“What swell people,” I deadpanned. The tingling in my feet was fading. I sat up in the bed, beginning to massage my right wrist with my left hand. It had been a while since I’d been hurling knives with quite that combination of speed and force. “I don’t know much about Jorōgumo, but it’s possible they have a sort of . . . larval stage where they can pass for ordinary humans. A lot of yōkai go through something like that. So maybe she looked human for so long because she sort of was.”
Emery’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know so much if you’re just a girl from a carnival that got wiped out by wasps?”
“We had a family of kawauso with the carnival for a while. The kids were too young to hold human form very long, so everyone sort of knew, even if most people pretended it was just a really weird otter show. I like to talk to people. I learned some stuff about yōkai. Inasmuch as you can learn stuff about yōkai that applies to more than one type. I mean, the word is sort of Japanese for ‘cryptid,’ but with a lot of other cultural stuff appended.”
Sam and Emery were both staring at me. Well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Umeko was pretty nasty to me, and I remembered she had a boyfriend, so when I saw her leaving with a townie boy who didn’t even look like he’d graduated from high school, I figured I’d follow and make sure she understood that the night after a death on the grounds was not the time to go messing around.” I paused, and my next question was laden with genuine concern: “Is he okay? Were we fast enough?”
“He is,” said Emery. “We think she had some sort of paralytic in her saliva. She put him to sleep. He was about half-webbed when we opened the RV.” She looked away at the end, eyes darting to the side. Not toward Sam, either: she was avoiding us both.
I took a deep breath and asked, in as gentle a tone as I could manage, “He wasn’t the only one, was he?”
“No,” said Emery, looking back to me. “There were five others, including her boyfriend, Pablo. I didn’t even notice that he was gone. He’d been webbed up in there for so long that he’d become a mummy; we had to identify him by his tattoos. I don’t know what we’re going to do with the bodies. We can’t dump them, or someone will connect them to the carnival. But that boy you saw her take . . . all the others were about the same age. She took teenagers. Their parents must be worried sick.”
“The carnival is still the common factor if you find a way to dump them.” I hated those words. I hated them as they were leaving my mouth, and I hated them even more when I saw them strike home. Emery’s lips turned down in a pained frown that had nothing to do with disapproval, and everything to do with understanding what I was about to say. “Maybe the local police departments will put together that the carnival was in town when the kids disappeared and maybe not, but Umeko is dead, and she’s not going to be taking any more kids. But if they’re all found in the same place . . .”
“Then people are going to ask questions, and we’re not going to have any good answers for them,” said Emery grimly. “They have to be runaways. If they’re found, we’re painting a target on our backs, and we won’t survive whatever comes after.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I could spin this. I could tell the Covenant Umeko had acted alone, and that the rest of the carnival hadn’t known they were harboring a monster; I could tell them I’d killed her myself. Although . . . “What did you do with Umeko’s body?”
“Shoved her in the RV with her victims, so she wouldn’t scare the shit out of people when they came to see what all the screaming was about,” said Sam.
“Language,” said Emery.
“Sorry, Grandma.” He ducked his head, tail twisting around his ankle in a gesture that I immediately translated as shuffling his toes in embarrassment.
“What are you?” I blurted.
“Um,” he said. “Human, on my mother’s side. Fūri, on my father’s.” He looked at Emery for support.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to ask such blunt questions?” she asked.
“He’s a monkey, and a giant spider-woman just tried to kill us both,” I said. “I think the trauma excuses a little rudeness.”
“I don’t mind, Grandma,” said Sam. “She didn’t scream or freak out or anything when I showed up. That’s pretty cool. I’m okay if she wants to ask questions.”
Oh, I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to ask about a hundred questions, and then a couple hundred more follow-ups. yōkai are plentiful in Japan and China, but not many have made the move to North America, which has its own cryptids, not all of whom are friendly to newcomers. The name fūri was familiar in that “I probably saw this once in a book” sense, but it didn’t come with any details.
“Maybe later,” I said, and pushed back the blankets, swinging my feet around to the floor. I was wearing someone else’s flannel pajamas, easily three sizes too big for me. They had a drawstring waist, pulled tight to keep them from falling down. That was a nice touch. I leaned down to roll up the cuffs, running my fingers along the skin of my ankles in the process. It was red and slightly inflamed, like I’d managed to acquire a bad sunburn in the middle of the night.
“You’re going to peel,” said Emery.
“Probably,” I agreed, and stood. My legs supported me. Since that was their job, I was pleased. “Did you throw away my shoes?”
“They were sort of ruined,” said Sam. “You got giant spider-lady guts everywhere.”
“Yeah, well, I was out of knives and options,” I said. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Are you going somewhere?” asked Emery.
I nodded grimly. “Jorōgumo don’t eat much in their spider forms, which is how any of them have managed to survive. I don’t know if they’re cross-fertile with humans, but some therianthropes are—”
“Like Dad,” said Sam.
