Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Cybil could almost have killed someone just to test the theory that she could get by with anything. Today, she'd gone into someone's backyard and took a hamburger right off their grill. There hadn't been anyone around, thankfully, but she enjoyed her first hot meal since trying to get her daughter to get up off her ass and make her feel welcome.

At this point, she didn't care if she was welcome or not. She just wanted her to hand over some funds so that she could get a bath and her hair done, as well as her nasty looking nails. Good Lord, they looked like she was biting them again.

Asking questions around town, she did find out that her daughter had money for her. Or why all of a sudden they moved here into great big houses with servants and shit got her nowhere. Where was her part in all this, was the fifty-four-dollar question. There was a great deal of it, too. Not only that, but she was working with a foundation that would give people money if they showed they needed it. Hell, she needed it more than the milk shops that showed up at their door. She would have gone in and gotten some for herself, but she couldn't get in the door. Some kind of magic prevented her from even touching the handle to get in.

Yesterday, when she'd heard about the place, she realized that she'd been there a couple of times already. But once she reached for the handle, she was tossed back a few feet and landed on her ass. Of course, there were a lot of people around when she landed, and they had a wonderful time laughing at her like she'd just done a trick like a clown would have done. She hated people.

There was no reason, none whatsoever, for her to be treated like she wasn't a thing to her daughter. Caroline should be thanking her lucky stars to have a mom like her. Hell, she only came around her when she wanted money and didn't drag on a lunch by talking about the kids all the time. She had one grandchild, and she didn't like him at all. The nosey little fucker.

This morning, when she woke up, she found herself back in the little town that her daughter lived in. The continuous rain was gone as well. Things might have seemed better to most people, but she was still without a place to sleep and food in her belly. It was unfair of the fates to just give her out little bits at a time of good news and take away the rest. No one understood the complexities of her life. That was all.

Watching the big truck being unloaded at the grocery store, she wondered if they had set someone out there on purpose to watch for her. There was an older man who was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, very unprofessional looking if you asked her. But he would yell at her to get her ass away every time she got within touching the truck. All she wanted was a light meal.

She discovered that she had no way of cooking any kind of meat that she could steal. Nor did she have a can opener that would get in a nice hot cup of soup when she'd stolen a case of tomato soup. Even the homeless place, the one place she knew was giving out meals, wouldn't allow her inside. She not only stank, but they'd been told not to allow her to eat even a crumble of food. She was going to kill those fucking Tuckers if it was the last thing she did.

Dropping to the ground when she heard her name being called through the air made her sick to her belly. It hurt to be demanded to come to her king. And worse yet, she wasn't going to be any happier when he pulled her in front of him. Like she'd been told a thousand times, she didn't smell good and wherever he was taking her to, she wasn't going to smell any better there either.

When she started feeling like she was being turned inside out, Cybil screamed. Her throat was raw by the time she felt the magic release her. Sitting on all fours, Cybil tried to think beyond the pounding in her head that seemed to be a constant reminder that she was starving. When told to stand, Cybil tried her best to oblige, but she was still hurting. Even if she wanted to, she didn't think that she could remove her shoes much less stand up and be accounted for.

"Cybil? Can you hear me?" She called the person a mother fucker. "I'm going to assume that's a yes. I've called you here to pay for the laws you've broken over the last fifty or so years since you've been alive. My name is Ronan Foster. This is my queen and wife, Brook Foster. We are your king and queen of Lions."

"I don't care if you're god himself. What the hell right do you have to pull me away from what I was doing?" He told her that he had every right and that watching a truck being unloaded wasn't all that important. "Well, a lot you know. I was hoping for a nice steak and a hot baker. Christ, don't you have anything else to do but annoy people?" Glancing up at him made her ill again. "Stand still, you mother fucker. I'm hurting from you calling for me. I don't know why you didn't just send a nice limo or something. You shithead, you hurt me."

