Time Will Tell (17 page)

Epilogue

“Do you want to hold the baby?” Lucia asked, carryin
g the little girl in her arms.

“Yes, I do,” Lexi said, reaching out to take her baby from the woman holding her, feeling an immediate sense of prote
ctiveness. Once she had her in her arms, she kissed her forehead and whispered, “Mommy loves you, Eileen. Daddy loves you, too.”

Lucia smiled. “She is t
he world’s cutest baby. So charming.”

“Thank you, Lucia,” Lexi replied with a genuine smile. “You may go home now, though. We’l
l be okay here by ourselves.” 

“Are you sure about that, Mrs. Nichols?” Lucia questioned. “Mr. Nichols made it very clear that I was to stay here until he came home from work. He doesn’t want you to bu
rn out too quickly, you know.”

Lexi laughed. “I know, Lucia. Dan is a little over protective sometimes. We’ll be fine here until he gets home.” She glanced at the clock. “He’ll be home
in less than an hour, anyway.”

The woman stared at her for a moment before sighing. “Alright, then. I’ll just pa
ck up my things and be on my way.”

As Lucia pulled on her jacket and grabbed her purse, the doorbell rang. “I’ll just see who that is b
efore I leave,” she told Lexi.

Lexi nodded. “Thank you. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it!” Lucia said, beaming. She stared at Lexi for a moment with a dimpled smile before running to the door to see who it was.

Lexi felt a
slight twinge of guilt. She was going to talk to Dan about letting Lucia go once he got home from work. Even though she knew that Dan meant well by insisting that they have someone there to help out during the day because he worked long hours as a doctor specializing in vampire medicine, having a nanny just felt too excessive. They weren’t rich, by any means, and a nanny was just an unnecessary expense.

Lucia opened the front door, and Lexi heard her say, “Why, hello, Mr. Hunter! Lexi and the
baby are in the baby nursery.”

“Thank yo
u, Lucia,” Lexi’s father said.

A moment later, he appeared in the doorway of the nursery, holding a stuffed teddy bear in his hands. “There are my girls!”
Lexi’s dad said with a smile.

“Hi, Dad,” Lexi said.

Her father came closer to them, smiling as he stared at the baby adoringly. It wasn’t the first time her father had seen the baby—the first time had been at the hospital—but every time he saw Eileen, who they had decided to name after Lexi’s mom, his smile seemed to get even wider. It made Lexi worried that he was going to break his face, eventually.

“How are you doing, k
iddo?” her dad asked, sitting down in a chair across from her.

“I’m good. Tired, but I guess that’s to be expected,” Lexi replied
with a giggle. “How are you?”

“Good,” her dad replied. He stared at her for a moment, smiling, before saying, “
And I have some news for you.”

Lexi raised an eyebrow. “What type of news? Tell me while you hold Eileen.” She held the baby out for her father to
take from her.

Her father
cradled Eileen in his arms. “It’s good news.
Very
good news, in fact.” He glanced over at Lexi. “Wilkins’ Syndrome no longer exists.”

“What do you mean?” Lex
i asked with wide eyes.

A smile tugged at her father’s lips. “I mean, the
curse has been broken, Lexi.”

“How do you know?” Lexi asked. As happy as she was to hear that no one was ill anymore,
she couldn’t believe her ears.

“This morning, I heard the news about the curse being broken,” her father explained. “I didn’t believe it at first, but then Eleanor Stratt—who comes to the office regularly and who happens to have Wilkins’ Syndrome—came in to see me today. It looked like she de-aged by about ten years. It was obvious to me that she was cured. So I went to Briar Creek, and I found that it was true.
Everyone looks healthy again.”

Lexi shook her head. “I . . . I don’t understand. How is it possible? What
happened to break the curse?”

Balancing the baby in one arm, her father pulled a piece of paper out of his
pocket and handed it to her. 

Lexi unfolded the piece of paper, which had a small piece of tape holding it together. Her eyes fell on the words:
The one who is Destined to Die must
. She glanced down at the bottom of the page, which was numbered as page ninety, and she gasped.

It was the missing piece of the Hunter family book—the spell book that had once belonged to Belinda, which Lexi kept upstairs in her library. It was the page that had been torn out before she and Dan had been sucked into the 1800s many years ago; the page that had never been relocated.

“W-where did you find this?” she managed to ask, wondering who had torn the other part of the page, the part that had been in the book,
and taped it together.

“I found it on my desk early this morning, but I don’t know where it came from,” her father said, shaking his head. “It seems like maybe someone knew where it was this whole time and they were hiding it from me. Unless . . .” He tr
ailed off.

Lexi met her
father’s gaze. “Unless what?”

Her father hesitated before explaining, “I felt this gust of wind and something cold touched my skin when I picked it up. It’s going to sound crazy, Lexi, but I think . . . I think your mother’s spirit may have delivered it to me. It was alm
ost like I felt her presence.”

