“And that’s that,” Annika said as she concluded the story. “The crux of this is that we need someplace to stay for a bit. Their parents will be here sooner or later, but last I heard they were being held hostage by the medical professionals in Eugene.”
Kyle remained silent a few moments longer. Before speaking, he drained his glass of whiskey. “So you just need someplace to stay. Is there really nowhere else?”
“Mom said something about having burned most of her bridges already,” Spinneretta said.
“That’s the Wolf, alright,” he said with an irritated nod. He breathed out and hung his head. “I’m not really sure what to say to any of that. This is a lot to dump on someone.”
Annika hummed in acknowledgment. “This is a pretty big place. Do you live here alone, Kyle?”
He frowned at her. “Yeah.”
“No wife? No kids?”
His mouth went slack for a moment. “Not anymore.”
She smiled. “Great. Then we’ll be able to stay out of your way for as long we’re here.”
He shook his head, not sharing her humor. “That’s not the issue. It’s just . . . Let me think about this, alright? I need some time to think is all.” As though in a trance, he stood up and walked out of the living room, toward the stairway.
Confused, Spinneretta stood and called after him. “So, should we just wait here or . . . ?”
No answer came. He disappeared up the stairs, leaving the group alone.
When the sound of a slamming door rattled the air, Annika whistled a low note. “Welp, this guy is strung as high as a French revolutionary. Is this really the best May could come up with?”
Spinneretta looked around the wide living room. The full-wall windows facing the dipping sun reminded her of home. “Do you think he’s going to let us stay?”
Annika grunted. “He’ll let us stay. Even if we have to force him.”
Mark reclined his head against the couch. “Hopefully it shall not come to that. But when he comes back, you’re going to need to check his outgoing phone calls.”
Spinneretta gave him a long look. “What?”
“He’s talking to somebody on the phone. The landline, in the study upstairs.”
She was about to ask how he could know that, but it was obvious. “Mark, you shouldn’t be using your magic right now.”
“Worry not about me.” The way the muscles in his face tightened was decidedly unconvincing.
Kara folded her arms over her bag and rested her head atop them. “Hey, can we get some food soon or something?”
“Why don’t you eat your second steak?” Annika asked.
“I already did.”
“What? And you’re still hungry?”
“Y-yeah. I mean, I’m still growing, you know.”
“I think we could all use some real dinner,” Arthr interjected. “I mean, I don’t know about anyone else, but I haven’t even had lunch.”
Annika sighed. “Fine, fine. Everyone can have dinner. Just as soon as we get this sorted out, alright?”
Tension dripped in the air. The nervousness in Spinneretta’s stomach lingered as they waited for Kyle to return.
Kyle wandered upstairs, feeling listless. Lethargically, he found his way to the study. He sat for a moment at his desk, his head swimming. He was lost in a bizarre dream, and he was about to make a big mistake. He picked up the phone from its charger, beeped it on, and began to dial. He put the phone to his ear and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to calm his nerves.
The phone rang three times before a woman picked up. “Hello?”
It took him a moment to find his voice. “Hello, May,” he said. His mouth was dry, and the words came out cracking.
There was a pause on the other end. “Hello, Kyle,” she said. It was the first time he could recall that she hadn’t been overjoyed to hear his voice; it lent a modicum of reality to the surreal evening.
“Your . . . Your kids are here,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.
“I thought they might be.”
He felt a familiar pang come over him as he heard the distance in her tone. “Is everything alright?”
“My children were almost kidnapped and killed by some stupid conspiracy. Nothing is alright, Kyle. And now Ralph is . . . Well, whatever. That has nothing to do with you.”
Kyle bit his lip and was soon chuckling a hollow sound. “Are you serious about this, May? What the hell are you thinking, sending them to my house?”
“I’m sorry.”
He paused a moment to catch his breath. “You never told me you had monster kids,” he said, neither censoring nor fact-checking the statement.
“You have a rather selective memory, don’t you.” The complete disinterest in her tone erased any inflection that may have rendered it a question.
