A Debut Unpaid (San Amaro Investigations)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

King went down hard, like a quarterback hit unexpectedly during practice. If we were in a sports movie, the orchestra music would swell and the audience would wonder if the star QB could walk after hit like that.

Since this wasn’t a sports movie, but one of my nightmares come to life, the only soundtrack was me making a half squawking noise that absolutely was not a scream.

Because with King down, I could see what hit him and it had eight legs, too many eyes, and fangs that would give vampires envy. It was hanging from the ceiling by a long thread, its thorax positioned to shoot more webbing.

“Spider!” My voice squeaked out.

The creature was enormous, easily the size of my car, if not bigger. Its black eyes had no pupils when they swung to me. It made a clicking sound with its mouth and every nerve in my body screamed that it was time to run, but then I would be leaving King behind.

Gritting my teeth, I muffled a groan and darted forward, closer to the giant spider. My key selling point to clients was that the weird and the strange were my business, but even I had to admit, this wasn’t something I dealt with regularly. Two werewolf neighbors who kept trying to ‘mark each other’s property’? Sure, I’d dealt with that. A witch who couldn’t find her favorite wand? That was a Parker Ferro special.

Giant spiders that a mob boss left in his house as guard dogs? That one was a little beyond my area of expertise.

I grabbed King by the shoulders and dragged him along the floor. In some other world where I spent time at the gym instead of eating potato chips in my car during a stakeout, I was strong enough to dead lift him up into a firefighter’s carry. In the world we actually lived in, he was a big guy, his muscles making him heavy, and I was running on adrenaline, panic, and the realization that I might have a heart attack before I could get my revenge on McCallum.

Luckily, only a few strands of the webbing that the spider had shot at King had attached to the ground. As I dragged him, I wasn’t also fighting against a giant spider’s giant spiderwebs. Even those two strands, though, provided a lot of resistance.

When they finally snapped, it shot King forward, like an air hockey puck on a six-year-old’s lucky hit. I let him go, and he slid to a stop near the kitchen. Jogging, I caught up.

“How about, we go outside, wait for your backup, and then come back with fire?” I suggested. “Just burn this whole house down.”

King blinked and groaned. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, then sat back on his heels. Slowly, as though the motions hurt him, he took off his jacket. Rubbing at his face, he turned and blinked at me.

“You sure you want to rent this place?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “The giant spider’s just a bonus. I figured that if I have adrenaline going all day, every day, it’s gotta burn some calories. Have to stay fit somehow; the dating scene is rough.”

King glanced at me, his eyes tracking from my bruised face down to my lean legs. “I don’t think you have any problems in that area.”

“So?” I hid my blush by examining our route out of the house. “Less talking? More running?”

“I don’t think the thing has had time to kill Smith yet. I can’t give it the opportunity.” King pushed himself to standing.

I followed suit, and found that we were a little too close to each other for the polite distance of strangers. We were almost touching, the heat of his body sending shivers along my skin. I was pretty sure it was the adrenaline, but I wanted him to kiss me.

King jerked back, as though he could read my thoughts, and I felt an overwhelming wave of disappointment. Yeah, of course a guy like that wouldn’t want to make out with someone like me.

But then he started doing something strange, a weird dance that looked half like he had sand in his crack and half like he was the awkward wedding guest who didn’t know how to dance after a couple glasses of white wine. He began swatting at his legs, stamping his feet.

I realized that the floor was moving a half a second before I felt my own creepy crawlies climbing up my legs.

How could I forget the giant spider came with an army of friends? I began shaking my legs, patting down my pants while trying to kill as many arachnids as I could.

“Aren’t there alchemy circles that can deal with this?” I shouted.

“ You’re the kitchen witch! The kitchen is right there.” King seemed to have gotten most of them out of his pants and was now doing some sort of jig in what was clearly a mixed attempt to stomp as many of them as possible while not giving the spiders a chance to crawl up his legs again.

I darted for the doorway, and when I was inside, I could see that it was still full of food and supplies. Either McCallum had no intention of being gone long enough for his food to go bad, or he was going to have someone come in and clean his house. I was betting on the latter. He didn’t seem like a guy who even gave a second thought to the logistics of his own travel.

What I needed was something I could turn into a flytrap. Something sticky. There, some organic, locally sourced honey next to a tin of tea.

