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Chapter Twenty
Five
A New
Beginning
At
the very moment that India’s spirit left her, a transformation took place among
the twelve cats. At a signal from
the Gate Keeper, India Crowley, the onetime witch, detoured to Purgatory to do
several centuries of penance for the mischief she had wrought. India, who had once been a member of
the Roman Catholic Church, understood the levels of torment she must pass
through before her period was up.
She was thankful that she had not been sent directly to hell where Nebo
had returned.
The
reversal first came to the twelve the cats in a collective dream in which they
had been at the Halloween party again and seen a woman in a radiant white robe
and flowing white hair confront the Shadow Brook Witch. Now, during this apparent nightmare,
however, India fell dead on the ground and the woman, who they thought was an
angel, told them that it was over, the spell was broken and they could wake up.
Though
the dream had been different from the actual event, a dizziness and feeling of
weightlessness struck all of the cats as they fell from slumber to wakefulness
and transformed back into human form.
They could feel their arms and legs grow swiftly, their faces tingle
with change, and they experienced a sudden inexplicable chill as the hairs
vanished from their bodies and left them shivering naked on the bed.
The
bed groaned under the great weight, collapsing finally as eleven naked men and
women returned back to their previous forms. Jim, who had been sleeping on a cushion on the carpet below,
was the only young adult who had not crashed to the floor.
He
stood there with the cushion in front of his private parts, staring in
disbelief at this scene. At first,
as they found themselves in a tangled mass on the mattress, the dazed mortals
did not know what to make of their predicament. Sam was lying next to Irma with his chin between her small
breasts. Wanda had managed to fall
directly onto Buck, who thought he was in heaven now. The remaining cats found themselves in similarly
controversial positions: Sheldon
pinned between Tanya and Penny and poor Neva pinned between Ed and Drew. Tom, who had been lying on Wanda’s rear
was the first to jump up onto his shaky legs. It was Jim, however, who made the
announcement “the spell is broken!” before the young adults began scrambling
with embarrassment to various sectors of the room.
“Oh
my God,” cried Neva, pulling a sheet up to her breasts.
“Oh
yuck, Buck!” Wanda shivered with disgust as the tall blond-haired youth stood
there gaping at her frame.
Sheldon,
Tanya and Penny likewise disentangled themselves and, with grunts, groans and
squeals, found a respective pillow, blanket and bedspread to cover
themselves. Tom and Ed simply ran
out of the room, while Sam broke away from the startled Irma, racing toward his
closet where his clothes hung.
Embarrassed
but happy to be back, Sam began rummaging around for clothing his friends could
wear. After slipping quickly into
a pare of jogging shorts, he began tossing them pants, sweaters, shirts and
anything else he could grab quickly and toss into their outstretched hands.
Neva’s
beautiful chocolate body was soon clad in an oversized white sweatshirt with a
university logo on the front, while the blond, exquisitely proportioned Wanda
was tossed a red sweater she pulled down to her knees. Buck was able to squeeze into a pair of
levi’s, though he could not button the front, while Drew had the opposite
problem as he scrambled into a pare of green corduroy pants. Irma’s spare frame fit nicely into one
of Sam’s dress shirts, which draped satisfactorily around her hips and
thighs. For the time being, Tanya
and Penny settled for stretchable black sweat pants that they yanked up over
their breasts and tied up with a string.
When
Tom and Ed returned to the room, they both exchanged the sofa cushions they
sported for the short sleeve white shirts and dress pants offered by Sam. With their modesty in tact, the
remaining men also attempted to complete their wardrobes with more of Sam’s clothes,
while Irma, Neva and Wanda seemed satisfied with what they now wore.
Tanya
and Penny, whose bizarre attire generated snickers, found two clean tee shirts
to slip over their torsos, slid their baggy sweats down a ways and retied them
at their waists. Buck went into
the restroom to change from the tight fitting levis into a pare of sweats Sam
pulled out of the dirty clothes hamper and a faded yellow sweatshirt Sam had
set aside for the Goodwill. Drew
pulled a tee shirt over his hairless bare chest, while Jim, who had stood in
the background ogling at the women, found himself draped in a bed sheet, since
nothing else would fit around his ponderous frame.
The
cast on Jim’s leg had, of course been shed with the return of his great mass,
but the injury he had suffered remained.
He began limping into the living room with the other humans, support
being offered by several helpful hands.