"No, you're not going to be brought anywhere in a limo. And I do what I want when I want to. As for making you come here as painfully as I could, it satisfies me in so many ways that you'll never understand. If you're done blabbering about how you've been interrupted today, I'll get to the reason you've been brought here. But first, the queen of the fae has something that she wishes to say to you. She, too, will put judgment against you for the harm and murder of her fae creatures. Stand to be judged."

She had no choice in the matter but to do what he said. The queen or whatever she was sure was a sparkly thing. When she waved her hand, just a simple gesture like that, a million of the little bugs that she ruled fanned out behind her.

"You have murdered more of my kind than anyone else has ever done in all your lifetime." Cybil asked her why that mattered. "Because without the fae being there, you would not exist. Nor would the world have as much magic as it does now."

"Magic hasn't done me a lot of good if you want to know the truth. So what, they're dead. It's not like I can bring them back. Do you worst on me." She nodded, and one of the little creatures flew to face her. "Don't get too close, little one. I've not eaten in a long time, and you look to be a nice snack." Snapping her teeth at the thing only got her growled out. Cybil didn't care. She was ready for just about everything.

"You will live and die for as many fae you have killed." Cybil looked around and then back at the fae before asking what the hell she was talking about. It was then that the little creature drew a long, thin blade from the air and ran at her, hitting her in the chest with it.

Cybil was sick with pain. But each time she fell backward, her body abused by one after the other creatures ramming something through her heart, eyes, and throat, she would fall back and bleed out. Or, with her heart, she'd only just die. Only to be brought back to start again.

"Enough." The queen raised her hand and then lowered it when the horde of fae just disappeared. "I'm not finished with you, Cybil, but I must leave a bit for the others to get their piece of you. Rise up."

She did. This time, it was harder than the first time. Her body was covered in blood. Some of it was fresh, others dark with age. While she didn't know how long she'd been subject to the things that had happened to her, she knew that she wasn't going to take much more.

"What gives you the right to treat me like this? I'm a lion and one of your shifters." Adonna said that she was nothing to her. Not even a thought in her mind would she be when she left the grounds. "So says you. What else do you have for me? As you can see, I still stand. You didn't hurt me at all."

A lie. Every word of it was a lie. When the queen lion stood before her, Cybil tried her best to act as if she had nothing to fear from her either. But she was terrified. This woman looked like she might be all sweet and nice, but there was something about her that Cybil thought evil-minded.

"There are four people that I am here to avenge for them. Caroline wanted to do it, but she is going to give you the final blow that will end you for all time." Cybil said she'd never be able to kill her own mother. "You think no? Well, I guess we'll see about that, won't we? The first cut is for your in-laws, Martha and James. You killed the two of them while they were holding your daughter in their arms. You used your own child as a distraction. You will have two strikes for that."

Her hands were just gone. From the wrists down, she bled profusely while trying her best to stop the flow. In a matter of seconds, less she'd bet the bleeding stopped. Cybil knew it was because they still had killing to do of her. The next time she was hit with magic from Brook, she lost both arms.

Standing was nearly impossible, but she did. Cybil wasn't going to give them anything to show that they were harming her. When she was ordered to stand up, not realizing that she'd fallen over, she stood as best she could while her lifeblood slipped away slower and slower.

Her daughter stood before her now. "You killed my father. What did he do to you but to give you more than he had? Nothing. He spoiled you, and you tossed it all back in his face when he wanted to have another child. He hoped for a boy this time." She couldn't speak. Her body was nearly drained of all liquid, mostly her blood, and she was dizzy with it. Cybil was asked if she had anything to say about her punishment, and she couldn't even work up enough to spit in her daughter's face. Christ, she hated her and everyone else that was standing around.

