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The spider-dude leaned over me to look down, probably worried about my sanity.
Join the club, mister.
The lantern he’d produced gave us a weak half dome of light, which showed the rock ground around me, him, in all his frightening-ass glory—all his eight spider legs and black shell with little orange flecks on it—and not much else.
Just cavernous dark all around.
I sat up slowly, getting my bearings, as much as I could—and then I picked up a handful of dirt from the cave floor and threw it at him. “Why did it take you so long? Where the fuck were you?”
He looked wounded at that, and drew back, as if I’d thrown something much heavier.
Then I remembered he couldn’t understand me, and he probably thought I was acting like a weirdo.
I didn’t care.
I guess I should’ve been glad my dad bothered to send anyone?
My kidnappers had been relatively distant, up until my father refused to pay.
Not once.
But twice.
Twice.
I knew it, because I heard them having conversations about it—it was impossible to not hear everything in that damn cavern we’d been in—and because afterwards each of them came up to shake my cage and yell at me like Iwasmy father at different times.
Wondering why I wasn’t worth anything to him.
Asking me pretty much the same things I asked myself most nights.
I curled into a ball on my side on the ground, same as I had when I was caged, angry tears leaking out of my tightly closed eyes.
And when I opened them again, the spider-dude had quietly crept up and lowered himself to be on the ground in front of me. His face was scary, he had fangs, he didn’treally have lips or ears, and his two eyes were all black, but somehow I sensed his concern.
“Just go away,” I told him.
Like I could somehow figure out where the hell I was on my own, in the dark, no less.
Then he proffered his hand out, showing me an electronic something-or-other on his broad palm.
While I didn’t understand, he had my attention. When he mimed putting it on, I realized what it was. “Your translator—broken?” I put my fists together and snapped something pretend in two.
He nodded at that.
“Well. Then I hope you’re good at charades,” I said and moved to sit up.
Eight
SLOANE
I stoppedbefore trying to stand. He’d wrapped my lower leg and ankle up in something like a cast, but I hadn’t done myself any favors by trying to run on it earlier.
It didn’t matter, though—because he didn’t want to go anywhere. He opened up his bag and starting bringing out supplies like we were about to have a picnic.
“Seriously?” I asked him, as he offered me a packet that looked like a Go-Gurt, but instead held bittersweet tasting goo. “Shouldn’t we be eating this on the road?”
I assumed my dad would want me returned as fast as possible...but what if this giant-spider-dude was a kidnapper too?
