King was busy levitating another alchemist circle, and shot me an irritated look. I glared at him and pointed to my pants.
“There’s something in there,” I said.
The look he sent me was so irritated that I threw up my hands in annoyance.
“Not like that,” I said. “Are you kidding?”
King rolled his eyes, and the spell hit the ceiling. It weighed down the mummified body of his partner, tugging the other cop loose. Slowly the mummy descended.
Okay. As soon as we got the body, we were out. I felt something on my other leg and begin doing a dance that looked like I had to use the restroom.
“Ferro, can you?—”
Whatever King was about to say was cut off as something the size of a watermelon hit him from behind.
CHAPTER FOUR
King went down hard,like a quarterback hit unexpectedly during practice. If we were in a sports movie, the orchestra music would swell and the audience would wonder if the star QB could walk after hit like that.
Since this wasn’t a sports movie, but one of my nightmares come to life, the only soundtrack was me making a half squawking noise that absolutely was not a scream.
Because with King down, I could see what hit him and it had eight legs, too many eyes, and fangs that would give vampires envy. It was hanging from the ceiling by a long thread, its thorax positioned to shoot more webbing.
“Spider!” My voice squeaked out.
The creature was enormous, easily the size of my car, if not bigger. Its black eyes had no pupils when they swung to me. It made a clicking sound with its mouth and every nerve in my body screamed that it was time to run, but then I would be leaving King behind.
Gritting my teeth, I muffled a groan and darted forward, closer to thegiant spider. My key selling point to clients was that the weird and the strange were my business, but even I had to admit, this wasn’t something I dealt with regularly.Two werewolf neighbors who kept trying to ‘mark each other’s property’? Sure, I’d dealt with that. A witch who couldn’t find her favorite wand? That was a Parker Ferro special.
Giant spiders that a mob boss left in his house as guard dogs? That one was a little beyond my area of expertise.
I grabbed King by the shoulders and dragged him along the floor. In some other world where I spent time at the gym instead of eating potato chips in my car during a stakeout, I was strong enough to dead lift him up into a firefighter’s carry. In the world we actually lived in, he was a big guy, his muscles making him heavy, and I was running on adrenaline, panic, and the realization that I might have a heart attack before I could get my revenge on McCallum.
Luckily, only a few strands of the webbing that the spider had shot at King had attached to the ground. As I dragged him, I wasn’t also fighting against a giant spider’s giant spiderwebs. Even those two strands, though, provided a lot of resistance.
When they finally snapped, it shot King forward, like an air hockey puck on a six-year-old’s lucky hit. I let him go, and he slid to a stop near the kitchen. Jogging, I caught up.
“How about, we go outside, wait for your backup, and then come back with fire?” I suggested. “Just burn this whole house down.”
King blinked and groaned. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, then sat back on his heels. Slowly, as though the motions hurt him, he took off his jacket. Rubbing at his face, he turned and blinked at me.
“You sure you want to rent this place?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “The giant spider’s just a bonus. I figured that if I have adrenaline going all day, every day, it’s gotta burn some calories. Have to stay fit somehow; the dating scene is rough.”
King glanced at me, his eyes tracking from my bruised face down to my lean legs. “I don’t think you have any problems in that area.”
“So?” I hid my blush by examining our route out of the house. “Less talking? More running?”
“I don’t think the thing has had time to kill Smith yet. I can’t give it the opportunity.” King pushed himself to standing.
I followed suit, and found that we were a little too close to each other for the polite distance of strangers. We were almost touching, the heat of his body sending shivers along my skin. I was pretty sure it was the adrenaline, but I wanted him to kiss me.
King jerked back, as though he could read my thoughts, and I felt an overwhelming wave of disappointment. Yeah, of course a guy like that wouldn’t want to make out with someone like me.
But then he started doing something strange, a weird dance that looked half like he had sand in his crack and half like he was the awkward wedding guest who didn’t know how to dance after a couple glasses of white wine. He began swatting at his legs, stamping his feet.
I realized that the floor was moving a half a second before I felt my own creepy crawlies climbing up my legs.
