CHAPTER 33

Of all the ghosts that populate the afterlife, kitchen ghosts are probably the silliest. At night, they bang on the pots and pans with wooden spoons, so that people listening spend many hours wondering if it is the wind.

Generally, it’s ghosts.

If you don’t feed kitchen ghosts, they will switch your sugar for salt and your flour for sand and all kinds of other things that will make your food taste terrible. Kitchen ghosts view messing with people as a job of sorts. A calling.

Kitchen ghosts rarely get invited to parties because of this switcheroo silliness, but kitchen ghosts also see their afterlife as a sort of party and so they don’t really care.

There were only a handful of people who knew about Miss Qiunzella’s kitchen ghost. Kzyzzy, obviously, had had many encounters with Inez, including one switcheroo that resulted in the invention of her savory pancake special. And there was Rosie, who sometimes liked to take a nettle tea with Inez and reminisce about old times. Bearwoman knew about Inez but found her a nuisance and disagreed with her insistence on vegetarianism.

And, of course, there was BunBun, who was in charge of making sure Inez got her offerings of delicious goodies. BunBun was probably Inez’s current favorite semi-scout, because BunBun took Inez’s eating habits quite seriously. Because BunBun took everything quite seriously.

It was for BunBun that Inez agreed to talk to April, Ripley, Mal, and Molly, and for jam. Because Inez was a HUGE fan of jam.

And April and Ripley made great jam.

“We used castor sugar,” April explained.

“And lavender,” Ripley added. “And a splash of lemon.”

Unlike the ghosts of Daedalus, Inez looked like an old woman, maybe eighty (but she’d been eighty for a long long time). She wore an apron and a puffy-sleeved dress. She did not look like she had any teeth. Her hair was long and twisted into a bun the size of a family loaf. Also, no shoes or socks. Inez actually didn’t really like socks. Never had.

Mal tried to decide what Inez reminded her of. She looked a bit like a ghost and also a little bit like a muffin. A ghost muffin.

“Did you know Daedalus?” April asked.

“Aie! Those wee scampers,” Inez tutted, “messin’ with tha witches’ tings. No goood!”

“After they took the Seal,” Molly asked, “what happened?”

“Whell, tha di-rector whas FURDIOUS! And they had to give tha Seal bak, didn’ they?” Inez smacked her lips covered in jam. Which was kind of odd. Like watching globs of jam float in midair.

“What happened to it?” Ripley asked.

“Aie! They put ee bak!” Inez rocked back in her chair.

“Back in the labyrinth?” Molly asked.

Inez nodded, sticking her finger back in the jam. “Wher else?”

“Where is the labyrinth?” Mal asked.

“HA! Don you wanna know. Iz DEEP BELOW.” Inez narrowed her eyes. “Wher wee scampers whod nay find it agin.”

“Deep below?” April looked at Mal and Molly.

“In the DEEPS, lass.” Inez waggled her significant eyebrows.

“The deeps.” The wheels inside Mal’s head churned.

“Where no one could get to it,” Molly whispered.

“Aye.” Inez grinned. “Was quite a sight. A whol’ production. Rain for DAYS. And then, the perfect hiding place. Right under yar noses. An now, ah’ll be off.”

And with that, Inez dunked her ghost finger in the jam, popped it in her mouth, and in a puff of what looked like smoke but was not, disappeared.

“Did that help?” BunBun asked, sticking a piece of toast in what was left of Levy.

Ripley looked at April. “Maybe?”

“I have an idea,” Molly said.

“So do I.” Mal grabbed Molly’s hand.

“What’s deep?” Molly asked Mal as they headed out of the mess hall. “What’s deep and can be MADE?”

“To the library, I’m assuming,” April said.

“To the library,” Mal and Molly said together.