King squinted, and then nodded slowly. When he had turned on the light, most of the illumination had come from the massive chandelier, covered in what I hoped were faux crystals. It had been exactly the sort of thing I imagined McCallum would have. Big, ostentatious, and very expensive.
“Okay,” I said. “So, if we can land that chandelier on the spider, we have a very flat spider and your partner is no longer in danger.”
“That’s not a bad plan,” King said. “We just have to figure out how to get the chandelier down.”
“And deal with the spider on the ground with us.” Even as I said the words, the plan seemed impossible.
“Which one of us is going to distract the spider, and which one of us is going to get the chandelier down?”
“Rock, paper, scissors?” I suggested.
King shook his head, a small smile quirking his lip. “I’ll take the chandelier. I don’t trust your accuracy with dropping it, and we only get one shot at this.”
“You know, you haven’t even seen me shoot,” I said. “You don’t know how accurate I am.”
King moved forward, his feet crunching the dead spiders as he backed me up against the countertop. “Well, you’ll have to show me your… accuracy… when our lives aren’t in danger.”
My mouth dropped open. The guy who was going to charge me for breaking and entering an abandoned house, who wouldn’t leave his partner behind, who probably knew every rule and regulation that I was breaking, wasflirtingwith me?
He leaned forward, his body pressed against mine in all the right ways. Then his lips were on mine, and it was the most erotic contrast: soft lips, hard body. Everything inside of me lit up saying yes.
“For luck,” he said, drawing back. The look he gave me said he knew exactly how much his kiss had affected me.
“You are on spider crushing duty. I’ll take getting it to the ground and ready to be squished.” I poked him in the chest with enough pressure to get him to take a step back and let me slide out from under him.
When I was clear, I tugged my shirt down and adjusted my bag. He frowned at me. “Why are you covered in dirt?”
I glanced down at the thin layer of dust that I had loosened when I adjusted my clothes. Explaining about the dust would mean explaining about the job I just finished for McCallum, and then how he tried to murder me.
“Long story,” I said, avoiding the conversational landmines. “You ready to go play exterminator?”
CHAPTER FIVE
I putmy hand on the doorknob to the kitchen and took a long breath.
After a few moments, King murmured, “Getting cold feet?”
“When you’re about to open the door to a nightmare, you’re welcome to do it as fast as you want,” I snarked.
I twisted the handle and pulled the door open as quietly as I could.
The hallway was almost unrecognizable. Before it had that clean, modern look that spoke of extreme wealth. Why keep things when you could always replace them if you needed to use them again?
Now, there were thick webs crisscrossing the hallway, leading somewhere. I reached out to touch one, trying to get a sense of what we were working with, but King grabbed my hand, his grip tight. He shook his head when I glanced at him.
“Spiders use their webbing to sense their prey.” He gestured to the trap laid out in front of us.
“So now we’re stuck in the kitchen?” I asked. “Great.”
King was examining the gossamer threads. When I’d first seen them, they’d looked white, but as I shifted my angle, theydisappeared. It reminded me of some glamours I had seen in the Far Realm.
After a long moment, King pointed. “I think I see a way through.”
“Does it involve both of us getting stuck together in spiderweb?” I made a show of looking him up and down, letting him know I wouldn’t have minded getting stuck with him.
Ignoring my innuendo, King crept out into the hallway, avoiding the webbing with a twist of his back like one of those cat burglars in a heist movie. How was he so flexible? I pulled my back if I reached for a jar of pickles on the lowest shelf of my refrigerator.
The air in the hallway made goosebumps rise on my arms after the warmth of the kitchen. I kept close to King, because he seemed to know what he was doing and I was at a bit of a loss.
