“You mean Derek? I hate to tell you this, Maria, but I fear Derek has already become one of his aunt’s followers.”
Maria couldn’t help laughing. “A follower? Derek? If there’s one thing about Derek I can absolutely guarantee, it’s that he does his own thing.”
“This isn’t a joke,” Arturo bellowed. “I don’t mean followers in the grammar-school playground sense of the word. More powerful men than Derek have been drawn into the Black Widow’s web. And with six rings now in her possession, the Black Widow will surely have powers even beyond my imagining.”
“Well,” Maria said, her voice staying strong even as her eyes misted over, “that’s all the more reason why he needs my help.”
“Don’t be foolish, Maria. I won’t let you throw your life away like your grandmother did.”
“Grandma Esme didn’t throw her life away!” Maria roared. “She made a wonderful life here, and she fought to protect it. You ran away, but she stayed with what was important to her. She warned me that I’d face the same decision. To do what is easy and run away, or do what is right and stay. You can make your choice however you want to, but my mind is made up.”
“I won’t allow it. I’m sorry, Maria, but this is for your own good.”
Arturo moved like smoke, twisting his body in a fluid arc that shouldn’t have been possible at his age. In a blink, he had taken off his suit coat and thrown it at her, as if it was a net he could catch her in. Maria darted away without thinking, fleeing the cave with Arturo’s footsteps thundering behind her.
Her spiders were screaming, Hurry, hurry, but it was nearly impossible for her to run — the mirror spiders were everywhere, their round silver bodies glittering in the dull light of the cave.
Maria darted and dodged, narrowly avoiding them with every step. She knew it too well — a spider never forgets. She could hear Arturo locked in the same struggle behind her, cursing the brown recluse spiders that had come to her defense.
Maria could see the mirror spiders scrambling to build a web in the mouth of the cave. Even if she pushed through, there was no way she could avoid them on the slippery staircase.
Yelling a warning to the spiders to get out of the way, Maria threw her arms in an arc and leaped.
In less than a second, the icy-dark water came up to meet her.
Maria surfaced for air as fast as she could. The pool of deep water at the bottom of the fall was no bigger than her mom’s jeep. Five feet to the right and Maria would have landed headfirst on the sharp rocks at the bottom.
Maria kicked her legs until she reached the edge of the sinkhole. She’d always hated swimming, and swimming in a dress was even worse. The wet silk of the skirt clung to her legs as she climbed out of the water and pulled herself up the slippery rocks to even ground. As soon as she was on her feet, she ran. She didn’t look back. The image in her mind of a swooping black coat and a sea of pale light was enough to keep her running.
She reached the boardwalk, and then the short grass, and then the line of her backyard. She was almost home free. But one look through the sliding glass door and Maria could tell something was wrong.
The lights were all on, and the chairs around the kitchen table were overturned. The refrigerator door stood open. Maria crept up to her house as quickly as she dared. She didn’t hear anything from inside the house, which supported her suspicion that whoever had done this was already gone.
Not that she had any doubt who had done this.
Maria slid the glass door open. She stepped over the oranges, trash, forks, and knives that had been scattered across the floor, trying not to imagine the struggle that must have taken place while she was in the cave.
“Mom? Rafi?” she called. She wasn’t surprised when they didn’t answer.
She had sworn she wouldn’t get trapped in Arturo’s story, but that’s exactly what had happened. It didn’t matter that he probably thought he was on her side — he and the Black Widow, and now Maria, too, were all part of the same vicious web. A poisonous circle that ensnared innocent people, just like the one around her finger.
Maria dripped water all the way back to her room, only now thinking to take off her shoes. Surely her mother would forgive her the muddy footprints, under the circumstances. For now, Maria needed to change clothes, and she needed to save her family. If she thought too hard about all the steps that came in between those two things, she might faint. Unfortunately, not overthinking things had always been Derek’s strong suit, not hers.
When Maria flicked on her light switch, she had to stifle a scream. The spiderweb that had begun blooming on her bedroom ceiling days ago now stretched all the way across the room. In the center of the web was a small white rectangle.
On closer inspection, Maria recognized it as a business card for Vic’s Antiques. Derek had once used a stack of these cards to do a magic trick. He’d had Maria write her name on one of them, then he’d put the whole stack behind his back and acted like he was trying to feel for which one had pen markings on it. Finally, he’d brought his hands back around to reveal that the card with the writing was the only one left in his hands at all. The rest of the stack had simply disappeared.
The business card in the center of the spiderweb didn’t have any writing on it, but the message was clear enough. The Black Widow had sprung her trap. Rafi and Mom were the bait.
Maria drew back her arm and slung her shoes at the web. The sound of the wet smack as the shoes hit the wall gave her courage.
She felt the ring on her hand grow warm. She heard the spiders before she saw them, and for one paralyzing second, she thought that Arturo had found her — that she’d never get the chance to rescue her family.
But of course she could hear only her own spiders, and her fear turned into a sense of overwhelming relief as a brown recluse swarm surrounded her feet. Her reinforcements had arrived.
The spiders did not stop by her side, however.
Maria’s ring grew from warm to hot, until it was almost painful, as the brown recluse spiders scurried up the wall to the web. The voices in her head were so fast and frenzied, it was impossible to untangle them. What Maria saw clearly was a color: red.
Maria followed her spiders as they climbed, until finally she saw what she had missed before — a black widow spider near the top of the web. It dangled from a thread over the hole Maria’s shoe had just created. It seemed to be injured, or stuck, or afraid.
The brown recluse clutter flew at the lone black widow. In a second, they would be upon it, blind with rage.
“Wait, stop!” Maria shouted. “That’s not what I wanted!”
Her spiders stopped. They turned to face her, confused.
“If you kill that spider, we will only pay the price later. Now, I’m sorry, but at the moment, what I really need is to go save my family, and I need your help. Will you come with me? Please?”
Her spiders hesitated. It seemed to Maria that they didn’t care about the price — they wanted to eliminate their enemy. Maria hoped she wasn’t abusing their friendship by telling them no. But then, a real friend sometimes was the one who told you what you didn’t want to hear but needed to.
Finally, her spiders backed down, and the red in the back of Maria’s mind became a much quieter blue. The black widow pulled itself up to the top part of the web, and it, too, looked at Maria, as if it was considering what to do with her.
“You can go now,” Maria said, none too warmly. “But if I find you doing anything to my mom or brother, I’m not going to stop them next time.”