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“But I want to know how deep it is.”
“No, you don’t.”
She dropped the clod with a sneer. I obviously plummeted a few notches on her cool people meter.
Three small impressions marked the sides of the pit forming an equilateral triangle—the tracks from the cauldron’s three legs. Just like the tracks at the coven’s meeting place. The big pit in the Gap was missing a cauldron. And a huge one at that.
CHAPTER 8
BRYCE AND CO. HAD DECIDED AGAINST THE REMATCH,and we left the Honeycomb unmolested, carrying Esmeralda’s books. Custer had wisely chosen to make himself scarce. From Trailer twenty-three to the chain link gates, we didn’t see another living thing.
It took a good hour to cut around the Honeycomb through the Warren to where Ninny still patiently waited for me by a pile of mule poop. I loaded Julie onto the molly. White Street was only fifteen minutes away, but she looked tuckered out.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Home. What’s your address?”
Julie clamped her lips shut and stared at the front of Ninny’s saddle.
“Julie?”
“There is nobody there,” she said. “Mom’s gone. She’s all I have.”
Oh boy. Could I turn a momless, hungry, tired, filthy kid loose on a street with night approaching? Let me think…“We’ll swing by your house and see if your mom made it home. If not, you can bed with me tonight.”
Mom wasn’t there. They had a tiny house, tucked in a corner of a shallow subdivision branching from White Street. The home was old, but very clean, all except the kitchen sink full of dirty plates. Originally it must’ve been a two bedroom, but somebody, probably Julie’s mom, had built a wooden partition, sectioning off a part of the living room to make a tiny third room. In that room sat an old sewing machine, a couple of filing cabinets, and a small table. On the table rested a half-finished dress, light blue, in Julie’s size. I touched the dress gently. Whatever faults Julie’s mother may have had, she loved her daughter very much.
Julie brought her picture from their bedroom: a tired woman with loose blond hair looked back at me from the photo with brown eyes, just like her daughter’s. Her face was pale. She looked sickly, exhausted, and a decade older than thirty-five.
I made Julie help me with the dishes. Under the plates I found a bottle of Wild Irish Rose. White label. It stank like rubbing alcohol. It was also famous for sending the drinker into wild rages.
“Does your mom ever scream at you or hit you when she drinks?”