Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
A breeze rustled the leaves of bamboo as King used alchemy, trying to pull the chandelier down. He clearly saw that I had the spider penned in and knew that it was our best chance of getting it. I heard him grunt and realized that he might need help, and with the bamboo tall and blocking my view of him, I couldn’t tell.
The bamboo rustled and I shuddered. I could stay here, all the way across the room as King squished the spider, but that didn’t solve the problem that eventually we would need to also kill the baby spiders. Unless we just left it for McCallum to clean up.
I rather enjoyed the image of McCallum trying to clean up this mess. He’d probably hire some gardener to come in and prune away all the bamboo that was now growing in his beautiful floor. The poor gardener, expecting to work on the immaculate yard outside, would be brought in and have to face this forest filled with spiders and shadows and darkness.
It was a small bit of vengeance. But it wasn’t enough to satisfy my craving for blood and fire and the sort of pain that would leave McCallum with the same rage in his soul that I felt.
Between the panic at the spider, and some weird emotion that was blooming in my chest from seeing King, I no longer felt that red hot fury that I had when I first came to MacCallum’s house. Instead, I was so focused on my own survival, I didn’t have time for anything else.
The bamboo had grown all the way around the spider, each thread from the long-forgotten blanket forming a tall stalk. More of the baby spiders were dropping into the forest, and I realized that if I could get all of them in, we might have a way of killing them all at once.
I needed to get King in on my idea.
Only he was all the way across the long room, and between us was a forest filled with spiders. I could get through this, I told myself.
With the mass of bamboo between us, there was no way that King could see me, so I let myself use some more of the magic that he would have to arrest me for.
Touching the air in front of me, I felt it begin to spin, wanting to whip back into a windstorm. After a moment of coaxing, it settled, and I began weaving the light.
Luckily for me, between the bamboo and the hour, there wasn’t much light left. The chandelier had been casting long shadows, but when King had started working on it, the bulbs had begun flickering. I coaxed the light until it surrounded me, making me invisible to a glance.
It wasn’t even close to my best work, as that would take more time than I was comfortable spending. But when I opened my eyes, and glanced at myself in the reflection on one of the bar bottles, I was invisible.
Slowly, I crept through the forest.
The spiders moved with unnatural dexterity, given that they were each the size of my hand. I tried not to make a sound, but it was a close thing when I watched one drop on top of another, tearing apart its sibling with sociopathic speed.
Slow and steady, Ferro , I reminded myself. There was no sense in surviving this so far only to get bitten by one of these creatures.
I found myself face-to-face with one of the massive spiders, spread out in the center of its web. Slowly, I breathed in and out, although all I wanted to do was let out one of those primal screams that you could probably build a whole tent around at Burning Man.
The spider turned, searching, as though it could sense me. But I was invisible in every spectrum of light. After a moment it moved to the side of its web, waiting for its prey. Ducking low, I crawled underneath, slithering on my stomach on the smooth wooden floor. The bamboo hadn’t been alive long enough to drop any leaves or overgrowth, so at least I wasn’t crawling through splinters in the making.
I felt something land on my back and begin to crawl across, eight pointed legs that felt like the world’s most hesitant masseuse. Eventually, it completed its trek, and when I was sure I felt the last leg leave my back I let myself release a muffled gasp into my arm.
Then I was moving again, low enough that I was under most of the webbing. Occasionally I did have to reroute when a particularly industrious spider had thrown a web so wide and so tall that it could’ve downed an elephant. Finally, finally I was on the other side.
I hadn’t even noticed I was passing by the massive mama spider until I was suddenly right next to it. It was trying to move through the bamboo, but its feet were too big, the bamboo too thick to let it through. Attempting to climb the entryway wall, it kept slipping down, missing its three legs. I wanted to feel sorry for it, but I knew the instant it saw me it would try to eat me, so I let the unhappy swirl of guilt go.
Eight black eyes swung to me. Even though I knew it couldn’t see me, I was pretty sure if I got any closer, I would get torn apart like the spiders making war in the forest. On tiptoe, I inched away until the spider couldn’t see me.