"Goodbye, Cybil." The breeze was a small one that smelled of smoky cooking. Of cookouts that her daughter used to love when she was smaller. As her head rolled forward, front over back, and then sideways, Cybil could see her body still standing with the bits and pieces that she was able to see. It wasn't a sight that she was happy to look at. Even if she detached herself from the fact that it was her body, it was still a sight that she couldn't stomach. Then she wondered, quite out of the blue, how one threw up when one's stomach was no longer attached to your head and mouth.

~~~

No one seemed to be all that hungry. The kids, now out in the heated pool, were having a good time, and there were snacks, not all of them good for them, laid out on several tables. Georgie watched all the kids and wondered how they could look so much alike without being at all related. But then she knew that her sister-in-law was there too. Some of her features had come through. She wished she could have met the woman, but it was too late for that now to happen. The lounger she was sitting on moved, and she turned to find Lance sitting beside her.

"You've made a decision, I take it." She asked him if he meant about the kids. "I do. You're going to give them up for adoption so that Denver and Bailee can raise them. Right?"

"I don't want to take them from the only stable home they've known only to drop them into our life, which is far from stable as yet." He nodded and didn't look hurt like she thought he would. "You and I will have children if you want. Or we can adopt some, too. I'm in no hurry if you're not. I do, however, enjoy practicing making them. Christ, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me."

"Thank you. I really needed to hear that about now. I was just thinking about Caroline and her dealing the deathblow to her mother. I think I would have been able to do that, knowing what I do about their relationship." Lance told her that it had been building up for a long time. Then he told her about how she'd treated her son. "I heard him talking to the other kids about it. None of them have had a good life, it seems. They're going to be all right, I think. Simply because in this family, they'll be loved and cared for."

"I couldn't agree more." She smiled at him, and he grinned. "That is what I was hoping for. A good smile from you." He picked her up and put her on his lap, and laid back on the chair. "It's been a rough few weeks, and I, for one, will be glad for some normality so that we can enjoy each other."

"If you were to enjoy me anymore, I'd be dead." He laughed, like she'd caught him off guard at her comment. "But seriously, I do want to talk to you about a couple of things. I have an apartment full of stuff that I'd like to bring here. Not a lot. Just some albums, the musical kind, not photos. I do have a lot of those, too. I don't need the clothing there, so I can donate it to some sort of charity. The furniture is just stuff that I picked up second-hand here and there. I'm not worried about that either."

"We can go anytime you want to sort through it. Or we can have it packed up and brought here so that you can go through it when you have time." She didn't want to bring it here, or she'd never get around to sorting it. "That's what I did when we moved here. I was packing up the dishes that I'd had since college, and I took a look at them. They were, for the most part, all right, but they were chipped and in terrible shape. Not that I cared if they matched or not, but I think they were hand-me-downs from Denver when he moved into his apartment a few years ago. So I called the local charity, donated everything, including a few suits that I wore to death, and have been getting myself new things as I realized that I needed them."

"That's an excellent plan. That's what I'll do. But for my records and albums." He assured her that they could make an afternoon of it and go there to get her items. "Thank you. I would have been sorting through that stuff for days and would have come to the same conclusion. I can't thank you enough for making it easier for me."

The rest of the evening and well after midnight, the two of them worked in their separate offices. There was plenty to go over for the foundation, and Lance found himself glad that he could simply go into the other office and get a second opinion on what he'd been doing.

"This person wants to see about getting funding for putting a water wheel on his property so that his water is flowing all the time. It gets nasty in the summer months when the water is low." Georgie said that she had the same paperwork. After shuffling through her files, she handed him four files with the same man's name on them. "It looks like he's turning in requests weekly. Do you suppose he's thinking we'll get tired of reading it and give the money to him anyway?"

"Stranger things have happened." They put the files together and decided it was too late to start on anything else. "I'm exhausted. I think we should hit the bed and get up early enough to get another start on this stuff. I had no idea that there were so many people out there that had ideas—not necessarily good ones, but ideas on how to make their lives easier."

"I do have a couple of good ones. This lady said that she wants to go to college but has no way to get her children to daycare. They're twins and too young to be put in nursery school. I don't know a great deal about this area, but I want to know if there is good daycare around she could use." He said he'd hand that one off to his sister. "That's right. I forgot she was a teacher. She'd have a good idea about schools, too, I'd think."

