Along Came a Spider

Sunday, 7:05 a.m.

Tabitha groaned as an ear-splitting ring erupted into existence near her left cheek. Her eyelids flickered open, and she was immediately accosted by a ray of white sunlight that pierced her frontal lobe like an arrow. Her fingers groped around the sheets until they found her cellphone, and she squinted in disbelief at the name that had appeared on the screen.

" 'Lo," she croaked into the receiver, lifting a hand to muss her hair and grimacing when she realized she had forgotten to put it up the night before. It would be impossible to brush now.

"Sorry, Tabby. Did I wake you up?"

"Yes." She rubbed her eyes, then chanced a look at her alarm clock. 7 a.m. Well, she certainly hadn't overslept. "Luke, I don't work for another three hours---"

On the other end of the line, Luke paused. She could hear the wince in his voice when he spoke again. "Well..."

"Noooooooo,"

Tabitha moaned, flopping back into her pillows. Wielding a seemingly unending supply of beer, Lily had managed to keep her up until one a.m. watching vampire movies, all for the sake of proving that breaking and entering was, ultimately, the responsible thing to do for mankind.

"Look at what could happen to the rest of the planet if we don't nip this in the bud," she had declared, pointing her beer bottle up at the television as swarms of pale creatures with beady black eyes began their siege upon a remote Alaskan town. Tabitha shook her head vigorously.

"He doesn't...he doesn't even look like that," she slurred.

"Not

now,

but maybe his face goes all wacko when he gets angry. Like in Buffy."

"I'm so sorry, Tabitha," Luke's voice said, jerking her back painfully into the present. Her brain hurt. She couldn't remember how much alcohol Lily had conned her into drinking. "Ross didn't come in today. I tried calling, but nobody picked up."

"Can't you try him again?" she whined. At the sound of her voice, a black shape stirred on the floor by her nightstand. Tabitha leaned over and saw Lily squinting at her surroundings, her black coat bunched up under her head like a pillow. She blinked in confusion at Tabitha, then pulled herself to her feet and wobbled back into the living room. She was still wearing her clothes from last night. "I mean," Tabitha continued, watching Lily's retreating back, "maybe he just slept in..."

"His shift started an hour ago. He was supposed to open the shop and man the cafe. I show up and the place is still locked tight." He hesitated. "...Do you think he went to the hospital? If he did, I'm going to feel like an ass for---"

"He probably thinks he has cancer again," Tabitha grumbled. Then, immediately filled with self-hatred, she buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry, I'm

so

sorry..."

"Tabitha---"

"I know..." Lily reappeared in her doorway brandishing two new bottles of beer, and Tabitha waved her away. Something rattled over her chest when she did. When she glanced down she remembered that, at some point during the night, Lily had wreathed her neck with her grandmother's old rosary beads after they ransacked her room looking for religious items. Her fingers closed over the familiar pink beads. She wasn't terribly religious, but there was something comforting about them. "When do you need me there?" she asked.

"Yesterday," he said frantically. "The day before that. Run, fly, hitchhike...if you need to hijack a bus, I'll cover for you. Just get here as fast as you can. They...they want those coffee

smoothies,

Tabitha, and I don't even know how to---"

"Okay, okay." She rubbed her nose. "Just let me shower and I'll head over."

"Don't even shower. I'm sure you smell fine."

"...No...I need to shower," Tabitha insisted. Luke heaved a defeated sigh.

"Fine." He paused. "But don't

actually

hitchhike, Tabby; it's really dangerous and---"

"I won't hitchhike, Luke," she assured him. "I'll just hijack a bus." Lily gave her a strange look and she shook her head.

"Don't go leaving any witnesses. Thanks, kiddo." The line went dead, and Tabitha hung her head. It felt like it weighed several thousand pounds this morning.

"You need a ride?" Lily muttered before taking a swig of beer. Eyeliner and mascara were smudged in a black streak across the right side of her face and her pink hair was sticking up in every possible direction, but in that moment, Lily and her car keys were the most beautiful things Tabitha had ever seen.

"Yes.

I'll give you gas money---"

"No big. I gotta go home and feed the kitties anyway."

"Thank you thank you thank you

thank you,"

Tabitha chanted as she stumbled into the bathroom, clutching a bundle of clean clothes close to her chest like a lifeline.

