Page 53 of Magic for Nothing

There was a pause. Then, sweet but still muffled, Umeko said, “I try so hard not to involve the carnival, but you’re so new. You’re so fresh. No one will miss you. No one will think it’s strange that you’ve chosen to move on. You’ve made poor choices, little girl. Very poor choices indeed.”

Something about that voice told me to get the fuck out of there. That wasn’t an option, but I could at least back up a little. It was the right call. The door of the RV slammed open so fast that it must have been kicked, whistling through the space where I’d been standing before it hit the limits of its hinges and hit the side of the vehicle, hard enough to leave a dent. And Umeko emerged.

She wasn’t the beautiful fire dancer anymore—or maybe she was, only more so. Her face was still lovely, if somewhat distorted by the cluster of additional eyes that had opened in a shallow arc across her forehead. The reason for her muffled voice was harder to ignore: huge, vicious-looking mandibles had pushed out from between her red-painted lips, pulling them into a perpetual grimace and baring her still-human teeth in what I could only see as a threat display. Her arms were gone. So was her clothing. Her torso was exposed, small-breasted and sinuous, forming a graceful line down to the pendulous bulb of her spider-self.

Spiders can be beautiful. The spider that was Umeko was beautiful. It was vast, elegant, and sleekly white, more like a black widow or an orb weaver than a tarantula, with long, thickly-jointed legs that tapered to blood-red points. She moved like a dancer. She was a dancer. She was just something more than merely that.

I am enough of a nerd that my first thought was “drider.” My second thought was “oh, shit.” And my third thought was “I am in range of those legs.” I leaped backward a bare second before her front two legs slammed down on the place where I’d been standing, hard enough that they buried themselves easily six inches into the ground, piercing and penetrating it.

“You should have backed off,” she hissed, and reached for me again.

I wasn’t there anymore. I might not be wearing skates or waving pom-poms, but one of the few things roller derby and cheerleading have in common is the way they teach their participants to dodge. I’ve saved myself some expensive dental work and serious injuries by dodging the oncoming bodies of my teammates, and while I wasn’t quite ready to suit up and cheer next to Umeko, that didn’t mean I was going to stand still while she hit me.

“What are you doing with that kid?” I demanded, pulling one of the knives from inside my glittery candy girl’s uniform.

Umeko sneered. “None of your concern,” she said, and lashed out with two of her legs, forcing me to duck. Too late, I remembered that most spiders can balance on four legs when they need to; two more of her limbs were waiting for me, latching around my ankle and yanking me to the ground.

I’d been hoping to get through this without bloodshed, but that only worked when everyone was playing by the same rules. I flung the knife I’d been holding. It flew straight and clean, embedding itself in the central joint of one of the legs holding me in place. Umeko shrieked, a high-pitched, inhuman sound, and dropped me, even as she stabbed at my chest with two more of her legs. I rolled aside and scrambled to my feet, readying two more knives, mentally running down the lists of giant spider and spider-esque cryptids.

In the end, there was only one thing that she could be—one thing that matched both her behavior and her description.

“You’re a Jorōgumo, aren’t you?” I demanded, dancing back as I tried to get out of her range. “I didn’t know there were any of you outside of Japan. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to eat,” she snarled, and struck at me again. She was fast. She was also in pain, and not expecting me to be nearly this much trouble. For the moment, I was keeping ahead of her. That wasn’t going to last. I needed to end this, or she was going to end me.

My family is not the Covenant. Our unwillingness to kill cryptids who haven’t yet committed murder is part of the distinction. “Where’s the boy?”

Umeko’s smile was rendered terrible by the mandibles still forcing her lips apart. “He was delicious,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll taste even better.”

She lunged for me, for the first time putting her entire body into the motion, and she was fast, even faster than I’d thought she was. So fast there was no way I was going to be able to roll out of the way this time. I braced myself for impact—

—only to have something slam into her from the side, knocking her body off course. She went down hard, legs akimbo, armless torso sliding across the uneven ground of the bone yard. She shrieked, another inhuman sound. It hurt my ears. I staggered to my feet, filling my hands with knives as I struggled for my balance.

The something that had slammed into Umeko seemed to realize I was there. It turned toward me, eyes wide and surprised. It was a tall, sinewy figure, with a tail almost as long as its body, and a face that was faintly simian, somewhere between the average man on the street and an extra from Planet of the Apes. Its feet were bare, which only made sense: they were more than halfway to being an extra pair of hands. It blinked. I blinked.

“Sam?” I asked, finding my voice.

“Annie?” he said, the word sounding more than halfway to “oh, shit.” Unlike his face, his voice hadn’t changed.

That wasn’t the only reason to be concerned. I felt my own eyes widen, and shouted, “Get down!” a bare second before two of Umeko’s limbs scythed through the air where Sam was standing. She was fast, and somehow he was faster: what should have been a killing blow turned into a wide miss as he dashed away, winding up standing next to me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“She took a townie boy back to her trailer. Didn’t seem right, so I followed,” I said, keeping a careful eye on Umeko, who was tensing for another strike. Her slide across the bone yard had opened a wide, bloody scrape in her side and limbless shoulder; there was a chance the pain would distract her from killing us, but, really, I just expected it to make her angry. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s my show!”

Umeko struck at us. Sam leaped straight up. I dove to the side, only to find myself lifted into the air as he wrapped his tail around my waist and jerked me into the air. I squeaked surprise before I got my wits back, and flung a knife at the off-balance form of Umeko, skewering another of her joints. She roared. I landed, hard, on the roof of a nearby RV.

“Warn a girl next time!” I snapped, readying another knife.

“Me warn you?! You’re the one chucking knives at a giant spider!”

“Jorōgumo,” I said primly. Umeko was back on her feet, beginning to clickety-clack her way around the RV where we were standing. “Japanese origin, also known as ‘the binding bride.’ They’re a type of therianthrope. They feed on humans.”

“Uh,” said Sam. I glanced at him. He was watching me with open concern. It was surprisingly easy to read his expression, despite the bone and muscle changes that accompanied his transformation. “How do you know all this? Shouldn’t you be running and screaming right now?”

“Running and screaming comes later, after we don’t die,” I said. “It would be a little self-indulgent right now.”