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An insectoid screech of agony pierced the night sky, and the stench of burning tires filled my nostrils.
“Stay back,” Clay barked to someone I couldn’t see. “It’s still alive.”
A slight pressure on my foot warned me Colby had landed on my shoe to help.
“I don’t care.” Her sass was off the charts. “I have to protect Rue.”
A fuzzy hand slid under my pant leg until it touched skin. Had I not known Colby was there, I would have screamed, flopped over the railing, and risked the makara rather than discover what had tickled my ankle.
The white witch life was making me soft.
No self-respecting black witch would need to check her pants after this.
I could tell when the spider well and truly died, because Clay quit chanting “Kill it, kill it, kill it” under his breath.
What I couldn’t tell was if Colby had been successful in saving my face, or if I had melted it off and was so euphoric over killing the spider—the talking spider—that pain hadn’t set in yet. Adrenaline was a heck of a drug.
“We’re done here tonight,” Clay announced. “We’re going to a hotel, we’re all going to bathe in bleach, then we’re going to shower in bleach, then we’re going to skip dinner and eat dessert until we can’t move. Then, and only then, we’re going to pass out and forget this ever happened.”
For as long as I had known Clay, I had never realized he was an arachnophobe.
Then again, until that bulbous body descended toward Colby and me, I hadn’t realized I was one either.
Maybe we were situational arachnophobes. Or just in possession of common sense.
“I get Rue.”
Familiar arms enfolded me, lifting me against a heated chest that smelled of barbequed arachnid.
“Hang in there, Dollface.” Clay patted my knee. “We’re going to get that off you.”
So, I had flambéed the spider, but Colby had spared me from roasting myself.
Good to know.
“Hold on, Rue.” Colby brushed my elbow. “Try not to struggle.”
Until she mentioned it, I hadn’t noticed I was tugging at the web glued to my face.
“You don’t want to rip off your skin.” Clay sounded close to tossing his cookies. “Just hold still.”
The daemon loaded me in the back of the SUV then yielded to Asa, or so I thought, based on the lick of heat that flashed one side of my face. The SUV rocked when Clay joined me on the bench, but he didn’t tuck me against his side like always. This time, I was pretty sure he was plastered to his door.
The door on the opposite side of the vehicle.
As far away from me as he could get.
With a sigh, I settled in and tried not to feel like the living embodiment of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
* * *
Acetone worked wonders on the spiderweb’s stickier bits. Asa was the only one brave enough to use the supplies Clay bought from a drugstore before we hit the hotel to help me. He cut away the worst of the gunk with scissors then set my hands to soak while he daubed my face clean with cotton balls.
He worked with the intensity of a man given a task in which failure was not an option.
A slight crease appeared on his brow, and his bright eyes were narrowed in study. He didn’t say much—he wasn’t one for filling silences with empty words—but I did catch the slight curve of his lips now and again. Each time, he shook his head as if to rid himself of some fanciful idea.
“Are you laughing at me?”
