“We’re never going to find him in this crowd,” Katie said, throwing her arms in the air. There must have been two hundred homeless people at the base of the bridge, mulling around, eating scraps of food from flaming trash can grills, and trying to get some shut eye before the sun rose again.
“Excuse me,” I asked a tall, greasy man with straggly hair. “Have you seen a troll around here?”
“Lots of trolls around here, love,” a greasy man with bright blue eyes said. “Look around. Men ugly and mean enough to grind your bones and eat ya for dinner.”
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t doubt that, but I mean a real troll. Like the kind who lives under bridges and takes coin for passage in exchange for not eating you.”
“Nah, I don’t know nobody like that, not that they would get a lot of coin around here.”
“Look over there,” Katie said, pointing across the campsite. I turned my head and saw a woman whose eyes were wide as saucers, muttering to herself as she pointed at Katie. “I think she sees me.”
“Maybe she knows about magical creatures,” I said, walking toward the woman.
“That’s just old Greta,” the man called after us. “Ain’t nobody understands what she says, honestly. Most of us just lucky we aren’t like her.”
There seemed to be a hierarchy of pity even in the homeless camp, and Greta ranked toward the bottom. However, she was the only person who looked like she could see Katie, and since the only people who could see Katie were either me, Samantha, and other witches, it was a good bet that she was a witch.
“Excuse me, Greta?” I waved as I walked toward her.
“Did you know you got a ghost next to you?” Greta asked me in a soft, raspy voice.
I gestured to Katie. “This is my friend, Katie. She’s nice. You don’t have to be afraid of her.”
“Hello!” Katie said with a smile.
“Oh hello, ghost child,” Greta replied. “Such a shame when they take one so young. My apologies to your family.”
“That’s very nice of you,” Katie said. “You’re the first witch I’ve met who has said anything nice about my death. Most of them don’t even acknowledge it.”
“Excuse me? Witch?”
“You are a witch, right?” I asked. “Only witches have been able to see ghosts.”
She scratched her head. “I don’t know. I just knocked my head really hard one day, and afterwards of it I could see ‘em everywhere. People think I’m talking to nobody, but I’m not. I can see ‘em plain as day.”
“I didn’t think there were any left on Earth.”
Greta shook her head. “There aren’t many, and those that are…they’re miserable. They want to go back home, but they just can’t. It’s a horrible life, being a ghost on Earth. Makes my life seem almost bearable. They just walk around, moping, trying to get somebody to pay attention to them,” Greta turned to Katie. “You’re lucky you have a human that cares. Most people don’t.”
Katie looked over at me. “I am very lucky. Trust me, I know.”
“Don’t you forget it,” I said.
“Yes, we are both lucky, but I’m hoping you can help us be even luckier. We’re looking for a troll, a real one. A good, old fashioned magical troll. Have you seen one?”
Greta scratched her head again. “I hear people talking a lot about a nasty bugger that lives in the sewers about a hundred meters down. Don’t know if it’s a troll, but nobody who goes down there ever comes up again.”
“Nobody?” Katie asked.
Greta smiled. “Nah. I’m only foolin’. Some of ‘em come out, but not nearly enough. Of course, not like a lot of people come looking for us, either. There’s a reason we’re homeless, ain’t there?”
“Thank you,” I said to Greta before turning to Katie. “I guess we go down the disgusting sewer tunnel.”
“Yet another moment when I’m glad to be dead,” Katie said. “I don’t envy the smells and things you will touch.”
Chapter 30
Do I really need to say how nasty that sewer pit was? It smelled like the rotten, putrid, disgusting socks you haven’t washed in months mated with the rancid fish sandwich you forgot to throw away, and their power of stank fused into the most wretched smell imaginable.
The walls of the sewer pipe were lined with actual shit, or maybe it was grime, but it smelled like feces. A small creek of vile bilious sludge snaked through the base of the sewer and out into the water outside. I felt bad for any fish who swam by, minding their own business, being a fish, only to be smacked with a grotesque sludge from the literal bowels of humanity. Poor fish.
“Does it smell as bad as it looks?” Katie asked, eyeing the walls.
“Oh no,” I said, trying to hold my breath. “It smells much worse than it looks.”
“That’s impossible.”
“And yet, it’s still true.” I heard a crunching sound coming from further down the sewer. “Go scout ahead and see what’s making that sound.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, because you can’t die again, but I can.”
“Fine.”
Katie flew ahead, while I crept slowly through the sewer, trying my best not to step in the sludge. “You’re not going to like it,” she said as she floated back to me. “Or maybe you will. I’m not sure. I mean, the troll is up there, but he’s uglier and meaner than I expected.”
“How ugly and mean did you think it would be?”
“Pretty ugly and very mean. But the troll looks worse than that. It’s horrendously ugly and viciously mean. I think it was gnawing on the leg of a hobo. You should go back.”
I pressed forward, through Katie’s strenuous
