I stiffened my shoulders and forced the beam back on Zery’s face-not stitches…lines. A drawing, like Bubbe had said held her down. Someone had drawn stitches on her mouth, closing it with ink and magic. I took a breath. Sick, but not the horror I’d first imagined. Unless Zery…how had the magic felt when her attacker drew those lines? Could it have been that different from the actual act?
A shiver danced up my spine, but I shook it off. Focus, focus, focus. I had to break this spell, not let myself get lost in the hideous act itself.
I redirected the light to her wrists and bare feet. Chains were drawn around her wrists. Stakes of ink pierced her feet.
I knew how to free her.
I looked across at Mother. “Denatured alcohol. If you can’t find it, bring Listerine.” Without a question, Mother took off at a trot toward the shop.
Then I glanced back at Bubbe. “You said a web?”
She nodded. “A spider’s work.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. Hard to escape? I reached out, let my mind go like I had when I’d discovered Bubbe’s serpent. This time it only took seconds. A complicated web of silver magic glowed before me. It covered the space between where Pisto and I stood and in the center of all the spirals, under the web, lay Zery. So, she’d been pinned down first, and the web spun on top of her. Made sense.
Now I could see the trap, but how did I navigate it? How did a fly?
The answer was easy. He didn’t, but a spider could travel across his own web without getting stuck.
But I was no spider…or was I? I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were taking me, but I had to follow them. The dead girls had been left for me. Had Zery too? Was it possible I could walk this web, when Bubbe couldn’t? Was she simply a fly, while the killer saw me as a fellow spider?
I hated the thought, but prayed it was true too.
I closed my eyes, pulled in another breath, and dug my bare toes into the grass until I felt the soil beneath. I needed contact with the earth for this, needed all the strength I could call on. Then I opened my eyes.
The web still shone, as silver and perfect as before, one concentric circle around another with lines intersecting their core over Zery’s heart. But that was it, no secret entry, no key to the path to my friend.
Disappointment, failure. I lowered the flashlight, dropping my gaze as I did. And there, right where the web started to go out of focus, I saw them-tiny bronze spots speckled throughout the web. A path leading from the outside of the web, curving around, then back, jutting out on a straight line, then following the curve again, until stopping next to Zery’s sword, not the Amazon queen herself.
The sword. It wasn’t there because Zery had brought it. It was there so I could kill her.
The realization hit me hard. What kind of sick bastard did this killer think I was?
It didn’t matter. What did matter was that I could see the path. I could save her.
Mother arrived, a plastic bottle of denatured alcohol in her hand. I grabbed it like the desperate alcoholics you hear of, who supposedly drink the stuff for a cheap-if potentially deadly-buzz. Then, with the bottle held against my heart, I sidestepped around the edge of the web, careful not to step on even a sliver of magical silk.
I took my first step, and Pisto jumped in front of me, her staff lifted, ready to jab into my throat. The web quivered, like it was coming to life. Surprise rounded Pisto’s eyes. Her feet slipped beneath her or, more accurately, the web now stuck to her feet moved beneath her. Her knees buckled. She flailed the staff overhead, then jammed it into the ground in an effort to keep from falling, but the web began to grow around her, around her legs, like an invisible spider was wrapping her, his prey, with silk. The whole process took only seconds.
I clutched the alcohol to my chest, determined not to drop it, and stared at the mummified Amazon. She was coated in silver threads, nothing but the top of her blond head visible.
“What-?” I could feel the group behind me move forward, felt Bubbe’s shield click into place too. She was holding them off, but it was harder now. They’d seen one of their own fall.
“Melanippe?” Bubbe, her voice more unsure than I’d ever heard it. “What happened?”
I glanced at my grandmother. Her back was to me, but when I glanced at Mother, saw the confusion in her eyes, I realized having her back turned wasn’t the issue. They were flies. Bubbe might sense the design, but she couldn’t see it, not like I could, not like the spider.
“Is she breathing?” I asked my mother.
She gave a short nod. “Barely.”
Barely was enough. I had no idea how to save Pisto from the web. I hoped if I saved Zery, somehow the rest of the spell would disintegrate. Besides, I had no time to waste. While Pisto lay quietly in her bundle, Zery had come to life-bucking against her bonds, her lips pulling against the stitches. If she made contact with the web, what would happen? I didn’t want to find out.
“Zery, lay still.” It was an order, plain and simple-a tone no one had probably used with the queen since she was fourteen and her destiny had been discovered.
To my surprise, she quieted. Everyone did. A group of twenty-plus Amazon warriors stood completely silent, watching me. Every hair on my body would have been standing at attention if I wasn’t already slipping back into the zone, channeling every nature show I’d ever seen-becoming the spider.
My sight dimmed, almost to the point of blindness, but it didn’t matter, didn’t disturb me in the least. I didn’t need it, knew deep inside I could feel my way along the web. I picked up my foot and held it out in front of me, the silk path vibrated as my weight shifted, but only slightly, not enough to alert my prey-not that it mattered. She was caught…waiting for me. I turned away from the victim already subdued and moved toward the one still waiting in the center of my web. My foot hovered over the thread, but I didn’t set it down. Magic-cold, cloying-tickled my sole. I shifted so my foot would land six inches farther down the path-nothing. I lowered my foot, picked up the other, and continued on my way.
Somewhere along the way, my speed increased. I scurried along the silk, hopping from one safe section of thread to another-never doubting where I was going or that I wouldn’t arrive there safely.
At the center I stalled. My path stopped at the sword, not my prey. I scuttled around the weapon, unsure what to do next. I reached out and realized I already had something grasped in my hands-a bottle.
A bottle. I looked up. Forms surrounded the web, spots of light-one shone on me. I held my arm up to block the glare and liquid poured down my chest-cold. And the smell…medicinal…familiar. I shuddered and turned my head to save my lungs.
With the movement, the spell I’d sunk into snapped. My sight returned, but suddenly I had no idea where to place my feet. I could feel myself swaying as if I were trying to stay on a tightrope.
The bottle fell from my grasp. I watched it fall, end over end, alcohol pouring out of it, splattering me, Zery, and the ground. Seconds before it was going to hit, I dove for the sword, jerked it from the ground just as the thread began to weave around me.
Chapter Thirteen
The thread whipped around my legs, jerking my entire body off the ground with the intensity of its movements, then slamming me back down as it swerved around again. It took a second for my brain to focus, a second I didn’t have. Mother and Bubbe yelled, Bubbe at the Amazons, warning them to stay back, Mother at me, telling me to use the sword.
The sword. It had been put here for a purpose. I thought it was there to kill Zery, but maybe…I hacked with all the precision and patience of Freddy Krueger-barely considering where my own limbs were before slashing down with the blade. My position was awkward, on my back, the thread halfway up my body now. My arms screamed and my back ached, but I lifted the sword over and over, brought it down again and again.