May gasped. “Ninth? Well, yeah, that’s pretty far removed, I guess.” She rested her chin on her knuckles and her lips formed into a mischievous grin. “Sell me on it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Sell me on the fact that you’re really related to Ralph. Prove you’re not just some drifter who knows how to use a phone book and a genealogy website.”
Mark’s pale eyes narrowed. “Well, I am confident I can prove it. Though I believe it would only convince Ralph.”
May frowned. “Well. You’re no fun.” She leaned back against the couch, thinking. For a moment she was quiet, and then she clapped her hands, beaming again. “Fine. We’ll let Ralph be the judge of it.”
“Thank you for your understanding,” he said. “I shall be out of your hair once I’ve spoken to him.”
May shook her head. “You’re at least staying for dinner.”
“What?” Mark and Spinneretta asked in unison.
“Family is family, and you’re awfully far from home,” May said. “Besides, what kind of hostess would I be if I sent you back on the road without giving you a good meal?”
Spinneretta cringed when she heard the word good applied to her mother’s meatloaf.
Mark, meanwhile, shook his head in disbelief. “Forgive me, but did you not moments ago accuse me of being a drifter? Why would you allow me to remain longer than absolutely necessary?”
May giggled. “Oh, that’s all just a formality. I have to assume the worst, you know, for my kids. Between you and me, my motherly instinct tells me you’re safe.”
He gave an unsure smile. “Well, I thank you.”
Spinneretta rushed out the door a few moments later when she got a text reading we’re here, get outside, stupid. She was relieved to get away from Mark. There was something unsettling about him. She didn’t know if it was his dated manner of speaking or the weird way he seemed to disregard her spider legs. More than that suspicion, and more than the familiar embarrassment of being seen by a complete stranger, there was something else that gnawed at the back of her mind for the duration of her shopping adventure.
While she still found his use of the term family seat laughable, there was something about it that made her shiver. Her father never spoke about his family; whenever the topic came up, he brushed it aside as though it were a mental plague. That made the vague implication of a family seat seem sinister when she thought about it. The amorphous implications would continue to weigh on her throughout her trip to the Centerpoint Mall.
After the girl with the queer appendages retreated from the home, the woman calling herself May excused herself and made her way into the kitchen. For a short while, Mark sat on the pleather couch, his eyes sweeping over the full-wall window that dominated the living room. He’d expected a far more modest dwelling, like Aunt Sylvia’s back in Arbordale. Apparently, Ralph Warren was quite affluent. Despite the clan’s wealth, his family had always been miserly, with no interest in the material. I suppose some behaviors are learned and not inherited, he thought. Growing listless, he got to his feet and wandered toward the kitchen, where the sound of banging pots rang. As soon as he drew near the doorway, May looked over her shoulder at him. He showed her a smile. “Anything I can help with?” he asked.
The woman’s own smile only grew warmer and more welcoming. “Oh, don’t you dare. I’m the chef around here. No offense, sweetie, but I think you’d just get in my way.” As she spoke, she expertly cracked an egg into a bowl without looking.
“Sweetie?” It had been a long time since somebody had called him that.
May giggled and dumped a smaller bowl of finely chopped onions into the mix. “But if you really want, I’ll give you something meaningless to do.”
He shook his head, not daring to step over the threshold into the holy ground of the kitchen. “No, that is fine. I shall stay out of your way, then.”
“You know, whenever Kara wanted to help out with cooking, I used to have her balance an egg on a spoon for as long as she could. I told her it warms them up so they mix better.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Is Kara another of your children?”
“Mmhmm. We’ve got three of them: two angels and one Arthr.”
He nodded, thinking. Dared he to ask? He didn’t want to be rude, but he was getting a very ominous vibe from the home and its residents. His struggle was short-lived, and he decided to address the kangaroo in the room, as Annika would have said. “Mrs. Warren—”
“May. Call me May.”
“Forgive me. May. I really hope this does not come off as insensitive, but I noticed that your daughter . . . ”
She started to nod as she whisked the eggs. “Yep, she’s half-spider. You don’t need to walk on eggshells around me, it’s tedious.” She giggled, seeming to find the incidental wordplay amusing.
Half-spider? A chill ran down his arms and he stepped into the kitchen, sacred ground be damned. “Forgive me, but when you say half-spider, what does that entail, precisely? If you don’t mind me asking.”
She hummed in consideration, and her voice fluttered as though on the cusp of song. “No need to apologize. You’re not from around here, so of course you don’t know. We didn’t really know either, at first. After some genetic testing, it turned out Ralph has some rare genetic disorder that causes his DNA to match that of a spider in some places. I started jokingly calling our kids half-spiders, and it sort of stuck between him and I.”
Jokingly? “Wait a moment. What genetic disorder can make one’s DNA resemble a spider’s?”
May shrugged. “I dunno. He might be able to tell you, but I’m afraid that’s all I ever found out. It’s an uncomfortable subject for him even now. Anyway, the doctor told him he was genetically spider. Quite a world we live in these days, isn’t it? Never heard of such a thing before we moved to California.”
