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“For months now, we have anticipated this event, and today I have the honor of asking you, Benoît Ayad,sahir, to consider continuing your outstanding work for the Magic Council as part of our crime-fighting team.” When Ben is silent, he adds, “Professionally. For pay.”

My grandfather just officially acknowledged Ben as asahir, the highest rank among human mages. Almost breathless with delight, I squeeze his arm. “Will you do it?”

He turns to me, his expression dazed yet hopeful. “Do you think I should?” His voice is nearly a whisper.

“I think you’re a marvelous investigator and hero. But do you enjoy it? I mean, would you rather set up as a farrier? I bet you and my papa could work together.”

While we talk, I hear other mages conferring quietly, and then Rina speaks up. “Before you decide, I have another request to make. Of our granddaughter, Cerise DuBois.”

Startled, I nod.

The words seem to surge from her lips. “We wish to invite you, Cerise, to accept official magic training here at Council headquarters. I was deeply impressed with your progress after a few short lessons, and today you surpassed even my wildest hopes.”

“You set me up,” I accuse her, trying to scowl. “I thought you were in danger.”

“She could have been,” Grandpère grumbles, giving his wife a chiding frown.

I hear a murmur from the crowd, but Rina rolls her eyes. “I knew what I was doing. And Cerise, after that demonstration of power today, your grandpère and I are of the opinion that your magic is near, if not at,sahiralevel.”

Somehow, I manage to feel both numb and ecstatic. “Once I have training, could I join the crime-fighting team too? I mean, solve magical mysteries and arrest magical villains?” I feel a warm hand wrap around mine as I speak.

My grandparents nod, smiling. “We were hoping you might ask.”

“Hourra!”I shout just as Ben picks me up and spins me around.

Several months have passed since we defeated Gisella and her fae ring—days and weeks packed with explanations, reunions, smiles (my facial muscles are developing), some tears, and a great deal of confusion. Can any family, any life, be more tangled and confusing than mine? It’s one crazy story.

Hmm. Where shall I begin? I guess I’ll jump into the middle and work my way to the edges. First, the technical stuff.

When Ben bit the ring off Gisella’s hand, he severed the blue magic’s connection with the human world. Loss of its anchor destroyed the fae magic as well as the ring, which instantly released all its stolen magic. The sudden surge of imploding magic killed Gisella.

We still don’t know how and when she acquired a fae ring. That investigation is ongoing.

A quick pause here while I gloat: After enduring Rina’s warnings about Barbaro and how he shouldn’t be trusted, I can’t begin to describe the pleasure I now take in hearing her boast to various people, “We saw it coming for several years but couldn’t tell a soul. It was dreadfully difficult to keep to myself! Yes, the boy was a reprobate criminal back then, but he’s a man now, and a changed one. His selfless, honorable service and commitment to excellence finally earned him his freedom. We’re proud to have him in the family.”

Ben regained complete control over his shifting andsahirmagics and is now a full-time crime-fighting operative, and I’m . . . well, I’m learning. Both magic and investigative stuff. The transition from pastry baking to crime fighting is even harder than it sounds, especially since I’m simultaneously learning how to use my magic. Then again, a baker learns to follow directions and pay close attention to detail, skills that come in handy in my new line of work.

I’m also learning to accept earth-shattering news with creditable calm. First, I learned that Gisella was not my mother. Suzette and Charlotte are her daughters, but I am not. Papa isn’t blood-related to them either.

When Barbaro spoke to a witness who knew Gisella as a child, the woman mentioned a girl that Gisella bossed around. As they grew older, both girls worked in the bakery. Now I know that the friend, Bernadette, is the daughter of Bernard, my head baker. Furthermore, Bernadette is my father’s wife andmy real mother. Not only do I now have a mother I can love, but it turns out I’ve been working with my grandfather, uncles, and cousins all these years. “Happy” is an inadequate word to describe how I feel about all this, but it’s a beginning.

