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I fly to join Jace, tucking my tail and curling my claws against the church’s roof. Sunlight touches my face, and magic flickers over my skin, stealing my ability to move and turning me to stone.
4
ROSEMARIE
TEN OF WANDS: STRESS, SECRETS, AND SPIDERS DON’T MIX UNLESS YOU SHARE THE BURDEN
(Or Host a Kickass Séance)
“Kill the spider!” my cousin screeches, hopping from foot to foot in the bathroom she shares with my sisters. She’s one of the triplets that my uncle’s third wife named rhyming names, but I can’t remember if this one is Brandi, Candi, or Sandi without an “e” in the unholy trinity.
The lump on my head pounds, the bruise on my cheek throbs, and the last thing I need is her shrieking like a fire alarm when I’m already struggling to breathe through fear because spider. “I’m not killing it.”
“Why not?” She stretches the words into never-ending sentences, paragraphs, entire novels.
Telling her how Lala talked about spiders being a favorite of the Great Goddess, how they weave the threads between the living and the dead, dreams and reality? Yeah, the screecher won’t care, and worse, it’ll make me sad that I didn’t ask Lala more questions before I couldn’t. “I’m just not. I’ll take it outside instead.” Thus the newspaper and jar I hold as I crouch too close to the toilet for comfort.
“It’s a little thing. Smash it.”
“If the spider is such a little thing, then why don’t you take care of it yourself?” My people-pleasing tendencies take a temporary backseat to my headache.
“I’m pregnant,” she announces, pointing to her stomach that’s way flatter than mine.
“And?” I prompt.
“Annnd you came over here so you might as well make yourself useful.”
Over here being my parents’ house, not hers.
Reminder #6,799 of why I should’ve met my friends at one of their homes—any of their homes—for our trip to the haunted house instead of saying it’d be easier for them to pick me up on their way. Also, I should’ve known better than to arrive an hour early, but my stoner roommates lit a bong so potent it could fumigate the entire block. “Isn’t there anyone else in the house who you could make useful?”
“No one else came when I called.”
Oh, the joys of being a people pleaser. “Of course they didn’t.” I’m the sucker. Which isn’t her fault. Just like it isn’t her fault that I’ve been terrified of spiders since my brothers filled my bed with plastic ones. I shudder. Now is not the time for that memory. I swipe at the spider with the jar and newspaper, missing it and sending it crawling along the baseboard.
“Can you hurry it up?” she whines. “I might have to pee. And you don’t want a spider near my unborn child, do you? Think of the nightmares my baby could have about skittering little legs, beady eyes, and…huh, I wonder if it’s poisonous? Or venomous? Or?—”
I switch topics to take my mind off the spider. “I saw Benita at the hospital before I left.”
“Who?” she demands.
“The nurse who cared for Lala in hospice.”
“I thought Lala went to a nice private place instead of that charity hospital you work for. Wait, did you work there after you flunked out of nursing school? Will they let you do that when you drop out of college?”
“I graduated college.” My fist curls to crinkle the newspaper.
“Is it because you do that thing, switching numbers and letters? My mom said we were lucky not to get the dumb gene.”
I suddenly wish the spider would jump at her, maybe grow to the size of a pterodactyl and bite her head off. The dumb gene. “It’s called dyscalculia and dyslexia, and those are learning disabilities. Not a sign of lower intelligence.”
“Yeah, well, I heard you couldn’t talk until you were three. They had to bribe you like you did with that bird Lala kept.”
“Huey was an owl.” I keep the and you’re an insensitive jerk to myself.
“Is that why Lala gave you money for school? And why she wanted you to learn those freaky cards she read?”
I refuse to explain how Lala used tarot to teach me how to read numbers and more. Not that my cousin stops talking anyway.