After digging through her pile, she made a note on the sticky paper on top of the several files to ask Ivy about. After explaining to Lance what she was doing, he went to his office and brought in his files for the same questions. She finally looked up at him after stretching her back.

"We need more jobs." He said that he couldn't agree more. Then, he told her about what Bailee said about getting companies to come around. "Even if they can hire as many as fifty people, that'll hopefully be enough income coming into most of these families that they can get what they need. I was thinking, too, that we need to get with the grocer and see what they think about enlarging and updating the store that is around here. I know that they only carry name branded stuff, which is good but more expensive. But I think we need to start looking at the larger picture around here. Nothing is going to happen overnight, but it would be good if we can get a few dozen people working for income."

As they made their way up to the bedroom, he sat on the side of the bed and just stretched his muscles, too. Her mouth nearly watered when he did that, but she was just too exhausted to jump his bones right now. Instead, she rolled over to her side and closed her eyes. Not long after she was falling into sleep, she heard Lance talking and decided that it wasn't worth getting up for if he didn't need her.

She was shaken awake by Lance too early for her to see much beyond someone standing over her. Slapping out, she told him how sorry she was when he told her it was him. Sitting up, Lance looked like he'd had the shit beaten out of him, and it wasn't from her. Asking him what was going on, he sat down on the floor and let her know what he'd been up to all night.

"One of the buildings that were set for demolition fell inside of itself earlier this morning. It wasn't until we started going through the mess that we discovered that people had been living in the building, and one of them had started a fire to cook her family dinner." He looked at her. "Honey, she actually set the fire right on the wooden floor like it wasn't going to catch fire that way. Anyway, she got out with one of her four children. Two of them were sent to the burn unit at the hospital, but the husband never got out. By the time she remembered him, the building had collapsed on him, and there wasn't anything that we could do to save him. I was still trying to find out about the fourth child when Denver sent me home to get some rest."

She got up and dressed herself. "You rest. I'm going to whip up some sandwiches and see if someone can get water to the site." He said he'd help. "No, you rest. When you're all right enough to come back, then I'll see you there. Right now, we have to get those that are fighting the fire—" She stopped talking when he raised his hand.

"They found the other child. He's all right, but he knew that his mother was going to burn them out by how she was cooking dinner. He waited until he could see the smoke, thinking that they'd get out in time before he called the fire trucks. Denver asked him why he didn't try and convince his mother that she was going to kill them all, and he told him that he knew better than to give his mom lip. They're taking him to the hospital now." She asked him if he thought that it was set on purpose. "That is just what Denver said. He's the one who thinks outside the box better than anyone that I know. Even Bailee has it in her head that it was done to get rid of her family."

"I guess one of you guys has looked into her sick noodle to find out." When she didn't get an answer, she noticed that Lance was sleeping right on the floor where he'd been resting.

Covering him up and laying a pillow on his chest, she left to get things organized. As she was trying to figure out how to make sandwiches for a bunch of hungry people with three slices of cheese and half a loaf of bread.

"Just wave your hand over the counter." She asked who this might be but did it anyway. "I'm Parker Foster. The grand witchy. I gave you the powers that you'll need to do a lot of things, but for now, just pack up what you have there and water will be already on site. Good thinking on that. You'll make Brook jealous, in a good way, because you thought of it before she did."

Laughing while she was putting things in bags, large capacity ones that didn't look like they'd hold much that Parker suggested that she make. Telling her that having her around was going to be helpful in all kinds of things had her laughing.

"Also, the kid who called the police, he has been trying to get away from his mom for the last couple of years. I can read his mind better than most of the rest. There are two little girls, and thanks to a bit of magic, they are going to live. The baby, an infant that seems to be about six months old, is the only one that Mrs. Agilent got out with. She left the other two screaming for help from her when she left them there. The police will be taking care of her when they get her to the hospital. You might want to think about you and Lance taking on a couple of kids to be watched over. There are other members of the family out there that will be willing to take them, but for now, they just need baths, food, and a safe haven."

