Page 69 of Broken Queen
Once they were done clapping, the women turned to each other, forming a line in front of one of the estate managers. Zira grabbed my shoulder.
“Can you stay here?” she asked. “There’s something I need to do. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“I’ll be here,” I said.
With my direction and help, one of the staff members raided the main building’s kitchen and brought back a feast for the women. The building glowed with the fire. A set of private fire fighters came, taking care of the flames. It was a long night, and for once, I was patient. It should have bored the hell out of me, but there was so much energy in the air that I didn’t mind it. And since Zira wanted me to stay with the women, then I would. I had learned to trust my queen.
Hours passed. Hints of daylight crept over the horizon, trickling through the magnolia trees. The stench of popcorn and charred meat filled the air, white smoke rising toward the clouds. Right around the time the building unlocked, a staff member brought a fourth round of coffee to the few of us that were still left, and I drank it down, the liquid burning my throat. I had begrudgingly called Carter Care—that assassin company that Zira liked—to provide the women with security guards to escort them home. It was out of Carter Care’s typical services, but Carter complied, no questions asked. Most of the women were gone now, but a few of them were left, and I stayed beside them.
Zira came out of one of the other buildings, emerging from an exit I didn’t recognize. She pushed a large cart with a rectangular wooden box on the top, and as our eyes met, I knew instantly what it was.
My sister’s coffin.
The wooden box was much smaller than I expected. I opened the lid and found her shriveled neck, sunken eyes sockets, her wrists arched in an unnatural shape. She was mostly bones now, aged with decaying brownish yellow skin. Her dull red hair in tangles at the back of her head.
A heavy weight rolled in the pit of my stomach, but I held onto that emotion, forcing myself to experience every ounce of it. It was my fault that Gabby had come here in the first place; I could accept that now.
I closed the metal box. I had found her body, and I hated that this was the best I could do. But maybe working beside Zira was the best way to make it right for my sister. To make sure that things changed from now on.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
Zira straightened her stance. “What do you want to do with her?”
“Know anyone who will cremate her?” I asked. Zira nodded. “We can scatter her ashes. Go on a trip somewhere. She probably wouldn’t want to be stuck here any longer.” I paused, biting my tongue. “No offense.”
Zira pressed her lips together. “I don’t blame her.”
I tilted my head toward the building. “And your father?”
The building had a faint halo of smoke around it, but it was no longer burning. The windows would need to be replaced, but the shell of it still stood, blackened and gloomy. Taking Gabby on the cart with us, we went to the final resting place of Daddy Bloom. The blackened carcass of a man, like a hollowed-out log, lay on the ground.
His head lay a short distance away, like a rippled black bowling ball.
“Time to clean out the trash,” Zira muttered. I stared at her, trying to see if there was any pain in her eyes, but she waved away my concern. “He was technically my family, but that never meant anything in the Marked Blooms Syndicate.”
“But it does now,” I said.
At those words, she held my hand, looking up at me. I might not have been the best brother to Gabby, but if family meant a union between people who did everything they could for each other, then I wanted to be that person for Zira. I wanted to make things right for her.
“We’re family,” I said.
She stepped up on her toes, her boots crunching on the ground, and she kissed me.
“We are,” she said.
A few days passed. Zira was busy as hell, trying to get all of that glorious chaos under control again. But by the time everything was settled, we took Gabby’s ashes back to Oakmont. It was a shitty little town, but it was home. And whether or not either of us would admit it, I think it was home for Zira too. Turns out, her mother was from there too.
We walked through the woods, the sycamore trees covered in Spanish moss, the branches hanging down like lazy fingers. For once, we walked in silence. It was closure for both of us, and in a way, it left me without a clue about where to go next. Zira was the de facto director of the board now, but what that meant for the Marked Blooms Syndicate was unknown.
“Maybe we should do this for everyone down there,” Zira said, breaking the silence. “It seems better than decaying in a catacomb underneath a place that symbolizes so much trauma.”
I wasn’t one to make any kind of judgment like that, but staying still in any place for too long, dead or alive, made my skin crawl. My crushed up bones and ashes scattered throughout the wind seemed more fitting.
I dumped out the rest of the small container. Usually there were several pounds of bones and ash from a fresh corpse, but since Gabby had decomposed a lot already, we were done spreading her ashes much sooner than I expected.
A bird chirped in the distance, and as we continued walking through the woods, a car hummed on the highway. A few people shouted to each other, their voices carrying through the trees, no doubt crowding over a six-pack of beers. It was life as usual in Oakmont.
But what was life ‘as usual’ with Zira?
