Five
Iput my hand on the doorknob to the kitchen and took a long breath.
After a few moments, King murmured, “Getting cold feet?”
“When you’re about to open the door to a nightmare, you’re welcome to do it as fast as you want,” I snarked.
I twisted the handle and pulled the door open as quietly as I could.
The hallway was almost unrecognizable. Before it had that clean, modern look that spoke of extreme wealth. Why keep things when you could always replace them if you needed to use them again?
Now, there were thick webs crisscrossing the hallway, leading somewhere. I reached out to touch one, trying to get a sense of what we were working with, but King grabbed my hand, his grip tight. He shook his head when I glanced at him.
“Spiders use their webbing to sense their prey.” He gestured to the trap laid out in front of us.
“So now we’re stuck in the kitchen?” I asked. “Great.”
King was examining the gossamer threads. When I’d first seen them, they’d looked white, but as I shifted my angle, theydisappeared. It reminded me of some glamours I had seen in the Far Realm.
After a long moment, King pointed. “I think I see a way through.”
“Does it involve both of us getting stuck together in spiderweb?” I made a show of looking him up and down, letting him know I wouldn’t have minded getting stuck with him.
Ignoring my innuendo, King crept out into the hallway, avoiding the webbing with a twist of his back like one of those cat burglars in a heist movie. How was he so flexible? I pulled my back if I reached for a jar of pickles on the lowest shelf of my refrigerator.
The air in the hallway made goosebumps rise on my arms after the warmth of the kitchen. I kept close to King, because he seemed to know what he was doing and I was at a bit of a loss.
If I was dealing with werewolves, I was in my comfort zone. Witches, yes. Even poltergeists were something I could handle.
Spiders? No. Why did McCallum even have a giant spider?
I asked that aloud, and King shot me a look. “It’s certainly cheaper than a guard dog. And he can leave it here as long as he needs.”
“Because it can go back to eating flies, or even an occasional rat,” I said, realization striking me. “And, what, we’re just… extra-large rats?”
I twisted, following King’s movements as we avoided another string of spider silk. They were getting denser as we approached the entryway, and I saw flashes of green in the distance.
“Is that your magic?” I jerked my chin towards the strobe lighting, unwilling to make any move that might jostle the web.
King’s back had gone straight, as though he was about to be inspected by a drill sergeant. Standing next to him was like standing next to a movie star; he was so attractive that evenbeing in his proximity made me feel awkward. After our kiss, my lips still tingled when I looked at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “If the circle is going off like that, the spider is trying to break in and get to Smith.”
I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was definitely late. We were well past midnight and approaching the time of night that always felt endless, the stretch of hours when your body knew you should be asleep, but your brain was very much awake.
I probably looked as half dead as I felt and hated that King looked just as attractive as I remembered.
King wore his suit with confidence, as though he was used to them. The last time I had seen him, he had been in a beat cop’s uniform. He’d looked great in that as well, but I could already tell him in this suit was going to be featuring in some fantasies of mine.
If we survived this whole experience. I wasn’t putting our odds very high, because ninety percent of the time when I saw a spider in my apartment, I screamed as loud as I could until the thing scuttled under some furniture.
Spider– one
Parker – zero
In fact,if we were playing a game, I would have to start with a pretty high handicap. Because up until now, the only spiderI had managed to squash had been out of surprise when I had been attempting to flee.
In the massive entryway, the spider had spun its web.