“—and since her boyfriend was her first victim, there might be an egg sac in there.” I shook my head. “You said Umeko was with you for years, seeming totally human the entire time. So maybe Jorōgumo have babies the human way. But they could just as easily hatch, and I’d rather we found that out now, instead of hearing the babies start to scream when we set the RV on fire.”
“Who said anything about setting the RV on fire?” asked Emery.
“Do you have a better way to get rid of a dead spider-woman? We can’t bury her. Not after Savannah. Digging a big hole would be deeply suspicious. A small burn, on the other hand, if we wait to do it until we’ve moved on, and we control it properly, looks like an accident. Spread out the trauma. Save some for the next town.”
“I really wish that didn’t make sense,” said Emery.
“Believe me, so do I,” I said. “Do you have a pair of shoes I can borrow?”
“My shoes wouldn’t fit you,” she said. “Sam, can you please take Annie back to her own room so that she can get some clothes?”
“Sure, Grandma,” said Sam, and crossed the room to where I was standing, and picked me up. My size didn’t seem to be a problem for him: he just hooked an arm under my knees and hoisted me high.
“I can walk!” I protested.
“But you won’t,” he said, and walked out of the room.
Sam and Emery lived in a large enough RV to give them each a private bedroom, which meant it also had a living room larger than the entire available living space in my RV. Sam carried me past the couch and dining table before using his tail to open the door, stepping through and into the bone yard. The sun was up. People were moving around. If any of them were surprised by the appearance of a six-foot-tall monkey man with an armful of pajama-clad human female, they didn’t show it; a few of them even waved. Sam was apparently a common sight around here.
Which meant . . . “Were you so snappy with me when I showed up because I meant you had to stay human-looking?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Sam. He hopped down from the steps, absorbing the three-fo
ot drop easily. He crouched. “Hold on tight.”
“Hold on tight for—ahhh!”
Being a monkey person didn’t just make Sam faster and a little bit taller: it apparently also converted his legs to some sort of piston system, granting him the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. In one jump, we were on top of the RV. In another, we were on the next RV over, moving fast enough that it took my breath away—at least at first.
By the third jump, I was starting to enjoy myself.
By the fourth jump I was thinking about what he could do in a more urban setting, or a proper jungle, or really anywhere that would have things for him to grab and swing from, rather than leapfrogging across a relatively horizontal plane. He was getting some serious air on his jumps. He could have done a lot more with mechanical assistance.
“You okay?” he asked, after I’d been silent for a few seconds.
“Whee!” I replied.
Sam blinked. “Okay, holy shit, you’re weird.”
“Never said I wasn’t,” I said blithely.
Sam hit the roof of a large RV before hopping down to ground level and gesturing grandly with his tail to the door of my room. “You are delivered. Mostly. I’ll carry you in. I don’t want you telling my grandmother I didn’t get you all the way home.”
“That’s very sporting of you.”
“You haven’t seen my grandmother mad yet.” Sam walked up the steps to my RV, again opening the door with his tail. It was a neat trick, and neatly enough performed that I didn’t think to warn him about what he was walking into.
The mice were well-trained. Mindy and I had spoken at length about why it was important for her to stay concealed from the Covenant, and Mork came from a colony that wasn’t as accustomed to being seen as the home colony. But that didn’t mean they’d be able to resist one of the Priestesses being carried in by a man who clearly wasn’t human. There was no reason for stealth in that situation. And in fact . . .
“HAIL!” shouted the mice, as soon as the door was open. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for with enthusiasm. “HAIL THE RETURN OF THE PRECISE PRIESTESS! HAIL THE COMING OF THE VERY LARGE MONKEY!”
Sam stopped. Sam blinked. Sam said the only thing that made any sense under the circumstances: “What the fuck?”
Mork and Mindy had continued to refine their little house, decking it out with pennants made from ride tickets and bits of text torn from carnival posters. It was a tiny work of art, and more than suitable for two Aeslin mice. They had also, it was clear, gone scavenging when I didn’t make it home the night before. The counter around their house was covered with popcorn, wads of cotton candy, and half-eaten hot dogs. By any rodent standards, they were going to be eating like kings.
“Aeslin mice. They’re pathologically religious,” I explained. “Put me down.”
Sam put me down. “I knew they talked. I didn’t know they, uh, did that.”
“You get used to it,” I said. “Mork, Mindy, this is Sam. You don’t need to hail him, but he’s safe enough that you don’t need to worry if it just slips out.”
“HAIL!” cheered the mice.
Mindy stepped forward, fanning her whiskers out before she said, “Priestess, your telephone rang many times during the night. Many, many times. We did not answer it, for lo, did you not say ‘Keep Your Paws Off’? But perhaps it was important.”
My stomach flipped over. I only had one phone, and only two people had the number.
And I had missed a check-in.
Turning to Sam, I smiled as brightly as I could while also feeling like I was about to throw up, and asked, “Meet me at Umeko’s RV? I need to change out of your pajamas and into something a little more actually mine. I’ll need about fifteen minutes.”