“I . . . That’s not what I mean. I mean . . . I didn’t know you were telling me the truth.”
“What does it matter what I told you? You wouldn’t have heard it anyway.”
“May? Are you alright? I’ve never heard you like this before.”
“I’m a lot of things right now, but alright isn’t one of them. Sorry for not being on top of the world, Kyle.”
He shook the thought away and lowered his voice. “Why are you dumping this on me, May?”
A pause. “You’re the only one.”
He lost his breath, and his chest began to shake. “Are you really, really doing this to me?”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, though her voice sounded insincere. “We’ll find some way to compensate you for this. I know it’s short notice, and I know it’s unconventional. Just give us a little time, Kyle. Please?” The last few words were tinted with a ghost of the old Wolf vigor, and for a moment he couldn’t think straight.
The request pulled his mind and heart in opposite directions. The shadow of the Wolf that lurked within her plea buried his history with her. For what may have been the first time, she was actually vulnerable; his mind told him to stomp on that weakness, but his heart was still living in a bygone era. He expelled an uncertain breath and nodded to himself. “Fine. I don’t know where they’re all going to sleep, but I’ll figure something out, I guess. Will you and . . . you and Ralph be coming too?”
“Yes. Might be a few days till the tests are finally finished, I really have no clue. At the very least we’ll be coming to get our kids. I don’t know what that detective is going to want to do after that. Be a dear and tell her thanks again for me.”
“I . . . Yeah, sure.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I, uhh . . . What happened to Ralph, exactly?”
A brittle laugh came from her side of the line. “Don’t pretend to care now, Kyle. You’ve had twenty years to give a damn.” The speaker crackled a little, as though she were shifting her phone around. “I have to go now. Take care of them, alright? I’ll make it up to you.”
“Y-yeah. Right.” He already wished he hadn’t agreed.
“Goodbye, Kyle.”
“Bye, May.” He exhaled a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding, and beeped the phone off. He sat there, still, for a long moment. When he clicked the phone back into its cradle, his eyes fell upon the latest half-reviewed issue of the Journal of Arachnology. It may have all felt like a bizarre and unwelcome dream. But if this was reality, then it was, in some way, exciting. Spider people. Half-spiders. Homo arachnida. He licked his lips as he ran his thumb over the volume’s glossy surface. This changes everything. Absolutely everything.
“I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,” Kyle said, his face in his hands. “But I’ve decided to let you all stay here.”
Spinneretta and the others breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Thank you so much,” she said, smiling as widely as she could.
Mark’s posture relaxed. “Worry not. We’ll make this up to you.”
Kyle looked away and began to shake his head. “No, that’s . . . It’s fine. I have a second bedroom upstairs, but you�
��re not all going to fit in there. I could clean up the guest bedroom as well, that’s room for, what, four?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Annika said.
He raised his gaze to the packed couch before him and, swallowing hard, he caught Spinneretta’s gaze. “However. There is a condition.” His expression was steady, turbid with a seriousness wholly unlike his previous terrified demeanor. “I want to examine you.”
Spinneretta froze. “Excuse me?”
At her reply, his confidence shook. “It’s just that this is, well, kind of unusual, you understand. I’ve never met someone with . . . Uhh . . . ”
“Spider legs,” she finished.
“Yeah. And, well, my line of work deals with spiders so, you know, I hope this isn’t asking too much, but I’d really love to get a look at your anatomy.”
She gave him a blank stare. “Uhh, how about examining Arthr’s anatomy instead?”
Kyle recoiled, his face lighting up red, and a nervous laugh slipped from his lips. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I must not have been thinking. I didn’t mean to . . . ” He trailed off again and looked over at her brother. “D-do you mind, Arthr?”
Arthr shook his head slowly. “No, that’s fine. I mean, I guess.”
He sighed. “Oh, thank you! I . . . I wouldn’t want to impose on your first night, but tomorrow, if it’s alright with you . . . ”
“Yeah, no problem, dude,” Arthr said. It sounded like he was just trying to be polite.
