“Upon my death,” Calixta coaxed, “you may rule without a mate, as I did, be a power in your own right, as I was.”
Pretending to consider her, I asked, “How do I set you free?”
“Blood would have been best,” she mused, “fed into the water where the ward could taste it.”
“There’s no Plan B?”
“A life is the cost.” She mulled it over. “Delma’s ashes sprinkled above me will do.”
“Clay.” I swept a hand over the bulk of them. “Can you seal those in an evidence baggy for me?”
Since he swore they doubled as snack bags, he always kept a few on him in case of emergency.
“Sure thing.” He used a business card to get every flake possible while the daemon padded closer to the spider. “Good enough?”
“That will do, golem.” Calixta kept her voice dialed to benevolent. “Now, my darling girl, free me.”
“Pass them to me?” I held the remains of my cousin, but no pity stirred within me. “Calixta…”
“Please,” she demurred. “Call me Grandmother.”
Thank all the gods and goddesses that my grandparents had called it quits after one child.
As alike as they were, they could have been a formidable pair, had they made a go of it.
“Grandmother,” I humored her. “It was nice to meet you, but I prefer the devil I know.”
The director held enough of my strings to jerk me around for the rest of his life. I wasn’t about to set free a female version with untold years of experience in making others her puppets, as she had Delma. The woman was a master manipulator, even while stuck at the bottom of a marsh.
“Your grandfather will betray you,” she warned. “You can’t trust him.”
“He raised me,” I informed her. “I know how far I can trust him.”
The same distance I could throw him.
A guttural shout and a squelching noise jerked my attention back to the boardwalk in time to watch the daemon yank Colby from the spider’s clutches and toss her to Clay. Clay caught her with a prayer on his lips and carried her away from the swamp, back toward the SUV to release her in a safe environment.
Meanwhile, surprising no one, the daemon ripped off the spider’s head, yelled down its neck, and tore it out of its web. He flung the carcass toward the spot where my grandmother’s voice originated. The boardwalk rattled on impact when he landed, and the planks under his feet snapped in two. He shook it off, prowled over to me, spider head in his hand, its pinchers still clacking, and held out his arm.
“Present.” He smiled, his face bright green with ichor. “For Rue.”
“I…” I knew how much it meant to him that I appreciate his gifts, so I reached for the head, only for the pinchers to snap closed on my wrist. “I’ll wash your hair when we get to the hotel if you can throw that farther than you threw the body.” I jerked my hand free. “Deal?”
“Brush?” He cocked an eyebrow, weighing the gift in his hands. “Braid?”
“Yes.” I was happy he set such a low price. “Just fling it, please?”
“Okay.” He cocked his arm and hurled the trophy beyond where I could see. “It gone.”
“Excellent.” I patted him on the back. “Good work.”
While the daemon preened, my grandmother seethed, but she was locked down tight.
“You will regret this,” Calixta promised. “There will come a time when you need your family.”
Thinking of Colby, of Clay, of Asa and his daemon, of all the people back home in Samford, I pitied her.
“I always need my family,” I told her, looping my arm through the daemon’s. “But you’re not it.”