The Burning Page (The Invisible Library 3)

‘Kai,’ Irene said firmly. ‘I’m surprised at you. This is a valid route for investigation. We don’t simply want to destroy them – first we want to find out everything we can about them. But before that, I am going through this place with another suitcase. I’ll use the Language to hatch any hidden eggs and make absolutely sure we’ve found them all.’

Kai evidently hadn’t thought about the possibility of eggs. He shuddered and glared down at the suitcase. ‘Disgusting creatures. How do you suppose they got into the house?’

‘We won’t know till we’ve checked,’ Irene said, brushing herself off. ‘Could be a broken window, or a hole in the roof. It could be . . .’ She looked at the front door. ‘Well, it would be incredibly blatant, but you could just about push them through the letterbox, if they cooperated.’

‘At least it’ll interest Vale,’ Kai said with resignation, as they went to find another suitcase.

The all-night pet shop down the road was an upper-class one, gleaming with up-to-date chrome and high-power lamps, and little steam-powered climate systems hissed along the rows of tanks and cages. It was complete with pedigree puppies, Persian kittens, glass tanks full of brightly coloured and probably incompatible fish, and a proprietor who didn’t want to serve them. She was stick-insect thin, with straw-pale hair the same shade as the blond ferret ripping toys apart in a cage behind her, and was dressed in spotless dark blue with heavy leather bracers on her forearms.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful,’ she protested icily, ‘but I’m afraid I really don’t understand what you could possibly want with a humble establishment like my own, which only serves the most refined of clients.’

‘We have two suitcases full of giant spiders,’ Irene said pleasantly. She’d taken ten minutes to change into proper clothing for this alternate world and get rid of most of the ash, so she knew that she looked like a respectable woman, if not a stinking rich one. ‘We need an expert’s opinion.’ The proprietor raised her near-invisible eyebrows. ‘Madam, I realize that a lot of spiders may seem large to you—’

‘Eight inches to a foot across.’ Kai stepped forward, giving the woman his most serious and winning look. Irene wasn’t normally a supporter of the ‘go persuade people through your good looks’ school of thought, mostly because she didn’t have the sort of looks that one needed to make it work, but she could appreciate it when it was being done to help her.

The proprietor hesitated. It might have been because Kai was handsome, well dressed and charming. Or it might have been because however much he tried to play it down, he inevitably came across as someone from an aristocratic background, with more money than he knew what to do with. ‘Well, I suppose I could take a look at them. Perhaps a consultation fee . . .’

‘Of course,’ Kai said, with casual disdain for precise amounts. ‘Do you have a glass tank or something similar, which we can release them into?’

The proprietor signalled an assistant to fetch a large glass tank. Kai took the smaller suitcase and laid it inside the tank. It held the few stragglers that they’d found, plus some tiny specimens that Irene had forced to hatch early, and which she still eyed with suspicion, small as they were. Kai snapped open the catches, but left the suitcase lid down. ‘When I open it,’ he said, ‘please stand ready to close the tank lid, and make sure that nothing has a chance to get out.’

To Irene’s relief, the proprietor nodded professionally. ‘Let’s have a look,’ she said.

Kai flipped the suitcase lid back, pulling his hand and arm out of the tank in the same motion. Spiders came spilling out of the suitcase in a drift of waving legs and heaving balloon-like bodies the size of tennis balls. With an astonished curse, hastily cut short, the assistant brought the tank lid down firmly and slid the bolt shut.

The proprietor pursed her lips. ‘Why, I do believe – can it be?’ She leaned closer to the tank, nearly squashing her thin nose against the glass.

The spiders swarmed inside the tank, dashing up and down on the sandy bottom and running up the interior glass walls. Irene felt something squishy bump against her leg, and nearly jumped away in automatic reaction, before she realized it was a bystander moving closer to peer in fascination.

‘How splendid,’ the proprietor exclaimed. ‘Pelinobius muticus! A king baboon spider! Dozens of them – an entire breeding colony!’ Irene didn’t need to be a mindreader to see the little signals tipping over in the woman’s head and pointing to EXCLUSIVE SUPPLIER and HUGE PROFIT. ‘Are you intending to bring them onto the market yourself, sir?’

Kai glanced at Irene. Irene stepped forward. ‘Not exactly, madam—’

‘Miss Chester,’ the woman said, with a narrow-lipped smile which tried to look friendly and failed.

‘Miss Chester,’ Irene said, ‘we recently had a crate of bananas delivered, a gift from a friend in Brazil.’ Did they grow bananas in Brazil? She’d forgotten her basic school geography and national products, let alone whatever they were in this alternate world. ‘We honestly didn’t expect to find these, um . . .’

‘Pelinobius muticus,’ Miss Chester said, pronouncing it very clearly to make sure that Irene got it right.

Irene liked being underestimated. It made people less likely to suspect that she was lying. ‘We just didn’t have the resources to take care of them ourselves,’ she said. She tried to look like a woman who might actually like spiders, rather than one who preferred the drown-them-in-a-vat-of-acid option. ‘If you feel that you can give them a good home, then perhaps . . .’

‘I’m sure that we can come to an arrangement,’ Miss Chester said, her smile growing toothier.

‘It would have looked suspicious if we hadn’t bargained,’ Irene said later. They were in a cab and were finally on their way to Vale’s rooms.

‘You don’t think it looked suspicious anyhow?’ Kai queried drily. ‘Two people showing up with suitcases full of giant killer spiders—’

‘Pelinobius muticus,’ Irene said. ‘I wrote down the details. We can ask Vale about them.’

Kai brooded, leaning back and folding his arms. ‘Irene . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m concerned.’

‘Well, that’s quite understandable. Someone did probably just try to kill us.’ Not to mention the gate going up in flames. But were the two connected?

‘And while we did survive . . .’