The shower water was too cold, too hot, and then too cold again. She dropped her conditioner twice. When she finally managed to finish cleaning herself properly, she toed her way carefully out from the shower and wrapped her hair up in a towel. She scrubbed her teeth with the inordinate amount of toothpaste that came flooding out of the tube when she squeezed, mashed moisturizer into her face, and then rubbed at the steam on the mirror with her towel.

When she caught sight of her reflection, she stopped for a moment. Then, slowly, she rubbed a larger patch away until she could see herself in her entirety, from her hips to the top of her towel-clad head.

Her skin was glistening with lotion and was just a little too tan on her forearms, a little too pale on her stomach. Her newly-scrubbed face was pink and shiny, especially her nose. Without makeup, her brown eyes looked wide-set and childishly small. Her breasts were perky, but nothing to write home about, and their size contrasted sharply with the generous swell of her hips. Child-bearing hips, her mother called them, and the thighs to match. They ran in the family, along with thick ankles.

Now that she was looking---really looking---she didn't think she looked like the type of girl who had to worry about monsters. In fact, she didn't look like any type of girl at all.

When she finally emerged from the bathroom, fully clothed and towelling her hair, Lily was perched on the counter with the beer bottle. She looked like Tinkerbell on a bender.

"Hair of the dog?" she offered in a raspy voice. "It helps."

"No thanks. I can't go to work smelling like beer."

"Well, you're gonna, if you're in the car with me," Lily said, dismounting the counter and following Tabitha to the door. To Tabitha's relief, she left the beer bottle on the counter. When she glanced back at the living room, however, her face fell.

"What did we

do?"

she moaned. The living room table was a mass of candy wrappers and beer bottles, and there were two plates on the couch that were piled high with pizza crusts. The delivery box was sprawled out on the carpet, completely empty. Lily rolled her eyes when she saw the dismayed look on her face.

"It's a house, not a museum."

Tabitha shuddered and turned to wrench the door open. "I can't look at it."

"Hurry up. Don't you want to woo that boss of yours?" Lily chided, jingling her keys impatiently. When Tabitha shook her head, she fluttered her eyelashes and pressed her hands to her cheeks.

"Look at me, Mr. Bossman, I'm so eeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrly..."

"Stop."

---

Sunday, 6:50 p.m.

Tabitha was staring through the store window with an expression of dread. The sun was already low on the horizon, peering through the silhouettes of buildings.

She was running very, very late.

In a little over an hour, James would be showing up at her door. And, at this rate, she wasn't so sure that she was going to be there. She was more than apprehensive about her excursion, of course, but at the same time, she couldn't really decide which was worse: going out at night with a vampire...or standing him up.

And what was she supposed to

wear?

"I really am sorry, Tabitha," Luke said suddenly, rousing her from poring over a mental catalogue of all her clothing. She turned to see him watching her mournfully from over the counter. "I didn't mean to keep you so late."

The entire day was anything but uneventful. Jenny, the new-hire, had been called in a couple hours after Tabitha's arrival, and the extent of her training was quickly made known when she somehow locked herself out of her own register. Nearly reduced to tears when Luke snapped at her, she spent the rest of her shift following Tabitha around like a lost puppy and plucking at the register keys with the dexterity and swiftness of an arthritic geriatric woman. Tabitha tried to keep calm, (Jenny was barely nineteen, after all), but after she was summoned to the cafe for the sixth time during the afternoon lunch rush, she found herself entertaining thoughts of Jennies plummeting from cliffs and being mauled by bears.

And all day, nobody had heard a word from Ross. That made her feel endlessly guilty. If he

did

have some incurable disease, she was going to owe him an apology and a very large bouquet of flowers. Ross could be snippy at times and collected mysterious symptoms like they were baseball cards, but he had never been anything but decent to her.

"It's fine," she lied, her fingers clenching at her purse strap impatiently. Far behind Luke, Jenny was scrubbing the pastry display with worrying enthusiasm. Tabitha hoped she was using the glass cleaner and not the wood polish.

"So," Luke said brightly after a moment, "how was the lasagne?"

Tabitha winced. "I don't mean to be rude, but I have plans tonight and I should really be---"

"Well, aren't you Miss Socialite all the sudden? Even busy on a Sunday." He folded his arms across his chest with a chortle. "What's his name?"

Tabitha, who had already wound her way out from behind the counter and was edging towards the door, knitted her brow in confusion. "...His name?"

