more time, but this was really the only chance I had. Myrddin didn’t leave the Council building much these days. He preferred to stay close to Daniel, and I worried if he carried out his plan to save Dev, Daniel would be even further in debt to the man. I knew exactly where Myrddin and Nimue were going to be for the next few hours. I might have to risk it.
“Let me do it.” Neil nodded, looking toward the door. “I’ll say I forgot which room I live in and I was drunk and oops… What’s he going to do to me?”
Sarah stared at him. “You have a penis, babe. You want to ask Nina’s brother? I know Myrddin’s a dude, but I bet he can twist a penis, too.”
Neil winced. “Damn it. I need my penis, Z. I don’t think they can do anything to a vagina.”
He wasn’t very creative. “Ever had a yeast infection?” I sighed. “If I do this, our war goes from under the covers to obvious. I’m not sure which side Daniel will come down on.”
I had to wonder if this was what Gray had meant. I was running a big risk of getting caught, and Daniel would have to pick a side.
I feared that choice, but there was a part of me that craved it, too. There was a part of me that wanted this terrible anticipation to be over with.
“Or you could use the invisibility cloak,” a new voice said. “It makes everything, and I mean everything, invisible. Even to spells.”
I turned and there stood the sneakiest of my children. Lee Donovan-Quinn wore jeans that had seen better days, a T-shirt with some kind of Pokémon on it, and his favorite pair of sneakers.
“The boy is right in his assessment.” My father, Harry Wharton, stood behind Lee. He wore his typical uniform of khaki pants and a golf shirt. His hair had gone completely silver in the last few years and it looked good on him. He smiled more now, as though retirement had lifted something heavy from his shoulders.
He’d been a good dad. He was an even better grandfather.
“What are you two using to mask your scent?”
They shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on Neil. Lee snuck up on me all the time. He was absolutely the sneakiest kid I’ve ever met, and I’d met me. My father was incredibly proud of him and spent lots of time teaching him the tricks of his trade. I would bet it had been my father who’d taught him how to get around werewolf senses.
“It’s a charm.” My father put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “It works better than the herbs he used to steal. Christine made it.”
My father had settled into a happy relationship with a witch who was way too young for him. Christine and I hadn’t gotten along in the beginning, but she’d grown on me and she was good to my kids. Though she didn’t like being called Grandma.
I frowned my father’s way. “We’re going to have to have a long talk.” Sometimes Dad took things too far. I looked to my son because Lee always took things too far. “You’re supposed to be upstairs.”
He frowned my way. Far too often Lee looked older than he really was, as though he knew how dangerous the world could be long before he should have faced that truth. But then, he’d been in danger since before he’d been born. “Papa’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
Now both Dad’s hands were on Lee’s shoulders as if he was trying to give his grandson strength. “He called me. Whatever you’re hiding from him, it’s not doing him any favors, love.”
I should have known I couldn’t keep it from him. Lee wasn’t the kind of kid who didn’t notice shit. He wasn’t the child I could distract with candy and video games, though he certainly liked both. Lee had learned at a young age that he had to know what was going on around him at all times because he was fragile in a world where strength was the greatest commodity. I couldn’t lie to him. “Maybe we should have this conversation behind closed doors.”
Neil stepped toward the elevators. “I’m going down to keep an eye on things. I’ll text you if anything at all changes. Unless you need me here.”
Unless I needed him to help me with the heist. I wasn’t going to put him in the line of fire if I didn’t have to. Besides,