“Last chance,” he said, voice guttural, harsh.
The old man started to speak. Whatever he might have said was lost in the opening of the steel door, in his sudden, deep fear as a pregnant woman entered the back room, her greeting of “Thierry” cut off, strangled.
Here is a weapon I can use against him, Tir thought. But before the intention could take root, a black-haired, brown-skinned girl-child slipped inside, stopping Tir’s heart with her likeness to Araña.
A blink and the child’s features became her own. But it was too late. The image of Araña growing heavy with his child, bearing a daughter that looked as she did, had shocked him to his core and scattered the hate festering in his soul.
Tir sheathed the knife, knowing Araña would turn away from him and accept death rather than welcome him in her arms if he harmed this woman and child whose only crime was being loved by the bookseller.
He would gain the book by another means, he decided, and thought instantly of Araña’s picking the locks, freeing him of his shackles.
He was reminded of his own pronouncement at the stream. I believe I’ll find what I seek in Oakland. Otherwise you wouldn’t have found your way into my dreams.
The bookseller said, “Talk to Draven. Perhaps there’s some service you can perform for him in exchange for his intercession with Virgilio. Only Virgilio and his High Servant have the combination to the safe the book is in.”
Tir gave a curt nod, his eyes quickly scanning the room and finding a line of safes set into a wall. He didn’t know who Draven was. It didn’t matter.
Araña had lived among thieves. She was one. If she couldn’t open the safe, then she could help him locate someone who could.
Tir left the shop through the steel door set in the back wall. He hurried toward the healer’s house, telling himself his rush was dictated by what he’d found at L’Antiquaire. But the stirring in his cock and the worry in his heart called him a liar.
ENTERING the witches’ house again was harder, so much harder than stepping into it the first time. The paintings and antiques had no power to distract Araña, and though she forced her hands to hang loosely at her sides—away from the knives—she doubted she was successful in appearing relaxed.
She expected Annalise to lead her to the parlor again. Instead the witch took her deeper into the house, only stopping when they arrived at a sigil-painted door with a bloodred pentacle in its center. Magic hung thick and heavy in the air, as if centuries of conjuring had soaked into the wood before spilling out into the space in front of the door.
When Annalise opened it, revealing a narrow, dark stairway leading downward into utter darkness, Araña took an involuntary step backward. Despite her time with Matthew and Erik, the fear beaten and prayed into her during her formative years returned as if she’d never been free of it.
Hell and damnation waited at the bottom of the stairs. It waited for anyone who took up with witches and played in their dark magic.
Araña could almost see Hell’s flames shadow-dancing on the walls, black and hungry for her soul. The prospect of taking the first step downward made her skin crawl and grow clammy, threatening her resolve to gain control of the demon gift.
“Levanna waits below,” Annalise said, voice empty of inflection.
Araña’s stomach knotted, forcing the acid-hot taste of fear into her mouth, and without her meaning them to her hands curled around the knife hilts.
The witch said, “Only agreements entered into long ago spared your life earlier today. They won’t protect you a second time. A single human life span passes without notice to beings whose existence spans eternity. Failed tools and plans are easily set aside and replaced by new ones.”
Araña’s fingers tightened on the smooth leather of the hilts before she made them uncurl and ordered her hands away from the false security of the knives. She closed her mind to fear and blocked out the voices from the past, the sermons shouted from the pulpit and delivered with the lash of a cane.
Her reasons for seeking out the witch hadn’t changed. Levi would die because of her unless she gained some control over her gift. Her next victim could easily be Tir.
She took the first step downward. Then a second. And a third. Fully expecting Annalise to close the door and trap her in darkness.
But if the witch was tempted, she didn’t act on it before Araña reached the bottom of the stairs and found a hallway instead of a room.
A single candle beckoned at the end of it, bloodred, the flame whispering, Come to me.
It was like a vision summons, only Araña’s body answered instead of her soul, moving steadily forward, unwilling to turn back or deny the fire’s command.
Her heart thundered, not the phantom beat she imagined in the dark center of the flame, but the real squeeze and release of muscle.
The Wainwright matriarch waited in a room of flickering candles set at each star-point of the pentacle drawn on the floor. She was draped in black, moon-faced and milky-eyed, like a spider waiting in a web. “So you returned. Perhaps you’re not a foolish child after all.”
“Will you help me gain control of my gift?” Araña asked, her throat so dry it took effort to push the words into the air between them.
“You have to enter the place where the Spiders weave if you want to learn.”
Araña’s eyes glanced at the candles, positioned one at each apex of the pentagram. If she’d allowed herself to think about it at all, she would have guessed she’d have to go to the very place she’d spent a lifetime trying to avoid.
She had no way of knowing if the matriarch would lie or tell the truth, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Will I be able to undo something that hasn’t come to pass?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. That is not for me to say. Where you go is not a place I can enter now. Another waits to teach you the things you need to know.”
A chill swept through Araña as she imagined herself coming face-to-face with the demon responsible for the spider mark. “Who?”
Goose bumps rose on her arms with the witch’s laugh. “Nothing you can offer is worth what it would cost me to speak that particular name out loud. If you want answers and knowledge, then enter the place where the Spiders weave.” A gnarled hand emerged from the black folds of her garment. In it was a vial full of liquid. “I am here to assist you in finding the true gateway and to ensure the shell of flesh so painstakingly created to house your spirit will not host another’s.”
Araña felt as though a wall of ice encased her heart. A silent scream of no came from the depths of her soul.
Levanna lifted the vial higher and the candlelight bounced off it, turning dark liquid into a thousand strands of color. “The choice is yours. My obligation extends no further than offering you a way to enter the place of Spiders and keeping your physical body safe until your return.”
Araña’s gaze flicked to a candle flame and back to the vial. “I can enter on my own, through the fire.”
“That’s your gift, to be able to enter a realm no human can. And your curse. To have the gift limited because you’re bound to mortal flesh and can’t enter it fully.”
The witch indicated the pentacle drawn on the floor, serving as an altar much in the way the shamaness’s fetish-surrounded dirt floor had. Wax pooled at the bases of the candles and spread like bloodstains, reminding Araña of the blood she’d willingly shed in order to enter the ghostlands.
She thought of Matthew’s use of their code to tell her he and Erik were truly okay, and Erik’s parting words. Don’t let your courage fail you.
“What’s in the vial?”
“A rare poison. It separates the soul from the body.”