A knot tightened in Lexi’s stomach. It had been years since she’d seen her mother—or any signs that
might indicate that she could still be there, still lingering somewhere and watching. If her dad was right and her mom was the one who had delivered this paper, why had she given it to him and not Lexi? It didn’t make much sense.

“It doesn’t matter where the page came from, Lexi,” her father said softly. The look in his eyes told Lexi that he knew what was running through her mind. “What matters is what’s written on it. Read it for yourself.”

Lexi glanced down at the page and read the words that had been scrawled on it.

The one who is Destined to Die, dubbed as such by the corrupted town,
is the only one who has the ability to break the curse. The Chosen One will be a Hunter, and it will be a female. She mustn’t become a vampire in order for the curse to be broken; rather, she must remain a human unless she chooses to become another type of immortal being.

The Chosen One must prove that vampires and humans
(or other beings) can unite and that they can truly live in harmony with one another. She must do this by falling in love with a vampire, who she will later go on to marry. It must be a sincere, genuine love that cannot be broken. On the day the Chosen One gives birth to their first child, the spell will be broken and the curse will no longer exist.

Lexi looked up at her father, a confused look on her face. “So, Eileen is what broke the curse?”

Her father nodded. “Yes. I could hardly believe it when I found out. That’s why I had to ru
sh over here to let you know.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Lexi insisted. “When I talked to Belinda, she told me there was no way the curse could ever be broken. She said there was nothing we could do.”

“She must have found some way around it,” her father replied with a shrug. “I don’t understand it completely myself. I also don’t understand why someone tore the page out, or how it ended up on my desk this morning. I don’t think we’ll ever know the answers, but the important thing is that it worked. The curse is broken. Wilkins’ Syndrome no longer exists.”

So that must have been what her mom had been referring to that day, the last time she had seen her so many years ago when she had said that everything would change one day because of Lexi. Technically, the curse had been broken because of both Lexi and Dan, but together, they had changed everything.

At that moment, Lexi’s cell phone blared from its place on the baby’s nightstand. She glanced down at the caller ID and then hit the ‘talk’ button. “D
an?” she asked into the phone.

“Lexi, you won’t believe it! I have
the most wonderful news,” Dan told her. Lexi could hear the excitement in her husband’s voice, and if there was any doubt in her mind that her father was telling the truth, it had completely washed away.

“I already know
about the news, Dan,” Lexi said, smiling. “And you’re right. It
is
wonderful.”

*

4
YEARS LATER

“Mommy, when is Lily going to get here?” Eileen asked.

“I just spoke to Anna. They should be here any minute now, sweetie,” Lexi replied, as she smoothed out her daughter’s white
flower girl dress.

At that moment, the door to the church was opened and
Lily, Austin and Anna’s three year old daughter, bounded into the room.

“Is it okay if Lily
and I go get ready over there for the wedding?” Eileen asked, pointing to a corner of the room.

Lexi laughed, knowing that her daughter wanted some privacy because she was so shy, and the room was beginning to fill up
with people she didn’t recognize. “Of course it is. Just be careful.” The last time she had talked to Anna, she’d told her that Lily was having a difficult time controlling her blood cravings. They were trying to teach her about controlled feedings, but it was a little more difficult to teach a young child than it was to teach an adult vampire.

Even though Eileen hadn’t been able to become a vampire because Lexi was part of the Hunter
bloodline, Lily hadn’t had much of a chance at being born as a human, since both her mother and her father were vampires.

Lexi glanced over at Anna, who was walkin
g towards her, wearing a short purple bridesmaid dress that matched the one Lexi was wearing. The only difference was that there wasn’t a round belly bulge under Anna’s dress.

“Hey, Lexi!” Anna said, flinging her arms around her in a tight embrace. Even though they talked on the phone and through Skype regularly, Anna and Austin had moved to California a few years back. Austin had wanted to get as far away from Briar Creek as possible, and Anna had wanted Lily to grow u
p near her Grandpa Lancefield.

Even though Lexi knew it was the right thing for them, she couldn’t help but miss them at times. Actually, that was an understatement; she missed them most of the time. In fact, Lexi had something important to tell Anna today, and she knew that she couldn’t wait a second longer. “We’r
e moving to California!”

“Really?” Anna asked, cupping her hands over her mouth in excitement. 

Lexi nodded. “Yes. We miss you guys so much, and honestly . . . Dan’s practice isn’t doing that great lately. Now that Wilkins’ Syndrome is cured, there aren’t many patients for him to treat regularly. You know vampires. They never get sick.” She smiled. “We’re going to come out sometime next month to look at houses and see if there are any hospitals Dan can get a job at.”

Anna smiled. “There’s a house on our street that’s for sale, you know. It has three bedrooms. The one would make the perfect baby nursery. It has
a window seat and everything.”

Lexi sm
iled. “That would be amazing.”

“Have you guys decided what you’re naming him yet?” Anna asked, patting
Lexi’s baby bump.