Epilogue: Ezra - Entities to Lovers

One Year Later

Halloween

“Why, Ms. O’Brien, you really are determined to send a man to an early grave.”

Rory smacks her lips together as she applies the final coat of Midnight Plum lipstick and breaks into a dastardly smirk.

It’s Halloween again, and Ye Olde Spirit Tours is truly busier than ever. Two trolleys completely full of guests, a surge of customers making their pilgrimages to the store for spooky season, and neither of us have had a night off all week, but I can’t complain. There’s no one I’d rather haunt the city with than Rory.

Without missing a beat, Rory slips into her accent. “I’m not sure that can even happen, dearest, on account of you already being long dead.”

Dearest. Dead or not, she can undoubtedly make my heart skip a beat.

Rory slams the locker door shut and circles in on me. She’s fully dressed for her tour and we’ve decided to go all out with our costumes. Rory invested in some more elegant skirts for special occasions, the new bird pin in her hair has beaming red eyes, and she’s smudged her eye makeup in a way that looks utterly indecent. Darkened shadows under her cheeks, deep violet lips—god, I’m going to make such a mess of her later tonight.

I press her against my closed locker, and she toys with the buttons on my vest like she’d consider undoing them right there. Unfortunately for both of us, we’re far too busy to break for even a quick tryst. So, I happily settle for a kiss. I slip my arms around her waist, one hand firmly on the small of her back, and pull her toward me. I’ve learned all the ins and outs of her costume over the past year, including knowing what I can and can’t do depending on what will mess up her stage makeup. Her lip tint is formidable, and I’m going to make it fight for its life.

I lean in, kissing her and closing the gaps between us. She kisses back ravenously, nipping my lower lip between her teeth and humming an indecent moan into my mouth, and then, a beaming smile.

“Are you really going to dishevel me before our tour?” she asks in character with a giggle.

“If you’d let me, I’d do anything you wanted,” I say, and then pause. I finish with a kiss on her forehead. “I love you.”

Rory smiles, soft and safe. It took us some time to work up the courage to say the words, even though we both felt it long before. It was a quiet walk home along the water after a slow shift during the holidays, but the beauty of the first snowflakes of the season landing in her curls and the pink in her cheeks was too loud to ignore. I was devastatingly in love with this woman and I needed her to know. Like everything with Rory, it’s worth facing my fears and it’s always worth the wait.

Now it’s the last words we each hear before bed every night, even if we aren’t at each other’s apartments. It’s a silence breaker when I have nothing else to say but that I’m in awe of her, and deeply, remarkably happy to love someone like her. I’m even luckier she loves me back.

“I love you, too.”

“A lot,” I insist.

“I know,” she agrees. “Shall we?”

“We shall.”

Rory and I step into the store, which is still bustling. Halloween is always a frenzy, but the ripple effect from shooting a singular episode of The Out There is clearly still in action. Helping the fan base’s favorite couple get engaged pulled in a small army of customers, enough to bring me on as a manager during the summers and busy seasons.

Shortly after breaking our curse, which we did through a series of tests with separate shifts, job interviews, and subsequent internet appearances for Rory, she and I curled up on the couch and talked about our futures, mostly mine. She held my hand, toyed with my rings, and listened for over an hour as I told her how disillusioned I felt with upper academia, how I wanted to teach and share the things I loved with other people, but also feel like I was doing something. The next day, like fate, an honors history position opened at a local high school for the following year.

While, sure, public school might not pay well either, there are loads of kids who need teachers to believe in them and take a chance on them. I think of high school me, who wanted to impress everyone, who wanted to be seen and to matter. Every guidance counselor saw me in statistics terms and nothing else. Everyone except Ms. Drake, who let me sit in her classroom during open hours and talk about my favorite history books and documentaries and banter with me about the if-thens of the world. If I could be that for just one kid, the teacher who they’d remember years down the line as making their life better? Sold. That was what I wanted.

Education isn’t all about who pays the most money and who gets the most degrees from whatever prestigious schools. It’s about leaving a mark that’s meant to be remembered.

