Winter Lost

I should have been listening. Spiders, the ones I was familiar with, didn’t hunt down their prey like a coyote did. They waited for prey to come to them. That spider wasn’t hunting anything. It hadn’t been a predatory run; it had been a get-out-of-Dodge run.

I turned to see what the spider had been running from. I half expected to see nothing, having hesitated long enough for anything of the insect variety to have disappeared from sight. Maybe it was something as simple as a hotel cat or, in this lobby, a falcon, though I trusted it wouldn’t be a Maltese.

But it was there, all right—the thing the small spider had run from. It was a bigger spider, a much, much bigger spider. I felt the quietness that overtook the others as, alerted by my sudden tension, they, too, saw the spider.

The last time I’d seen her, this spider had been on the tree at Uncle Mike’s.

A thimble wasn’t a big thing, but a spider with a body the size of a thimble was a very big spider. She wasn’t as large as some tarantulas I’d seen—there’s a kind of tarantula in South America that’s so big its legs could hang over a dinner plate. But tarantulas weren’t metallic silver, either.

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

Mercy

I 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.”