldn’t change its ways. I had been trying to use my influence to change things without resorting to magick, we all had, but without that power backing us, we were a dozen voices among billions. This was my home; it had given me family, friends, my beautiful partner, and a career that I once loved, and I would miss this place.

I turned my attention away from the window and to the pictures on the walls, a collection of wonderful memories from lives well lived. The day that Sarah and Annie got married in Tír na nÓg when I was seventeen. They had the wedding there so Yanisse, our troupe’s Chieftain, could be the one to marry them, and then had a private ceremony with just family and friends in Toronto to make it official on Earth. That private ceremony was the one in the photo on the wall, the others were already packed away.

A little more than a year later, Ziralin and I had done the same, getting married not long after graduating high school, with our real ceremony taking place among our troupe and a private ceremony later at City Hall with family and friends. Some people, especially the media, didn’t take well to that, but we were bound together, mind and soul, and I didn’t want to wait to spend the rest of my life with the woman I loved.

Other weddings followed, of course, and Mason and Jennifer were the next pair to tie the knot, followed by Michelle and Lisa, and then Rebecca and Elsaishe finally stopped playing around and made it official three years ago. Doing so with the troupe in Tír na nÓg first, and then a more private ceremony became a tradition among our group. Another photo pulled me from those thoughts, one of me, Sarah, and Becca all together and smiling for the camera.

That was the day that Becca had her first photoshoot, and Sarah and I had come along for moral support. Despite all her worries and a little bit of her usual snark, she did well and went on to have a lucrative career, just like us. Sarah quit modeling when she was thirty, for several reasons, but mostly so she and Annie could give Becca a little sister using the fertility artifact we had brought from Nhekar for our troupe.

The troupe was having a small baby boom because of that artifact, and while most of the babies were girls, the troupe as a whole was happy to be able to have kids and stabilize the dwindling Faery population. Sarah and Annie probably caught the bug from them during our regular visits there and wanted to have a baby together, so my sister thought it was a good time to retire and become a mom, though she did take a job working with Divine Cosmetics in public relations. Now she and Annie had three daughters, and Becca had two little sisters.

Becca and I were both still going strong with our careers, at least until I decided eight months ago that I needed a break and decided to follow in my sister’s footsteps and become a mother. It felt like a good time to take a break for me. I was almost thirty, wealthy, I had done everything I wanted to do when I began my career; I had even co-starred in a romantic comedy movie with Mason a couple of years ago.

On the surface, we were all doing well in our chosen careers, and Ziralin was working with Elsaishe and Talisha crafting jewelry while I was at home and waiting for the baby to come. Mason’s movie career was at its peak as well, though honestly, I wasn’t sure how he and Jen made their relationship work so well while he was away so often for shoots and she stayed in Toronto working in the Divine Cosmetics lab. Even Michelle and Lisa seemed to be doing well, owning and running a shop that catered to Witches, new age spiritualists, and the like.

I sensed Ziralin’s presence approaching me from behind, her emotions a mix of relief, excitement, guilt, and concern for me, and I let out a sigh as I placed a hand protectively on my gravid belly and took one last look out the window. It seemed that the time had come. My Familiar and partner kissed me on the back of the neck as she leaned in to embrace me from behind. Then, coming around my chair, she helped to pull me to my feet, her lips meeting mine as I stood for another, far more intimate kiss.

When our lips finally parted, her faery wings twitched in agitation as she whispered softly in my ear, “Everyone is here, Babe. Are you sure that you want to do this? We could st…”

“I’m sure,” I responded. “This isn’t our world anymore, I can feel that more and more each day. We fought to protect this world, but for what? So we can watch humanity destroy itself just like the Sanori? I don’t want our baby to grow up in the chaos out there. Besides, we all decided this would be for the best.”

“I know,” she said quietly, “but I also know how much you wish you could do more, how helpless you feel about it.”

“All the better reason to leave, before I break my promise to keep magick secret and do something we’d all regret,” I replied with a shake of my head as we stepped out of our bedroom and made our way to the living room. “Besides, I’ve been wanting to live the simple life with our troupe for a while now, and I know you have too. Our children can grow up happy and healthy there.”

They were all waiting for us in the living room. Talisha, sitting in an armchair with Ellie and Becca snuggling in another nearby, Jennifer and Mason, Michelle and Lisa, and finally, Annie and Sarah sharing the couch and holding their young daughters, five-year-old Sinead and three-year-old Sonya. Sinead definitely took after our side of the family with her pale complexion, green eyes, and bright red hair, while Sonya had Annie’s Chinese features and dark hair.

Except for the children, all of us looked barely into our twenties, despite time dictating otherwise. Sarah and I probably would have stopped visibly aging around that age anyway because of the Blood Oath that tied the Cailleach Dearg to the Faery, but when the others had been inducted into the troupe with that same ceremony that Xuriel once went through, they too had become as ageless as the Faery. Soon, it would be difficult for most of us to continue hiding that fact, especially those of us who were not Faery, who could use glamours, or who could shapeshift like me and Becca. We no longer belonged to this world, and we all knew it.

