Family (Insanity Book 7) Read Free Page B

just like everyone else.
    “Humpty!” She summoned Margaret’s son.
    “Coming, Majesty.” Humpty came limping in, a satirical version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
    The Queen looked irritated, watching the poor child trudging across the hall. “They did a horrible job stitching you up, darling,” She mused. “I mean, is that your head?”
    “It is, Majesty.” The poor child sat by her feet. “Something wrong?”
    “Nah,” The Queen lied. His egg-shaped head had taken a few bumps here and there. It was by no means egg-shaped anymore, let alone coherent enough to be called a head. “You look beautiful, darling. Now why don’t you be a good boy and lick mum’s tired feet?”
    Humpty didn’t object and began doing what her dogs once did in the past. The boy was helpless, but the Queen still loved him. She could not conceive children, so he was her one and only. Of course, he was Margaret’s really. But it felt much better to have another’s child as her own. The Queen loved taking from other people what wasn't hers. A little attitude she had grown up with. She used to love to take anything that belonged to her sister when they were children.
    The sister she wouldn’t want to remember now.
    “My baby.” She scooped Humpty’s head off the floor and kissed the nose. “Don’t worry, baby. Mum will fix you soon. No one will ever laugh at you like they did to me when I was a child.”
    “Does that mean I won’t be as ugly anymore?” Humpty questioned.
    “You will always be ugly, darling.” She patted the decapitated head. “But you will rule the world. That’s what ugly people do.”
    Suddenly, the Queen heard Margaret’s voice nearby.
    Confused, she pushed Humpty’s body under the bed next to the couch. “How did you get in, Margaret?”
    “It’s important. The guards let me in.” Margaret wasn’t yet visible, probably standing behind a column at the other end of the huge chamber. “Can I come in?”
    “Just a second,” The Queen said, attempting to roll Humpty’s head under the bed after shushing him.
    But the child’s head refused to budge. She’d accidentally poked his eyes with her thumb and forefinger, like bowling ball – and the head stuck.
    “Just a sec!” The Queen said again, pulling Humpty’s head off her fingers and kicking it under the bed.
    Clapping her hands free and then turning around, she realized Margaret stood behind her. “I told you to wait.”
    “I didn’t hear you,” Margaret said, eager to peek behind her. “What’s under the bed?”
    “A head,” The Queen’s tongue slipped.
    “A head?” Margaret curved an eyebrow. “Under the bed?”
    “Who said head?”
    “You said head.”
    “I didn’t say head.”
    “I heard head.”
    “I said dead. I mean ted. No, I said bed. Yes, bed.”
    “You shoved a bed under the bed?”
    “Aye.” The Queen nodded, chin up, hands behind her back, blocking Margaret’s stare.
    “Who puts a bed under a bed?”
    “What’s wrong with a bed under a bed?”
    “No one ever puts a bed under a bed.”
    “They put boxes, shoes, and other things. Why not a bed?”
    “So you mean you have a smaller bed you just shoved under the bed?”
    “Aye.”
    “What’s in the small bed?”
    “Another bed.”
    “Seriously?” Margaret challenged her.
    “Why do you ask so many questions?” The Queen’s voice pitched up. “I’m the Queen of England. I can do whatever I want. Why did you want to see me?”
    “Ah, almost forgot.” Margaret’s face returned to its spider web of seriousness again, though not so much as to defuse her plastic surgeries. “I received a message from an anonymous informant.”
    “So?”
    “It’s someone who knows about us, about each one of us. The details mentioned worried me.”
    “Did he blackmail you?”
    “It’s not about that. That person, whomever he or she is, claims to have important news coming.”
    “News about what?”
    “About the Six Keys.”
    “So it’s a Wonderlander who