Mercy (Queen's Birds of Prey 1)

“I got the reports back on the bodies. Did you know that he’d demanded that they both be cremated, and then him have the ashes? Right now I’m still trying to figure out why they didn’t consult Joel on the decisions. Not that it mattered in the long run. The only reason that Saul wasn’t able to cremate them is because his parents had filled out their final arrangements a few years ago and didn’t want to be burned to death. Their words, not mine.” They laughed a little. “She was poisoned, no doubt about that. There was enough in her system at the time of death to have killed an elephant. Also, there were traces of it found in his father’s body. I guess it wasn’t working fast enough for him, and he hit him with the axe. No one, not in all this time, was able to find the murder weapon until the day before yesterday. It had been in the back of the shed under so much shit that it was small wonder I was able to find it after you told me where to look.”

“He has a lot of misdeeds in his mind that I’m going to start looking into. Well, have others look into. Joey has a list of things that he’s sharing with New Mexico. And there are other deaths that he’s had his hand in. The problem with some of them is it’ll be hard to pin them on him. I’ve come to realize that the man can be like a fart in the wind when it’s necessary. What did you find out about the will?” Piper said that there had been one, but it had been voided. “Because of no money.”

“Pretty much. I did have someone look into seeing what it would take to get the house back for Joel, but it’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. The house was torn down in the name of progress. Progress that only went as far as tearing down an entire block of houses, then doing nothing else. The only thing left was this little shack, for some reason. I think it sat too far back off the road. Lack of funding, I was told, stopped the entire project. Anyway, there are a few possessions that I was able to get. The bank took them in order to sell them off for back payments. That never happened either. They’d been behind in their payments for years, but only by one. And then about two years ago, the bank, pressured by the people that wanted the improvement, decided to toss them out. It wasn’t anything that Joel’s parents hadn’t expected to happen. The banker, a semi nice guy, told them monthly that it could well happen.”

“What did Saul do about the house once they were gone? I mean, did he live there long enough to make some money off their things?” Piper said that he’d pretty much sold off everything of value before he killed them. “So, the bank had nothing to use to catch them up. That guy is a peach.”

“Mom and Dad had a lot of valuable antiques. A lot of them worth thousands of dollars. They were holding onto them to pave their way into a smaller house someday, and have it paid for so that there would be nothing they’d have to worry about.” Joel kissed her on the mouth and hugged Piper before continuing. “Mom called me a couple of months before she was killed. She told me that it was all gone. All the books, first editions that they’d paid nothing much for. Swords that they’d picked up at estate sales that the auctioneer had no idea what they were. Things like that. Oh, and they had art too, some of it from extremely famous artists. Saul found it, sold it off for more than likely nothing much, and they were left without anything to fall back on.”

“You do realize that all this is going to hit him at once, don’t you? I mean, once the yarn starts to unravel around him, he’s going to be put away for a long time. And if he touches Miley.... Well, we’ll take care that he pays as well.” Piper looked at her, then back at Joel as she explained to him what she’d found on his parents’ bodies. “I’m so sorry, Joel. But I have a feeling that you might have known about this anyway, correct?”

“Yes, I suspected it, but hearing that he did murder them both makes it no less difficult.” He looked away before saying anything else. “I was going to take Miley to see them the summer they were murdered. It was going to be a long trip for her—she didn’t travel well even for the few hours that it would have taken to get there. But they only got to see her once, when she was just a little girl.”

“I’m so sorry, Joel.” He nodded and stood up. “Did you need help with the interview today? I’m sure that any one of us can quiz you on what to ask.”

“I got it.” Joel kissed Mercy again and told Piper he’d see her later. But he stopped at the door just before leaving the room and turned back to Mercy. “This position that I’m hiring someone for, I need to know if you plan to interview them as well.”

“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. If you think this man is good for the job, then I’m all for it.” Joel left them then and Piper asked what was going on. “The school board is short two members. Joel said that he’d take one of the positions if he was allowed to hire the second one. I think he had it in his mind to have the pack leader be a part of it anyway. This way, the pack will have a say in what goes on with their own kids in the school.”

