The Steward (30 page)

Sara took shape in front of me, and I exhaled with a start. “Oh my god, you scared me. Was that you, please tell me it was, in the library?”

“Yes, it was. I’m sorry I scared you, Maggie, but I needed to hear what was going on in the room.”

My bottom lip quivered, and I fought to control it—emotions returning with a vengeance. “What happened to Aunt May? Someone really murdered her?”

Her eyes dimmer than usual, Sara spoke with a very sad look on her face. “I read the images that flashed in Mr. Cook’s mind, and it does appear that way. He’s convinced she was murdered, and much worse, he is very suspicious of you and your father. You didn’t show much emotion in the room, and he keyed in on that—he said so to the other men in the car. Of course, I felt your emotion and knew you hid it like you always do, but he only saw you staring stone-faced back at him. In the car, before they left, he told the other officers to keep an eye on you at all times.

“There’s something else, too. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about at the time, but his respiration increased and his heartbeat quickened when you told him about the tea you had with May. He changed for some reason and I will find out why, I promise.”

“Why is this happening—Rhonda, Candace and now Aunt May?”

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be a Fae behind the attacks, and I’m betting it was a Fae who murdered Aunt May.”

“I’ve considered that, Maggie, and I don’t believe it’s possible. The Unseelie are not permitted inside the garden wall—ever,” she said.

“Then a human?”

“It could have been, yes, but let’s not speculate right now. I am going to pay the lieutenant a visit tonight and have a look in the files. Don’t you worry.”

She walked over to the music box and opened it. She stared at it for a moment, closing her eyes as the somber tune played.

“Did you see her that night—Lola’s ballet?”

She turned back to me, and nodded slowly with a tender smile. “Yes, I watched from the garden the night she showed you and I’ve seen her perform it before. I also saw Lola perform it when May was a little girl—Exquisite.”

“I keep trying to learn…”

“It took them years to learn, Maggie. So if you keep practicing, you should be able to do it in a month,” she joked, trying to cheer me up.

I managed to laugh, and it never felt better because I was struggling at the moment. I felt like I was at an emotional breaking point. It was as though I stood at a precipice, off-balance, trying not to fall into an abyss. But no matter how hard I fought to get better footing, I couldn’t seem to back away from the edge. I struggled with Aunt May’s death, and that was based on the belief that her time had simply come—that she’d gone to sleep and didn’t wake up.

All the songs and poems were correct—losing her left me feeling hollow. It was so much worse now, because not only did I miss her, I was worried that she had suffered. I lost my battle with the tears and let them roll down my face.

I wasn’t here when it happened, but I could have been. I knew I could have protected her from a human. What if the murderer was in the cottage when I came home? Just opening the door might have saved her—I would have blown him through the wall.

“Maggie, I see what you’re thinking and I sense the guilt you’re feeling. You know better than that,” Sara said in a soft voice.

“I can’t help it.”

“I understand. I feel the same way, even worse, perhaps. I was on the other side of the cove when it happened. I would have been here in an instant if I’d only known. There were Fae, undoubtedly several of them, who were even closer. But that is beside the point—it does no good to subject oneself to this kind of torment over something that has already occurred. There’s no changing it, and you know that.”

“I know you’re right…” I muttered, not ready to let myself off the hook.

“We will discover what happened, Maggie. As May’s
Treoraí, I promise you that.”

As I began to relax I noticed something in the room change. I felt a sense of calm—it was everywhere. At first, I thought Sara was doing it, but she said she wasn’t. The more I concentrated, the more I believed there was something in the room with us—a presence. It wasn’t Fae. I could tell that much. Sara didn’t notice a change and suggested that it was probably my mind playing tricks on me during a difficult situation.

* * *

The Monday following the police visit was awful. Things at school had gone from uncomfortable, when Candace got hurt, to nearly unbearable. The stares and whispers that didn’t come after Rhonda’s accident were everywhere I turned now. Ronnie told me that Lieutenant Cook questioned dozens of kids from school to find out if any of them saw my car at the hospital on the day of Aunt May’s death. He offered to say he’d seen it, but I wouldn’t let him lie. I loved him even more, though, for offering.