The job allows me to work during the day and do tours in the evening a few nights a week, and leaves the summers free and clear to work at Ye Olde Spirit Shop, helping Delia manage the place while Rory works on procuring new items we can sell for a pretty penny. Especially now that we’re breezing through more inventory than ever…

I think Clementine likes the extra attention, too. Currently, there’s a group of teen girls trying to take a selfie with her, kneeling near her rocking chair. One coos, “She’s so cute!” and another remarks, “She is haunted a.f.” Delia stands chatting with Vic near the door, before offering him a single kiss on the cheek as he leaves to prep the trolley for our first tour of the night. I have yet to hear him speak. It’s clearly his choice to not interact with me. We’ll get there one day.

Everything here—from the chatter of customers picking up books about things they didn’t know before to the eerie vintage vinyl playing on the record player, to Rory gripping my hand and kissing my palm as we gaze out at the thriving store—feels like home.

Rory and I wade through the crowd and gather at the trolley outside. We’ve fallen into an easy rhythm here, though we can’t do every tour together, as much as I’d love to. Since our time in the spotlight, we’ve had plenty of customers coming in to ask if “the ghost couple” could do their tour. It turns out, we’re a hot commodity, which naturally called for rewriting our characters’ stories.

I return from readying the trolley to find Rory taking attendance, and I spot one of my own students in the crowd of guests for the evening. Teddy Irving is in my second period class, and on day one, I had him pegged as a favorite. He dressed like high school me, a little too proper, tried really hard, and had a nonfiction history book tucked in his backpack to read before class began. He’s yet to score anything below a ninety-three on our quizzes or tests so far, and yet, he’s still here because I offered extra credit to any student who shows up to Ye Olde Spirit Tours and gets a question right.

He’s got a bright future.

“Hey, Mr. B,” he says, waving. “Nice ascot!”

But of course, I’m not Mr. Blackwell now, and this teacher’s pet is trying to get me to break character. Not gonna happen. I am a professional, dammit.

“I’m afraid I have no idea who that is,” I lie, waving him off. Rory laughs under her breath, as I’d given her a heads-up that at one point, I might have a student show up. Most likely, it’d be to make fun of their dorky teacher in his silly costume. Thankfully, I think Teddy’s going to have a good time. “I only answer to Royce Montgomery—”

“The Fourth!” Rory chimes in.

“Of course, of course. Royce Montgomery the Fourth. If all bodies are accounted for, why don’t we go ahead and board our trolley for the evening? Careful now,” I direct as the crowd shuffles on. “If you trip and fall, your soul will be trapped here forever. You will hear the same haunting facts for all eternity.”

“That’s not true!” Rory banters. “We change it up occasionally. If you die on board, it will give us new content.”

“Legally, that is a joke,” I clarify. “Anyway…welcome aboard the Grisly Fate, my dearest souls. Tonight, we will be taking you around the haunted streets of Boston. We are thrilled to be your ghostly hosts this evening. As I said, I am Royce Montgomery the Fourth, and the beautiful phantom beside me is Ms. Kitty O’Brien. Funny, we lived in different eras, but found each other in the afterlife.”

Rory taps Vic on the shoulder and he hits the gas. She’s clearly getting more comfortable with him now that he and Delia are an item, and he has fixed her sink twice lately after, we suspect, Luna put something where it shouldn’t have been.

“Of course, my love,” she coos. “We are truly soulmates if our souls managed to find each other in a different life.”

We have full permission to incorporate our romance into our characters, but Delia asked that we kindly not canoodle too much on tours. So, as much as I want to sweep Rory into my arms and kiss her, I settle for a peck to the back of her hand, which gets an “aw” from most of the crowd, and an “ew” from a rambunctious toddler.

“And also do keep in mind that if you enjoy our services here this evening,” I add, “Ms. O’Brien and I are trying to afford a haunted house to live in, so please do tip generously. We ghosts must pay rent, too!”

Rory blushes and rolls her eyes. For now, we’re alternating back and forth at each other’s places. Her apartment is far too small for both of us to live in full time, and mine is too small to warrant three people living in it. We’re on a continual hunt for a place that will be all ours. We’re working on it.

Just like everything else…

“As you can see, the trolley is now moving,” Rory transitions, “so please do stay seated and refrain from screaming.”

Rory

Talbot House used to feel like a place of mystery and mischief. The air was weighted and the energy was tense. Now there’s a kinship between the three of us—me, Ezra, and Temperance—and while that mischief lives on every time we cross the threshold, I can never, ever be mad about it. Not anymore.

