Free Kate Daniels 02 - Magic Burns by authors_sort Page A

Jeremiah’s gut. He tried to pitch forward, but I swept behind him and caught his throat against Slayer’s blade.
    Everything stopped.
    The dog let out a long surprised whine and went down with the jangle of carelessly tossed coins. Bryce squirmed on the ground, clawing the dirt, trying to breathe. Mory stared at me, his mouth open. Jeremiah gulped, Slayer’s blade sliding a little on his Adam’a apple. On the trailer’s porch Julie stood petrified, face slack like a melted rubber mask.
    â€œWhat the fuck?” Mory said, bewildered. “What the fuck happened?”
    â€œWhat happened is the three of you made me kill a dog for no reason.”
    A drop of sweat slid from Jeremiah’s dark hair and rolled down his unshaven neck. A two-millimeter change in the angle, and the enchanted saber would bridge the distance between him and his wings. I was pissed as hell and keeping my hand steady proved an effort.
    â€œI paid my fee, and you, greedy assholes, decided to shake me down a second time. And threaten my kid, while you were at it. What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you at all human or did this place leech all decency out of you?” My voice was low and growling. I knew I was wasting my breath talking.
    Bryce finally sucked in a breath and moaned.
    â€œYou killed my dog,” Jeremiah said, his voice high with disbelief. “You killed my baby. Jesus Christ. You killed my dog.”
    They were done. I took my blade from his throat. Jeremiah sank in the dirt. His face stretched. He put his hand over his eyes. I walked past him to the dead dog. It lay in a glistening metal heap, great paws unmoving, ruined eye bleeding crimson. What a waste.
    Bryce got to his knees and stood up shakily.
    I pulled a piece of gauze from my pocket and wiped Slayer’s blade. “I’m going to break into this trailer so I can find this little girl’s mother and Esmeralda, or whatever her real name is. While I’m doing that, why don’t you go and get some help. However many you think it will take to get the job done, and then you can have a do-over. I’ll be right here. But this time, I’ll cut to kill human, not dog. And I’ll enjoy it. In fact, you would be doing me a favor.”
    He took a step back.
    I glanced at Julie. “Come.”
    She scurried in front of me to the door. I walked up the metal stair and hammered a kick to the lock. The frame splintered with a sharp crack and the door flew open.
    Julie ducked inside and I followed her into the gloomy house of the head witch.

CHAPTER 7
    THE PLACE STANK OF ROTTING CITRUS AND OLD socks. Julie clamped her nose. “What stinks?”
    â€œValerian extract.” I pointed to the dark stain on the wall. Glass shards studded the floor below—looked like Esmeralda hurled the vial against the wall. “Our head witch had trouble sleeping.”
    Narrow to the point of inducing claustrophobia, the trailer lay steeped in gloom. Blood-red tattered drapes hid the windows. Julie picked up a flyswatter off the narrow counter separating the tiny kitchen from the rest of the space and used it to push the curtains open. Smart kid. Who knows what the hell was on those curtains.
    In the light of the afternoon, the trailer looked even sadder. A beat-up fridge took up most of the cooking area. I opened the fridge. Years ago I had bought a perpetually cold egglike object, which the seller had called an ice sprite egg. I 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,