Worse yet, someone leaked that I was inheriting the estate, Aunt May had been drowned, and the police treated her death as a homicide. By the time the story got around the rumor mill, it was perverted beyond recognition. Someone heard that I was arrested on Saturday and was out on bail. According to the rumor, I drowned Aunt May in the bathtub after forging a Will that gave me everything.

It was crazy how so many people seemed to believe the worst about me, and it wasn’t just Rhonda, though she basked in it. Some of my classmates even gave me new nicknames:
Murdering Maggie
,
Brown Widow Spider
, and worst of all, the
Bathtub Butcher—
yes, some people blamed me for Candace, too.

* * *

A week later, Sara came to my room. She had read the police reports and the autopsy, listened in on the officers’ conversations, and understood where the investigation was headed. Tests found the drug Flunitrazepam in Aunt May’s bloodstream along with trace amounts in her stomach. The only other thing in her stomach was tea. The police called Flunitrazepam a date rape drug and said that it was frequently used as a powerful sedative.

“What does this mean?”

“Right now the police are trying to find out how you managed to purchase the drug. They are convinced you slipped it into May’s tea hoping you’d given her enough to be fatal. They believe you waited until four o’clock to come home, but found her alive and panicked when you thought she might wake up. They’re speculating that you decided to drown her in her bed, using a bowl or something, and that she was so drugged she was unable to put up any resistance.”

The accusations chilled me to the core. I felt helpless, cornered. Lurching to the window, I flung it open and pulled several deep breaths into my lungs. “But I was at the hospital!”

“Chloe Fontaine didn’t know what time you showed up that day, and worse yet, Rhonda Adair told them she was with Candace then until six o’clock—alone—giving you plenty of time.”

Before I could scream, or drive to Rhonda’s house and re-break her jaw, Sara told me she had a plan that would clear me and everyone in my family.

“I know you’re going to hate this, but it’s the only way.”

“What is?” I asked, instantly alarmed.

“I’m going to confess, Maggie.”

“No!” I screamed as her words knocked the air out of me.

“Maggie, listen…”

I wouldn’t let her continue. “No! I won’t let you.”

She glared at me and I could see anger in her face. I’d never seen her angry before and it caught me off guard.

“Maggie! You have no choice! This is not a debate—you will do EXACTLY as I say,” she said fuming.

With my attention, and my silence, she continued in a softer voice, “I know what drug was used and the dosage—when the police search my cottage, they’ll find it. I know when they estimated her time of death—they’ve not released any of that information to the public. I’ve seen the photos and read the images in their minds, so I can describe every detail as if I were there. They will believe me and they will leave you alone.”

“But why you?” My voice squeaked, weak and pathetic.

“There is no one else, that’s why. We cannot afford for you to get caught up in this, and Maggie, don’t you worry about me.” She smiled. “I can leave that jail anytime I want, and I will visit you. Now, and this is important, I’m only telling you because I need you to know that it’s all a ruse, but please, everyone else, your mom and dad, they all have to believe I did it. They are going to be furious with me and they will feel horribly betrayed. You have to let them.”

The sensation of being alone gripped my chest. I stumbled back to my bed and sat down slowly. “I can’t lose you too. It’s not worth it.”

“You won’t lose me, and this
is
worth it. It is too important that you be cleared of wrongdoing—it’s the only way you can inherit the Weald and you must inherit the Weald. I have to play this part until the investigation concludes.”

“What do you plan to do? Go to prison?”

She smiled. “No, I won’t do that, remember I’m Fae. When the authorities are convinced that I am responsible for May’s death, when they finally leave you and your family alone, and only then, this Sara will make an amazing jail break. This Sara will disappear, but only after I have conveniently shown up on a few surveillance cameras in New York or Chicago—before I appear, mysteriously and conspicuously, in Paris or Milan where my trail will go cold. I will be back, Maggie. I will not leave you, but I’m afraid this Sara must disappear—it’s about time for me to be young again.”

