The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (7 page)

I
stand, dressed in Stephen’s bloody coat; my clothing along with
every hair on my head and body burnt off when Andras tried to burn my
body away.

The
demonic ravens press in, they don’t fight or squawk or search
for food; not a sound is made, not a movement, they are waiting for
something, something from me.

“
Screw
you!” I shout, belligerently at the living blanket of demonic
birds that Andras tried to suffocate the world with. “Screw
every one of you little evil…I hate you! Andras is gone!”
I scream my next words, “So, you can all just follow him to
Hell!”

To
my surprise, the birds listen; simultaneously, every raven pushes off
the ground and takes to the air. They rise like a dark shadow lifting
from the world.

I
topple, hitting the ground hard, near Stephen, watching as the cloud
of birds disperse into the sky. “An unkindness,” I say,
remembering what a group of ravens are called. I look at Stephen once
more and whisper, "Survive, please, please...”

And,
that was the last time I saw him. They told me he survived, that
Madeline burst into his operating room and healed him with magic. But
somehow, I didn’t
feel
it was true. Stephen risked everything to tell me the truth. We had
undergone Hell together. We saved each other’s lives in more
than one way. Then I fell asleep while he bled out beside me, and
when I woke he was gone.

When
I came-to, I had one mission:
to
find Stephen,
to make sure, with my own eyes that he survived. And, I needed to get
the answers that he, and only he, must have.

But
his family prevented it.

In
my soul, I know that Stephen and my experience together is
unfinished.

But
the
Leijonskjöld
demon-killers, led by the four Tapper brothers: Albert, Tobias,
Stephen and Nicholas, seem to think that if I get within fifteen feet
of a man, I’ll catch love like a virulent case of the flu. The
ironic part about this is that Nicholas tried unsuccessfully all last
summer to make me fall in love with him (his plan to defeat Andras);
but, I’m not sure logic and the male ego have met.

It’s
strange to think that the greatest fear of a large organization of
highly trained demon killers is that I’ll experience an emotion
that I’m not even positive I’m capable of.

A
grunting sound yanks me out of being lost in my thoughts. I look over
to the source of the sound, Jones, who’s trying to pry apart
his hand in the dirt-cement substance.

I
look around, making sure that Cassidy left, the cock pit door is
closed and Madeline is dead-asleep. When I’m certain the coast
is clear, I walk as quietly as possible over to Jones and crouch
down. He concentrates on his hands, so I grab for the rope, but it
slithers away from me. I try again and the rope coils tighter around
Jones, making him inhale sharply.

“
Stop
that,” Madeline says, above me. But, when I look, her eyes are
still shut and she looks fast asleep.

“
Sorry,”
I whisper to Jones, because I’m just making his situation
worse. “Can I help you get more comfortable? Can I get you
water or something?”

No
response.

“
You
okay?” I whisper while lowering myself to the floor, trying to
catch his eye, scared that the rope restricted his air and made him
pass out. The moment I make eye contact with him, he turns his head
to stare pointedly away.

Ah,
we’re back to that, are we?
Grrreat
.
I thought we had moved past it, but Jones clearly can’t trust
me to get him a glass of water without falling head over heels for
him. “Fine, Jerk Face,” I say, getting up, “Go
ahead and dehydrate.”

I
stand and go search the cabin for any type of fridge or cupboard and
find a store of water (in glass bottles, not plastic) in a
mini-fridge. I look back to Jones; I know I’m parched and I
haven’t undergone the trauma his body endured.

I
put a straw in one and set the bottle beside his head, before
returning to the couch.

After
downing an entire bottle, I curl up next to my sister. Dread washes
over me, as it does every time I grow too weak to fight my
exhaustion; I know what dream waits for me. My fingers cover the mark
on the side of my neck, a mark that looks like a tattoo of a black
kiss. I got this mark directly after I made my deal with Andras.

I
close my eyes, knowing, once more, I’ll have to get the dream
of the deal I made with Andras over with.

****

“
Don't
even dare to hope that you will ever escape…”

I
wake with a start.

Madeline’s
nose is less than an inch from mine; her finger nears my face
dripping some sort of green slime.

I
lean back into the couch. “What are you doing?”

“
I
need to fix your face and tell you a feck load of information before
we land in Bangkok, starting with fixing your face. Don’t move,
I’ll tie you up if I have to.” She ignores that I’m
trying to maneuver away from her hand and she coats my face in
freezing stinky slime.

“
Ugh,”
I say, wiping my eyebrow so the gel doesn’t drip into my eye.

