Page 80 of The Chain House
Nancy folded her arms on the ledge. “Yeah. I do. I do have remorse. I’m sorry for what I did.”
“And the other two?”
Nancy smiled. “They’re still drinking the juice, I’m afraid.”
“Still followers?”
“Until their dying days, I assume.”
“But not you?”
“No. I’ll gladly admit to my atrocities.”
“Do you see each other?”
“No,” Nancy said. “They’ve kept us apart for a decade or more.”
“Us children … on the ranch,” Jennifer said. “Did you know our parents had been killed?”
“Yes,” she said with a grin. “By demons, right?”
Jennifer didn’t share her smile. “My mother was one of them.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Who do you think?”
“Minks?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He did all of Sal’s killing.”
“Why did he specifically go for Beth Hawthorne that night?”
“You’re a bright girl. You always were,” Nancy said. “You know I kept you alive, don’t you?”
“How?”
“It was chaos on the ranch,” she said. “We knew the authorities were on the way. Minks was looking everywhere for you all.”
“And The Raven hid us in a closet right under his nose.”
“A closet Minks personally asked me to check, looking for you children,” she said. “He asked me to check all the closets upstairs. I knew you all were in there. I heard you. Almost opened the door, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Even then, I wasn’t real big on leading children to the slaughter.”
“Minks would have slaughtered us?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Then why hasn’t he done so over the past twenty years?” Jennifer asked.