Other than my father, no man, woman, or child in Chartreuse remembered my real mother’s existence for twenty years, thanks to Gisella. As soon as I was born, Gisella, who had “kindly” served as midwife, stole Bernadette’s magic and mine using the fae ring, then trapped her in the little stuffed dog she’d sewn for me and wiped her existence from the memory of every human in the area. Only Papa dimly remembered his beloved Bernadette in the back of his mind, but he believed she’d died in childbirth. Gisella, who had earlier disposed of her inconvenient first husband, pushed Gerard to marry her so their daughters could grow up in a family. Dazed, brokenhearted, and enspelled, he gave in to her demand but insisted on an in-name-only marriage.

In the years that followed, he loved Suzette as dearly as he loved me, and he even took Gisella’s illegitimate daughter, Charlotte, into his heart. Gisella freely parasitized his magic until, in time, he fought off her spell enough to become concerned about my future and seek out his parents. Refusing to lose her main sources of human magic, she then trapped him in the statue to keep his magic handy, convinced the locals of his death, and did her best to make us girls forget him. It didn’t work. My ancestor’s statue served as a constant reminder. Gisella simply had to deal with our sorrow and our continued devotion to our papa. And all those years, my parents were imprisoned, neither knowing what became of the other.

They both believed the worst up until the ring was destroyed, Gisella died, and Bernadette emerged, pale, dusty, and disheveled, from the ruins of Rina’s cottage to find her husband and his parents standing out in the snow beside the bronze statue. I wish I could have witnessed that reunion. Rina did, and she still tears up when she talks about it.

I can’t imagine a more beautifully tragic romance. Twenty years they were apart—they’re both around forty years old—yet they love each other like newlyweds. For the present, Papa has returned to the smithy to work with Monsieur LeRoy, who was delighted to have him back, and Bernadette replaced me at the bakery, working with her father and brothers, meeting their families, and reuniting with Wenna and Othen, who’d remembered but been unable to speak of her all those years.

Suzette and Charlotte were more relieved than saddened by Gisella’s death. They’d had their fed of their manipulative mother long ago and only attended her parties to be with me. Without attempting to explain the craziness to anyone else, they have adopted Gerard and Bernadette as grandparents for their growing broods, and everyone is happy.

Our former stepfather, the mayor, apparently has only dim memories of his second wife, and his real children were thrilled to be rid of her. None of them have attempted to contact us.

I was quite surprised to learn that Grandpère Gauthier DuBois is a vicomte. Which makes my father a lord of some kind as well. He doesn’t particularly care about the title and duties involved, but the family property lights up his eyes. The historic DuBois estate,Château Magique, lurks on the outskirts of Chartreuse, maintained by a host of brownies and dwarves. Papa hopes to raise horses there, which would make it even more delightful. Ben, Miette, and I visit whenever we have time to relax for a few days. My parents—I do enjoy using that word now—live there and manage the place, magically commuting to their city jobs. Sometime next year I will have a baby brother or sister.

Interesting to ponder that my baby sibling might grow up alongside my children. Not that we’re in a rush. I should have mentioned earlier that I married Benoît five months ago. Many people would say marrying after a mere three weeks’ acquaintance was unwise, but we have no regrets. We’ve shared so many formative life experiences—for example: megalomaniacal family members, complex curses, nighttime strolls in the park, battles against hideous blue fae magic—that we know each other better than many couples who courted for years.

As for the statue of Christophe DuBois, it once again stands proudly in the city center. My sisters’ children are being trained to keep its bronze boots shiny. I imagine my offspring will join them someday. Family traditions are important, after all.

Miette enjoyed her part in fighting magical crime so much that she forsook her duties at the bakery to travel the world with us. That cat does love adventure. Benoît recently told me she hopes we’ll someday give her a litter of wolf cubs to raise and train. I nearly passed out in horror before he assured me it doesn’t work that way, then laughed himself silly.

When I’m not tempted to throttle my husband, I enjoy his sense of humor, and I still bake éclairs and chouquettes for him on occasion. Crime-fighters, parents, or whatever else we become in the future, we will always be the Baker and the Wolf.

The End