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Chapter 1
Lunch With A Rabbit
The bloody image of two young women in military uniform being shot in the back of the head jolted Liliana awake. She sat up abruptly, her heart pounding, a pointless “No!” forming on her lips.
Her fourth eyes that saw things in other times and places were already open, the source of the ugly dream.
Who are they?
But her mental question did not elicit any new visions, just a repeat of the same horrors. She needed more information to have any chance of saving the women. Her fourth vision showed her nothing near them but a forest, trees, and grass. There was a pine leaning on an oak tree, and a bush with lovely white flowers beneath it. The oak tree had no leaves, so it must have been winter. The plant life looked like the local forests, but that same kind of forest could be anywhere for hundreds of miles around. North Carolina had a lot of forests, especially since paper, and for the most part, wood, had become obsolete.
The two women both had faces in her vision that shimmered with Otherness. They were not Normal humans, but that was all Liliana could tell about them.
Death overwhelmed her fourth vision under the best of circumstances. When she slept, she didn’t have as much control over her vision as she did when awake. She had no idea why the two women she didn’t even know were suddenly in her mind, or if the vision was of the future or of the past. Oddly, it had a trace of the overbright reflections of the future mixed with the muted color tones of the past.
They can’t die both in the past and in the future.
It made no sense.
She got up, feeling tired and achy, and determined not to let it stop her.
Liliana had taken a sick day after nearly being killed a couple days before. Much to her chagrin, she had been forced to take a second sick day by the inability to open her fourth eyes to see the past and future without waves of dizziness from her head injury. She could not get paid for her job as Madame Anna Sees All when she couldn’t open the large swirly pair of spikder-kin eyes on her forehead to see anything.
The awful dream told the spider-kin seer one important thing: her fourth eyes were once again fully functional.
That meant she could get back to work. Which was good. She hadn’t cancelled the appointments for the day, hoping that would be the case. Spider-kin healed fast and cancelling appointments was bad for business.
Liliana removed all the bandages and examined her injuries in the mirror. When she closed her six spider eyes, leaving only her first, human eyes open, her thick dark hair hid the tiny crinkles where they closed. The image in the mirror looked just like a petite young Normal. It was good camouflage. Normals outnumbered Others a hundred to one and tended toward violence when faced with “monsters.” She nodded at the image. She could pass.
Her face and body still clearly showed that she’d been in a battle recently, though. The gash on her cheek looked particularly ugly. The wide, jagged slice made by a widow spider’s spiked limb was closed but still a livid purple with mottled green and yellow old bruising over that side of her face. At least Doctor Nudd had taped the gash shut. That helped it heal more cleanly and quickly.
All of Liliana’s small cuts from her and Pete’s recent battle had healed to the point that only raised pink welts were visible. The swelling on the back of her head was much reduced. She could rotate her neck and open all eight of her eyes without her head feeling like it would fall off.
The only real pain was from her shoulder wound. She supported one arm with the other as she carefully tested how much she could move it. She closed all her eyes as a wave of sadness came with the pain of moving her arm. Stella, the widow spider, had stabbed clear through her shoulder, and Liliana had used that leverage on her limb to drag the brave warrior to her death over the side of a tall building.
Under other circumstances, she and Stella might have been friends. Liliana mourned the death of a fellow spider-kin doing what she must to protect her nest sisters. But if she had not killed Stella, the widow spider would have killed Liliana, so… She sighed. She killed only when she had to, as all three of her parents taught. As long as that was true, she would still find the image in the mirror acceptable, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be sad about the necessity.
As she dressed, she cheered herself with thoughts of the people she’d met over the last few days. Doctor Peter Teague, a civilian bio scientist with the Criminal Investigation Division for Fort Liberty, and a deadly Celtic wolf-kin, accused her of murder and tried to kill her before becoming the closest friend she’d had in years. Siobhan, the little person and flower sprite who owned the custom weapons shop Emerald Arms, a few doors down from her own shop, had also tried to kill her. Then the sprite helped her and Pete survive their battle with the widow spiders, the real killers Pete mistook her for. The unseelie oak goblin, Doctor Nudd, had also tried to kill her, but he made up for that later by loaning her his homemade warm sweater and healing her injuries after the battle.
She had an odd way of meeting people lately.
On the plus side, she had been getting out more, and her life could no longer be described as either boring or lonely.
Opening her fourth eyes, the swirling opalescent lavender and teal ones set above her eyebrows, she took a quick look forward in time to check the weather like she did every morning. It would get chilly and rainy again later. Winter in Fayetteville tended to be sunshiny one day and cold and wet the next. She added cozy purple tights with her black leotard under her usual flowing, brightly colored, homemade skirt. She chose a blouse made of warm velvet scarves with wide, drapey sleeves like mini-wings that went all the way to the wrist. They would keep her arms warm without restricting the natural weaponry hidden in her forearms.
Her shoulder wound would take a week before she could go without a sling. She put the sling on her arm and frowned. The medical sling Doctor Nudd gave her was a plain, dull light blue canvas. It did not go well with the sapphire blue velvet top, and the skirt with glittery silver bead trim that complimented it.
Liliana took the sling off, chose a scarf from her chest of drawers, and tied it around her neck. She slipped her arm into it and looked in the mirror again.
The leafy-green, floral patterned silk scarf held her arm without pulling on her sore shoulder, and it looked much nicer than the plain canvas one. She nodded with satisfaction and walked into the converted dining room that served as her place of business, Madame Anna Sees All. She closed the door that led to the rest of her house and checked that the crystal ball was where it belonged, in the exact center of the round table in the middle of the room.
She had scheduled multiple appointments back-to-back, far more than she normally would in a day, to catch up. The first knock on the business door came only minutes later. She welcomed the pair of young wood nymphs who entered in a cloud of giggles and lilac perfume.
Bowing, she waved her arms to gesture them in, and chanted, “Madame Anna sees all. Pay me what you feel is fair for truth that cannot be seen by other eyes. I see what is, what has been, and what might be. Ask and the truth shall be yours.”
Her first appointments went reasonably well. Everyone insisted on asking what had happened to her shoulder and her face. The gash on her cheek from Stella’s last attack was the first thing everyone noticed. It didn’t particularly bother Liliana until they mentioned it, unlike her shoulder injury that restricted her movements, or the persistent itch from the gash on her ribs.
When she answered, “I was stabbed by a giant spider,” the nymph girls laughed as if she made a joke, even though they were Others. They knew that such things could exist.
