Free VoodooMoon by June Stevens Page A

on. Besides, the only people home would be Pinky and Anya, and they both worked at the pub all night. So, instead I walked to the end of the block and up the alley to the back entrance. The security ward on the back door was keyed to my energy signature so I didn’t have to use a key to get in. Anyone outside of the family who tried to enter would get a nasty shock and thrown back about fifteen feet, which would slam them into the building behind us. If they were stupid enough to try it a second time, it would kill them.
    Like most of the buildings up and down Broadway, the pub was narrow in width but over half a block in length. The first half of the building was four stories high and made of brick, but the back half was only two stories and constructed concrete block and wood. Though not even Pinky had been here back when it had been built, it was obvious the back half had been built on several decades after the main building.
    The building was quiet as I crept through the back rooms of the pub to the back staircase. I paused on the second floor landing to look out the window. River wasn’t in her massive rooftop garden, or at least I couldn’t see her. She could be in the jungle-like grove of potted fruit trees or inside the greenhouse, but at this time of day she was most likely at the public market selling her produce. That meant, with Pinky asleep in his third floor apartment and with Anya asleep in her bedroom I’d have the wash room to myself.
    Like most older buildings in Nash City, we had the bare minimum of plumbing. It had only been about 50 years or so since water delivery had been restored to most of the city via hand pumps. Flushing toilets were a luxury the older generation hadn’t had. Some buildings, mostly those in the slums, still didn’t have them. Hot running water was still elusive, though I knew from my history classes back at the Academy that once every home and most buildings had cold and hot running water and every home had a bathtub. These days hot water that flowed from the pump required a crystal-powered heater and a second set of pipes running throughout the home. Only the very rich had hot water.
    There were public bathhouses spread throughout the city where attendants were employed heat water on coal or magic powered heaters and kept the tubs filled. Normally I would use the Blade Bathhouse or stop at the one down the street, but I’d been too tired. Luckily, though it wasn’t as relaxing and convenient as a bathhouse, Pinky had rigged us a small washroom in the apartment years ago with a steel tub and a small heater in the washroom. The heater had been expensive, but necessary. While warming water is a basic household spell, it would takes more power than most mages can expend at once to heat enough for bathing. We couldn’t immerse ourselves in a tub full of warm, scented water like we could at a bath house, but we could wash our hair and keep generally clean.
    I put on a kettle of water and scryed Sam with my report on the morning’s activities while it was heating. I washed my hair with the first pot of water while heating a second to bathe with. Then I braided my clean, wet hair and then stepped into the tub to was the dirt and grime from my body. Once I was clean and mud free I wrapped a towel around me and went to my room, collapsing on the bed, too tired to worry about clothes, and was asleep within minutes.
     

SEVEN
     
    FIONA
     
    When I woke my room was lit only by the moonlight and haze of crystal-lights from the street below that streamed through the spaces where the blanket I used as a window covering didn’t quite meet the window pane. Groggily, I mumbled a spot illumination spell so I could see the hands on the windup clock on the bedside table. It was a little after eight o’clock, about hour after the last evening bell. The city-wide bells rang several times a day to announce the approach of dawn, dusk, and their full arrival, and mid-day and