The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (42 page)

“
I’ll
earn it...how much?”

“
Two
hundred American dollars or so...” The rest she whispers, “The
Spider will miss me; I have been at every summoning since the first.
He will know I am disobeying him, when he returns, he’ll know I
betrayed him.”

“
If
he
returns. And, if he does, we’ll... just have to figure out a
plan for that.” I whisper, “May? Why not just come with
us? This summoning will ‘rip’ your magical web apart
anyway—”

“
Not
without my spider,” she says.

“
Maybe
we can get your spider beforehand...”

“
The
only way I could get it back would be if he gave it to me or if he
was dead...”

Our
eyes meet for a second but she shakes her head. She exhales slowly
and says, “You should go.”

****

I
drive my scooter spraying sand and pulling up feet from my front
porch. Both Kasem and Stephen sit on the top step, looking
disheveled. Stephen obviously didn’t take the time to put on a
shirt and Kasem’s suit is a sweaty, dirty, wrinkled mess. They
glare at me but I return the glare with twice the heat.

Kasem
starts, “Do you have any idea—?”

“
Don’t,”
I say, turning off the scooter and dismounting. Whatever Polite Goon
wants to say, I’m in no state of mind to hear it. On the short
drive back my anger heated up from a fire to full-blown inferno, and
who I’m most pissed at: May and Kasem. I try to contain my fury
and say, “Just get out of my way so I can go lay down.”

Kasem
stands, “I don’t think so. First you tell me where you
went and why.”

“
No....How
about first you tell me how you,
you,
could
let this happen? I kind of understand why he did it. He’s
insane,
psychotic
.
But you are not. I know for a fact that you are an intelligent sane
man.”

Kasem
takes a step forward and lowers his voice, “What do you know?”

“
Everything!”
I show him my arm, pointing with one furious motion to
Räum
’s
demon mark. “The demons gave me a power: dreams of the future.
I saw yours,” I lie, “it’s horrific, and it’s
your own fault. Let me in.”

He
steps aside. But when I step inside the bungalow I can’t lay
down, I’m too furious.

Stephen
enters meeting my eyes with a grim understanding, but only taking a
seat on one of the beds silently. He throws on a shirt and leans back
against the wall.

Polite
Goon enters, closing the front door of the bungalow without touching
it. He points his hand at Stephen and lowers it saying, “Sleep.”

Stephen
slumps onto the bed, eyes closed and lightly snoring.

“
Well,
at least you’re not going to insult me by pretending you’re
not a magician,” I mumble. “That you’re not
all
magicians. Venom addicted magicians. Do you know that you’re
about to... you’re about to... How can a person like
you
,
who is intelligent and perceptive, put the world at risk
to
get high
?”

Kasem
looks at me, then at Stephen; he says, “I could ask you the
same question.”

I
can’t help but glance at Stephen lying on the bed asleep then.
I swallow. Kasem is not getting out of this by playing the
hypocrite-card. I turn back to Kasem and say very quietly, “Don’t
you know how this is going to end?”

“
Yes.”

“
But
you’re willing to—”

“
Yes.”

Slumping
onto the bed (Stephen is not on), I put my head into my hands. “The
Spider didn’t know I was coming here until after I arrived; did
he?”

Kasem
doesn’t answer, but the answer is plain enough: if The Spider
doesn’t know who Stephen is, there’s no way that he
baited this trap.

“
Where
I was before here, I was guarded by a hundred, or more, highly
trained soldiers. The Spider wants me protected, safe, and guarded
day and night. That’s why you’re here. He knows that if I
die more than twenty demon armies are going to annihilate him, then
you and then everyone else. If he wanted me stolen from my home, he
wouldn’t have done it by luring me into a demon nest with only
a couple of protectors. He wouldn’t have had me travel half of
Thailand alone; I was almost murdered by a huge guy on the train. If
The Spider knew about me and wanted me, he would have had me
protected the whole time. Meaning: he didn’t know I existed
until I was already here. He didn’t know I existed until
someone or something told him I planned to leave, did he?”

Kasem
sits in the chair he always sits in. He doesn’t answer or give
any physical sign of consent, but I know my logic is sound.

“
Who
do you think lured me here, trapped me here?”

He
continues to sit, not answering.

“
You
know and I know that it was the demons who lured me here. Do you
think they went to so much trouble and planning to hand me to The
Spider, so he could use me against them? I was handed over,
practically gift wrapped.”

This
time I watch his always-inscrutable features closely; all but his
eyes which are always hidden, I read nothing, no surprise, no anger,
and no fear. I say, “But you already figured out all of
this...didn’t you?”

He
nods, amazing me-not that he knew, but that he answered.

“
Why
didn’t you tell him?”

He
doesn’t respond.

“
Or,
did you...and he didn’t listen?”

He
nods. Surprising me more, he asks, “How do I die?”

