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“Bring the red dress,” the Spidress calls to another apprentice before looking my way with all eight of her eyes. The effect is disconcerting. “Rona said stones speak to you. Do tarot cards talk to you as well?”
“What?” I struggle to regain my focus. “Uh, no.” Do they believe inanimate objects actually have conversations with me? I can’t very well unleash a judgy inner dialogue about the crackpot giant spider having kooky beliefs when I fantasize about gargoyles who I’d thought to be statues until yesterday. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Then why keep the deck?”
“It belonged to my great-grandmother, Lala. Those cards were her favorites. Having them close makes me feel like a piece of her is still with me.”
“Is she the one you plan to use your wish to talk to? The wish the Bridge allows to a newly chosen queen?” She gestures for an apprentice to hold the red dress against my skin. “Up more,” she tells the apprentice while staring at me as if waiting for an answer.
“She is.” I lift my chin, not willing to apologize for my plan. Even if I’m second-guessing its selfishness myself.
“Family is everything,” the Spidress says. “Mine is vast.”
“Mine feels like it most days.” I hate to admit that I don’t miss my siblings, cousins, and most of my family.
She clicks at me, and I can’t tell if it’s annoyance or humor. “You saved one of my little ones even when your own vulgar relation told you to kill her. The small spider at your parents’ house? You freed her near the fence?”
The memory of my cousin screaming at me to kill the tiny spider and the reason why I refused flood my mind along with the possibility that I’m meeting a living deity. Why not if their Bridge is the embodiment of one?
Should I be bowing or genuflecting or offering some kind of sacrifice?
Please don’t say sacrifice.
“Are you the Great Goddess?” I whisper. “The Spider Woman who connects the dead and the living, the dream world and the waking one? Is that how you know about my wish to see my Lala again?”
“No,” the Spidress says on a clicking chuckle. “Rona told me about your wish. It’s a good one.”
“How did Rona know?” I ask. I certainly didn’t share that information.
As if sensing my agitation, Huey flies a couple of laps around me, stopping to snag a snack from the goodies the housekeeper left out.
“I told her,” Atticus confesses.
“Be glad she knew,” the Spidress tells me, glaring the gargoyle into silence. “It’s why I’m here. Candidates usually don’t have such worthy plans for their wishes.”
“Oh?” Atticus asks. Clearly the Spidress’s threats don’t keep him from butting in. “What have you heard about her rivals?”
“The red silk will do,” she says instead, ignoring him so long that I wonder if she will answer. “Cutter’s candidate wants immortality. Or as close as being queen can get to it with a few centuries.”
“What about Wilborne’s candidate?” Atticus asks.
“She hopes to save her baby sister who’s sick with a terminal illness that kills human children which we all know the Bridge won’t grant.”
The heartless way they talk about this amazing woman who’s willing to sacrifice everything for her sister? It drives me insane. Also, her wish makes me think mine might be the most selfish yet. Okay, immortality is pretty vain, but maybe she’s a rocket scientist or someone with a purpose who will help humankind for the next few centuries. Either way, they shouldn’t be pawns in a real-life chess game.
Atticus nods as if this discussion is normal. Part of me hates him for his detachment. If they’re nothing to him, what am I? “And Mildrake?—”
I interrupt him. “Those women have names.” I can’t stand to think of everyone gossiping about grown women who risk terrible consequences if the Bridge rules against them as so-and-so’s girl. It’s so friggin’ dehumanizing. “We’re not candidates. We’re people.”
“In your world maybe, but not here,” the Spidress tells me. “Which is why you’ll be known as the twins’ candidate.”
“Even Jace and Atticus don’t get names?” I ask.
“You’re lucky they have another chance,” she says, “after what happened with their last candidate.”
I wince at her callousness, glancing to Jace to see if he heard. His downcast gaze is my answer. I lower my arms and wave away her apprentice, tired of playing along as her dress-up doll.
The Spidress doesn’t stop. “Dyphena didn’t do us the honor of sticking around to show off my creations,” she says. With her eight eyes, she still can’t read the room.