“Put
it on, it stretches really wide.” Sam placed a pare of shorts in Jim’s hand.
Jim
nodded obligingly but had begun feeling the pain acutely in his leg. Looking around for a place to sit down,
he looked pathetic draped in his sheet and holding the shorts limply in his
hand. Plopping down in an easy
chair, his chubby bare legs protruding beneath, the once portly cat caused
laughter in the group. Irma had the
presence of mind to find a bottle of aspirins and a glass of water for him as
she chattered happily with members of the twelve. Not caring what they were going to do or where they might go
from this point, the young adults were elated and exalted by their
transformation. The sound of their
own voices and the ability to walk on two legs was a wondrous experience for
them all. After the twelve cats
had congregated in the living room, Sam led them all in a prayer of
thanksgiving. This time there was
no mockery in Drew or Wanda’s voices.
There were, in fact, tears in everyone’s eyes as the apartment manager
gave all the credit to God:
“Lord,
we thank you for giving us our bodies back. We know now that there are secrets that even the prophets
and saints did not know. The
nightmare inflicted upon us by India Crowley tested us as cats and, as we
adjust to our human forms, has given us all a new lease on life. Please let our incredible experiences
make us better humans now that we have lived these days as cats. Do not let us ever forget your special
creatures, for they are specially blessed!”
“God
bless the cats.” Irma murmured, and they all followed with a heartfelt
“Amen!”
Except
for their bare feet, Tom and Ed, whose measurements were close to Sam’s, looked
rather sporty in their dress shirts and slacks, but the smaller and thinner
Drew looked like an adolescent wearing his older brother’s clothes. All of the girls had to be satisfied
with sweatshirts, sweaters and shirts.
But no one seemed to care what they looked like at this point. Without being asked, the women held up
a sheet while Sam, Buck and Drew helped Jim into the shorts Sam salvaged from
the Goodwill bag. In the end, the
portly youth added the sheet, itself, over the garment but as a flowing cape
that he fastened crudely at the neck.
They
were back. The spell had been
broken. They would, they agreed,
forever be family and friends. For
that hour before the Spell Reversal Team returned, the twelve young adults
continued to marvel at their restored bodies, sharing the experience in excited
spurts of emotion as would sleepers awakening from a long, incredible dream.
******
Alice,
who had more at stake than the others, had coaxed Elijah to leave the hospital as
the priest followed Madelyn’s gurney from the room. It seemed ludicrous to give the Last Rites to someone who
had invoked Lilith, the mother of witches, to undo a spell, and yet Blaze
wanted to believe that Madelyn could be saved, for it meant he could be saved
too. Mortimer had no such
doubts. The priest could do no
more than raise his hand up in a blessing and mumble a few words before Madelyn
was rushed into the trauma room down the hall, but he sensed, as had Blaze,
that Madelyn Fontaine, after a long, controversial life, was at peace with God.
******
“Father,
bless me, for I have sinned grievously,” Blaze said to Mortimer as they settled
in the back seat of the car.
Mortimer,
who had been fastening his seat belt, did a double take now. “I beg your
pardon,” he uttered in disbelief.
“I
am not an ordained minister,” Elijah interrupted, as he turned the key, “but
all you have to do is ask God to forgive you, Blaze. You don’t need to confess your sins.”
“Yes,
Mister O’Dare,” piped Alice, “pray to Jesus; that’s all you have to do!”
As
the gravity of the sorcerer’s request filled his mind, Mortimer, the wizard
priest, almost laughed aloud until he saw in Blaze’s dark eyes something he had
not seen before.
“Listen
my son,” Mortimer said wearily, patting the sorcerer’s knee, “I may only be a
heretic priest, but you are still a Catholic, a member of my church.” “If you
wish to confess your sins,” he whispered conspiratorially to him, “we’ll
conduct this in private, so these non-believers won’t hear.”
Stricken
with the absurdity of it all, the overwrought Alice began to laugh hysterically
then. The long, dreadful ordeal
leading up to India’s death and the overwhelming concern that Sam might still
be a cat seemed to catch up to her all at once as her laughter grew imbecilic
and then turned to tears.
“Alice,
Alice, stop it!” Elijah patted her leg gently, glancing at the two men in his
rearview mirror.
“Non-believers,.
