In a strange way, like the ghost, she fit with the decor of the room. The metallic silver and the spider shape was exactly the sort of combination that looked so Art Deco in design that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it echoed in the vase that held the peacock feathers.
“That’s not a normal spider,” Elyna said.
The spider made a leisurely, if intent, trek along the same path the other—the harmless spider—had taken. She appeared to take no notice of us. But I knew that wasn’t true. I had to look at my arms to make sure that there was no silvery spider silk sliding across my skin.
Adam shifted his weight, and I put a hand on his arm to keep him where he was. I didn’t think trying to squish the spider or throwing her out into the storm was going to be a good move. It took maybe twenty long seconds for her to find the crack between flooring and wall where the first spider had sought refuge. It didn’t look as though there was going to be room for her to follow it.
“Does this have anything to do with the Soul Taker?” Adam asked. “The spider-fae?”
My feet itched with the memory of the bits and pieces of the fae spider-thing that had served the Soul Taker and its absent god.
I shook my head. “No.”
The silver spider didn’t feel like something fae. She felt like something that belonged here in a way the fae did not.
When I spoke, the spider turned around to face us, face me.
“What the fuck is that?” asked Jack O’Malley, sounding freaked-out. “What’s she doing to me?”
I had to fight to make myself look away from the spider so I could see the ghost.
The whites of Jack’s eyes were showing as he shook his head, staring down at his arms. His hands were simply gone—and as I watched, the pale forearms, corded with muscle, grew less solid.
Feeding, the spider told me.
Interlude
Gary Laughingdog (Johnson)Gary sat up abruptly, knocking a piece of paper onto the ground. He was in a strange bedroom, on an unfamiliar bed. His head ached and he could hear a murmured conversation from a room on the other side of the closed bedroom door.
It sounded like Honey—and someone vaguely familiar. They were being quiet. He caught the words “sheriff” and “stupid.”
He got slowly to his feet. He understood what he was hearing. He had recognized Honey’s voice. He even identified the other voice. It belonged to the firefighter in Mercy’s pack. Mary Lou. Mary Jane. Something like that.
He was free.
He started for the door, and paper scrunched under his bare foot. He bent to pick it up.
You did pretty good. But I decided to have Mercy finish this up instead of you. She’s at the hot springs now. Communication of any kind is not possible. Don’t try to return to Montana. There’s a BIG STORM just now. You might know something about why that is.
Instead of a signature, someone had drawn a little coyote.
Gary crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at the wall.
8
MercyI wasn’t sure I had actually heard the spider’s voice—a warm, amused feminine voice that quivered a little around the edges, as if the speaker were elderly. I could have just imagined it—though it wasn’t the type of voice I’d expect such a creature to have.
Just now it didn’t matter. Real or imagined, the “feeding” part was accurate. I could see it as soon as I looked.
“Jack?” Elyna sounded worried. “What’s wrong?”
“Mercy?” Adam asked.
“The spider,” I said absently, trying to understand what I was seeing. “It’s not really a spider—not only a spider. I think it’s feeding on Jack.”
Elyna pulled off her shoe, but when she tried to approach the spider, she ran into some sort of a barricade. When she threw the shoe instead, it hit the spider with a crack, like a baseball hitting the side of a barn, then rolled to the side. The spider appeared unharmed.
And amused. I didn’t want to know how I knew that.
I raised a hand. “Hold off. I don’t think you can do anything to her that way. I might—” I lost track of what I was saying.
Jack was a ghost—and a disturbingly strong one at that. He wasn’t a friend, or even an acquaintance. Maybe if the spider consumed him, it wouldn’t be a bad thing compared to the damage a strong ghost could cause.
But my instincts told me it was wrong, and I was in the habit of listening to my instincts.
Afterward…afterward I wondered why I knew what I had to do in order to understand what the spider was doing. And why I thought that I had to understand it before I could stop it. But that was later.
I’d spent the better part of the last two months trying to shut down the way the Soul Taker had ripped open my senses. Yes, I sensed things in a way I never had before. But that raw knowledge, that seeing into people without them or me having any say over what I saw—that intrusive, overwhelming ability had disappeared when Zee destroyed the Soul Taker.
Mostly. The quick glimpses into people—like the way I’d seen forests in Uncle Mike’s gaze—were nothing compared to the overwhelming comprehension the Soul Taker had given me before it was destroyed.
At that moment, I knew, knew that the only way to save Jack was to see the world as the Soul Taker had forced me to see it.
Opening that extraordinary, abominable sight felt like peeling bandages off and opening wounds that were raw and oozing. Festering. I exposed the changed part of my mind that the Soul Taker had made and forced it back into the light.
I was very careful not to look at Elyna, and I tried to only observe the stuff Jack was made of—energy and magic and soul. I told myself I didn’t notice the events of his life and what kind of person he had been when he was alive.
I tried not to see the bonds of spirit and soul that entwined him with the vampire. When I failed at that, I tried not to get lost in the sudden understanding of how her vampiric nature allowed him to hover so near to being alive, not a vampire but held by the necromancy that kept vampires walking when they should be corpses.
There was no time for that, and it was knowledge I should not have.
Dangerous knowledge, agreed the spider, sounding intrigued.
What I was doing was reckless, dangerous. My mind wasn’t built to hold this much, to understand this much. If it lasted too long, I didn’t know if I would die or turn into someone—something—not me.
“Mercy.” Adam’s voice was a growl, and it centered me.
I focused on the strands between Jack and the spider, but those didn’t tell me enough. I had to examine the way the spider was feeding, and my choice was to see too much of Jack—who he was and how he was made—or to see too much of the spider. Reading the spider with my mind open like this struck me as a good way to get lost.
Jack was covered in fine silver threads that encircled him and wove around him like a lovingly knit sweater. The spider silk concentrated around the ends of his arms, and the bright magic made me want to close my eyes against the power of it. Instead, I stepped closer to Jack and reached out to touch the threads.
My head ached with the amount of information pouring into me, from my eyes and my fingers and my skin. Most of the information didn’t matter; I needed to know how the spider was feeding from him so I could see how she could be made to stop.