I released the glamour, and left the shadows like a fish darting from beneath a coral reef. King was covered in sweat, his white shirt damp and his mouth moving as he drew some large alchemist circle on the ground.
I wasn’t familiar enough with the practice to even try and guess what he was doing, just that would help us in the long run.
When he paused for breath, I said, “I have an idea.”
“Burn down the forest you just grew?” King said.
“Got it in one,” I said. “Crush mama spider, and then we burn her babies.”
“Already working on it,” King said. “How did you grow a forest?”
I looked out at it from his perspective. What did he know about witchcraft? Did he have any witch friends? Was he one of those progressive alchemists who said at parties, Some of my closest friends are witches ? No, not an alchemist like King.
He might know witches socially, but I bet that he didn’t talk magic with them, because he didn’t like getting in arguments with people in public.
“I had some seeds in my bag. I’m a kitchen witch, so —”
I didn’t even need to finish the sentence, King was already nodding. Kitchen witches, with their reputations for hasty and creative spellwork, would get me out of a lot of problems.
“The bamboo is flammable?” King asked.
“Crush mama spider first,” I said.
King shook his head, “No, I want to burn down the forest first, get her —”
“— distracted,” I finished, nodding. “That’s a good idea.”
The whole time we had been talking, King had been drawing. I glanced down at his work, but my understanding of alchemy circles was limited to kindergarten-level spells.
“Is this going to burn down the rest of the house?” I examined the walls, the house beyond us. It was far enough from its neighbors that the firefighters would be able to put it out before it spread. However, as a Californian, I wasn’t much of a fan of fire at all.
“I think I can limit it to this room, as long as the bamboo aren’t growing runners under the floor?”
He glanced at me, and I read in his gaze curiosity more than suspicion. He clearly didn’t understand witchcraft any more than I understood alchemy.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Nonetheless, I pulled some of my magic back from the bamboo, and felt it begin to wither. It was drying up, its root system disintegrating into nothing. “You should work quickly.”
King snorted at my command, but after examining the alchemy circle for a moment he stepped back and pressed his palm to the outer circle. It glowed green, and when his eyes opened, they looked like two lights in the darkness.
I felt myself drawn towards him, a moth to those bright flames. He was powerful. I hadn’t ever seen an alchemist with as much power as he had… Well, ever. With that much power, what was he doing playing the cop?
I didn’t have time to worry about it, because the flames were instantaneous.
King might not be sure that his spell would keep itself to the room, but I could be. I drew on the water I still felt swirling out of McCallum’s sink. It puddled on the floor, sucked up by the thirsty bamboo. With a soft hum of song, I coaxed it to circle the bamboo forest, a swirling whirlpool of water that lapped at my feet. Anytime a spark dropped from one of the tall bamboo shoots, it was instantly doused in the water.
My eyes glanced at King, expecting him to question it, but his eyes were already on the massive spider, which was now panicking as flames surrounded it.
It was rearing back, circling, trying to get out. King looked up, and began chanting. The chandelier above the spider crashed to the ground, and our panicking, murderous spider was now a pancake.
Not one that I wanted to eat, no matter the fact that I hadn’t had any food since lunch almost eighteen hours ago.
The flames were reaching higher, as the fire ate through everything. I drew in more magic, so that the bamboo became brittle, collapsing in on itself.
I squinted at it. I could feel the heat from the flames, it stretched my skin, drying me out. But there was something else that was bugging me.
“Did you design this fire to only burn bamboo?” I asked.
“Yeah,” King said, panting. “That’s what took so long.”
“There’s an alchemy circle to just burn bamboo?” One of the downsides of alchemy is that the spells have to be memorized. Unlike kitchen witchcraft, which can take almost anything on hand to do what you need in incredibly messy fashion, alchemy is so specific that an alchemist can spend years memorizing even the most basic spells.
Witchcraft might be jazz, but alchemy is someone playing scales. Everything exactly the same, over and over and over again. On the other hand, with alchemy you’re much more likely to get the end result that you want with considerably more precision.