. . . he calls us non-believers,” her
voice began to constrict, “a heretic priest says this to a blasphemer, who
mocks the Lord. ” “. . . . This has been one, long, frightful obscene joke on
reality, hasn’t it Elijah?” she shook her head. “My fiancé wanted me to pet him and stroke his fur, but I
couldn’t help it, I still hated cats.
They made my skin crawl.
What does that make me, Elijah?. . . . God forgive me for not reaching
out with my heart to those poor furry little beasts!”
“There-there,
Miss Wagnall,” Mortimer consoled, tapping her seat, “you did everything you
could for them. It’s how you’re
raised. My mother loved cats when
I was a child, and so I grew up loving them too.”
“I
had one cat that looked a lot like Neva,” Blaze said wistfully, closing his
eyes. “Sometimes I think she was
the best friend I ever had.”
“When
this is all over,” the priest suggested earnestly, “we should all go straight
to the animal shelter and adopt three or four. They’re hardly any trouble. All they need is a little food, a kitty litter and a warm
lap to lie on once in awhile.”
“You’re
right, Mortimer,” Elijah nodded thoughtfully, glancing at Alice with concern,
“I don’t think I’ll ever look at cats the same way
again!”
******
Upon
reaching Shadow Brook Arms, the group grew silent as they imagined what they
might find. Would it be humans,
they wondered, or would it be cats?
With baited breath, they climbed out of the station wagon and walked as
quickly as their trembling legs would carry them to apartment 1A. When they arrived at Sam’s apartment,
it was, of course, Alice who began hammering on the wood with both fists
calling out impatiently for them to open the door.
“Sam,
Sam, all of you, we’re back.
Please let us in if you can!
For God’s sake, open the Goddamn door!”
Wincing
at this blasphemy, Elijah tried to comfort her but his own heart was hammering
too loudly for him to speak. Irma, he thought reflectively, I almost wish you would remain a cat!
When
the door opened, it seemed to do so on its own accord, swinging wide to expose
a dark cavern inside.
“Surprise!”
the twelve adults shouted.
The
last rays of sundown flooded into the living room as the Spell-Reversal Team
stood silhouetted against the glow.
In youthful exuberance the twelve young adults had treated this event as
a reunion in which honored guests had just arrived, but it was too much for
poor Alice. As she had done after
discovering the bewitched cats, Sam’s fiancé fainted abruptly onto the floor.
“There
she goes again!” cried Wanda.
“She
must be anemic,” Drew whispered to Ed.
“Someone
get a glass of water,” Sam directed, bending down to cradle her blond head in
his arms.
For
a moment Irma looked with understanding at this poignant scene. The bitter-sweetness of her experience
as a cat and Sam’s companion had ended with the breaking of the spell. This scene seemed to make it a
reality. Looking around the room
at her newfound friends, she wondered if it might also be the same for them now
that they were back in human form.
Neva and Drew had been inseparable as cats, but now the tall, beautiful
black woman looked with embarrassment at the sparsely built Drew. Wanda, for that matter, would still
need to be drunk to have a fling with Buck. Sheldon, it appeared, was still engaged to the sassy
Tanya. Penny, who sat quietly in a
distant chair, had seemed to withdraw back into her old introverted self, in
spite of all she had been through with that pair. For Tom and Ed, who had not paired off with anyone in the
group, it was not so easy to tell, but Irma was certain that they would go back
to their old selves too.
As
she found herself watching the resuscitation of this frail woman, wishing that
she could have remained a cat and feeling guilt because she hoped Alice would
not be resuscitated at all, a notion forced itself into her thoughts
contradicting her present mood.
“It’s not true,” she
whispered, delighted at the sound of her crinkly voice. “After all that they’ve
gone through, these people have changed!
This experience has certainly changed me!”
She, Irma Fresco, would use
every ounce of her energies for the rest of her life, to make it so. When she looked up again, she noticed a
certain look in Penny’s silent gaze, a quiet strength and nobility, and there
was, though fleetingly, a fond fair glance exchanged between Neva and
Drew. A voice broke into her
reverie then “. . . . Irma, . . . . Irma Fresco. . . . Irma, is that you?”
Elijah
had looked at the slightly built little woman with short black hair and
almond-shaped blue eyes and recognized her immediately.
“Hello,
Elijah,” she extended a small, trembling hand, “would you like me to introduce
you and the others to our group!”
“I’d
love it!” he said, taking her proffered hand.
