Free Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews Page A

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, Page 42

    took an iron ladle from the handle of the cauldron, and stirred the nauseating brew. Chicken bones, with shreds of rotting meat still clinging to them. No human. Thank God for small favors.
    The magic wave died. The technology regained its control, snuffing out the knot of magic above the cauldron.
    I slapped the lid back onto the cauldron and moved on to the altar. A few black feathers had stuck to the blood. A long curved knife, sharpened to a razor edge, lay on the table. Black runes, etched with hot wire, covered the handle of the knife. The pieces clicked together in my brain. Now the chicken in the fridge made sense.
    Julie finally braved the room. “Is that human blood?”
    “Chicken.”
    “So what, she did voodoo or something?”
    “Voodoo isn’t the only religion that uses chickens. Europe has a very long tradition of divination using bird entrails.”
    She looked blank.
    “You behead a chicken, cut it open, and try to foretell the future by how its guts look. And sometimes”—I used the knife to raise a blood-spattered rope from behind the altar to show her—“you don’t kill the chicken first.”
    “That’s just sick. What kind of people did that?”
    “Druids.”
    Julie blinked. “But druids are nice.”
    “The modern Order of Druids is nice. But they didn’t start out that way. Have you ever seen any girl druids?”
    She shook her head. “They’re all guys.”
    “So why was Esmeralda messing around with druid rituals?”
    Julie stared at me. “I don’t know.”
    “Neither do I.”
    I had a feeling that she had done it because someone had instructed her to do so. The sick premonition that had made me shiver at the edge of the pit returned full force. The deeper I got, the less I liked this.
    I crouched before the wicker chest and opened it, half-expecting more grisly chicken remains. Books.
    MacKillop’sDictionary