“None of that is on you to fix!” Alistair’s gaze pleaded for Sam to believe him, even as Mom and Jake loomed up behind him, drawing closer and closer. “Your family’s problems never had anything to do with you. Their anger, their resentment, their miserable, shriveled, pathetic hearts—none of that was ever about you. If it had been, Opal wouldn’t be their target now, would she?”
His instinct was to refute Alistair’s words…but Opal had always been the favorite child, after Jake died. Right up until Sam left, when they started treating her the way all of them, including her, had treated him.
“As for The Pride—it was just a building. The important thing is we’re all together.” Alistair’s expression softened. “Put this burden down, Sam. It was never yours to carry in the first place.”
Sam felt as though something broke inside of him. Hot tears scalded his face, and he wanted to collapse into Alistair’s arms. Instead, he backpedaled, dragging Alistair out of Mom’s reach. “We have to put an end to this.”
“How?” Wanda asked. She crouched by Holly, who was half holding her up.
“There’s only one end,” Jake growled. “You owe us, Sammy. You owe us your life.”
“Shut up,” Sam choked out. “Doc? Do you have any ideas?”
Doc’s bodyguard crouched by him, staunching the wound and looking distressed. Doc was worryingly pale, but said, “I tried to warn him—I looked at the mummy, like I told you I was going to. I opened her coffin, and inside there wasn’t the usual inscriptions. It told about using the hex, resurrecting Akhenaten, but whatever came back was a demon from the underworld. It strangled her to death.”
Jake reached for Sam, and Alistair yanked him out of the way. Behind Jake and Mom, Sullivan lay sprawled on his back, unmoving, with Junior on top of him. Turner stood frozen with horror, apparently unable to intervene, while witches tried to support their fading familiars rather than rescue their boss.
“But how do we stop them!” Sam yelled. “Focus, Doc!”
“The Aten Disc—it’s the key. You need to destroy it!”
“Easy enough,” Reinhold said, and scooped up the gun Sullivan had dropped.
He unloaded every chamber directly into the disc, the bullets tearing through the soft gold, destroying the symbols inscribed on its surface. It fell to the floor with a heavy clunk, the sound followed instantly by softer thumps.
The spell was ended, the magic no longer flowing. The dead—or whatever had animated them—returned to their rest.
For a long moment, the only sound came from the wind blowing through the building’s steel skeleton. Then one of the witches scooped up her duck familiar and ran for the stairs.
That must have shaken Turner from his stupor. He took a step toward Sullivan, who lay unmoving. Junior’s inanimate body curled on his chest, as though they both merely slept.
“Boss?” Turner said, as though he couldn’t believe it. But Sullivan would never move again, so after a few seconds he swallowed and said, “Everybody out of here. I’ll…I’ll handle the cleanup.”
Mom and Jake were dead once again, their bodies unmoved by whatever had been summoned into them. Some fragments of their souls, or evil spirits, or even just magic shaped and twisted by the hex it was in.
Tears burned his eyes, blurring the view—then Alistair pulled him into a tight embrace. Whatever composure he’d retained vanished, and Sam sobbed into his shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Alistair murmured into his hair. “We’ve got you.”
“Yeah, we do,” Doris agreed, and wrapped her arms around both of them.
More and more arms were added—Philip and Joel, Holly and Wanda, Teresa and Reinhold. They sank slowly to the floor in a pile, crying and relieved, while everyone else evacuated the tower.
“Thanks for coming back, songbird,” Wanda said after a while.
Holly sniffled and sat back. “I couldn’t just leave my number one girl.”
“I’m sorry.” Wanda took her hand. “I should’ve listened to what you had to say, instead of lashing out.”
“Yes, you should have.” Holly kissed her forehead. “But we’ll talk about that later.”
Alistair pulled away from Sam and looked around at the bodies, fresh and otherwise. Someone had carried Doc downstairs, and even Turner had left for the moment.
He’d send someone to clean up, though, as promised. Sam didn’t think he would go so far as to eliminate witnesses…but either way, it was time to go.
“We should leave, before anyone shows up,” he said.
Alistair stood up, held out his hand, and pulled Sam to his feet. “Agreed, sweetheart. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