By now, Alice had come to,
rose up with Sam and Mortimer’s help and been directed groggily to the
couch. Blaze looked up Neva to
tell her about his own black Persian cat, as the young adults mulled festively
in the room. Irma gathered
together all three men and asked them to sit next to Alice on the couch.
“May I have your attention!”
Irma called out in a jubilant voice. “These wonderful people, Elijah, Mortimer,
Blaze, and Alice, whom most of you have met, would like to meet you all once
again in your human forms.”
“I
am Irma Fresco,” she began to introduce the twelve with a polite bow. “The
young man, nursing Alice, is her fiancé Sam, the sable-colored Burmese you saw
scampering around the house. That
big blond haired fellow was the big yellow tabby Buck. . . . This fellow,
Buck’s best friend, is Tom, the Maine coon everyone liked to pet, and here is
that naughty Havana cat, Ed, and the sleek tan feline Drew, who is also Buck’s
friend.” “These women,” she pulled
them both forward by their wrists, “are, of course, the wonderful Persians you
liked to cuddle, Neva and Wanda--black and white negatives of themselves. And let’s not forget our brave Sheldon,
who had been a Norwegian forest cat, his girl friend Tanya, a Siamese, I
believe, and,” “come on, don’t be shy,” she motioned, looking across the room,
“. . . . Penny, a beautiful Abyssinian I wished you folks had seen.” “Last but
not least,” Irma directed the spell-changer’s attention to the big, portly
young man, whose toga-clad body was reminiscent of Emperor Nero as he lounged
in the chair, “I want to introduce you to that entertaining fat little calico
everyone loved: Jim Courtney.” “How are you feeling, Jim?” she smiled sweetly
down at him now.
“It’s
good to be back.” Jim reached out and gently squeezed Irma’s hand.
As
if this was the proper thing to do now, the four members of the Spell Reversal
Team rose up from the couch and mingled with the twelve young adults. Alice paired off with Sam, but the
apartment manager would glance frequently at Irma, marveling at how much she
had changed.
The
stories told and retold from their smiling faces would one day be written down
by Irma Fresco in a book. She had
learned so much as a cat. Once in
the shadow of her friend India Crowley, she had struck her neighbors and
friends as mousy and unattractive by virtue of her attitude and drab apparel,
but everything had changed now. . . . And something else, she suddenly realized
after experiencing this same marvel as a cat. . . . She no longer needed her
glasses! This realization, though
astounding, seemed somehow irrelevant after the ordeal she had gone through,
and yet she wanted to share it someone special now.
Looking
around at all her chattering friends, then focusing a last moment on Sam, she
turned suddenly and found Elijah standing next to her again in the room. Remembering the warm little black cat
in his coat, Elijah’s voice constricted with emotion as he tried to tell her
what was in his mind, but his heart was hammering too loudly again for him to
speak.
“Guess what Elijah,” she
said, clasping his shaking hands, “my eyes are twenty-twenty now. I was so nearsighted before I couldn’t go anywhere without
glasses. How do you account for
that?”
“I-I
can’t Irma,” he stumbled with the words, “perhaps all of you will retain
something from your feline bodies. . . . I can’t speak for the others who were
cats. . . . The only cat I grew to know and love is now a young woman
again. I feel like I lost my
favorite pet!”
“You
haven’t lost me, Elijah,” she promised, her blue eyes flashing with tears. “How
can I ever forget the warm haven you gave to me. How can I not love you in return?”
Not
daring to misconstrue her meaning and spoil the mood, Elijah very wisely,
smiled, but turned the subject his way.
“Perhaps,”
he began clumsily again, “. . . I mean I am several years older than you, but,
but-“
“Yes,
of course,” she nodded pertly, a lock of black hair falling over her brow.
“I
was going to ask you on date.” Elijah began to relax. “. . . . I’m sort of out
of practice, but perhaps we could have dinner and go the theatre or something.”
“I’ve
got a great idea,” Irma emitted a girlish squeal, “why don’t we have a party!”
“That’s
a capital idea!” cried Mortimer now.
“Yeah,
it will be our first reunion as humans!” piped Sam.
“I
don’t know,” quipped Neva, looking across the room at Drew, “the last time we
had a party like that we were turned into cats.”
Drew
boldly walked across the room toward Neva, while Buck, who and finally inched up next to Wanda Craven, felt
himself drowning in her gaze. Sam,
Alice, Mortimer, Blaze, Tom, Sheldon, Tanya, Penny, and Ed joined this foursome
to plan the reunion ahead, as Irma, the very person who had initiated the idea,
withdrew with Elijah into another room.