“Come along, come along!” Ezra chimes from the middle of the crowd. “We’ve arrived at our final stop of the evening. Especially you. You’ll like this one.”

I glance back to see if Ezra is talking to his student, but no, he’s talking to an old man who has fallen asleep every time we’ve gotten back on the trolley.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, but I love it so much more this year. It’s a hell of a day to call an anniversary, and it’s so apt for Ezra and me. Over the past couple of months, Ye Olde Spirit Shop has seen an uptick in customers. While a lot of them come in to take pictures or explore the inventory, especially during the Halloween season, many have walked out with knickknacks and gifts they didn’t anticipate buying. Some of them even stay for a tarot reading because they’ve always wanted to try it.

I’ve tried to take the lessons Temperance taught me about myself and my skills with me when it comes to helping around the store. My mom still takes point on most things, but giving her more nights off has allowed her to spend more time with Vic, and it’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time. I’ve kept a focus on inventory searching and inspecting, and over the summer, Ezra helped with the day-to-day managerial tasks. It didn’t take long for us to start branching out.

Making and selling my teas and little salves in the shop.

Helping run a monthly spooky book club together.

Planning special, limited programming like murder mystery dinner theater, or private events.

If I make mistakes, there’s a safety net to catch me. I’m learning to trust it more each day.

The guests wander into the parlor. Before Ezra and I enter with them, he rests a hand on the small of my back and kisses my cheek while no one’s looking.

“You fearless rake, you,” I tease him, keeping my voice low.

He presses his hand to his heart. “What can I say? I was overcome.”

Tonight his makeup is heavier than usual. His cheeks are painted to be far gaunter; his eyeliner is thicker and it brings out the deep dark browns in his eyes and the lush arcs of his lashes. He’s thrown on one of his nicer ascots, added another ring on his hand, and recently had some of the embroidery on his vest touched up in time for the season. He looks so good I know it’ll haunt me until I get him back to my place tonight.

The past year has afforded us many gifts. Of course, there’s the incandescent joy being with Ezra brings, and the confidence to take action at the store and step into my own. But there’s also been late-night lectures on Ezra’s history topic of choice as we fall asleep next to each other. I get to tell him I love him each morning before he heads to school. I know adjusting to the two jobs weighs on him, especially in these busier seasons, but he carries it well.

He’s often rushing right from school to the store, but even on his most tired days, he still comes home telling me the exciting things that happened that day with sleepy glee in his eyes, like he feels he’s finally leaving his mark. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that he’s happy.

We both are.

I mouth I love you to him, and he squeezes my hand in return. A silent You too for when we’re being watched. I turn from him to continue our tour but am stopped dead in my tracks.

For the first time in Talbot House, I’m seeing a full-body apparition—Temperance Talbot stands at the top of the stairs, looking directly at us. She’s a vaguely green mist and I’m not certain if I’m the only person seeing it or not. The business-savvy thing to do would be to tell the guests and encourage them to take a picture, but this moment feels intimate and specifically for us.

I wrap my fingers around Ezra’s palm. He glances up the stairway and his body stiffens. He can see her. That is new, too. Ezra’s figured out how to keep a keener eye, but the instances in which he sees something are few and far between. Sometimes I think he’s just saying he does to engage with me, but tonight I know he’s seeing this clear as day.

Temperance’s figure holds still for a split second, before offering the gentlest hint of a nod. A wholehearted stamp of approval.

I’ll show you.

She did. She showed me that the best thing I could have asked for was right in front of me.

And then she vanishes into smoky wisps and floats away when the breeze from outside hits the top of the stairs.

Ezra and I remain still for a second, trying to determine if we really saw that. I’m going to believe we did, and that Temperance is pleased with how we’ve grown over the past year.

So am I.

Ezra smiles at me and tips his head into the parlor. We’ve got a tour to give and we’ve reached our absolute favorite stop.

Together, we enter the parlor where this all began—we mind the séance table and take space on either side of the room. A cool fall wind makes the house creak, the sconces on the walls flicker, and this moment feels like slipping into the past. What began as a disaster is now one of my fondest memories.

“Welcome to the home of Temperance Talbot,” I introduce, glancing across the parlor at Ezra. “Now, she is one spirit you certainly don’t want to upset.”

Ezra smiles, and says, “Ask us how we know.”