A shiver twisted up my spine, like I was a screw someone had over-tightened. King darted to the side, and I reached out with a finger, plucking one of the remaining threads. Taking out my lighter, I raised it to the webbing, a threat that even the spider understood.
The spider veered back to me, its massive body swinging as it began crawling towards me.
Okay, spider, we were going to play. I was wearing my big boy panties and everything. Maybe it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen, but I could handle it. After all, if I ever told anyone what I really was, I’d be featuring in their nightmares, so I was pretty sure I could take on a living nightmare of my own.
As it approached, my automatic spider scream rose in my throat, but I kept my lips closed, releasing only a softly muffled screech.
King glanced at me, but I shot him a thumbs up. I was okay. At least I could pretend to be okay until the spider was reduced to goo on the floor.
I started simply, chanting some nonsense words while I used my actual magic to summon wind. The wind curled under the spider’s two back legs, unseating it as it descended the wall. The massive thing was stable. With all eight of its legs, it would be almost impossible to unseat. However, messing with its limbs had the desired effect of distracting the spider.
“How long do you need?” I called King.
“Give me at least fifteen minutes,” he answered.
I swallowed the bile surging in my throat. The spider adjusted its approach, shifting its weight so the wind jostled it, but none of its feet came up.
How was I going to distract something that big without making myself a Parker Ferro appetizer? I could see its mouth, what looked like sharp fangs and hairy mandibles moving in a way that made my brain collapse for a second into white, hot terror. Grabbing a handful of the flour again, I cast a new spell, emphasizing the powdery nature, how blinding it would be if I hit the spider’s eight eyes with flour.
Then, I whispered to the wind for help and threw the flour straight into the spider’s face.
The thing about kitchen witchcraft is that a single substance can cause multiple different outcomes. When I chanted the weight spell, the flour had the heft of a pair of dumbbells. With the powdery focus, it was like shooting mace at the spider, right into the thing’s eyes.
The only difference was what I wanted the material to do and the spell that I chanted.
Flour is multipurpose. All-purpose flour, Laurel would joke. I could think of a couple of other uses for it, spells that would highlight distinct qualities, and I held them in my reserve in case I needed them.
The spider reared back from my homemade pepper spray, shrieking and using its front legs to claw at its face. I danced away, habit making me brush my magic against the spirits in the room around me.
No, I reminded myself, I couldn’t use my own magic. That would be too obvious, something for King to note and take back with him to his new job in Paranormal Crimes.
As soon as he mentioned my real magic to anyone who had more experience with witchcraft, the game would be up.
So, I had to stick with using witchcraft.
The spider reared back, now on only four legs as it tried to clear its eyes from the temporary blinding I’d given it. I reached in my bag again and pulled out the salt. There wasn’t a lot, but I had some left. Would it even work against something this large?
In the kitchen, the spiders had been small. The drying spell had worked as advertised, cracking open their skin and exposing their insides to air. I didn’t have nearly enough salt to desiccate this spider’s massive body.
But what if I just did one leg? Would losing a single appendage throw the spider off its game?
I wanted to get close, for accuracy, but my feet froze on the floor, my heart going rabbit-fast as I thought about gaining any proximity to the spider.
It was about the height of an oversized truck. One of those monster trucks that says more about a man’s supposed prowess than simply being a vehicle he enjoys driving.
The alchemy he was working on clearly distracted King, so I took a chance and used a gust of wind to blow half of the remaining salt onto the spider’s back legs.
The reaction was immediate.
One of the legs got the brunt of the salt and began to crack. I could see jagged openings forming in the spider’s exoskeleton, and whatever soft flesh was underneath was clearly not designed for being out in the open, because I could see it darkening and drying as soon as it was exposed to air.
Shifting focus, the spider gave up on its facial wounds, landing heavily on the pine wood floor, and shrieked again. I wasn’t sure if the sound was real, or if it was all in my head: a mix of the spider’s exhalations and the terror that was still twisting my stomach.
The spider circled itself, almost like a dog chasing its tail. It was so distracted that I took a moment to sidle closer to King.
“You good?” I asked.
“Almost done,” he said. “I had to reinforce the shields around Smith. I couldn’t risk the spider getting through.”
