The Faire (Harrow Faire #5) - Kathryn Ann Kingsley Page 0,71

She was sitting there with Bruce, Aaron, Donna, and Rick. With a faint, uncertain smile, she walked up to them.

It felt like the first day of school all over again, and she hated it. But she forced herself to smile. “Hi, guys…um…”

“Sit down, stupid.” Bertha shook her head. “Lordy, you’re too damn bashful for your own good sometimes. Sit.” She eyed Simon. “As for you? Stay or go, I don’t care.”

Simon huffed and put his tray down and took his seat. “Then I want to stay simply to annoy you.”

Shaking her head, Cora sat next to him. “Be nice. We’ve been here for fifteen seconds.”

“Don’t blame me! She started it.” He picked up his fork and knife and, looking down at his lasagna with utter contempt, started cutting it up into pieces. “Ugh…and it’s stuffed with vegetables, no less. Not even any meat to give it actual texture.” He wrinkled his nose then looked to Cora thoughtfully. “Can you pick dinners, now? If I demand ‘no more vegetable lasagna night,’ in fact, ‘no more ricotta cheese in anything,’ can that be made a law?”

“First, you don’t make the rules.” Cora rolled her eyes. “Second, no. I don’t think so. Ringmaster still has the Key, and he’s still in charge.”

“Bah. Another reason to kill him. Ricotta cheese.” He picked up his glass of red wine and sipped it. “As if I needed another excuse.”

“You’re such a fucking weirdo, Simon.” She sighed and looked up at everyone else. “Sorry.”

Bruce the Firebreather was watching her warily. “What the hell’s ‘the Key?’”

“Think about it this way,” Cora began, gathering up some of the lasagna on her fork. She liked vegetable lasagna. “I’m the translator. The navigator. I’ve got the map, but Turk’s still got control of the steering wheel. I can tell him where to go as much as I want, but he doesn’t have to listen to me. Until I take the steering wheel—the Key—I can’t do shit-all anything to control Harrow Faire.”

“Oh.” Bruce rubbed his hand over his head. “I think I get it…and the Key is a thing?”

“Yeah. Can’t be stolen. Has to be given or taken on death. And he’s not going to give it up.” Cora paused to take a bite of food. Lasagna did get weird when it was cold. “I wish he would.”

“Why? Do you not want to have the vote?” Rick asked. He and Donna were usually pretty quiet people. Cora couldn’t tell if there was judgement in his voice or not.

“No. I want there to be a vote, otherwise I’d have killed him when I had the chance. I wish he’d give up the Key specifically so I wouldn’t have to kill him.” She sighed. “Look. I don’t want to kill people. I don’t. Even after what he did to us.” She rubbed that spot on her collarbone that still ached when she thought about it. She wondered how long it would take for the phantom pain to go away. “I don’t particularly like the idea of wandering around slaughtering people.”

“Why am I dating you, again?” Simon eyed her narrowly.

She elbowed him in the ribs.

The table laughed. It felt nice to have them laughing at their antics again, even if it was with their current situation in mind. She smiled. “I missed you guys.”

That seemed to catch them off guard. Bertha reached across the table and took her hand. “We missed you, too, sweetheart. We all tried to get Ringmaster to let you out. But…you know how he can be.”

Cora squeezed her hand. “Yeah. I do.”

“What happens if you win, then? We vote for you, and then you kill Ringmaster, and you become our leader?” Donna watched her with the same wary expression of her husband.

Cora put down her fork. She hadn’t really thought about that. She reached for Simon’s red wine—she had only grabbed a can of soda—and chugged it. That got a laugh out of the table again, as well as Simon’s offended noise.

“Well. Fine. Be that way.” Simon took his empty glass and stood, walking off to refill it, muttering the entire time.

Cora smiled after him before looking back to Donna after a moment. “Do I want to lead? No. I don’t know what I’m doing. I majored in photography, and I worked at a bank. I played The Sims, I know how bad I’d be at being a god.” She shook her head at their blank expressions and remembered she was the only one at Harrow Faire who had ever touched