Chapter 489: Chapter 489: This Is How It Ends

I was sure that was it, we were dead, but somehow the rest of the ceiling held and we were still alive when, gasping and choking on the dust she'd created, Ruth Wilkins staggered through the secret door and into the room.

"We have to go!" She shouted like she'd been partially deafened and perhaps she had. She certainly looked like she'd come too close to an explosion, the side of her face peppered with little cuts, one hand cradled against her as if damaged by flying debris. Ruth had once been an imposing figure to be reckoned with but, as she'd been when I'd seen her last six months ago in my basement apartment at Petunia's, she appeared reduced, shrunken. A broken woman who'd sold her soul to the insanity of the past Peggy Munroe couldn't shed.