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All three stared at the spider-kin seer.
Liliana swallowed hard. She hated when people stared at her like that.
Sure, she had seen that kind of death, but she certainly didn’t want to see it again. It was a horrible way to die. Widow spider venom dissolved people while they were still alive.
Wait.
Widow spiders were spider-kin.
Every hair on her body stood on end.
Do they think I’m a widow spider?
Liliana rocked her weight onto the balls of her feet, her body ready in a moment to fight or run. She had seen enough of the detective and the sergeant’s minds and hearts, she didn’t want to hurt them. They were good people, but Liliana would not let anyone put her in a cage.
“Did you ask me those questions because you think I killed the soldiers?”
“You match the description of the woman we suspect, Madame Anna,” Detective Jackson said, with an apology in her tone. Her arms were uncrossed, and she studied Liliana. It was the first time since she arrived that the detective showed no sign of annoyance.
The man with the big shoes shrugged off Sergeant Giovanni’s grip.
His stare made her even more uncomfortable, like he was trying to tell her something, or ask her something, without words.
Was he some kind of Other?
Liliana put her hands over her face as if she were upset and peeked through her fingers at Peter Teague with the small, black third eyes by her tear ducts.
The man’s pale, freckled appearance hid another face, a sharp-fanged canine face, and an intense aura of feral energy, like the scent of musk mixed with the color of lightning.
Wolf-kin. Though he looked different from other werewolves she had known. His aura was filled with more feral power. Most wolves were dark-haired and of Eastern European or Native American descent. She had only seen red wolves in visions and nightmares.
Peter Teague must be a Celtic wolf, one of the mercenaries who hunted down dangerous Others and killed them for money. Like the pack who killed her parents.
Terror hit her in the gut like a kick.
He was on the hunt for a spider-kin killer. Liliana was the only spider-kin in Fayetteville. His cold blue eyes watched her intently.
Ice water crawled over her skin.
Not this time. This time, I am not a powerless child.
Liliana threw her scarf in the werewolf’s face and bolted through the door.
The wolf lunged for her.
She leapt over her couch.
His fingertips brushed her ankle, then his belly hit the wooden back of her couch. Air whoofed out as if he’d been punched.
Ha!
No one knew her house like she did, and no human or wolf was more agile than a spider-kin.
A pirouette on one toe spun her around the corner to her kitchen. She thumbed the switch on the room-bot. The waist-tall device with its long extendable arms trundled into the wolf’s path.
Peter Teague tripped over her bot and face-planted on her tile kitchen floor. It sounded painful.
Liliana couldn’t help but wince in sympathy as she slammed the back door shut behind her. It gave her a few precious seconds on her back porch, out of the wolf’s sight.