“
Horribly,”
I say, feeling little doubt that it’s true, “Unless you
can stop him from summoning—and help my sister and I—”

“
Don’t
ask, the answer is no.”

“
You
know the—”

He
gets up and walks out of the door, closing it behind him.

Grabbing
up my pillow I throw it at the bungalow door. Shouting a long
screechy horrible sound, I throw the other pillow. “No,”
I say. “No...”

“
Come
here,” rasps Stephen’s voice from the other side of the
room. “Tell me what happened.”

My
shoulders shake as I walk to him, climb in beside him and curl up in
his arms.

“
How
did I fall asleep?” Stephen asks.

“
Kasem
put you to sleep; he’s an unnatural magician, they all are.”
I say into his shoulder.

“
And
the greater demons?” he whispers into my hair.

“
Ballooned
in silk. The blood is stolen. It’s in the Venom.”

All
he makes is an, “Ah,” sound. He combs his hands through
my hair several times, absently. “And how does he control all
the unnatural magicians?”

“
If
they’re strong enough he takes their spider in exchange for
daily doses of venom. I’m still not really sure what their
spider tattoos are but it somehow connects their power to his. This
connection feeds his power so he can maintain the web.

“
So
simple, yet so— intricate. I would have thought that designing
this sophisticated of a system would be beyond Mængmum...”

“
May
says she’ll get Linnie out this full moon, smuggle her off the
island.”

“
And
you?”

“
Yes.”
I say, adding the:
you’ll
be coming too, whether you like it or not
,
mentally. “I’ll need to make two hundred dollars by then;
I used all of mine to escape today.”

“
And
what an escape you made,” he says, squeezing me. “Thank
you for the note, by the way. I just barely convinced him not to tell
The Spider. The Spider would have killed us both...I think. Now, let
us be late for work and go for a run,” Stephen says.

“
In
this heat? Are you crazy?” I say into his shirt.

“
Well
I’d suggest a swim but we’ve already had one today. And,
you like to run; you used to be on your school’s team. You told
me last summer.”

“
I’m
surprised you remember, with all that happened last summer...”

“
Details
like that are what I want to remember,” he says, sounding
serious. “The demons, the death, the horror: that is what I can
never forget.”

“
Nathan,”
I force myself to say, “I thought we agreed you were going to
distance yourself from me.”

“
Yes,”
he says, “Well, I thought about it for a full day. You see,
what we went through last year... we saved each other’s lives,
we both nearly died, that type of experience can create a bond; a
bond that can easily be mistaken for more.”

I
have the automatic need to swallow but suppress the urge, staying as
still and expressionless as I can.

He
continues, “I think the demons let my brothers isolate you for
a year, convincing you into thinking that you must be guarded and
protected from your own weakness; in a full year of training my
brothers managed to painstakingly convince you that you are weak,
which is a lie. The power of suggestion is one of the demons’
strongest weapons against us. If everyone tells you that you are
powerless against love, that you are weak, that you will fall in love
with the first person who shows you the tiniest shred of kindness;
then they isolate you from any love and kindness for a full year,
when you are shown that kindness you just might believe all the fears
and lies they ingrained in you. I think that ignoring you, pushing
you away will just be playing into these ideas the demons and,
unfortunately, my brothers are trying to indoctrinate you with. And,
if I push you away, I will be abandoning you when you need an ally
and a friend more than any other time.”

The
rationality of Stephens ideas threaten to convince me.
I
only believe his ideas because I want to be around him,
the voice of reason argues in my mind. I bat it away, suddenly too
exhausted to argue with my common sense and not able to make myself
push him away. “Yeah,” I say, burrowing deeper into his
embrace and closing my eyes, “Let’s go for a run.”

“
Wake
up, Raven,” Stephen says, what feels like a second later.

“
Hrr...?”
comes from my mouth as my eyes fight to take in the full-daylight. A
solid whiteness shoots into my eyeballs every time I manage one open.
My chin feels wet and when I wipe at it, I realize it’s drool.
Drool. I drooled.

When
I can see, I check Stephen’s shirt: matching drool spot, check.

Kill
me now.

Stephen
says “Unless you want to skip work altogether, you need to wake
up.” An arm squeezes around me. “We are very late.”
He looks down then over at me, giving me a smile. “And I need
to change my shirt.”

“
You’re
going to need to change a lot of things,” says Kasem from his
chair.

I
sit up, startled.

Kasem
continues, “You think I didn’t see that the demon
manipulated Mængmum into placing Nathan with you, but I did.
You think I haven’t noticed that you two have a history that
runs deeper than a summer dance, but I do. You think that because you
distracted me that I forgot that you were gone for two hours, came
back wearing someone else’s clothing and gave no explanation of
where you went, but I didn’t forget.” Kasem takes off his
sunglasses for the first time, exposing green eyes with a black slit
dividing each pupil, reptilian eyes.