She looked up a heartbeat later and flashed him a beaming smile.

“Uncle Jed!” she said, running to him as he pulled the door open and stepped across the threshold.

Before he could even respond, she’d jumped up and wrapped her arms around his neck. He chuckled as he hoisted her up in a bear hug. “How are you, kid?”

A sudden tsunami of memories and emotions washed over him—fear and dread when she was trapped at the Dark Ones’ compound, relief and strength when Jed found her hiding in the tree hollow in the woods, panic when black-clad assaulters broke into her old house trying to take her a second time, guilt and self-loathing when her parents argued about whether to move away or send her to St. George’s, shame and embarrassment on her first day of school when a girl named Darilyn made fun of her Target brand shoes, repugnance watching Rector Senai executed by a glowing-eyed Nick Woland in the Vatican, worry and shock seeing Detective Maria Perez show up on Jed’s arm at the team barbecue . . .

With each flashbulb memory he felt the accompanying emotions as strong and powerful as if they were his own. Lump in his throat, he lowered her to the floor and took a knee in front of her.

“Wow, you’ve got, um . . . a lot on your mind, kiddo,” he said, reaching up to wipe a tear from her cheek.

“I don’t know why that happened,” she said, powering a smile onto her face. “When I hugged you, it was like a floodgate opened and all the stuff I’d been bottling up came to the surface. I’m sorry I pushed in on you. Apparently that’s what you get for being friends with a weirdo.”

“You’re not a weirdo, Sarah Beth.”

She bobbed her head from side to side theatrically. “Give it time—you’ll come around.”

This candid comment got him laughing. “I missed you, kid. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner for a visit.”

“I missed you too, Uncle Jed,” she said with a self-conscious smile.

Jed stood up and made an exaggerated show of looking around the vestibule. “Wow, this is quite a place.”

“Come on,” she said with a jolt of buoyancy. “I want to show you everything!”

She grabbed his hand and took off, dragging him behind her.

Are you really okay, Sarah Beth? he asked and felt himself probing to make sure.

“I’m really fine, Uncle Jed,” she assured him, out loud. “But let’s either talk or Watcher snapchat. It’s confusing to go back and forth.” She gave him a stern look. “I didn’t mean to push all that stuff on you, but it’s also rude to mine my thoughts without my permission. I mean, thoughts deserve to be private, right?”