How could I forget the giant spider came with an army of friends? I began shaking my legs, patting down my pants while trying to kill as many arachnids as I could.
“Aren’t there alchemy circles that can deal with this?” I shouted.
“You’rethe kitchen witch! The kitchen is right there.” King seemed to have gotten most of them out of his pants and was now doing some sort of jig in what was clearly a mixed attempt to stomp as many of them as possible while not giving the spiders a chance to crawl up his legs again.
I darted for the doorway, and when I was inside, I could see that it was still full of food and supplies. Either McCallum had no intention of being gone long enough for his food to go bad, or he was going to have someone come in and clean his house. I was betting on the latter. He didn’t seem like a guy who even gave a second thought to the logistics of his own travel.
What I needed was something I could turn into a flytrap. Something sticky. There, some organic, locally sourced honey next to a tin of tea.
I fumbled in my pocket for my chalk, but realized that it would never write on McCallum’s smooth, marble countertops. What were my other options?
Opening the nearest drawer, I shuffled through papers until I found a black sharpie. A grin bloomed on my face, despite the situation. I was going to enjoy destroying McCallum’s meticulously maintained surfaces.
I bet he was the sort of guy who had a stone specialist come in to condition, seal, or whatever you did to make sure your shiny, expensive counters stayed looking beautiful.
Drawing a large triangle on the counter, I filled in the three points. Witchcraft was not my specialty, but kitchen witchcraft was not as fiddly as alchemy or some of the more archaic forms of craft like numeracy. Kitchen witchcraft was more forgiving. When she was training me, my foster mother used to tell me it was like jazz.
“There are always different ways to get to the same result,” she would say. “And as long as you’re feeling it, it’s probably good.”
Oh, I was definitely feeling this. My desperation made me feel it a whole lot. King followed me into the kitchen, shutting the door, and stuffed a kitchen towel under the jamb.
He was shivering, I noticed. No, not shivering. He was trembling.
“You don’t like spiders?”
The look he shot me was dark. “Does anyone?”
“I mean, entomologists do.”
He gave me a look that was just annoyed enough that I could tell he was actually amused. “Well? Do you have something for us?”
I put the jar of honey in the center of the triangle and filled in the details. On one point, I defined what the honey was. On the second, I defined the properties I wanted to use from it. The third was just me saying what I wanted it to do.
When it looked good enough, I closed my eyes. My magic was still red-tinged, but the spellwork wouldn’t care. In fact, I had a feeling that the anger in my magic would make it more efficient at killing spiders.
I fed my magic into the spellwork, watching the triangle blaze red. When I couldn’t add any more magic, I closed off the magical spigot and watched the glowing fade like embers in the fire.
Carefully, I removed the honey from the triangle.
“Honey?” King said, squinting at it.
“Honey,” I confirmed, a nasty grin on my face. “Give me your pants leg.”
Grabbing a butter knife from a drawer, I waited for King to prop his leg up next to me. He balanced easily, and for a second, I admired the feeling of being trapped by his body. His leg on one side, his body close. I could smell him, and although we had experienced the same terror, he smelled clean and spicy with that cologne he used.
I was pretty sure that I just smelled like sweat and adrenaline.
“No complaining. You asked for witchcraft.”
I spread the honey over his shoe and the cuff of his pants. The honey glowed red as it went on, and it sealed the cuff of his pants to his shoe, leaving a thick, solid residue behind.
“What?” King leaned forward to examine where it looked like his shoe and pants had become one. “Is that reversible?”
“No.” I spread some more honey up the leg of his pants just to be sure. Then I gestured for him to lift his other leg.
His expression was something between annoyed and resigned. “This was a really nice suit.”
“Boo-hoo,” I said, spreading more honey when he switched legs. “You can either have your nice suit, and accept that you’re going to be crawling with spiders, or you can buy yourself a new suit and not worry about what a thousand spider bites are going to do to you.”
