After that, all that was left was cleanup.

Curiously, it didn't take more than a couple of days for me to get used to having Penny around. Ken confirmed my suspicion that the bond between us helped nudge things along, but also…well…I think my tolerance for weirdness was finally improving.

I quickly adjusted to having her following me around in her fox form. It helped, I think, that I'd always wanted a pet. Having one that was both highly intelligent and capable of seeing to her own needs was beyond ideal. Not that I thought of her as a pet, though her animal form did make her presence feel that way from time to time.

Like at night, when she quickly settled into a routine of curling up on the foot of my bed to sleep. Or when I spent an evening reading by the fireplace in the kitchen, and she curled up on the hearth there.

Fortunately, Ken's insistence that she spend time adjusting to her new human form - as he continued to push Sparkle to do the same - disabused my subconscious of any notion that she might be just an animal.

We also determined that whatever I was wearing when Penny changed to her human shape was what she would also be wearing, which she found a bit bewildering (clothing in general, that is), and which Ken found utterly fascinating. She also wasn't able to change her physical form to match anyone else's appearance…only mine.

She was able to disguise her fox form in a variety of ways using illusions, a type of magic with which she was profoundly talented. Her favorite 'mortal' animal form (as she put it) was that of a black Siberian Husky, with a pattern of light gray under her chin and at her paws. That would let her go out in public with me if she wanted to, rather than simply lurking in my shadow.

Sparkle, of course, took to Penny like a fish to water. In a scant three days it was as if Penny had been with us for years. Which really emphasized to me how right being at Oakwood Hall felt to me...it had, after all, been significantly less than a year since I'd come home.

I continued learning about ward construction, finally testing my knowledge by laying down a half-dozen smooth, flat granite stones - with Penny's help - in a circle at the edge of the clearing outside my bedroom windows. Onto the bottom of each stone I had carved a series of runes that formed the matrix of a protective enchantment, rather like the work I'd done to prepare the staff von Einhardt had so effortlessly destroyed.

Once Penny and I laid down the stones in the proper sequence (outside the defensive perimeter of mushrooms my fairies had raised), I was able to complete the spell carved into them. Energy was drawn from the land they were touching to form the wards that would protect the clearing. Now, nothing would be able to get in without my permission, though once something (or someone) was allowed in, they could come and go at will.

There were other protections etched into the wards I'd raised, of course, but the less the rest of the world knows about them, the harder they'll be to breach.

Which is also why I won't go into any details about the wards surrounding Oakwood Hall's property line. Using the same basic technique, I was able to expand them out to the road along the front, which let Wadsworth's clan keep the verge neatly trimmed and kept me from having to hire a landscaping company to do it.

I can only imagine what landscapers would've thought of such a task. Mow the verge, but leave the perfectly manicured grounds within the wall alone.

My life had become weird, and I found I rather liked it that way.

Still…even if I liked and had grown quite comfortable with the general weirdness of Oakwood Hall, I wanted an anchor of reality (for lack of a better term) to keep me grounded. Thankfully, I still had the town of Oakwood and my regular visits to the Oak & Ivy Pub to help with that.

Thanks to von Einhardt and the chaos that followed his 'visit,' it had been almost two weeks since my last visit to the pub when the little bells over the door jingled as I went inside. Sparkle was, as usual, clinging to the Master Key, and I could sense Penny lurking in my shadow. Between the two of them watching out for me, I felt quite relaxed.

Nothing was going to sneak up on me, and anything that tried was going to have a very bad day.

The pub was its usual warmly rumbling chaos, with the only completely free space being the area between the dartboard on the wall in the corner, and its throwing line near the bar. I stood quietly in the doorway for a minute, observing the low-key commotion with a smile on my face. After the two preceding weeks, I was a bit surprised by the intense feeling of relief that washed over me when I saw everything unchanged within.

I mean…I don't like pubs! I'd always actively avoided being dragged to them while attending university. But then, I'd actively avoided most forms of socializing while I'd been in school.

Maybe, I thought, it wasn't pubs themselves I didn't like. Maybe I just hadn't found the right pub crowd before going to the Oak & Ivy.

It took a minute for anyone to realize I was there, but that was all right too. I was quite content for the moment to stand there and soak in the atmosphere of complete and absolute normality that the old pub seemed to exude from every inch of its warm interior. Then Malcolm, at his accustomed place behind the bar, spotted me and waved, his voice rising over the hum of the crowd. "Caley!"

The result was startling and made me feel both embarrassed and warm inside. All over the room, heads turned towards me and there was a general hash of friendly greetings. Just like that I was pulled into the gathering and - after a few handshakes and a hug or three - quickly and unobtrusively drawn over to the bar, where one of the tall bar chairs was mysteriously open for me to sit down in.

