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I would need all the help I could get.
Once he found the right drawer, he handed me a small yellow wax brick. I found a box of paper squares like the ones used in bakeries to grab donuts and pastries, and wrapped the square carefully so it wouldn’t melt in my hands.
In the fauna tunnel, live animals squawked and grumbled, all hidden from view. I’d never had a reason to use a live animal sacrifice—that was blood magic and I wasn’t that kind of witch—so I had no idea what kind of animals were here. Their voices were strange and vaguely alien, though.
Ez stopped in front of a glass case and riffled through various small drawers. He whispered under his breath as he sorted through objects unseen, then with a quiet aha he withdrew a rock about the size of my closed fist and held it in front of the light of his torch so I could see it.
Flame danced behind the golden brown crystal, giving the impression of fire trapped inside the stone. It also gave me a clear view of the tiny body frozen within. A little frog, his legs poised as if crouched to leap, was hovering inside the amber, with a few bubbles near his head, having captured the exact moment of its last breath.
I took the amber and looked closer, seeing the perfectly preserved creature stuck in the last dream it would ever have, a dream it was living in forever.
Amber with the soul of a dreamer in it.
“Perfect.”
Ez nodded and handed me a small basket. “You’ll need this.”
I deposited the lump of wax and pods into the basket alongside the amber. Ez pulled out a big box from underneath a workbench, and when he opened it, a millipede the size of my arm crawled out and fell to the floor, skittering across my foot as it ran for an exit.
A full-body shudder rocked me as the hundreds of feet scraped against my shoes.
“Sneaky fuckers,” Ez said, barely registering the monster that fled the scene.
This made me wonder what else lurked within the depths of the basement, and reminded me all the more that I didn’t want to know.
He withdrew a large glass mason jar, the kind you might store canned peaches in, and rattled it. I grabbed a small paper bag out of the stack on the counter and handed it to him. Ez counted to three as he poured something dry and hard into the bag, then handed it to me. When I peeked inside, a dozen small, milky orbs like pale brown raisins stared back at me. I gagged.
Owl eyes.
Well, I had asked for them.
Next he led me around a corner to a narrow corridor with shelves lined three deep with more glass jars, these all filled with dark liquid and floating solid objects. Some had full-sized animals inside, suspended not unlike the frog in amber. Ez walked sideways down the corridor, the space too narrow for his body to fit comfortably. He scanned the shelves, then found what he was looking for on the bottom one behind two smaller jars.
He handed me the torch so he had both hands free to pick up the jar, letting out a little grunt as he did. The container in his hands was enormous, at least six quarts, and when he approached the light, I could see the brain floating inside. It was huge, twice as big as a human brain.
“Jesus,” I muttered. Carrying that thing on the motorcycle was going to be one hell of a juggling act.
I decided then and there I never wanted to do this spell again.
“I’ve got this one.” He kept the jar tucked under his arm and pointed towards a tunnel directly opposite us. “That’s the one we want, just be careful where you step. One of the paths gave way last month, and there’s a hole in the floor. Not sure how deep it goes, and not really interested in finding out.”
Holding the torch ahead of me, I inched my way along the path until we came to the place he’d warned me about. A narrow, makeshift footbridge had been installed in the form of a long two-by-four.
I got across bit by bit, making the mistake halfway over of looking down. A black abyss yawned beneath me, like a hungry mouth waiting to swallow me whole.
My palm was sweating profusely, and the torch slipped down in my grip. I struggled to keep hold on it and tottered uneasily on the bridge.
“Breathe, Genie. Just look straight ahead and take another step.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and took another two steps, then three, the board bobbing under my feet. When I touched hard stone again, I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief.
In spite of Ez being much larger than me, he moved across the gap with easy grace, joining me on the opposite side within a few seconds.
At the end of the tunnel was a door identical to the one upstairs, only this one had no locks. I set the torch into a sconce on the wall and turned the handle, the metal slick and almost too hot to touch. When the door popped open, I didn’t wait for his instruction; I ducked through, clinging to my basket.
Leaving the basement was a lot easier than going down. The same sensation of air rushing past was there, but no suffocation and no screaming. It was the sensation of jumping from a ledge, but flying up, not falling.
My ears popped again when I stumbled through the door on the opposite end. I sucked in deep lungfuls of air. Even the stuffy warmth of the shop seemed cool and refreshing compared to the basement.
