Chapter Twelve
Chloe had once visited a bathhouse in the city, a sort of spa filled with great quantities of scalding-hot water separated into a multitude of pools where steam rose and men and women walked around virtually naked.
The pools had been built to relax people. To loosen the muscles and de-stress the cluttered mind. There were spas and saunas, people rubbing oil on other people. A large number of skin cells and germs shed as people leaving the bathhouse felt lighter than air and cleaner than soap.
What that meant, however, was that there was a hell of a lot of skank left behind. Stray pubic hairs, filthy skin cells, dirt from under nails, and all of it was washed into the drainage system of the bathhouse and left to run into the city’s sewers, forgotten and discarded.
Until o