"The man who's been taking up all your time. That has to be it, right?" He stopped short when he saw the look of horror on Tabitha's face. "...No?"

"I'm not...it isn't..." She took a deep breath and gripped the door handle. " 'Bye, Luke," she said in what she hoped was a cheerful voice, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him wave uncertainly through the glass as she bolted towards the bus stop.

---

Sunday, 7:46 p.m

After what felt like hours, the bus finally screeched to its proper stop. Tabitha exited it in a whirl, shooting apologies left and right as her elbows jammed into various ribs and hipbones. If she ran all the way home, she might actually be able to make it in time to intercept Lily before James came knocking.

Her face grew pale, and she stopped in her tracks. Oh, God.

Lily.

Her phone was still off, and she hadn't called to tell her she was running late...

"Tabitha, right?" a familiar voice called from her left as she withdrew her phone from her purse and began furiously pressing the power button. Blinking, she turned towards the source of the noise and saw Lex leaning up against a brick building, her cherubic features cast into something vaguely menacing from the streetlamps. She was wearing a pair of purple skinny jeans and a slouchy beanie this time, but her torso was still swallowed up by that baggy hoodie. "Hello," she said. Tabitha stared at her.

"Were you...waiting for me?" she murmured.

"What?" she asked incredulously, falling into step beside Tabitha, who cast her eyes downward and began furiously contemplating the practicality of a new bus route. "Okay, maybe," she admitted. "I got here early tonight, so I decided to wait around and see if you were coming too, and, well..." She looked down and busied herself with unwrapping something green in her hands. "Here you are."

"Here I am," Tabitha agreed with an unsteady smile. When Lex looked back up again to return her grin, a lollipop stick was jutting out from between her teeth. For a few seconds they walked in silence, but then Lex glanced towards Tabitha's scarf.

"Nice necklace, by the way," she said thickly from around the stick. Tabitha lifted her hand to her throat in confusion and her fingers caught in a loose strand of rosary beads.

"Thanks," she murmured, clutching at the glass beads nervously. Did she want it? Did she want money? What was happening? "It was my grandmother's," she continued.

"Oh, that's nice. That's really cool. You know, heirlooms like that are supposed to be really great at warding off bad juju," Lex said in an awkwardly casual voice, as if they were discussing the weather. Her tongue was already stained green. "Reeeeeeally great."

"...Okay."

"Yeah. Better than lots of other things." She looked innocently up at the sky as they walked, her lips pursed around the lollipop. Then, after a brief period of silence, she popped it free from her mouth. "Like...garlic?" Tabitha stopped cold, and Lex paused to meet her stare. "That stuff's no good. No good at all," she said slowly. Then, with a cheerful smile, she slipped the little green globe right back into her mouth and continued walking. "Practically useless, really," she called from over her shoulder, tonguing the lollipop into the corner of her mouth.

For a few seconds, Tabitha watched her retreating back in confusion. Then, with a sudden surge of insanity, she was dashing forward to catch up to her.

"What do you mean? Why doesn't it work?" she insisted, and Lex threw up her hands in a baffled gesture.

"I mean, I don't know

why

it doesn't work, but---"

"But you know what does," Tabitha said.

With another popping noise, she pulled the lollipop out from between her lips. "Sure. At least, my boss does. I told him about you yesterday, you know, and he said you might be in a bit of trouble. And apparently he was right." She rolled her eyes. "Again."

"Is this...that herbal stuff you were talking about?" Tabitha asked slowly. Lex nodded as the two of them crossed the street, skittering quickly over the pavement as the lights began to change.

"Kind of, yeah."

"Right." Tabitha let out a titter of the hysterical laughter that was building up in her belly. "You know, at first I thought you were selling drugs or something..."

Lex waved her hand dismissively and stuck the lollipop back in between her teeth. "I get that a lot."

"So, what do I have to---" Tabitha began, but Lex had stopped in front of an alley.

"It's just this way," she said, jerking her head towards the mouth of it. In that moment, it was the darkest place Tabitha had ever seen. Her mouth worked quietly for a few seconds, and Lex lifted a pale eyebrow. "What?"

"I think I have a thing about following strangers into alleys," Tabitha said quietly. Lex shrugged.

"Probably a good thing to have, I guess." She turned to venture through the alleyway, then looked back at Tabitha. "You coming?"

"...I don't know," Tabitha admitted.

