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CHAPTER 7
THE PLACE STANK OF ROTTING CITRUS AND OLDsocks. Julie clamped her nose. “What stinks?”
“Valerian extract.” I pointed to the dark stain on the wall. Glass shards studded the floor below—looked like Esmeralda hurled the vial against the wall. “Our head witch had trouble sleeping.”
Narrow to the point of inducing claustrophobia, the trailer lay steeped in gloom. Blood-red tattered drapes hid the windows. Julie picked up a flyswatter off the narrow counter separating the tiny kitchen from the rest of the space and used it to push the curtains open. Smart kid. Who knows what the hell was on those curtains.
In the light of the afternoon, the trailer looked even sadder. A beat-up fridge took up most of the cooking area. I opened the fridge. Years ago I had bought a perpetually cold egglike object, which the seller had called an ice sprite egg. I have never seen an ice sprite, although there were rumors of a swarm in Canada. The egg cost me a pretty penny, but I hung it up in a small sack in a corner of my fridge, and it kept my food partially frozen through the magic waves. Esmeralda had used a cheaper, “friz-ice”
method: chunks of enchanted ice, sold for a small fee by Water and Sewer Department. They melted about twenty times slower than regular ice. The trouble with friz-ice was that eventually it did melt, and it had done precisely that, and some time ago too, leaking all over the ritualistically beheaded black chicken on the middle shelf. The sickeningly sweet stench of decomposition slapped my face.
I gagged on putrescence and shut the door before I vomited onto the chicken corpse. Chopping off chicken heads when you’re worshipping a bird took some balls. Either that or Esmeralda was an equal opportunity dabbler and tried other magics on the side.
The kitchen held no clues, and I headed to the opposite side of the trailer. I passed a small immaculate bedroom on my left: bed made, no clothes strewn on the floor. An equally pristine bathroom followed, and then I stepped into what should have been the final room.
The Honeycomb had expanded the room, pulling the ceiling up and widening the walls. The grimy linoleum floor ended with the hallway. The bottom of the room consisted of packed dirt, and it sloped to the center, where an iron cauldron sat. The curve of the floor and the bloated ceiling made the room look nearly spherical.
Past the cauldron, at the opposite wall sat a wicker chest. Next to it stood a concrete picnic table. The table was stained with blood.
Behind me Julie shifted from foot to foot.
The magic sat over the cauldron in a big tense knot, but I sensed no wards. I took a step onto the dirt.
The room shimmered a little but remained as it was.
I approached the cauldron and lifted the lid. The greasy stench of burned fat and rancid broth assaulted me.
“Ugh!” Julie stumbled back.
My eyes watered. My stomach churned and squirted acid into my throat. I swallowed it back down,