As he entered the room, he was led to the open arena that surrounded the castle. He’d never known what the place was for until just this minute. The ground was made of sand and stone so that anyone bleeding here would not spoil the earth. As soon as Bea was bought out to him to kill, he waited for her sentencing to be read to her before he let go of his beast and did what few others could do. Kill a troll.
Chapter 7
CJ entered the back door of her sister’s home just as she heard her calling for Cody. Not sure what she’d be wanting her faerie for, CJ pulled the shadows around her and slid deeper into the room until she could actually see Pfeiffer.
“Cody? Where are you? You were supposed to be here an hour ago.” She stomped her foot, then yelled for him again. “Cody, if you don’t come back here right this minute, I’m going to take away your sugar cubes for a month. Come on. I need you.”
“Why?” Startling her sister, CJ sat down at the table and gave herself a tall glass of iced tea and several cookies. “I so love that I can eat whatever I want and not gain a single pound. I mean, it’s not like I was carrying around a lot of weight in the first place, but knowing that makes this so much better. Why are you calling to my faerie, Pfeiffer?”
“We were to have a meeting. Here, let me get you something else. You shouldn’t be eating sweets when it’s so close to dinner.” CJ pulled the cookies to her and told her to leave them alone. “That was harsh. What’s up with you? Did someone say something to you?”
“No. Not yet. But you’ve not answered my question. Why are you calling for Cody?” She told her again that they had set up a meeting. “About what? I can’t imagine what sort of meeting you’d be having with Cody. I mean, he only answers to me.”
Pfeiffer sat down again and then got up to get herself a glass. While she was pouring tea, CJ tried to look into her mind. All she got for her efforts was a singsong about the alphabet. When Pfeiffer sat back down, she didn’t reach for the cookies that were still on the plate. But she did crumble up a napkin. A sure sign that she was nervous.
“Just after you started going to school, even as young as you were, I was in awe of you. How you were so poised and seemed to be able to do just about anything. I know there were times when you’d get frustrated with me. Not having much in the way of confidence in myself the way you did. Then I met Robert. It seemed to me like things were going to go my way for a little while.” Saying nothing, she watched the other woman. “Robert wasn’t a nice person. Not even before we started dating. He wasn’t abusive, not in the way that would show to anyone else, but you saw it, didn’t you?”
“Yes. He would ride you until you didn’t have anything left for anyone but him. Even when there were others around, your daughters, he seemed to think all that time you devoted to them wasn’t right.” Pfeiffer said that was how she felt as well. CJ wondered if she’d get to the point when she started speaking again. “Neither Sally nor Rachel are his. They’re born of an affair I had with a kind man when I was younger. Robert knew. It was something he held over my head right up until he took his last breath.”
“I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but you still haven’t answered my question about Cody.” She nodded, sipping her tea. Then she told her she was working up to it. “He’s dead anyway. So is Benson.”
“You killed them both.” CJ told her she had. That she was going to kill the person that had hired them to kill her. “She’s dead as well. That was why I was calling to Cody. To help me get rid of the body. Or, in this case, bodies.”
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was talking about, so let that hang there between them. Neither of them seemed inclined to speak right then, so she enjoyed her tea. Reaching out beyond where they sat, she could feel death, but not who it might have been. Then it hit her.
“Rachel and Sally.” Pfeiffer nodded, then started crying. “Why? I mean, why did they want me dead? Did they tell you?”
“Rachel has hated you since you were living with us. Sally? I don’t know. I didn’t know that at all, to be honest. They were always jealous of you that I am aware of, but enough to have you killed? It just didn’t seem a possibility to me. Not my own daughters.” Pfeiffer sobbed out how she’d found out. How she’d not known how far they had gone. “You see, they had to work so very hard for things. We never had a lot, and even though I was sure you had more than enough for all of us, I can understand why you didn’t use it when we needed it. But they thought you should have paid for everything. Our home. Food. I’m not sure how they found out about it. Oh CJ, I’m so very sorry.”
While offering her sister comfort, she thought about the girls, her nieces, while they’d been growing up. They would sometimes snap at her, make her a target of things, but they’d never indicated— She remembered a couple of times when she’d been out, and someone would hurt her. Lately, it had happened more and more, but she didn’t think of her cousins as being part of it.
As she sat there thinking, more and more times when they had been nasty or hurtful to her