Spinneretta looked at Mark, and caught a suspicious glance suspended between him and Annika.
“In the meantime,” Kyle said, getting to his feet, “make yourselves at home. I’ll stay out of your way as much as I can. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Well, if you’re offering,” Annika said. “You got any more liquor?”
He began to nod with a sad smile. “Of course, I do.”
Soon, Spinneretta, Arthr, and Kara wandered off to explore the house where they’d be staying for the immediate future. Annika went straight upstairs as soon as Kyle was out of the room, and that left Mark staring out the full-wall window at the golden sunset over the sea. The wood of the house seemed to glow orange and red. He could feel the age in the structure, an almost anachronistic obsession in the doilies and décor that suggested Kyle himself had not earned the house by his own sweat and blood.
“Nice view, eh?”
He turned and found Annika coming back down the stairs.
“That was fast,” he said. He cringed as the last word got caught on the wrong side of the nerves in his skull.
“I work fast.”
“Did you check the phone?”
“Yessir. Afraid this one’s an anti-climax. He was talking to May.”
“Figured as much.”
Annika walked over to him and lowered her voice. “So, what do you think?”
“About?”
She picked at one of her nails. “Kyle. Think it’s a coincidence that he just happens to be an arachnologist?”
He hummed, and he felt it vibrate through his left eye socket. “Is that what he meant by working with spiders?”
“Mmhmm. Found a bunch of old issues of some arachno-journals and other research paraphernalia up in the study.”
“My first thought is coincidence, although that is quite an unlikely one. If he’s involved with NIDUS in some way, then he’s quite good at acting horrified. I could plumb his mind and find out for sure.”
“No reason yet, Marky. Not unless he does something suspicious. He won’t be likely to trust us after being subjected to that, after all.”
“Then I’d like it if you looked into him a bit more.”
“Can-do-will-do,” she said with a garish salute.
As she spun about and made to leave, Mark caught her attention once more. “Before I forget,” he said. “What’s going on with your job?”
She was quiet for a moment. “What do you think happens when you don’t show up to work for two months?”
“Did you use all your vacation time?”
“Weeks ago.” Another pause. “Think I’m going to be looking for another insurance company when I get back home.”
“I’m really sorry.”
She shrugged. “Don’t be. Staking out fatsos to see if their backs are really shot gets boring. About as bad as tailing adulterers. Just makes me wanna take a shower as soon as I touch that sweat-money. Could do with a change of scenery.”
“I’ll reimburse you,” Mark said. “For what you’ve lost by helping me.”
She smiled. “I told you that isn’t necessary. Besides, you’re already going to need to offer unemployment checks to Kyle. Can’t have him telling anyone that we’re here, of course. You’ll be running out of money soon if you keep throwing it around like the government.”
He shook his head. “I have enough for now.”
Annika turned away with a sigh. “Welp, I guess I’ll leave it to you to tell him he’s out of work for a while. Time to do a little digging for closet-skeletons before wrangling up some dinner. Wish me luck.”
Chapter 15
Cinnamon
“Chinese’ll be here in about forty-five, kids,” Annika said as she slipped her phone back into her pocket.
Arthr beamed at her from the couch where he sat. “Awesome, can’t wait! I’m starving.” The edges of his smile were false, pasted on.
Spinneretta examined Arthr’s expression until Annika flopped down beside him and his face at last loosened to an uncertain neutrality. What are you sucking up for? she thought. Deciding to ignore him, she turned back around and continued to drum her fingers against the long-silent ivories of the piano. It was a forlorn, dusty relic that looked at least a hundred years old. Doilies, old pictures, glass trinkets, and a small stack of books littered the top of it. Even touching it almost felt sinful, but whatever neglect Kyle had visited upon it was far worse than a little harmless exercise could be. It was oddly symbolic; a broken husk of a once-noble instrument, its wires snapped and soul crushed, mutilated into the equivalent of a shelf—a role that a two-by-four could have filled just as well if not better.