As
they looked down at the collapsed bed, Elijah could not help laughing when he
realized what this meant.
“Ho-ho! That’s where you cats were lying when
the spell was broken!” he declared, moisture willing up into his eyes.”
“Yes,”
nodded Irma, “we ruined poor Sam’s bed.”
“So,
tell me,” Elijah pressed forward awkwardly once more, “would you consider, I
mean, a real date, not just the reunion?”
“Yes,
my dear Elijah,” answered Irma, bending forward and kissing his check, “I would
be honored. One would think it was
you who needed glasses now!”
“I
think you’re a beautiful woman Irma,” Elijah tried to explain, “but not in a
way that some of those fellows out there would understand.” “. . . . You have,”
he searched for the words, “a beautiful mind and soul. . . . You have the most
expressive eyes I have ever known. . . . You’re generous, sweet, and
unpretentious. You were, as a cat,
Irma, the most precious miracle to grace my sore eyes. . .”
Elijah’s
voice trailed of in reflection.
Irma thought about what he had said and shook her head. Irma, the human being, was, for the
preacher, beyond mortal words. He
remembered how she had studied her reflection, as she did now, in a toaster in
Blaze O’Dare’s kitchen. Now she
stared with the same wonderment into a mirror on the bedroom door. The long sleeved men’s dress shirt that
covered her little body could not have been more becoming in Elijah’s
eyes.
“You
are describing Irma, the cat,” she said, looking in wonderment at herself. “Irma, the human, was an eccentric, who
dabbled in the occult and, when she was India Crowley’s friend, had wanted to
be a witch.”
“Your
mind and soul are beautiful,” Elijah insisted, studying her pixie frame. “. . .
. Those are constants, Irma, that make all the difference in the world. You have found your way back to God
after being bewitched by India Crowley.
You have taken the best parts of Irma, the cat, with you. I am thankful now that I was a part of
this miracle. So much of that
small, black purring cat is left in the Irma Fresco looking into the
mirror.” “Don’t you see?” his
voice constricted again, “. . . it is I
who am bewitched now!”
Epilogue
(One Year Later)
******
For
the courageous Sheldon, who led two female cats through one of the worst ordeals
of the twelve, becoming a human again had reinforced his relationship with
Tanya. Tanya, after experiencing
Sheldon’s nurturing care toward Penny and herself, had learned humility and
patience as a cat. Although Tanya
planned to marry Sheldon someday, Penny, whom she had treated insufferably in
the beginning, was now like a sister to her now.
Penny, of all people, struck up a lasting friendship
with Tom Wellitz at Shadow Brook Arms.
Because each of them had journeyed on separate odysseys as cats, they
found much to talk about at the reunion.
It turned out, to Penny’s delight, that she and Tom had much in common
as humans. Both of them were
Jewish, and they both loved swing music and jazz. Of all the human changes Irma had hoped would come about, in
fact, the beguiling Abyssinian, who paired up with the Maine coon, pleased her
the most.
For Buck and Wanda’s friendship, time would, of
course, tell, but the big yellow tabby and Persian were both attending college
together in earnest now. Being
cats had given them a focus on life.
Buck, who had tried to hard to be top dog as a human had proven to be
more than top cat to his friends.
He could not believe that the fabulous Neva was dating Drew, but, unlike
the old Buck, who would have made fun of this match, the new Buck was actually
proud of the awkward and sparsely built youth.
Buck’s friend Ed, whose drift toward feral cathood
had worried them all very much, had been greatly moved by his experience as a
cat, so much so, in fact, he decided to serve the church. His family had tried to talk him out of
it, but Ed could not be swayed, even by his friend Buck now that he had decided
to become a priest.
Jim, being a fat kid, a fat adult and then a fat
cat, was on a diet now. Buck, Drew
and Tom gave Jim a great deal of moral support during this period of time. After only a year’s work, Jim has lost
eighty pounds and had also, as all the other members of Buck’s gang, gone back
to school.
******
Perhaps,
viewed by Irma, herself, the most unexpected change had come for Elijah Gray
and herself. In this matter, she
would later write, her instincts had been dead wrong. She had grown to love him as a father figure when she had
been rescued by him on the street.
