The black widow fled, and the brown recluse spiders waited at attention.
“I’ll meet you by the front door,” Maria said, and as they left her alone, she took a deep breath. She was happy to have them with her, she thought. Now that she’d seen what they were capable of, she knew it was better than having them against her.
Maria changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It was after three in the morning, and she had reached that point in being tired where she was actually dizzy, as if she might fall asleep standing up. But no good could come of waiting. And the exhaustion was making her braver than she would be in the daylight.
She threw on a hoodie — one with a sewn-on sword patch that always reminded her of Agatha at Sea — and in this armor, headed out into the night.
The historic district was deserted. Maria had been here at night plenty of times before, with Derek’s family or for town festivals, but usually there were cars parked on the street, and other people around. Now the old streetlamps cast pale oranges and yellows on all the empty shops and restaurants, and the wide-open road looked like a set for a movie about the zombie apocalypse.
Maria stepped out of the shadows and hurried across the street before she could think better of it. Even the spiders trailing at her feet were nervous. Their energy crackled like a radio in her brain.
She reached the door to the shop at a jog, but the creepy doll in the display window stopped her cold. Its wooden horse mount was rocking back and forth as if it had only just been pushed. Maria could swear the doll was looking back at her.
Over the doll’s shoulder, a picture caught Maria’s eye. It was one of many old photographs on a corkboard in the display window. All of them had something to do with the history of the shop, and Maria had never paid them much attention before. But one of the photos was a family portrait from when Derek’s great-grandpa Vic was a little boy. And now Maria noticed a girl next to Vic — a girl who looked so much like Aunt Luellen that they could be twins.
But they weren’t twins, were they? This must be Luellen herself, already a teenager almost a hundred years ago. Maria had guessed that the rings had something to do with Arturo’s and Grandma Esme’s remarkable youth. But if this picture proved what Maria thought it did, the combined power of the rings had kept Luellen from aging hardly at all in a century. Perhaps with all eight rings, she’d become immortal.
Maria tried the door. As she expected, it wasn’t locked. She pushed it open quickly. The sudden, frantic warnings of her spiders came a moment too late.
She ran headlong into a heavy black coat, which enveloped her even faster than she could scream.
Maria was thrown back outside, and she heard the door slam closed behind her. When the coat was yanked off, she was face-to-face with Arturo, who in this strange light looked like an alien, and not the friendly kind, either.
“What in the world is wrong with you?” he said, clenching his coat in his fist. “Did you really think you could just barge your way in there and take down the Black Widow by yourself?”
“I’m not by myself,” Maria said defiantly. Her spiders twittered.
Arturo ran his hands through his hair and breathed an exasperated sigh.
“You’re every bit as stubborn as your grandmother. I hope you know that. But even she would have approached this problem with a bit more forethought. You can’t help your family at all by rushing in and getting yourself killed.”
“Oh, so you’re trying to help me now?”
“In my own way, yes.”
He gave off the faintest hint of a smile, not devious or deceitful but perhaps a bit playful, as if to acknowledge just how peculiar his way was. In that smile, Maria could see the young man Grandma Esme had known.
He loved her, Maria thought. He really did.
“All right, then,” she said. “So what now? I didn’t see anyone else in the shop, and this was my only lead.”
“Oh, someone’s in the shop, all right. The light was on in the basement. My mirrors should be here any” — he cracked open the shop door, and a trio of shiny mirror spiders slinked out — “moment.”
The spiders crawled up Arturo’s leg, all the way to his shoulder. He squinted his eyes as if listening to a faraway sound.
“They say the boy is down there. Derek, it sounds like. But your mother and brother, too. The two of them are … asleep. My mirrors caught no sign of Luellen herself. I expect she is still out looking for you.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Derek won’t be a problem. He won’t. I know it.”
“Maria, I don’t think you understand how dangerous a person without a mind of his own can be.”
“Sure I do,” Maria said. “This girl in my school, Claire, has turned practically the whole seventh grade into followers.”
“If you don’t take this seriously, you’re going to get us both killed.”
“I’m sorry, but look: You might know more about spiders, but I know more about Derek. If you just let me talk to him, I —”
“No. I have a better plan.”
Every moment they spent talking in the street was a moment they weren’t rescuing Rafi and Mom.
“Fine. What’s your plan?”
“Well, part one is that we hide your ring.”
“What?”
“Your ring. If you take it right to her, you have nothing left to bargain with, and she’ll kill you immediately. If you hide it, you have the power to negotiate.”
Maria winced. She hadn’t thought about that. But there was one small problem.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you all the way. The Black Widow kidnapped my family, but you tried to kidnap me, too, you know. Esme gave me the ring, so the ring stays with me.”
Arturo narrowed his eyes at her, visibly unhappy.
“Fine,” he seethed. “Then on to part two.”
And with that, he turned and swept back into the shop, not even bothering to make sure Maria was following him. Fine by her. She was getting the hang of this Order thing. You just had to accept that everyone was trying to trick you at all times, and the only safe bet was to trick them back.
“Are you ready?” Maria whispered to her spiders. She could almost feel their anxious twitching in response. “Me neither,” she said.
Arturo was waiting for her at the checkout counter inside. The light from the basement filtered up and speckled the main room with just enough slivers to see by. The same old trinkets that had looked so harmless and familiar earlier now looked like the possessions of ghosts.
“They say Derek is guarding your family on the far side of the room,” Arturo whispered, the trio of spiders still perched on his shoulder. “I’ll go down first and keep him occupied while you sneak around and free them. And whatever you see down in the basement, you mustn’t stop moving. Do you think you can do that?”
“How are you going to distract him?”
“Do you think you can do that?” Arturo repeated.
Maria nodded. She dreaded to think what the mirror spiders had seen that Arturo was so afraid to tell her now.
“Then do it, and don’t worry about how I’m going to distract him. Just count to ten, then follow me down the stairs.”
With that, Arturo disappeared through the door.
One, two, three, Maria counted, listening for movement from the basement but hearing nothing.
“Stay close to me,” she whispered to her spiders.
Four, five, six. Still nothing. Maria went to the door.