We watch. We whisper. We wait. We’re not doing this tonight. That’s been said and repeated between us—out loud, in the car, like a spell—because going in blind is how people die or disappear. Tonight is reconnaissance: find the seams, walk the edges, figure out the choreography. Tonight, we learn where he sleeps, where he eats, and where he thinks he’s untouchable.
I feel something brush my hair, a soft, small disturbance.
For half a second, I think: leaf. Just a leaf.
But then it fuckingmoves.
A deliberate, diabolical, disgusting eight-legged crawl through my hair.
And just one second later, I see it out of the corner of my eye. A hairy leg, thick and twitching, right next to my temple.
Tarantula. The kind of nightmare that haunts people into therapy.
A sound I’ve never heard before rips out of me—like a squeaky balloon meeting a dying crow. The scream rips out of me before my heart even has the chance to spike.
It’s loud.
Too loud.
Willow slaps her hand over my mouth with enough force, I’m shocked she doesn’t knock my teeth out. “Lucky!” she whisper hisses. “Shut up!”
And then she proves she hates me. Truly hates me and wishes me dead. She slaps her other hand across my face as the sliding door swishes open and Phoenix steps onto the patio, scanning the darkness. She traps the tarantula against my fuckingface.
The spider is trapped between her palm and my cheek, and I feel every single leg tap-dancing against my skin.
This. This is hell. Actual hell.
My brain is having a seizure.Don’t move. Don’t scream. Don’t die. Get this fucking thing off my face and smash it into oblivion!
Phoenix is still looking. He’s peering into the darkness, but he didn’t bring a flashlight. He only has the solar glow lights surrounding the pool to go off of, and they don’t reach us by a long shot.
I’m sweating like I just ran a marathon through a sauna full of bees. The spider twitches again. I’m going to ascend. This ismy ending. Saint Shade, patron saint of losing his shit silently so he doesn’t get his girlfriend killed.
8,436 years later, Phoenix finally, finally goes back inside. The door closes.
Willow waits a beat that lasts yet another 256 years, then flicks her hand. The tarantula sails into the bushes.
I collapse backward, gasping for my damn life. “Willow, you…” For the first time ever, I glare death at the woman I love. “A tarantula. A fucking tarantula. My face!” I whisper scream like a terrified little girl. “I saw my ancestors!”
Willow grins in the most unhinged way I’ve ever seen on her beautiful lips. “You’re fine. Tarantulas aren’t usually venomous to humans.”
“I had legs on myface, Willow!” I gape in horror.
“And you only screamed once,” she whispers as she grabs my chin and gives it a little shake. “You were so brave.”
I’m probably two seconds away from tears or throwing up, but we both sit up straight when suddenly the sound of a door opening inside the garage sounds through the dark. And just a moment later, the garage door groans as it rises. We freeze, pressed into green and gravel. The garage light spills a rectangle of brightness across the drive. A figure steps out and pauses, phone to his ear.
Phoenix’s voice is smooth, a velvet I want to introduce my knuckles to. “Yes, that’s too much for you to handle on your own tonight, Bella. Yes, I have something in mind that can help. I can do a private session,” he says, low and persuasive. “Just you. No one else. You’ll have every second of my attention. Meet me at the Institute in twenty minutes?”
Bella must agree, because he gives a satisfied sound and continues to listen.
Willow’s fist tightens in my sleeve, and instantly, the tarantula is forgotten. She doesn’t need to whisper thetranslation. We both know what “private session” means when Phoenix says it.
He laughs softly into the phone in a way that makes my skin crawl. “You’ll feel much better when I’m finished. I promise.” The word is a lie that tastes like aftershave. “See you soon.”
Just moments later, the Porsche backs out, tires whispering across stone, lights strobe, and the car slips away down the drive. From inside the car, he presses the button, and the garage door slides back closed with a soft finality. The night reclaims that rectangle of brightness, and we are swallowed back into shadow.
“Fuck,” Willow hisses as she rises and strides straight back toward the car. She’s careful to avoid stepping into the camera’s view, but only barely. “He’s going back to the clinic, in the middle of the fucking night,” she says, her voice a snarl. I scramble to keep up with her, brushing a hand through my hair and over my shoulders to make sure I don’t have any unexpected passengers.