The crush she had on Sam, which had no foundation in hope or logic, had
seemed to make her meeting with the preacher a bittersweet affair. Elijah had loved Irma, the cat. The preacher had, in fact, gone out and
bought a little black cat just like Irma and called her Lilith, which seemed to
prove his affection for her as his pet.
But, now as a mortal woman, she looked at the frisky little cat one day
and realized that Lilith was a living tribute of Elijah’s love toward her that
defied his own faith. How could
she not help but to love him in return?
******
The
greatest changes if not the most wondrous transformations, however, did not
come from the miracle surrounding the cats.
The
first of these miraculous changes, at least in Mortimer Hildebrand’s thinking,
was what had happened to Blaze O’Dare, the make-believe sorcerer, who had led
them to Madelyn, the Witch. For
several years of his adult life Blaze had detoured from the mother church in a
search for the mysteries of life.
His journey into what he believed was white magic had brought him close
to the brink of spiritual darkness.
But now, after seeing, with his own eyes the miracle of the cats and the
spell-reversal by Madelyn that led to her own return to the faith, the sorcerer
was back. What it meant that he
was blessed by a heretic priest, no longer mattered, since he knew that white
magic did, in fact, exist, and God was the greatest magician of them all.
Even
greater than the change that came over Blaze was the change that Mortimer
Hildebrand reported for Madelyn Fontaine.
“I could not believe my eyes,” he told Irma one
night, as he sat at the dinner table with Elijah, Irma and Blaze. “. . . . The
old woman, not only recovered from her dreadful injuries, she seemed to go
through a metamorphoses. The
doctors replaced her sightless eye with a right fine glass one. Her matted hair, which had not one gray
hair showing as a witch turned snow white after her experience, but the
wrinkles on her skin have even been smoothed out somehow.” “. . . . She’s a dignified looking old
lady now,” he groped for clarification. “. . . . I’m not saying that she’s
attractive mind you, for that woman is still the ugliest woman I have ever
known, . . . . but there is another beauty-”
“Ah,
yes,” interrupted Elijah, squeezing Irma’s hand, “the soul.”
“Yes,”
the priest nodded his head gently, “. . . . the soul,” “and, of course,” he
added after a pause, “the workings of the mind. Unfortunately, as you both have come to realize, they are
not the same. For the mind tempts
us, and the soul, which is a child, as the beasts of the field, accepts
unconditionally. Madelyn learned
this when she confronted her greatest challenge and almost lost her soul. . . .
Now she is a child again, having returned to the church as a nun.”
“Returned?”
Blaze marveled at the thought. “I thought she was excommunicated!”
“A
nun indeed,” Irma giggled to herself.
“Madelyn
had been a novitiate when she quit the convent during the grace period in the
Catholic church,” Mortimer explained, “yet she could not forgive herself for
failing in her vows. Her entire
odyssey of searching began back then.
With the great knowledge of the occult which she offers church doctors
today, the Roman Catholic Church will better understand its enemy Satan. As a gatherer of mysteries she returns,
but this time to help the Sacred College in its quest for knowledge.”
“India’s
death bed repentance was a miracle too,” Irma said wistfully, trying to
remember the India she once knew.
“A
miracle? . . . I don’t think so,” replied Blaze, stroking his beard, “that
woman was barely alive. All she
did was move her little finger when Madelyn asked her a question. I’d hardly call that repentance. She didn’t even open her eyes!”
“In the Roman Catholic Church,” Mortimer explained
thoughtfully, “it’s not necessary to even be awake during the Last Rites. But Madelyn didn’t really give her such
rites; she improvised too much for that.
She was trying to save her soul, what was left of it anyhow.” “In our faith,” he said, nodding
affectionately to his hosts, “it’s customary for death bed repenters like India
to spend time in Purgatory. I
don’t know if she’ll be going there now. . . . I’m not so sure about myself.”
“Mortimer,”
Elijah said, raising a glass of water up as a toast, “I do not believe in
Purgatory nor the efficacy of prayers to the Saints practiced in your church,
but I’ve always believed in friendship. I’ve learned, against my own nature, that God does, in
fact, work in mysterious ways.
You, gentleman, are proof of it.
Madelyn is certainly proof of it too, and this dear child I once carried
in my coat is the greatest proof of it all.”
“I shall toast to you both,” Irma said, raising her
glass.
“Here,
here,” nodded Blaze, joining the toast, “and to Madelyn and Lilith too!”
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