If I was the kind of guy who watched nature documentaries, I probably could have determined what kind of web it was, and thus what kind of enormous spider we were dealing with. Instead, my brain had shorted out and all I could think was I had to act like the rodeo clown with this thing while King got the easy job of bringing down a massive chandelier. I mean, if an Andrew Lloyd Webber hero could do it, surely it couldn’t bethathard.
King was right, the spider was attempting to eat his partner, but luckily was impeded by the magic that King had left behind. The spider circled Smith, walking along its webbing. Smith was still hovering in the middle of the room, where King had lowered him from the ceiling. The hovering body confused the spider, who kept shooting webbing at Smith to reattach him to the ceiling, where, I assumed, the spider was going to take its meal.
“So I get it down, and you kill it,” I said. “If this works, how do you feel about becoming my live-in spider killer?”
“Well, I’ve heard worse propositions,” King said. “At least you’re being honest about your needs.”
I let my eyes trail down his suit, where the fabric clung to his ass. “If I’m being honest, there might be other requirements for the job.”
King shot me an amused look. “We need to clear this webbing.”
Agreeing, I reached in my bag and took out a handful of flour. Closing my eyes, I began murmuring the spell.
My mind raced; I’d never done a spell like this before. I could practically hear my foster mom’s voice in my head reminding me that it was jazz. If I thought it sounded good, it was probably fine. The basics of kitchen witchcraft were baked into my bones. I could do this.
The ache of missing her distracted me for a half moment, but then I was back to the spell.
Unlike fae magic, witchcraft has different ways to achieve the same goal. The seeming randomness, the fact that there wasn’t one way to do anything meant I often found myself stymied in any attempt to do even the most basic magic.
If my sister Laurel had been at the house, she could have made quick work of the spider on her own. Her murdered rats still haunted me. As I didn’t have her brutal improvisation skills, I was going to need every bit of help that King could give me.
With my eyes closed, I focused on weighing down the flour, emphasizing how heavy it was. When my arm ached, I tossed it at the webbing. Everywhere the flour hit, the webbing came down, slamming into the floor with a loud slapping sound. I hadn’t thrown enough to take down the entire thing, but half of its web disappearing definitely got the spider’s attention.
Darting into the empty space, I pulled out my chalk. I wasn’t sure what spell I’d draw yet, but I knew I had to be ready.
King, meanwhile, had activated a circle, and tossed it onto the remaining webbing where it caught on the sticky substance — a fly the spider did not want to catch. The webbing burnt up, like hair touching a birthday candle. The spider swung its gaze to him, and I got a glimpse of those infinitely black eyes again.
A shiver twisted up my spine, like I was a screw someone had over-tightened. King darted to the side, and I reached out with a finger, plucking one of the remaining threads. Taking out my lighter, I raised it to the webbing, a threat that even the spider understood.
The spider veered back to me, its massive body swinging as it began crawling towards me.
Okay, spider, we were going to play. I was wearing my big boy panties and everything. Maybe it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen, but I could handle it. After all, if I ever told anyone whatI really was, I’d be featuring in their nightmares, so I was pretty sure I could take on a living nightmare of my own.
As it approached, my automatic spider scream rose in my throat, but I kept my lips closed, releasing only a softly muffled screech.
King glanced at me, but I shot him a thumbs up. I was okay. At least I could pretend to be okay until the spider was reduced to goo on the floor.
I started simply, chanting some nonsense words while I used my actual magic to summon wind. The wind curled under the spider’s two back legs, unseating it as it descended the wall. The massive thing was stable. With all eight of its legs, it would be almost impossible to unseat. However, messing with its limbs had the desired effect of distracting the spider.
“How long do you need?” I called King.
“Give me at least fifteen minutes,” he answered.
I swallowed the bile surging in my throat. The spider adjusted its approach, shifting its weight so the wind jostled it, but none of its feet came up.
How was I going to distract something that big without making myself a Parker Ferro appetizer? I could see its mouth, what looked like sharp fangs and hairy mandibles moving in a way that made my brain collapse for a second into white, hot terror. Grabbing a handful of the flour again, I cast a new spell, emphasizing the powdery nature, how blinding it would be if I hit the spider’s eight eyes with flour.
Then, I whispered to the wind for help and threw the flour straight into the spider’s face.
The thing about kitchen witchcraft is that a single substance can cause multiple different outcomes. When I chanted the weight spell, the flour had the heft of a pair of dumbbells. With the powdery focus, it was like shooting mace at the spider, right into the thing’s eyes.
The only difference was what I wanted the material to do and the spell that I chanted.
Flour is multipurpose. All-purpose flour, Laurel would joke. I could think of a couple of other uses for it, spells that would highlight distinct qualities, and I held them in my reserve in case I needed them.
The spider reared back from my homemade pepper spray, shrieking and using its front legs to claw at its face. I danced away, habit making me brush my magic against the spirits in the room around me.
No, I reminded myself, I couldn’t use my own magic. That would be too obvious, something for King to note and take back with him to his new job in Paranormal Crimes.
