And she’d known that they were all, even Spyder, just a little bit afraid of what she was setting in motion, of what she would soon ask them to do. These three, who had taken her in and shown her how to fill in the emptiness, had midwifed her rebirth from that suburban zombie hell; had shown her what they knew of darkness and light and the graying shades in between, of the power to be gained by living through death without first having to die. Grave robbers and self-styled ghouls, cemetery children, daemon lovers, eaters of every opium and lotus, and now they were afraid, these three beyond fear or dread, and it gave Robin the slimmest satisfaction, that she could be so powerful, and that she could, at last, give something back.
Four days after Walter had brought the grocery bag of peyote buttons to Weird Trappings, she’d finally called them all together, had given Byron a list of things they’d need and her Visa card, Spyder’s car keys. And then she’d asked Spyder to find her something to eat, had soaked in a tub of hot, soapy water, rose-scented bath salts, while Spyder scrambled eggs and fried slices of baloney, brewed strong black coffee in her noisy old percolator.
And Walter and Spyder had watched while she ate, Robin stray-cat ravenous after days of Cheetos and candy bars, and his eyes had seemed to follow every forkful from the plate to her mouth. But she was past being annoyed by Walter’s gnawing adoration, too exhausted to object or care. When she’d finished, Spyder had rubbed her neck and shoulders, strong hands kneading away the kinks and knots, and they’d talked about other things until Byron had come back: a shipment of animal skulls that had come into the shop that morning, a documentary Walter had seen on cable about the Knights Templar.
It had been dark an hour when Byron finally returned, found them in the living room listening to Bach, and he’d sent Walter back out to the car for the bags while he’d bitched about a cashier at the supermarket who had looked at the credit card and wanted to know if he was Robin Elizabeth Ingalls.
“Did you get everything on the list?” she’d asked, and he’d rolled his eyes.
“I’m not totally fucking incompetent.”
“If I’d thought that you were, Byron, I’d have gone myself.”
Revived by her bath and the food, by Spyder’s gentle ministrations, she’d finally felt the first twinges of excitement, adrenaline promises and a tightness deep in her belly. When Walter came back in with the bags, she had him set them down on the floor, and she prowled through them, one by one, checking their contents against the list in her head. And yes, Byron had found everything she’d asked for, the spices and salt, the paints and olive oil and two dozen white candles.
“Okay, Walter, if you’d please take this all down to the basement now…” But then Spyder’s eyes had gone wide, lightning swift passage of dread across her face before she’d turned suddenly away, and Robin had known that look, that special silver panic that rode piggyback on her madness, that flashed itself like a warning display. She’d glanced at Byron and known that he’d seen it, too. Spyder walked away from them, stood by a window and stared out at the dark between them and the house next door.
“Spyder? What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?”
Nothing for a second, hearts beating and sluggish time, and then, “I don’t want you to do this in the basement. Anywhere else is okay, Robin, but not the basement.”
Robin had stared at Spyder’s dim reflection in the window-Spyder reversed and so maybe that Spyder was sane-feeling her concern melting into annoyance, and anger not far enough behind.
“Why? What’s wrong with the basement?”
“I don’t want you to use it, that’s all, okay? I just don’t want you to use the basement.”
Robin had taken one step closer, still some hope of defusing this, if she didn’t get pissed, if Byron and Walter kept their mouths shut.
“It needs to be the basement, Spyder. I’ve worked this all out very precisely, and your basement is the only place I know that’s even close to what we need.”
In the window glass, Spyder’s eyes were just shadows beneath the ridge of her brow, her dark eyebrows, unreadable smudges, and she didn’t say anything.
“Come on. At least tell me why you don’t want us to use the basement for the ceremony-”
“I don’t want you to use the basement. You can do whatever you want in any other part of the house, okay? But I don’t want you to do this in the basement.”
“You said that already,” Byron mumbled, then, and Robin had glared at him, dry ice and razors, had given him a rough shove and silently mouthed Shut the hell up; he’d sneered and given her his middle finger in return.
“Just tell me why, Spyder, and maybe we can figure something out-”
“No, Robin. There’s nothing to figure out. I don’t want to do this in the basement. You’ll have to think of some other place.”
The finality in Spyder’s voice, the mulish resolution, and to her fleeting surprise, Robin had discovered that this time she didn’t really care if it was because Spyder was sick, if she couldn’t help these unpredictable barriers and taboos. She loved Spyder and had always walked on eggshells and china plates for her, had always been so careful, so mindful of the places and things and words that you could never know were off-limits until you’d already stepped across the line.
“Goddamn it, Spyder! Shit!” Robin wheeled around and Byron had flinched, maybe thinking she was going to hit him that time. Instead, she’d stomped across the floor and stood in the basket-handle archway separating the living room from the dining room that Spyder used as a dumping ground for her hundreds or thousands of books.
“There is no ‘why’ because there’s no reason for us not to perform the ceremony down there and you know it. You’re just freaking out over something, and you could at least tell me what the hell it is.”
Spyder had not turned around, still stared through herself and the window, vacant and intent, but Robin noticed the way she’d begun rubbing her left hand against her hip, her callused palm across ancient, ragged denim. As if her fingers had started to itch, as if there was a stain on her hand or her jeans, and Robin had known that Spyder wasn’t even aware that she was doing it.
“It’s my house, Robin.”
“Oh please, don’t give me that shit. Just tell me why the hell we shouldn’t use the basement and I’ll shut up about it. But I want a reason, Spyder.”
Robin had glanced at Byron, at Walter still standing there holding the bulging brown bags in his arms; both of them nervous, frightened, caught in the middle, and as if she could read their minds, scrape the thoughts off the gray folds of their brains: This is not the way it works, Robin, and Don’t push, and It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter near enough for this.
“Please, Spyder,” she said. “All I want is a reason.”
Then Walter had set the bags down again, both of them on the coffee table, and rammed his hands deep in his pockets.
“Maybe we should just forget about it, Robin,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just forgot about it? I didn’t really care that much any-”
“Shut up, Walter,” and Spyder had sounded like the still and quiet before a summer storm, the voiceless threat in the eyes of something wild. And she’d turned away from the window and crossed the room to stand in front of Robin; her left hand rubbing furiously at her jeans and the fingers of her right kneading the puckered cross between her eyes, the scarred flesh that turned scarlet when she was upset or angry.