“What about the Water trial? Will you be there?” She was my rock, my safety net—she had to be there.

“That may not be possible,” she said. Her words hurt me and left me feeling exposed. “But Gavin will be there if I am not—he will not allow anything to happen to you. Maggie, we will find out who is responsible, but we have to clear your name first.”

I realized that her plan would work—she would pull it off as only a Fae could. Thinking about Gavin, I relaxed a little and settled back into the pillows on my bed. She smiled at me and sat at the foot of my bed, clutching a pillow like she always did.

“I can’t even tell you how pissed I am, Sara. If the police are right about Aunt May, someone or something murdered her. I just can’t figure out why. She wasn’t a threat to anyone. She actually got along with Chalen better than you did. Why kill a feeble old woman?”

“There is a disturbing possibility—one that I have not wanted to consider.”

I felt my body go cold as the words left her mouth.

“What?”

“I’m now convinced the Fae were directly involved.”

“Why, what changed? You were so set against that earlier.”

“None of the Fae, neither those in the garden nor those in the Weald, noticed any human being come or go that entire afternoon—except you when you came back from your boat ride. Since it wasn’t a human, logic suggests that it had to be my kind.”

“Why would a Fae do this?”

“Upon May’s death you are to become the next Steward, correct?”

I nodded.

“To do that, you must inherit the Weald. If you were convicted of May’s murder, you would not be permitted to do so. Incarcerated, you cannot fulfill your duty as Steward, and the Fae would require your family to sell the Weald. The Fae would place another family here and select a new Steward to take your place.”

“But who would do this? You said the Unseelie were not permitted to enter the house or the cottage garden?”

“They are not supposed to—that is part of their accord with us. To ensure it, there are always Seelie present to make certain the boundaries are not crossed.

“The Fae in the garden?”

“Yes, there are at least three who guard the cottage at all times.”

“Could an Unseelie have done that to her from outside the cottage wall?”

“Again, yes, it is possible, but whether an Unseelie did it from the room or the moon, we would detect the boundary violation. In our world, Maggie, one doesn’t have to use a
physical
body to trespass. That’s why the guards are always in both forms, physical and Naeshura.”

The implications were numbing. “Could a Seelie have changed sides and allowed the Unseelie to do this?”

“No, one of them could not have done it alone—it would require all three guards, because any of the three could change forms and sense an incursion.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“As of yet, I don’t know. It’s possible that some of my kind are in league with the Unseelie. Probable, even. As I told you the day of the Earth trial, the lines separating the two clans are not as clearly drawn as they once were. Ultimately, though, I don’t understand why they would do this, except to oust your family, and I can see no benefit in doing that. None of this makes sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me either, but I’m scared and I’m pissed. Will there be justice served on the Fae who murdered Aunt May?”

“Yes … but probably not the level of justice you expect,” she said with an apologetic expression.

“What do you mean?”

“If a Fae is responsible for May’s death, and that is likely, the harshest punishment would probably not involve more than banishing the offender from taking physical form for a period of time, perhaps a century, possibly longer.”

I was furious. “What? That’s not justice! To an immortal, that’s not even a slap on the wrist. That’s a nap!”

“Maggie, I’m afraid this is going to be offensive, but you deserve to hear it. You know how the Unseelie feel about people. The truth is, most Seelie do not see humans as equals. While many Seelie are intrigued by human art and culture, a large percentage think of humans as little more than disposable entertainment. For them, the punishment a Fae would receive for killing a human should be no more severe than the punishment a human would receive for injuring a song bird.”

I thought about what she said, tried to wrap my mind around it, and again I felt numb. She walked to my jewelry box and opened it. I only half-heartedly watched her as she dug through the contents. She closed it and walked over to the cedar chest at the foot of my bed. The lock popped open as if she’d used the key. I still wasn’t paying much attention when she lifted a bottle from inside.