“Oh, he would love to get his hands on Sarah.” Christine took a deep breath and seemed to steady herself. “All right. Let’s see if you can get through the wards she put on her place. I think you should move fast, Zoey. Myrddin has plans, too. He doesn’t know where the book is, but he has his suspicions. If I figured out you’ll go for it, he could, too.”
“Okay, we’ll be quick,” I promised.
“You’re lucky that bomb the kids set off is still causing chaos with Myrddin’s protection spells or it would have been hard for you to get on this floor. It’s the only reason I was able to make it. Myrddin only allows his most trusted witches up here because it’s so close to the penthouse. He’ll get them up again soon. I’ll keep lookout. If I knock on the door, you’ll know not to come out.” She turned and started toward Sarah’s apartment.
“Are you okay?” I asked as we walked down the hall that should be so familiar to me. Neil and Chad had lived in the apartment to my left, and Zack and Lisa’s home had been at the far end of this hall.
“I haven’t been okay since the day that bastard killed my husband, and twelve years of pretending to worship that fucker have taken their toll. I had to convince him I’d used Harry to get more power. It was kind of awful how easy that was for him to believe,” Christine said quietly. “This place is…it’s evil, Zoey. He’s infested the whole building. What he wants, it chills me to my soul, and I hate the fact that I once really did hold him in regard. I thought magic made us better than anyone else.”
Once she’d been all in on the witch sisterhood, but it was easy to see she’d changed. She’d seen what that kind of selfishness could lead to.
“Do you want to come with us? When we leave, you can come home.” I was calling an audible, but I didn’t like the thought of leaving her here. If Myrddin found out she’d helped us in any way, she would be dead in a heartbeat. Or worse.
She stopped and turned, a look of surprise on her face. “I could come with you?”
“Of course, Grandma Chris.” Lee had the cloak over his arm. “You’ve done enough.”
It was my turn to reach out to her. “Come back with us. Take your place in our little town. It’s time to let Dev and Danny handle this.” I wasn’t going to explain that it would likely be Lee and Dean doing the hard work. “We can be back by tomorrow.”
She nodded and a shudder went through her. “Yes. I want to see the kids again. I want to be with Harry’s family.”
“With your family,” Lee corrected.
A smile came across her face. “With my family. We can leave from here. I don’t need anything. All I need are my memories. Let’s do this.”
Her eyes had lit in a way that I’d never seen before. It’s funny how we meet these people and never quite understand how they’ll affect our lives decades down the line. We’d had a contentious relationship in the beginning, and now my kids called her Grandma Chris and I was happy to be able to take her home with us.
I would be happy to have her know Harriet and to be close to her.
So much emotion when I needed to be cool.
She stopped in front of Sarah’s door, and I was surprised that it was still just a door. It was still painted green, and the bell was a gold color. It looked exactly like it had when I’d last stood in front of it. I reached out and touched the bell like I would have days before. I would have rung it and Sarah would yell that she was coming or Felix would open it and give me his sunny smile before inviting me in. Lee had rung that doorbell a thousand times asking if he could see Mia or if she could come out to play.
“It’s so normal.” Lee was feeling exactly what I was.
“It’s not normal at all. You can’t feel the wards. She must have protected you.” Christine stood back. “There’s also a light emitting from around the door, though you should know that over the years it’s dimmed quite a bit. It’s one of the reasons I recommended that we extract whatever’s in there as quickly as possible.”
It was time to find out exactly what Sarah had left behind. I looked back at Christine. “Be careful out here. Remember we’ve got the cloak. If someone shows up, give us a knock, and then run. We’ll find a way out. If we get separated, meet us down in the basement.”