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?”
Julie stared at me in outrage. “My mom is nice!”
I threw the bottle away.
Two hours later we dropped Ninny off at the Order’s stable. The magic, after holding off for a good few hours, resumed hammering Atlanta in short bursts. The afternoon bled into the evening. I was tired and hungry. We headed north through the tangle of streets, to the small apartment that used to belong to Greg and was now my home when I stayed in the city.
I climbed the narrow stairwell to the third floor, Julie in tow. The magic happened to be up, and the ward clutched my hand as I touched the door and opened it in a flash of blue. I let Julie into the apartment, bolted the door shut behind us, and pulled off my shoes.
Julie wandered past me. “This is nice. And there are bars on the windows.”
“Keeps the bad guys out.” The lack of sleep finally caught up to me. I was so freaking tired. Worn out. “Take your shoes off.”
She did. I rummaged through the closet and came up with an old box of my clothes Greg had kept since the time I had stayed with him after my father died. Fifteen-year-old me was a lot bigger than thirteen-year-old Julie, but the clothes would have to do.
I tossed the sweatpants and a T-shirt at her. “Shower.”
“I don’t do showers.”
“Do you do food? No shower, no food.”
She stuck out her lower lip. “You suck, you know that?”
I crossed my arms on my chest. “My house, my rules. You don’t like it, the door’s over there.”
“Fine!” She headed for the door.
Good riddance. I clamped my teeth, hoping I didn’t say it out loud, and went into the kitchen. I washed my hands with soap at the sink and searched the fridge for vittles. The only thing I had was a big bowl of cold low country boil. Me, I’d eat it cold: corn on the cob and shrimp were good cold anyway, and I was hungry enough to stomach the cold potatoes and sausage. Julie, on the other hand, might want it warm, preferably with butter.
To warm up or not to warm up? That was the question.
The sounds of rushing water announced a shower starting. She’d decided to stick around. I put a big pot of water on the gas burner. Magic did screwy things to all sorts of ordinary objects, but thankfully, the natural gas still burned. If all else failed, I had a small picnic heater on top of the fridge, together with a jug of kerosene for it.
I had almost finished picking out all of the shrimp, when a very thin, angelic-looking child walked into my kitchen. She had fly-away caramel hair and large brown eyes on a sharp face. It took me a full minute to recognize her and then I collapsed, laughing.
“What?” The little elf-baby looked taken aback.
“You’re very clean.”
Julie pulled my sweatpants up before they slid off her butt. “I’m hungry. We had a deal.”
“Watch the water for me. When it starts boiling, put everything in except the shrimp. Don’t eat the shrimp, it’s better warm, and don’t let the water boil over and drown the gas while I take a shower.”
I gathered a heap of clothes and crawled into the shower. There was nothing better than a nice hot shower after a long day. Well, maybe a hot shower followed by hot sex, but my memory in that department was getting a bit fuzzy.
It took a while to get all the dirt out of my hair, and when I popped into the kitchen, the water was boiling. I hooked a piece of corn on the cob with a giant fork. Steaming hot. Good enough. I dropped the shrimp into the pot, let it boil for a quarter of a minute or so, turned the gas off, and dumped the whole thing into the strainer.
The magic fell. On, off, on, off, make up your mind already. “Ever had a low country boil?”
Julie shook her head.
I put the colander in the center of the table and put salt and a stick of butter next to it. “Shrimp, sausage, corn on the cob, and potatoes. Try it. The sausage is turkey and deer meat. I was there when it was made. It doesn’t have dog or rat in it.”
Julie snagged a piece of sausage, tasted it, and attacked it like starving wolves were snapping at her food. “Thish ish good!” she announced through a mouthful of food.
I barely had a chance to finish the first cob, when a knock echoed through the door. I looked through the peephole. Red.
I opened the door. He glanced at me, eyes narrowed into tiny slits. “Food?”
Kate Daniels, deadly swordswoman and rescuer of hungry orphans. “Come in. Wash your hands.”
Julie burst from the kitchen and threw her arms around him. Red stiffened and put one arm around her.
Her face over his shoulder took on a sweet dreamy look. Her mother’s disappearance had to have hit her hard, but losing Red would crush her.
“I missed you!” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he said, his face flat. “Me, too.”
Twenty minutes later I had two full kids and no boil. That meant I’d have to cook something tomorrow. Oi.
“Let’s talk.” I pinned Red to his chair with my stare. I did deranged quite well, when the occasion required. Strangely, most of my opponents didn’t faint and crash to the ground from my stare, but Red was young and used to being bullied. He froze. I didn’t like to intimidate adolescent street urchins, but I had a feeling he would bolt at the slightest opportunity if I played it nice. “Tell me what you know about the coven.”