“And to make a private phone call,” he said, with a sour expression that was much more like the Sam I knew than his friendliness of the morning so far had been.
I nodded. “And to make a private phone call,” I agreed. “I don’t know who called, but if it mattered enough to keep trying, I should probably let them know that I’m okay, I was just caught up in the carnival. Don’t worry about me telling tales out of school, if that’s why you look so worried. I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.” Sometimes too good.
Sam continued to look dubious as he nodded and said, “All right. But if you’re not there in fifteen minutes, I’m coming back here to get you.”
“Deal,” I said.
I followed him to the RV door and watched as he walked away into the bone yard. Then I stuck my head outside and looked up, making sure that he hadn’t somehow doubled back and returned via one of the neighboring roofs. There was no one up there.
Locking the RV door didn’t make it much more secure. It was still a thin-walled tin can, bordered on all sides by people I didn’t know and couldn’t trust yet with the secrets that defined my presence here. It was enough to make me feel a little bit better. I sat down on the bed, retrieving my phone from beneath the pillow, and checked the call log. Eleven missed calls, six from “Sue” and five from “Tom.” Since Margaret was my official contact, I selected “Sue” and hit the button to call her back.
The phone rang. I closed my eyes. The phone stopped ringing.
“What the hell are you playing at?” demanded Margaret.
“The disappearances were connected to the carnival, but they didn’t know,” I replied. “One of their performers turned out to be a giant spider-woman who’d been kidnapping locals to use as a larder.”
Margaret didn’t say anything.
“I saw her leaving with a local boy last night, and I followed, because I thought something seemed wrong with the situation. When she saw me, she transformed.” Not quite true, but true enough: it looked like the truth, from a distance. “I managed to get a knife in her throat before I fell on her carapace and shattered it. She died, and I passed out from the venom, hence my not being able to take your calls. I only just woke up.”
“We’ll be there inside the hour.” Her voice was steel and sharpness, and in it I heard the end of everything.
“No,” I said, as quickly as I could. “Don’t.”
This time, her silence was dangerous, the silence of a snake deciding whether or not to bite me.
I hurried to fill it. “The rest of the carnival didn’t know about her, I’m sure of it. I’ve spoken to their leader, and she was genuinely stunned. If you come in now, a lot of innocent people are going to get hurt. Human people. If you give me more time, I can find out whether anyone here isn’t quite as innocent as they seem. I can flush them out for you.”
The Covenant understood the meaning of “acceptable losses” better than I liked, especially when they were talking about humans who willingly associated with monsters: they thought the species as a whole was better off without harboring traitors. At the same time, they tried to keep a low profile when they could, and they didn’t go in for wholesale slaughter. It was messy and tended to attract attention.
Margaret’s voice was cold as she asked, “Are your loyalties wavering, Miss Brown?”
My loyalties had never changed. They just weren’t where any of these people expected them to be. “No,” I said. “I want to prove myself. Having the two of you come in and take over the situation doesn’t let me do that. It proves I can yell for help when I don’t actually need it. Please. Give me more time.”
“If you miss another check-in, we’re done,” she cautioned. “We won’t allow you to risk yourself for the sake of impressing us.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I promise, I won’t. I just feel like I can learn more if I stay here than if I leave now.” And I would be leaving if the Covenant came. Not for the reasons they thought, either. If they were coming to clean up the mess Umeko had made, that was going to mean killing everyone else here. I’d be warning the carnival and running for the hills as hard and a
s fast as my legs would carry me. There was no way I could go back after doing something so blatantly contrary to the Covenant’s interests.
But I also knew I couldn’t live with myself if I allowed innocent people to suffer because I’d run away too soon. Maybe if I stayed long enough, I could find a way to get all the cryptids to leave with me, so the Covenant would find nothing to destroy when they arrived. I wasn’t going to be a party to deaths. I just needed time. If I had that, I could figure everything else out.
“I’ll explain things to Robert. He may still try to overrule me—this is technically my mission, but he outranks me.” The bitterness in her voice mirrored the bitterness I’d heard so often in my own, when circumstances forced me to work with my older siblings against my will. It was weird, feeling sorry for a member of the Covenant. I didn’t like it. Life was so much simpler when it was black and white. Unfortunately for me, the deeper I got, the more things seemed to depend on shades of gray.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t fuck this up, Brown.” The line went dead. Margaret had hung up on me. I lowered the phone, looking at it for a count of ten. Then I stood. Time to get dressed. I had a dead spider-woman to see.
Sixteen
“I don’t care what else you do. Just come home to me.”
—Alice Healy
The Spenser and Smith Family Carnival, outside the RV that used to belong to Pablo and Umeko
SAM WAS STILL A MONKEY when I trotted up to Umeko’s RV. The ground around it was shredded and torn, commemorating our battle, and a large patch was stained with grayish sludge. That must have been where I’d smashed through her body. The grass there was dead. The grass immediately around it was dying. Just the sight was enough to turn my stomach.