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The goblin rolled his eyes and grumbled. “You want the sweater off my back now. What’s next?” He pulled the thick sweater off over his head and held it out to Liliana. Pete might not be able to see her, but the nocturnal goblin and the sprite with her eerie glowing green eye could see her fine. A soft, mechanical whirring sound came from the eye as Siobhan shifted focus to the spider-kin’s new location.
Liliana took the sweater at her arm’s extreme reach and hopped back from the goblin warily. She pulled on the garment, still warmed by the goblin’s body. The loose red and brown sweater swallowed her petite form, falling clear to her knees. It was heavenly, all soft, thick yarn with no scratchy labels. She pushed the sleeves up to free her hands.
“Thank you,” she whispered. That was an easy social rule to remember, to say thank you when someone handed you something, but it meant something more. While the goblin grumbled, she had seen in his heart he was glad to give her warmth, glad he could help someone who had protected his friend so fiercely.
When she glanced at the sprite, she saw a reluctant nod of respect. “Well fought, spider-kin.” Guilt colored the sprite’s inner face. Siobhan set the wolf on her trail, and now she regretted it.
Time for Liliana to go. She jumped, caught a line, but she had a strange desire for Pete and his friends to see her leave.
She scrambled up high in a tree and dove onto a line attached to the tree where Pete was tied. She swung around, circling the tree on that long line in a tightening arc until her feet touched the tree trunk itself, just above Pete’s head. She leapt then, caught another line, and swung into a high-flying flip as if from a trapeze full in the spotlight of the pistol’s LED. Her precise landing on a branch finished it off. She suppressed an urge to bow.
Behind her, she heard laughter and the wolf’s voice. “Now, you’re just showing off.”
Grinning, she ran along the branch as if it were as wide as a road.
Like a squirrel, she leapt from branch to branch, using the lines she left on her way there to swing across the wider gaps. When she dropped down to the sandy path, she opened her fourth eyes. She wanted to see what would happen in that little patch of woods after she left.
The goblin, Doctor Nudd, finished cutting away her webbing to free Pete. The red wolf knelt to collect his weapons.
“She bit you!” Siobhan said, as she noticed the tiny puncture wounds on the wolf’s shoulder. “Pete.” The little Fae reached up to touch the marks. “Are you okay?” Her sweet voice shook with emotion.
Pete patted the sprite’s shoulder. “I feel fine, Siobhan. It doesn’t even hurt.”
“Lucky you,” the goblin grumbled.
“Lucky?” the sprite piped, voice gone even higher with panic. “He’s been bitten by a spider-kin. He could die!”
“He’s been bitten by a spider seer.” The goblin snorted a laugh. “There are people who would pay a fortune for that privilege.”
Pete’s brows drew together. “Why so much? There are a lot of drugs on the street with a longer lasting high.”
“The high is just a side effect,” Doctor Nudd said. “Do you have any old injuries that aren’t fully healed?”
“My shoulder and ribs still ache from where that troll tossed me around.”
“How do they feel now?”
Pete stood, rolled his arm, took a deep breath, and his face lit with wonder. “No pain at all. I feel great.”
Doctor Nudd shrank down from a towering oak goblin to his gangly human form. The tall, slender man scratched his impressively bulbous nose and nodded. “Spider seer venom used to be available in Other markets back in the early 1900s and before. It can cure nearly any illness or injury, but it was rare even then and came at a high price. I haven’t seen any for sale anywhere in the last, oh, seventy years.” His bushy eyebrows drew together, and he scratched his chin. “Hmm. Maybe eighty or more. I thought the spider seers were extinct.”
“That is so class!” Siobhan said. “Think I could get the spider to bite me? My left wing aches something fierce when it rains.”
“Class?” Pete clenched his jaws, and anger touched his voice. “I could have killed her, Siobhan.”
The flower fae wrinkled her pert nose. “Yeah, she’s not likely to be in the mood to do me any favors after I sicced a red wolf on her.”
“You told me she was the only spider-kin who fit the description and was almost certainly the killer. She’s not even the right kind of spider. She said I should talk to a woman called Lady Daphne in Raleigh.”
“Daphne?” Siobhan said. “The toff that runs the Mirror Club? She couldn’t possibly be the killer. Madame Anna fits the description you gave me. Daphne’s not even close.”
“But you knew there were other spider-kin in North Carolina?” the wolf pushed.
“Well, right, yeah. Daphne’s a spider too, but she’s not petite and slender by anyone’s measure.”
“The only Lady Daphne I ever heard of was Lady Daphne Fairchilde,” said Doctor Nudd. “The rather notorious widow spider who was exiled in 1943 after she seduced Vita Sackville-West and three prominent young noblewomen.”
“Yeah, that’s her,” the little sprite said, nodding. “She lives in Raleigh now.”