Lex slipped a hand into her pocket, rocked on her heels, and then fiddled with the lollipop stick for a few brief seconds. Tabitha found it incredible that someone so fidgety still had fingernails. It could probably be accredited to a surfeit of lollipops. "You could just walk home if you wanted," she finally said. "I'm not gonna stop you or anything. But then you might never know, and...well..." She flashed her a crooked grin---the kind that stoned college freshmen give to the purveyors of their munchies. "Personally, I think it's always best to know. But not everyone rolls that way."

Tabitha, who still wasn't wholly convinced that she hadn't just befriended a wandering lunatic, only stared at her.

"Hey, you do you," Lex finished. Then she turned on her heel with a flourish and began to walk lazily down the alleyway. Her left arm swung through the air with each step like a toddler preparing to execute a graceless twirl.

Tabitha gnawed on her lip as she watched Lex wander deeper into the alley. It would be a stupid, stupid thing to go after her. Beyond stupid, really.

And yet, much like Alice, she suddenly found herself following her eccentric new bus-stop-buddy further and further into the dark passage. Through the faint glow of the street lights, she saw Lex turn to beam at her. Hesitantly, she returned her smile. Much to her surprise, they seemed to be heading towards the back of an arts supply store that Tabitha had visited rather often the year prior. It was located next to a thrift store and a frozen yogurt place which, Tabitha was certain, had gone out of business several months ago.

But, strangely enough, nestled in between the back door to the art supplies shop and the thrift store, there was another door. It was made of some sort of dark wood and fitted with a neat little brass handle and, no matter how Tabitha racked her brains, she couldn't seem to remember seeing a shop front on the building's other side that it might belong to. It didn't really seem to belong

there,

either. It stood out like a pristine beacon next to the steel doors and grimy bricks. Lex was making a beeline towards it. Of course.

"I don't think I've ever seen this place before," Tabitha said, cringing as her whisper split the silence of the alley.

"I mean, you wouldn't, would you?" replied Lex, who didn't seem to mind her voice rippling loudly off the walls. Tabitha fidgeted as she spoke and scanned the shadows around her. "That's kind of the point." Her hand encircled the brass handle and turned, exposing a sliver of a dark room. Tabitha surveyed Lex with wide eyes as she slipped through the doorway, and then, after sucking in a deep breath, she followed.

The room they entered set off alarms and red lights in the deeper recesses of Tabitha's brain. Her fingers tightened over the handle of an imaginary duster. The store was a labyrinth of shelves that were stuffed with a motley assortment of bottles---all sorts, from a dusty old blue one, stoppered with a cork and wax, that could have been holding a djinn captive to another that looked suspiciously like it may have once contained Jägermeister. In the corners, various dried weeds and branches hung from the walls. All in all, it looked like some sort of odd...shop. It was cramped, but not suffocating. It was dark, but not pitch-black. Two oil lamps placed on either side of the shop lit the area with a soft glow, and there was a stubby white candle burning on the top of a well-polished countertop near the back. And behind that candle, there was a very humanoid silhouette. As Tabitha watched, a pale hand moved into the candle light to turn the page of a massive book.

The door shut. Tabitha jumped. Lex, apparently oblivious to the ominousness of their surroundings, stretched and hung her hoodie on a brass coat hook protruding from the wall. Even the hooks were a little creepy: they were tarnished and large and looked much too old, like they had been snatched from another era. The whole shop looked that way, from the dull floorboards to the oil lamps.

"This way," Lex said suddenly, jerking her head towards the counter and the looming figure perched behind it. As she watched Lex wander forward, weaving deftly through the narrow spaces between shelves, Tabitha wondered if it wasn't too late to dive back through that strange door.

In for a penny,

she thought miserably, and she commenced to following her strange companion across the creaking floorboards. When they began to draw closer, the figure behind the counter lifted its head and shut the book with a snap.

And then, it spoke.

"Alexa," it said in a low, decidedly male voice. That word rumbled throughout the store like thunder from a distant storm. "How exciting to see you arrive on time," he added, in the sort of voice that made Tabitha wonder if excitement was an emotion he was actually capable of feeling. Lex, (or Alexa, but Tabitha decided that she didn't much look like an Alexa), scowled at him and fumbled with her satchel as they reached the counter. When she withdrew her hand, she was clutching a tiny, cylindrical tin. At the sight of that tin, the man behind the counter leaned forward into the light, almost eagerly.