Fearless The King Series Book One - By Tawdra Kandle Page 0,71

town. Turned out, according to the newspapers, that she had fallen in love with this other woman’s husband. He was a doctor, and whether or not he returned her affection or if they were having an affair—that was never clear.

“What caused all the uproar, though, wasn’t the affair or even the crime. It was how the attorney’s wife had intended to hurt her rival. She was using witchcraft. She had apparently been practicing for quite some time, and she had everything in place to… disable the woman and then eliminate her.

“And what made it even more of a story was that this woman, as it turned out, was a direct descendant of the original King Carnival witch—Sarah. And all of a sudden, all the mystical stuff that had been pushed underground or ignored all those years was news again. There were newspaper articles about the origins of the town, we had the big television news magazines here doing stories… it was a mess.

“My parents kept Lela and me away from most of it, but you couldn’t escape it in school. Especially… because it affected someone we knew.”

Realization was dawning on me. “Someone you knew?” I repeated slowly.

“Yeah. And this is where the gossip part comes in, and I feel uncomfortable talking about it. It was Nell’s mother who was arrested.”

I nodded, breathing out slowly. “Nell. Okay, I get it.”

“It was horrible. I remember a little of Nell from before, and if you could have seen the little girl she was then—well, you would never guess how she’s turned out. That whole time must have been so painful for her. She lost her mother, everyone was talking about her family… and she was only in first grade. So she would have been about six, I guess.”

“She lost her mother?” I questioned.

“Yes. Her father had enough connections that he was able to have her put into a very exclusive mental hospital out of state. She was declared incompetent to stand trial and that was that.”

“What happened to the doctor and his wife? The one she was in love with?”

“They moved out of town, and fast. I think they knew they’d never have any kind of life here. They weren’t from an original family, so it was easy for them to just leave. I heard they ended up getting divorced later, so maybe there was something more than just obsession between him and Mrs. Massler. But again, that’s gossip, and I don’t want to go there.”

For the first time, I felt something more than fear and dislike for Nell. I could picture the little girl she must have been, and I knew that the pain of losing her mother at such a vulnerable age must have been crushing. No wonder her mind was so dark.

“Poor Nell,” I whispered.

“Yeah, poor Nell,” Michael echoed. “Most people have forgotten it now, or at least it’s not in the front of their minds when they think of Nell. But I remember that first year was rough. It was all anybody talked about. And of course, kids are cruel. They called her “witch girl”, and they told her that her mom was crazy—which was probably true of course. But Nell had always kind of worshipped her mother—you know, they were always together. My mother thinks too that Mrs. Massler was probably unstable for a while before everything hit the fan, so that would have affected Nell, too.”

“Did your mother know Mrs. Massler well?” I questioned. I couldn’t picture pretty, down-to-earth Marly being friends with someone who would consciously hurt her child in any way.

“No, she didn’t know her except through work—my parents did some landscaping for the Masslers. The family lived in Mrs. Massler’s old home—a big house with lots of land. Mr. Massler liked to entertain in that huge garden at their house, and he had my parents redesign it for them, about a year before his wife was arrested. But I was talking to my mother about Nell the other day, and she said that even then, although Nell followed her mom around everywhere, Mrs. Massler seemed very… disconnected, I think, was the word she used.”

“Why were you talking to your mother about Nell?” I knew that Michael would never betray my confidence in him regarding my extraordinary talents, but I was curious about their conversation.

“I told her that Nell was really giving you a hard time,” Michael answered. “I said I was worried about you. My mom reminded me that Nell has her own issues,