“As a duppy myself,” she said, “I resent that.”
“Well,” said the old man, “Duppies can’t touch the living. Remember?”
She pondered this a moment. “So what can I touch?” she asked.
The look that flickered across his elderly face was both wily and wicked. “Well,” he said. “You could touch me.”
“I’ll have you know,” she told him, pointedly, “that I’m a married woman.”
His smile only grew wider. It was a sweet smile and a gentle one, as heartwarming as it was dangerous. “Generally speaking, that kind of contract terminates in a till death us do part.”
Maeve was unimpressed.
“Thing is,” he told her, “you’re an immaterial girl. You can touch immaterial things. Like me. I mean, if you want, we could go dancing. There’s a place just down the street here. Won’t nobody notice a couple of duppies on their dance floor.”
Maeve thought about it. It had been a long time since she had gone dancing. “Are you a good dancer?” she asked.
“I’ve never had any complaints,” said the old man.
“I want to find a man—a living man—called Grahame Coats,” she said. “Can you help me find him?”
“I can certainly steer you in the right direction,” he said. “So, are you dancing?”
A smile crept about the edges of her lips. “You asking?” she said.
THE CHAINS THAT HAD KEPT SPIDER CAPTIVE FELL AWAY. THE pain, which had been searing and continuous like a bad toothache that occupied his entire body, began to pass.
Spider took a step forward.
In front of him was what appeared to be a rip in the sky, and he moved toward it.
Ahead of him he could see an island. He could see a small mountain in the center of the island. He could see a pure blue sky, and swaying palm trees, a white gull high in the sky. But even as he saw it the world seemed to be receding. It was as if he were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. It shrank and slipped from him, and the more he ran toward it the further away it seemed to get.
The island was a reflection in a puddle of water, and then it was nothing at all.
He was in a cave. The edges of things were crisp—crisper and sharper than anywhere that Spider had ever been before. This was a different kind of place.
She was standing in the mouth of the cave, between him and the open air. He knew her. She had stared into his face in a Greek restaurant in South London, and birds had come from her mouth.
“You know,” said Spider, “I have to say, you’ve got the strangest ideas about hospitality. You come to my world, I’d make you dinner, open a bottle of wine, put on some soft music, give you an evening you would never forget.”
Her face was impassive; carved from black rock it was. The wind tugged at the edges of her old brown coat. She spoke then, her voice high and lonely as the call of a distant gull.
“I took you,” she said. “Now, you will call him.”
“Call him? Call who?”
“You will bleat,” she said. “You will whimper. Your fear will excite him.”
“Spider does not bleat,” he said. He was not certain this was true.
Eyes as black and as shiny as chips of obsidian stared back into his. They were eyes like black holes, letting nothing out, not even information.
“If you kill me,” said Spider, “my curse will be upon you.” He wondered if he actually had a curse. He probably did; and if he didn’t, he was sure that he could fake it.
“It will not be I that kills you,” she said. She raised her hand, and it was not a hand but a raptor’s talon. She raked her talon down his face, down his chest, her cruel claws sinking into his flesh, tearing his skin.
It did not hurt, although Spider knew that it would hurt soon enough.
Beads of blood crimsoned his chest and dripped down his face. His eyes stung. His blood touched his lips. He could taste it and smell the iron scent of it.
“Now,” she said in the cries of distant birds. “Now your death begins.”
Spider said, “We’re both reasonable entities. Let me present you with a perhaps rather more feasible alternative scenario that might conceivably have benefits for both of us.” He said it with an easy smile. He said it convincingly.
“You talk too much,” she said, and shook her head. “No more talking.”
She reached into his mouth with her sharp talons, and with one wrenching movement she tore out his tongue.
“There,” she said. And then she seemed to take pity on him, for she touched Spider’s face in a way that was almost kindly, and she said, “Sleep.”
He slept.
ROSIE’S MOTHER, NOW BATHED, REAPPEARED REFRESHED, INVIGORATED and positively glowing.
“Before I give you both a ride into Williamstown, can I give you a hasty guided tour of the house?” asked Grahame Coats.