“
You’re
welcome,” She says, “Now stop touching it.”

That’s
when I notice Linnie no longer sleeps beside me, she’s sitting
at a table across from Cassidy; they’re eating something that
looks like bean mush. Linnie waves her spoon at me, smirking.
Traitor.

Madeline
wipes the remaining slime from her fingers on the leg of her unitard
and takes a seat on my couch, leaning toward me. “You slept ten
hours, which is good, you’ll need your sleep, but we’ll
land in Bangkok in thirteen hours, and we need to prepare.”

I’m
about to ask if we already stopped to refuel, and I just slept
through it, but I catch a plant rustling in the non-existent wind and
realize that the plane more than likely doesn’t run on jet
fuel.

I
glance over. “What happened to Jones?”

Madeline
narrows her eyelids at me. “Why do you care?”

“
Well,
he and I aren’t exactly best buds; but, it’s my fault
he’s here so I’d feel pretty guilty if you sent him sky
diving without a parachute,” I say.

Linnie
points her spoon to further into the cabin, and says, “Cassidy
and I carried him onto a couch. I fed him bean curd; we’re like
this now.” She holds up crossed fingers. “He doesn’t
talk much, or like, at all, but he sure is pretty.”

Madeline
snaps her fingers in my face (which is
so
not cool), making me turn. “You need to pay attention—”

“
Get
out of her face!” Linnie shouts through a mouthful of
bean-curd.

Madeline
turns to Linnie, “Since Stephen vanished, I have sent twelve
people to find him, guess how many have survived?”

“
Um,
why haven’t you gone yourself?” Linnie retorts.

“
I
can’t,” Madeline says.

“
Suuure…”
Linnie says, “Because we didn’t all just see you do the
rope thingy in the airport, or the cement hands.”

“
I’m
pregnant, alright, if you must know,” Madeline says. “Four
months but barely showing.”

The
words slam into me; I don’t even know why, but suddenly, I feel
like throwing up. The slimy substance dripping down my cheek bugs me
so much, I feel like screaming. I swallow down the ugly that, for
whatever reason, surges through me making me want to hit anything,
hard.

“
Can
I go wash this stuff off my face?” I say, just wanting to walk
away from Madeline, Cassidy and Linnie.

“
Whoa,”
Linnie says, staring at Madeline, “I guess that makes sense.”

To
me Madeline says, “No, it needs to dry,” and then she
asks Linnie, “What makes sense?”

“
Why
you’d do all this…” Linnie gestures around at us,
“…the magic and the kidnapping and all.”

“
We
need to get back to the task at hand. I’ll tell you what I
know, from the beginning.” Madeline turns back to me, saying,
“Three months ago, Stephen called me and asked me to get
information on a magician. As you could probably guess, I have
contacts; most black witches have at least some contact with natural
witches. But the magician he wanted information about must have never
sold a spell or made a bargain with a natural witch, everyone had
heard of him, but I could not get one verifiable fact about him,
besides that he lived in Thailand, and his name: The Spider. He’s
the worst sort, the evilest of the demonically infected. I’d
heard of him, everyone has.” She says the last part with her
eyes distant. “Stephen flew in; then no one heard from him
again.”

“
And,
you know this how?” Cassidy says.

“
Because
there’d be no other reason that Nicholas Tapper or Tobias
Tapper would be callin’ me, asking me to find their brother.
First, I tracked down the hotel that Stephen had reservations for;
and then, Leijonskjöld sent three demon-killers into—”

“
Three
?”
Cassidy interrupts, raising her eyebrows at Madeline.

“
Yes,
three
.”
Madeline snaps, and then she says, “When those
three
demon-killers died and the Leijonskjöld shut me out, then I sent
two men from my clan, then I sent a large group of witches. In every
case I lost contact with them within two hours of their arrival. But
each time, those I sent were found in their rooms dead. And each time
a message was sent to me.” Madeline straightens, looking
uncomfortable.

She
continues, “The first message was:
I
have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be
resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders
and man to be devoured by demons
.
It is a quote by Voltaire, except that the real quote ends
differently.

“
The
second message left was an altered quote from a sixth century
philosopher named
Anacharsis
:
Demon
nests are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and
hold the inconsequential, while the consequential will easily break
through them
.
The third message was two quotes, the first from
William
Blake, and the second by
Mary
Renault:
‘
The
bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
’
Then,
‘
It
is bitter to lose a
friend
to evil, before one loses him to
death’.
”