Her fingers clumsily picked out the keys she thought went to the Chop Waltz. She tried to hear the ghosts of the notes, to conjure them back from her middle school music class. But she couldn’t quite do it. Still, she carried on the futile performance; a distraction kept the demons at bay. If she thought for too long or too hard about how they’d ended up here, she was liable to scream herself mad.
After a few minutes of trying not to think, it became impossible to ignore the taste on her tongue. She groaned, wishing she’d remembered to brush her damn teeth during her shower.
“What’s wrong?” Arthr asked from the couch.
“Nothing. I just need something to wash the taste of yesterday out of my mouth.” She pulled her messenger bag from beneath the piano bench, opened it, and scried its contents. There was a bulging wad of poorly folded clothes, from whose crevices assorted articles of miscellanea poked out. A pair of pens, the handle of her toothbrush, her alarm clock, a pad of sticky notes. “Who the hell packed this?”
“Uhh, I did,” Arthr said. “We were kinda in a rush to leave, so . . . ”
“Why didn’t you pack me toothpaste?”
“Kara got to it first. Check her bag.” He waved his hand at the desk in the opposite corner, but his gaze didn’t follow.
“Ahh. Gotcha.” She withdrew her toothbrush and slipped back to her feet. “Kara, where are you?” she hollered at the neighboring rooms.
“In the kitchen!” came her sister’s voice.
Spinneretta started toward the desk upon which Kara’s bag sat half-hanging over the edge. “I’m stealing some toothpaste. You’ve been warned.”
“Wha—?” Then a loud gasp, audible over the banging of wood on wood. “No!” Her footsteps pounded through the hall from the kitchen. “Get away from it!”
“Relax,” Spinneretta called back. “It’s not lik
e I’m borrowing your underwear.” Her fingers clutched the zipper of Kara’s bag just as the footsteps arrived at the threshold of the living room. She tugged the zipper open in a single motion.
And four red eyes stared back at her.
Her heart stopped. The blood in her veins turned to ice water. The ball of black fur shifted, contorting in the direction of the zipper with a high-pitched chattering. As soon as the eight chitinous legs came into view, Spinneretta screamed. She leapt backward, her own legs extending but—for the first time in years—failing to catch her balance. The hardwood floor slammed into her as she scrambled to push herself away from the desk.
Arthr was on his feet. “Spins, what is it?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “It’s the fucking baby!” Though the terror of the adult spider-beast emerging from the mist portal had passed, she had somehow completely forgotten the juvenile whose eyes had peered out from atop its mother’s head.
Kara scuttled to the desk as quickly as she was able. “No! I told you to stay out sight, didn’t I?”
On the floor, Spinneretta’s desperate retreat stalled when she saw her sister tending to the bag. “Kara?”
“What’s going on?” Arthr asked.
Annika was standing, one leg propped up on the couch to steady her revolver. “Kara, step away from it, now!”
“No!” Kara spread her arms, obstructing the target. “You can’t hurt her!” The thing in the bag was making a high-pitched version of the clicking sound the adults had vocalized. It poked its head out of the bag, and its eyes, far larger than the adults’ by proportion, darted back and forth between the walls.
From the doorway leading to the main hall, footsteps approached. Spinneretta’s adrenaline-soaked blood immediately identified the scent as Mark. “What is going on?” he asked, but nobody dared to answer him. Everybody was as stiff and silent as statues, and as soon as Mark entered upon the scene he joined the ranks of the unmoving.
A stillness weighed upon the living room.
The pounding pulse in Spinneretta’s veins sharpened her perception. She now saw that, unlike the adults, the baby had no visible teeth at all; if they existed, they had not yet grown long enough to protrude from its closed mouth. Its entire form, perhaps a foot and a half in length, was like a diminutive and disproportioned wolf without any lupine features. It was a spider that was part dog, part lynx, part mongoose, and all nightmare. “Kara, did you . . . Did you know that thing was there?”
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 16