Malcolm immediately set a steaming mug of tea in front of me and gave me a fond smile and a warm greeting. "Welcome back, lass. We were all a bit worried about you after that crazy storm. Heard from Constable Burroughs that the Hall's front gates were blown down."

"And did you see that lightning bolt?" the man sitting to my right asked, wiping a bit of foam from his bristly gray mustache as he set down his pint. "Never seen a bolt of lightning that close and intense before. Did it hit the Hall?"

I nodded as I picked up my tea mug. "It struck and melted the lightning rod over the front door," I said carefully, meeting Malcolm's eyes. "It did a bit of damage to the gargoyle there, too."

Malcolm's eyebrows went up and he whistled silently, then nodded his respect.

"Must've been grounded badly, then," the other man said as he rose. "Better get that looked at! Glad you're all right, Miss Reid." He winked, and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me wondering how many people suspected what had been going on.

"That was you?" Malcolm asked a moment later, keeping his voice pitched low enough that I had to lean forward a bit to hear him.

I sipped my tea and considered what to tell him, finally settling on. "It was. It was…intense."

"Everything all right now?" He asked with obvious concern, which warmed me more than the tea.

"Everything is fine," I said with a smile. "The gentleman who was in here bothering us won't be coming by again."

Malcolm nodded serenely. "Good. That man gave me the creeps. You know," he continued thoughtfully, "I could swear I'd seen him somewhere before. Could he have come in here years ago?"

I nodded. "Quite likely." I didn't want to try to explain the family connection, especially since I had decided that it simply didn't matter to me. The man I had killed was no more family than a stranger I bumped into on the street, and enormously less so than someone like Malcolm himself.

Someone who cared about me.

I looked around. Heck, everybody in this room cared about me more than von Einhardt had, without making any effort to do so.

I shivered a little and returned my attention to Malcolm. He seemed to understand that it wasn't something I wanted to talk about, and nodded toward the dart board. "Going to join the game tonight?"

"I don't think so," I said. "I really just came down to…to just sit and be for a little while."

He chuckled. "Good place to do that, if I do say so myself." He looked at me more closely and frowned ever so slightly. "Are you sure you're all right, Caley?"

Once again, his words and the genuine concern I heard in them and saw in his eyes touched me. It made me feel warm, and safe, and…and…

Like I was home. I felt a profound sense of being home.

Oakwood Hall, I realized, was only a part of my true home. The town was part of it too, and the people who lived there were family, whether I was related to them distantly or not. I didn't know all of them personally, nor they me, and might never know some of them except in passing…but at the end of the day, I had become…had always been, I supposed…part of their community

Oakwood Hall and the town of Oakwood were where I belonged. Where I was meant to be. I supposed that such a feeling might have scared a lot of people…but to me, it felt like an anchor holding me safe and secure in a storm.

I'd never felt anything like it before.

I didn't realize I had tears in my eyes until Malcolm handed me a couple of tissues. I wiped my eyes and smiled at him reassuringly. "I'm fine. Really. I just realized that I'm where I'm meant to be."

His face relaxed and he returned my smile. "You've decided, then? You're staying?"

I nodded firmly. "Yes."

Malcolm nodded and turned, raising his voice. "Hey everybody, Caley says she's staying."

There was a rousing (if slightly ragged) cheer from the rest of the patrons of the pub.

"So there's something I want to do," Malcolm continued as he drew himself a pint and lifted it. "A toast to the newest member of the Oakwood family," he said, having somehow divined my thoughts. Maybe that was a hint of his magical talent showing through. Maybe he understood how alone I'd felt all those years.

Maybe he was just a really nice guy, and an excellent bartender.

"Welcome home, Caley!" he said, beaming at me.

"Welcome home, Caley!" the room chorused back to him, and I was suddenly engulfed in hugs, handshakes, and pats on the back.

I was home. At last.

D.T. joined the scrum about a half-hour later, and I was pleased to see her greeted with the same warmth I'd received. She spotted me and gave me a relieved smile as she sat down beside me. "Glad to see you out and about again."

"Glad to be out and about again," I replied.

A line of dialog from Dracula popped into my head, something Van Helsing had said: "We must go through bitter waters before we reach the sweet."

I smiled. "Hey Malcolm," I said, "I think I'd like a small glass of mead. And a half-pint of bitter for D.T., please."

"Coming right up, my lass!" Malcolm threw me a two-fingered salute, and delivered our drinks a moment later.

I lifted my drink and D.T. picked up hers, raising an eyebrow when I held mine out towards her. "Better days."

"I'll drink to that," she said, and touched her glass to mine.