Small bags for everyone sat haphazardly on the coffee table, including those that Ziralin and I had packed for ourselves earlier. None of those bags contained much since most of the stuff we wanted to bring with us, like clothes, photo albums, supplies, anything related to magick, and some things that we might miss, like certain herbs, coffee, and cocoa beans, were already stowed in our portable emergency bunkers. As soon as we entered the room, Sarah stood up and placed Sinead back on the couch to wrap me in a hug.

We held each other for a moment before my sister chuckled, “You look about ready to pop, Sis. Are you sure you don’t want me to cast the portal instead? I’ll have the extra power for it if I change into my Celestial form.”

“I’m pregnant, not helpless, Sis,” I immediately retorted.

“Yeah, but you look tired. I’m your big sister, I’m supposed to be the one supporting you, not the other way around, like you seem to think,” she gently chastised.

“You always have, Sarah,” I told her as I held her tightly, tears stinging my eyes. “I owe everything I am today to you. I am so glad I made that wish that day.” Damn hormones making me all emotional. It took me a moment to collect myself, and once I did, I turned to the others and said, “Last chance to back out, everyone.”

“Well, you know that we’re ready to leave when you are,” Sarah replied with a glance toward Annie and their daughters. I knew that, and I knew that they had been wanting to relocate to Tír na nÓg to live with the troupe for years now. They had stayed behind for me, and I couldn’t let them keep doing that.

With Sarah and I now parted, Ziralin took the opportunity to reach for my hand, and her love for me simmered in her mind, wrapping around my heart and mind like a warm blanket. “Well, you know where I stand, Babe. Always at your side.”

“Mason and I have been thinking of leaving since… Mom and Dad died. Running the company without them here just… isn’t the same.” Mason wrapped his arms around his wife, and we were all silent for a moment. Jen’s parents had died six months ago in a car accident, and it had hit us all pretty hard. They had welcomed me and Sarah into their family without hesitation, and then the others as well. They were like parents to all of us, always there when we needed them, even after we had revealed the existence of magic and the Faery to them, and Talisha had formed a strong friendship with Hillary.

They were one of the few things keeping us here for the past few years, and now they were gone. Mason nodded and quietly added, “I’ve been having a lot of hunches lately, and they keep telling me that we need to leave.”

The Fae among us all wanted to leave, I knew that deep in my heart. It was as though they could smell the stench of death upon this world. Ziralin’s mother, brother, grandmother, and even her non-Faery father had already made the move to Tír na nÓg to be with their Faery kin, and the only other people that we wanted to stay for were all in this room.

I knew that Talisha and Ellie had been thinking a lot about returning to their people too, and the older of my Faery cousins confirmed that as she said, “I wish to be with my people again, but that includes all of you.”

“I’ve been thinking the same, but…” Ellie agreed with an uncertain glance at Becca.

“Everyone here is family, you all took me in and gave a shit after I lost my mom. When we got married, I promised to be there for you no matter what, Ellie. So, where you go, I go.”

We all turned to the last couple, Michelle and Lisa, whose hair was dark blue today. She never did lose the habit of magically changing its color when the mood suited her. It was Michelle who spoke for both of them in her usual blunt fashion. “If we weren’t ready to do this, we wouldn’t have brought our bags. We all know this world is going to shit, and none of us belong here anymore.”

I let out a long sigh of relief and nodded. The past six months, we had all been going through the motions, but our only real connection to this world now was each other. It was almost a relief to finally say we were done with Earth and moving on. “I guess we’re all in agreement then,” I said. Then, without letting myself take the time to overthink it, I began to cast the portal to Tír na nÓg.

“You know,” Lisa said as we all gathered our bags, “at least we’ll be fucking with some heads when we’re gone. People are going to wonder where we vanished to and how, most of us are pretty famous after all. It’s just too bad that they’ll never know how we saved the world from a Demon invasion.”

“No, but we know,” Annie said as she hefted her bag and her youngest daughter and stepped toward the portal, reaching out for Sarah’s hand as my sister held the older of the two.

They and their daughters were the last to step through, leaving only me and Ziralin. “Together, my love?” I asked as I reached for her hand.

“Always, Babe,” she replied as she put her arm around me.

Nobody from Earth would ever know what we did or what we went through, but we’d had a good life here while it lasted, and now it was time for us to move on. I think we deserved a peaceful life for a while, and if anything else came up to threaten that, then we’d all face that together too. I gave Ziralin one last kiss on the world of our birth and then, as we stepped through the portal, I smiled at her and said, “Let’s go find our happily ever after.” From our connection, I wasn’t sure which of our hearts was fluttering in excitement, but I like to think it was both.