I fumbled in my pocket for my chalk, but realized that it would never write on McCallum’s smooth, marble countertops. What were my other options?

Opening the nearest drawer, I shuffled through papers until I found a black sharpie. A grin bloomed on my face, despite the situation. I was going to enjoy destroying McCallum’s meticulously maintained surfaces.

I bet he was the sort of guy who had a stone specialist come in to condition, seal, or whatever you did to make sure your shiny, expensive counters stayed looking beautiful.

Drawing a large triangle on the counter, I filled in the three points. Witchcraft was not my specialty, but kitchen witchcraft was not as fiddly as alchemy or some of the more archaic forms of craft like numeracy. Kitchen witchcraft was more forgiving. When she was training me, my foster mother used to tell me it was like jazz.

“There are always different ways to get to the same result,” she would say. “And as long as you’re feeling it, it’s probably good.”

Oh, I was definitely feeling this. My desperation made me feel it a whole lot. King followed me into the kitchen, shutting the door, and stuffed a kitchen towel under the jamb.

He was shivering, I noticed. No, not shivering. He was trembling.

“You don’t like spiders?”

The look he shot me was dark. “Does anyone?”

“I mean, entomologists do.”

He gave me a look that was just annoyed enough that I could tell he was actually amused. “Well? Do you have something for us?”

I put the jar of honey in the center of the triangle and filled in the details. On one point, I defined what the honey was. On the second, I defined the properties I wanted to use from it. The third was just me saying what I wanted it to do.

When it looked good enough, I closed my eyes. My magic was still red-tinged, but the spellwork wouldn’t care. In fact, I had a feeling that the anger in my magic would make it more efficient at killing spiders.

I fed my magic into the spellwork, watching the triangle blaze red. When I couldn’t add any more magic, I closed off the magical spigot and watched the glowing fade like embers in the fire.

Carefully, I removed the honey from the triangle.

“Honey?” King said, squinting at it.

“Honey,” I confirmed, a nasty grin on my face. “Give me your pants leg.”

Grabbing a butter knife from a drawer, I waited for King to prop his leg up next to me. He balanced easily, and for a second, I admired the feeling of being trapped by his body. His leg on one side, his body close. I could smell him, and although we had experienced the same terror, he smelled clean and spicy with that cologne he used.

I was pretty sure that I just smelled like sweat and adrenaline.

“No complaining. You asked for witchcraft.”

I spread the honey over his shoe and the cuff of his pants. The honey glowed red as it went on, and it sealed the cuff of his pants to his shoe, leaving a thick, solid residue behind.

“What?” King leaned forward to examine where it looked like his shoe and pants had become one. “Is that reversible?”

“No.” I spread some more honey up the leg of his pants just to be sure. Then I gestured for him to lift his other leg.

His expression was something between annoyed and resigned. “This was a really nice suit.”

“Boo-hoo,” I said, spreading more honey when he switched legs. “You can either have your nice suit, and accept that you’re going to be crawling with spiders, or you can buy yourself a new suit and not worry about what a thousand spider bites are going to do to you.”

“What does the honey do?” he asked.

“ Now you’re curious?” I waited for the spell to set and then indicated he could lower his leg. I crouched to do my own pants and shoes. When it looked good, I stood and answered him. “The honey seals your pants to your shoes so the spiders can’t get in, but I also made it extra sticky and glued it to wherever I put it.”

“So, a flytrap?” he clarified.

“Give the man a prize.” I debated for a moment what to do with the leftover honey, and then tucked it in my bag. It might come in useful later.

“Why do you get the extra?” King sounded almost petulant. His eyes focused on the door, where something had moved aside the towel.

We both froze. Was it the army of small black spiders? Or was it one big spider? Either way, I didn’t want to see what was on the other side of the door.

I could hear King’s pen scratching the paper of his notepad as he wrote. When I looked over, he was inscribing circle after circle.

“Are any of those going to be useful?” I asked.

“You said you wanted fire.” King continued drawing.

“What if the spider already got to your partner?” I turned away to ransack McCallum’s kitchen, looking for anything else I could use. There were canisters of flour and salt, and I took both. Olive oil got tucked into my bag and a small lighter went in my pocket.

“Then we run,” King said. “But the spells I used should be hard to break through. He should be safe for a while.”