She told her that she could do that. "I have some ideas that I'd like to run by the people who made the money decisions. Our little town needs help with jobs." Parker told her that she could make that decision on her own. She was as much a part of the foundation as they all were. "I don't know how to even start. We need businesses, but where do I begin to look for something like that?"

By the time she was pulling up as close as she could to the fire trucks, people were unloading the food. The water just simply appeared by one of the tables that she'd commandeered, and she found some bags of chips in her bag that she hadn't put in there. She wondered if there would be pie, too, and shook her head. Sometimes, she was silly. How on earth would they eat pie?

The water was going fast but she need not have worried. There seemed to be an endless supply of that, as well as the sandwiches. The kids that had come out of some of the houses to look around began handing the sandwiches and water out to the homeless people in the buildings near the one that had caught fire when she asked them to.

By the time Lance had shown up, the brothers had taken turns going home to rest. Eating a couple of sandwiches, she was glad to see that Lance looked better than he had when she'd left him. They all watched as the firefighters worked to keep the fire contained while the woman and her baby were being treated for small burns. The other little girls had been taken to the hospital to be treated as well.

"What's happened to Samuel?" Georgie asked the woman, she had forgotten her name already who that was. "Well, I have a son. I couldn't find him anywhere as I was leaving, and my husband too. Both of them weren't there when I started out of the building. My daughters, too. They were on another floor when the fire started. You know how kids can be. Never wanting to be hanging around with their parents."

Before giving out any information, she asked what she should say. Denver told her that the mother was going to be detained. There was a smell of gasoline on her husband when they found his body, as well as the two little girls. She still didn't know what to say to her.

"That her husband died under suspicious circumstances, and you don't know anything about the other members of the family because you only just got here." After telling her that, Denver asked her what she'd had to say about that. She told him that it was Samuel's fault that she had warned him about starting a fire on the bare wood floor. "Sure she did. Samuel is with the police. His son is at the police precinct telling them what he knew about how they ended up in the building in the first place."

"Was it bad?" He told her how he'd spoken to the fire Marshal. He told him that it looked as if she'd planned on even bringing out the infant not breathing. "She wasn't going to save any of them, was she, Denver?"

"It doesn't look like it, honey. But there is enough evidence that she'll end up in prison. The man was dead before the building caught fire. The medical examiner said the body was at least three to five days old. He'll be able to tell us more when he gets him to the morgue." She asked about Samuel. "He's being examined with his other siblings who were in the fire. The baby has been taken from her and put into a secure place as well."

That was about all she could hope for, she guessed. Well into the next afternoon, they were just finishing up with the fires. A total of four buildings were demolished, the only way they could contain it, and three firefighters had been hurt. The stupid woman was going to be in such trouble when this hit the papers.

After getting a long bath, she had to stand up and shower, washing her hair three times before she felt like she'd gotten all the smell out of it. For some reason, it wasn't just the smell of burning wood, but she could smell the oil that had been a part of the building for so long that it had embedded itself in the floor. Gasoline was there, too, as well as the coffee, hot cocoa, and the food that she handed out. Everything that she'd been a part of, it was now smelling up her hair.

Blowing dry her hair, something that she rarely did, Georgie felt better and smelled better, too, than she had in a while, she thought. Putting her clothing into a large paper bag to be incinerated. The firefighters told her of a place they used to burn things that would never get the smell out of it. She was going to take them up on that offer.

Going into the kitchen, the first person that she saw was Grannie. Everyone called her that, even people from the little town that they were living in. The kids started to come over to her and Grandpa's home so that they could hang out with the elderly couple.

Two days ago, she found some of the teenagers who had come for a visit pulling dandelions out of the yard. She'd heard that they were going to make dandelion jelly. Not one to turn down a good jam or jelly, she was hesitant to taste the creation.

She'd never had anything better. There was the slightest floral taste, and the color was very delicate, too. Since getting a jar of her own, she'd been having some daily. Now, she had to wait on the other concoctions that they were putting together. Georgie promised to be their taste tester for whatever they made. It was the most fun she'd been having in a while, she thought. After having her treat and a slice of toast, she knew that she'd be able to hang on until breakfast, which would be in about an hour. It was going to be another one of those long days.