“What happened to the other members, or do I want to know?” Mercy told her. “Christ. You mean they were taking the school funding for three years and no one caught on until now? How is that even possible?”

“Joel found it. He was looking over some of the books—I haven’t any idea why—and noticed that there were large sums of money missing at the end of each year. Also, and this is what caught his attention first, the petty cash was nearly half a million dollars. There was never that much in the way of money in it, but it never had to be checked until it went below two hundred and fifty thousand. Since it never did, according to their records, no one noticed.”

“He’s been looking into a few other things for us too, did you know that?” Mercy told her that he loved numbers. “I can see that. He has the mind of a brilliant man. Joel also found out that the pack was being charged more interest than other people at the bank. And that they weren’t allowed to charge things to an account at the grocery store like the humans were. After he told me, I had Jude go in and make sure that they didn’t do that again. Blaze took care of the banker. And no, before you ask, she didn’t kill him. But for a while there, I guess it was a little close.”

Piper said she was going to put Joel in charge of the books for her business. She wasn’t having any trouble, but it would be one less thing she had to worry about. Mercy said that he’d love that, to feel useful.

“Well, you might want to talk to him about paying him. He seems to think that us paying him for working for us is wrong. I told him how it would help on taxes, and he isn’t budging. I thought about telling him to donate it to some worthy cause, but I wanted to talk to you about it first. How about a trust? Set up for kids that need chairs, ramps on their homes, and things like that. Adults too, if necessary. But I think we, after seeing how Miley struggles in places, can make a huge difference in some peoples’ lives.”

“Tell him that. I think he’d be right on board with that.” She said she’d talk to him later then. “Also, Piper, I’ve been thinking of taking him to see the stash. I was wondering if you guys wanted to go with us. I’ve decided that I’d like to bring some of the pieces here to put in our home. Miley might like some of it too, to put in her room.”

“I’d love that. And I’ve been thinking of getting a home too. I’m sick of apartment life.” Mercy said that she had been as well. “If you don’t mind, I’m having a meeting with Jude and Esme today. I’ll let them know and see if they want to head there as well.”

“All right. Great. Let me know.” Piper said she would and that she had four pieces to finish up but would be around if she needed her.

Mercy bent over the leather-bound books that she’d been given when Dante had changed them. Mercy was trying to make sense of it all.

The notes that she’d been left from Dante never mentioned a child. However, it did talk about money being paid to someone by the name of Mary. Surnames weren’t a thing back then, she was simply Mary the gardener. The sum wasn’t a great deal by today’s standards, but back then, it would have been a fortune.

There were records too. Of the move, what people were given

coins to live on for a time. She wrote of the magic that she’d bestowed on a few of the merchants in the new town. And what was going to be paid to them from the stash they had. Mercy didn’t know how that had worked out, as they were never told of paying anyone.

There were other notations as well. A woman by the name of Sally had been made a baker. The one that had been in the castle had died a few days before the great move. That was what it was called too, the great move.

Just as she was closing up the first of many notebooks, she found a notation that she’d not noticed before. It was written in Latin, perhaps so that no one would be able to read it. But Mercy could and sat back as the words sank into her mind.

“My son will be mated to one of my birds.” The queen’s son? And which one of the others could it be? And where had he been in all this time?

Mercy knew that it couldn’t have been Joel. He wasn’t an immortal when she met him. And as far as she knew, he wasn’t related at all to Dante. Where was this son of the king and queen? What was he doing all this time?

Perhaps he was the one that was paying the woman who had raised him. He would know, she supposed, that there was a stash. And since he’d been born before any of them had been magically changed, he’d be older than them. By how much, Mercy didn’t know.

The more information she found, the less she understood. Like for instance, why not tell the king that he had a son? And how had she hidden the pregnancy from him? Had he already been dead when she had the child? Who else knew of him? Mercy had no idea where to go from here, other than to pay more attention to the Latin on the pages.

Starting at the beginning of the book, the first one she’d read, she found other notations about the boy. He was born five months after the king’s death. Also, and this one had surprised her, his name was Duncan Neal Dante. No title was attached to his name at this point, but he would be King of Duncan Castle, Lord of the Realm.

Chapter 8