“This feels a little familiar,” I said. “You know, if you wanted to date without a chaperone, you just had to ask.”

“That easy?” he asked.

“Yeah. You wouldn’t even have to buy me dinner.” The look I sent him was suggestive, and he laughed. “In all seriousness, we have to stop meeting like this. It’s not good for my heart.”

“I have to admit, giant spiders are a first for me.” King sketched one last circle and nodded his head as he mouthed the words, going over the pages that he had used.

The spiders finally moved aside the twitching towel and black bodies poured under the door. There were more than before, thousands upon thousands of them.

I yelped, startled at the sight and had to take a deep breath to remind myself that they could no longer get up my pants legs. King seemed to have forgotten, because he was doing his awkward wedding dance again as he tried to squish as many of the arachnids as possible.

“They can’t get up your leg,” I started, but then they approached my shoes, and King and I were doing a synchronized why-is-this-happening-to-me dance.

Drawing the salt out of my bag, I held the small canister in my hands. Loudly, I chanted a spell that I hadn’t used in years. Actually, I’d only ever used it on clothing or towels. Now, I pressed new meaning into the words. When I was sure the spell was ready, I began sprinkling salt on the surrounding spiders.

Cognitively, I understood spiders didn’t actually scream, but as their bodies twitched, arched, and danced, I was pretty sure they were making some high-pitched sound going straight into my brain. When they were finally still, I had thousands of spider corpses littered around me, their legs curled up and their bodies lifeless. King swung his gaze around the room, checking for any survivors of my massacre.

“What did you do?” There was a slightly horrified expression on his face. “That was —”

“Gross,” I said. “Very, very gross.”

“What was that spell you cast?”

“A desiccation spell,” I said. “Usually I just use a few grains of salt or something else to dry off wet clothes.”

“A dryer doesn’t work?” His tone would have made a very good substitute for the salt I had just used.

“Ha ha, funny man,” I said, shaking my head. “So, what’s the plan?”

“We have to get my partner away from the spider,” King said.

“I’ve been thinking about that spider,” I said. “I don’t think it always stays big.”

King nodded. “If it did, it would only be able to stay in the entryway, and the living room that’s adjacent. How does that help us, Ferro?”

“I don’t think it does. I think it’s something we need to be aware of,” I said. “But that big chandelier…”

King squinted, and then nodded slowly. When he had turned on the light, most of the illumination had come from the massive chandelier, covered in what I hoped were faux crystals. It had been exactly the sort of thing I imagined McCallum would have. Big, ostentatious, and very expensive.

“Okay,” I said. “So, if we can land that chandelier on the spider, we have a very flat spider and your partner is no longer in danger.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” King said. “We just have to figure out how to get the chandelier down.”

“And deal with the spider on the ground with us.” Even as I said the words, the plan seemed impossible.

“Which one of us is going to distract the spider, and which one of us is going to get the chandelier down?”

“Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested.

King shook his head, a small smile quirking his lip. “I’ll take the chandelier. I don’t trust your accuracy with dropping it, and we only get one shot at this.”

“You know, you haven’t even seen me shoot,” I said. “You don’t know how accurate I am.”

King moved forward, his feet crunching the dead spiders as he backed me up against the countertop. “Well, you’ll have to show me your… accuracy… when our lives aren’t in danger.”

My mouth dropped open. The guy who was going to charge me for breaking and entering an abandoned house, who wouldn’t leave his partner behind, who probably knew every rule and regulation that I was breaking, was flirting with me?

He leaned forward, his body pressed against mine in all the right ways. Then his lips were on mine, and it was the most erotic contrast: soft lips, hard body. Everything inside of me lit up saying yes.

“For luck,” he said, drawing back. The look he gave me said he knew exactly how much his kiss had affected me.

“You are on spider crushing duty. I’ll take getting it to the ground and ready to be squished.” I poked him in the chest with enough pressure to get him to take a step back and let me slide out from under him.

When I was clear, I tugged my shirt down and adjusted my bag. He frowned at me. “Why are you covered in dirt?”

I glanced down at the thin layer of dust that I had loosened when I adjusted my clothes. Explaining about the dust would mean explaining about the job I just finished for McCallum, and then how he tried to murder me.

“Long story,” I said, avoiding the conversational landmines. “You ready to go play exterminator?”