Storm in a Teacup Read Online Free Page B

"— twenty four hours? That's over a hundred dollars an hour!"
    "I'm old, Ms. Ayala, and I ain't got kids or grandkids to support. What else am I going to do with my money before I die? My arthritis won't let me travel anymore, and the blasted witch who made my cataract potion got addicted to the skittles. Soon I'll be blind and twisted into bony lumps, and then I'll be dead. Lena was a good girl, and I was happy to do it."
    Skittles. The drug's taking over more and more of Nashville's best witches. I'm no witch, but apparently one of its effects is to make magic visible in colors. Or maybe it just makes spells orgasmic. Either way, it's about as easy to quit as heroin and meth combined, and there's no such thing as a functional skittles addict. They just sit there and do stupid glamour spells all day and watch their hands move in front of their faces.
    Twenty-five hundred dollars a month is a good income for a starving musician. Thinking of the bones protruding from The Righteous Dark's band members puts that clichéd phrase in a sickly light. "Did Lena have roommates?"
    "She sure did. Three. They lived in East Nashville, just outside of the Samhain Quarter. She worked at the Waffle Spot there a few nights a week." Hazel reaches into a basket to her right and dredges out a mass of colored yarn that looks like the seventies barfed in her hand. Olive green, magenta, burnt amber, and puke yellow threads form the base of what looks like a doily. Looking at it makes me dizzy, so I force my eyes back to Hazel's face.
    "That's one of the cheapest areas of town. Do you know why she needed so much money? Was she on any drugs?"
    "If she was, she didn't tell her employers." Hazel chuckles as if she's made a good joke, and her knitting needles click together in a flurry of swirling color.
    Even if Lena worked only three night shifts at the diner weekly, that would bring her monthly income up to almost four thousand dollars. That's almost as much as I make at my cushy salaried job. I live alone downtown in a building with security. What single musician needed that much income just to survive with three roommates in the cheapest part of town? Even if she paid all their rent, she'd have almost three thousand dollars left over. Debt? Loan sharks? Gambling addiction? Inability to say no to panhandlers?
    Drugs would make the most sense. "You never noticed her looking like she was strung out or tweaking?"
    "Never. Like I said, Lena was a good girl. I don't reckon she ever showed up even hung over."
    "You have no ideas where she could have gone?"
    Hazel's lips wrinkle like a dried apricot. "I've already told you no."
    I still don't believe her. Especially after she referred to Lena in the past tense. Just like the sound witch at the Hole.
    I don't like being lied to.

CHAPTER FIVE

    Non-Mediators like to ask me why I do my patrols in Forest Hills, the most well-to-do, hoity-toity area of Nashville. South of downtown and nestled around the sprawling Percy Warner Park, the demons love it. That's why. Don't tell the rich people who spend two million a villa there. Their real estate agents would loathe you forever.
    Or fine, whistle blow all you want. But don't expect to ever buy a house again.
    I keep the demon population down enough that the wealthy inhabitants don't notice. Though once I saw an article in the newspaper about a prized bloodhound dying after lapping up a puddle of anti-freeze in the woods. The dog's owner blamed the neighbor. I blame myself — I'd killed a slummoth there two nights earlier, and their blood is the same radioactive green as antifreeze. I feel worse about the dog than the owner, who had five others.  
    People picnic around here, and each little cleft of hills in the park is home to tables and the occasional ruin of a cottage.  
    A pink glow from one such ruin draws my attention as I creep around the bend of a ridge. There are as many different types of hellkin as there are boils on a witch's enemy, but I can