Still, a spell just to burn bamboo?
King’s face looked flushed, and I wanted to reach out and check his forehead to make sure that it was just from the heat of the fire and he wasn’t experiencing any magic loss symptoms.
“I may have made some adjustments to a circle,” he said.
My eyebrows shot up. Like I said, alchemists don’t adjust their spells. There is no such thing as creating your own spellwork on the fly in alchemy. As far as I knew, some alchemists spent their lives creating a new spell. And they did it in these lab-like settings where no harm could come to anyone if it went wrong.
“Well, it’s definitely working,” I said. The bamboo forest was now a charred mess, and it looked like none of the spiders had been able to escape.
We heard sirens, and I saw King’s shoulders slumped in relief.
“What took them so long?” I asked.
“Smith must not have called them before we went in,” King said.
“Well, it’s a lot easier to execute an illegal search without a dozen cops on hand,” I offered.
King sighed, but didn’t try to defend his web-encased partner.
Someone pounded on the door, and before King could answer it, there was a shattering sound as someone took a battering ram to the door. Lots of guns and shouting came next, and, in the end, the fire department came in to put out the last of the flames.
I had settled myself at the edge of the scene, trying to figure out the best way to escape before someone asked me about the magic I had been using.
Then, King was in front of me, offering his hand. I gripped it, his palm warm and solid in my own. As I stood, I realized that we were closer than I had thought.
“You need another kiss for luck?” I expected King to smile, but his expression was serious.
“Are you going to go see one of the EMTs about that?” He gestured to my head, where one of McCallum’s cronies had hit me.
“I think I’m going to just head home,” I said.
King’s face went tight and then he was spinning me and pressing me up against the nearest wall, dragging both hands behind me as he began reading me my Miranda rights.
“What?” I sputtered “King, what are you doing?”
Finishing the spiel, King said, “I’m arresting you for breaking into McCallum’s house.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. Glancing around us, I realized that there were at least two other cops who’d seen what he was doing, and were providing silent backup.
“He needs to get seen by a doctor before we book him,” King said. His hand was tight on my arm.
“I can’t believe this,” I muttered as King and the two uniformed cops talked logistics.
Twenty six hours later, I’d been seen by the hospital, released back into police custody and bailed out by my sister. Laurel was standing outside of the police station, talking to the lawyer she’d hired to go toe-to-toe with the DA.
In the end, all the charges had been dropped, since the paperwork filed was so bad that even I could see the gaping holes in it. How a guy as precise as King could be so bad at paperwork was beyond me.
“Hey,” Laurel said, offering me over a large paper coffee cup. I accepted it and drank. “Ted was just explaining that the DA dropped the charges.”
“Thanks,” I said, raising my cup to him. “I appreciate it.”
“Trust me, in my work for the coven, this is the least odd thing I’ve had to do,” he said, moving towards the parking lot. “Laurel, I’ll talk to you soon.”
Laurel and I began meandering down the street, towards her car. My foster sister didn’t say anything at first. I knew that something was coming, but before she could figure out which lecture she was gearing up to give me, someone called my name from behind us.
King was jogging down the steps, looking exactly as tired as I felt. “Ferro.”
“You going to arrest me for jaywalking?” I said.
“You did break in—I just wanted to make sure you were okay to leave. The doctor cleared you?” He moved as though he was going to touch my head again, but Laurel moved in front of me.
“Detective King, is it?” Her voice was chilly. “If you’re going to harass my brother again, I’m going to call back our lawyer.”
“No, that’s not—” He nodded at me. “Just glad you’re okay.”
I shook my head and turned away, tugging Laurel with me. “C’mon. You can buy me breakfast.”
She followed behind me, glaring over her shoulder darkly.
“You know I can call the coven lawyer. Is he going to be a problem?”
Glancing back, I saw King looking almost forlorn on the sidewalk. His expression was that of pure want . What he could possibly want from me, I had no idea.
“No,” I said, turning back to her. “I don’t think he will be.”