“Oh, hi,” she said, nonchalantly, as if she often emerged from subterranean levels.
“Hey, what’s up?” said Mal. She stared at Celia. There was something odd about her, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“Everything okay?” called Evie.
“I think so,” said Celia. “You guys are fine, right?”
“We are,” said Mal. She still wasn’t sure what had happened the night before, but she knew she had faced and survived some sort of danger.
“Good.” Celia leaned over to talk to Evie through the window. “That last card I told you about?” she said. “When I read your fortune?”
“Yes?” asked Evie warily.
“It doesn’t just mean disaster. I mean, it doesn’t mean disaster at all. It just means change,” said Celia. “Sorry I made it sound like a bad fortune.”
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Evie brightened. “Change, huh? So change is in my future?”
“Pretty much,” said Celia.
“Well, I am graduating in a few weeks,” said Evie. “So there’s going to be a lot of change happening.”
Celia yelped. “I was right? I predicted it correctly? That’s so cool!”
Evie laughed. “You did. Thanks, Celia.”
Celia rewarded Evie with a huge smile. Then she turned to face all of them. “Headed back to Auradon now?” she asked wistfully.
Mal nodded. “Yeah.”
“But we’ll be back,” said Evie.
“Soon,” added Carlos.
“We promise,” said Jay.
“I hope so,” said Celia, tipping her hat to them.
They waved to Celia until she was just a dot on the horizon and the car was speeding on the bridge back to the mainland. Carlos raided the treats in the limousine, happy to find it was still stocked with as much chocolate and candy as always. Mal looked out the window as the island grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
“I’ll call it. This was a success,” said Carlos. “We got the applications out. Now we just wait to see them come in.”
Jay smiled at them in the rearview mirror. “They will. Dr. Facilier was practically drooling at the thought of VK Day.”
“To villains!” said Carlos with a cackle. He put out his hand. “Come on, make the pile,” he said to Mal and Evie.
One by one they put their hands on top of one another’s. Jay met their eyes in the mirror and nodded.
“The Isle of the Lost will always be home,” said Evie. “It’s where we’re from.”
“But we’re also from Auradon now,” said Mal. She had grown up a child of the Isle of the Lost, a mean-spirited, selfish little sprite, but now she was a defender of Auradon, a lady and a dragon. She wasn’t only Maleficent’s daughter or King Ben’s girlfriend. She was also just Mal.
“I’ll always be just Mal,” Mal murmured.
“‘Just Mal’?” asked Evie. “That’s more than enough.”
They took back their hands and beamed at each other. As long as the four of them were friends, anything was possible. The future was waiting.