He took a deep breath, and the smell of lemon cleaner stung his nostrils. “You know, it’s strange,” he said in a measured tone. “When I finally found out about Ralph, the only names to come up in the records were yours and his. There was nothing suggesting you two had any children.”
She stopped stirring. “Hmm, that’s unusual. Maybe you were looking at out-of-date records? That or you didn’t look hard enough.”
The confusion in her voice sounded genuine, so he did not pursue the issue. “Mayhap.”
“Hey, what do you think of her?”
He was for a moment certain he’d heard her wrong. “Your daughter?”
“Mmhmm.” She shook some pepper into the meaty mixture in the bowl.
“I’m afraid I have no idea how to answer that question.”
She groaned a little. “Well, I thought you must’ve been from around here what with how calm you were around her. Most people are a little more surprised when they see one of our kids for the first time. Takes them quite a while to get used to us. Or at least it seems that way.”
“I can imagine that.” Surprise was a good word for it. Which brought up a queer point: why was it a surprise? Even he should have heard something if a family of half-spiders existed. A secret like that couldn’t have been kept for long. And yet surprise seemed to be the norm in this family.
May began to hum once more as she stirred. This woman must have despised the silence, for she seemed to fill every moment of it with a cheerful melody. Mark crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. Half-spider? Genetically spider? Long-dormant memories of the Repton Scriptures came flooding back to him. That old, out-of-place book from the Vigil’s library that he’d read as a child . . . Was it a mere coincidence? He shook his head. Alhazred’s razor deemed it unlikely. And coincidence or not, there was definitely something strange going on. Regardless, he had to remember his priorities. He needed to find Lily. Whatever mysteries this family of semi-spiders held could wait until he’d spoken to Ralph himself.
A crisp pitter-pattering came down the stairs a while later.
“Kara,” May called out at
the sound, “do you want to try meatloaf tonight? Or do you just want meat?”
“Meat,” a girl’s voice answered.
Mark looked up from the lemons he was chopping and saw a young blond-haired girl poking her head into the kitchen. Like the elder daughter of the Ralph Warren family, this girl had eight spider legs growing from her back. She was hunched over, legs frozen in mid-scuttle, staring at Mark with big, blue eyes.
“Mom,” the girl said, indicating him with one of her appendages, “who’s he?”
“Kara, don’t point! It’s rude!”
Unbothered, Mark turned completely from the work May had finally allowed him to do and raised one hand in greeting. “Well met,” he said warmly to the girl. “I’m Mark. You must be Kara.”
She smiled at the mention of her own name. “That’s me!” She raised two of her legs alongside her own hand, mimicking his gesture with all three limbs.
“He’s a relative,” May said. “From your dad’s side.”
She gave her mother a confused look. “But I thought Dad’s family was all gone.”
“He’s a distant relative. He was cousins with your grandfather. Sorry, ninth cousins. Ninth, right?”
Mark nodded.
Kara raised her hand and legs again, repeating the same gesture from before. “Nice to meet you!”
“Right, you said you wanted meat,” May said as though reminding herself. She opened the refrigerator door, pulled open a clear plastic compartment, and began looking through it. “What do you want? We have beef or pork.”
Kara frowned. “No buffalo?”
“All out. I’ll pick some up next time I get out to Lalo’s.”
“I guess beef,” Kara said, turning and beginning to scuttle away. “Thankees!”
May pulled a wrapped package from the drawer and carried it back to the counter. Mark watched as she unwrapped the red slab of raw meat and placed it on a dinner plate. She reached over and took one of the lemon halves that Mark had cut, and squeezed it until cloudy juice drizzled out upon the surface of the meat.
“It turns out half-spiders have some trouble digesting solid food,” she said, as though detecting his curiosity. “Spinneretta and Arthr weren’t able to eat normally until they were seven or so. Kara’s taking a bit longer. Maybe I spoil her too much.”
Mark nodded, eyes on the plate of bright meat. “How does she eat that, then?”
She gave a mischievous smile. “Oh, you’ll see.” She garnished the raw steak with a dash of pepper from the shaker and pushed the plate to the clear end of the counter. Still confused, Mark returned to chopping the lemons that were destined to become salad dressing.
When Mark heard the front door open, he read May’s excitement as a sign the promised hour had come.
“That’ll be Ralph,” she said with a smile.
The door clattered shut, and then a man’s voice called out. “That smells great.”
Mark wiped his hands on the towel, setting the dish he was washing off to the side to dry. “Please excuse me,” he said to May, “but I must speak with him. I will finish washing these after.”
“Oh, hush,” she said, making her way into the living room. “I couldn’t ask you to do any more than you already have.”
“Someone else here?” Ralph called toward the kitchen.
“You have a guest,” May said as she kissed him on the cheek.
At that, Mark emerged from the kitchen. Ralph stood by the door, briefcase in hand, tie loosened and hanging. He was shorter than Mark had imagined. He was thin, with a build he could only think of as wiry. Genetic drift had erased most of the Warren clan’s most prominent traits—though he still had the clan’s distinct russet eyes that Mark himself failed to inherit. Tellingly, he saw nothing indicating that this man was in any way spider.
Catching sight of him, Ralph straightened his posture and puffed his chest out a little. “Ahh, hello.”
Mark raised his hand in salutation. “Well met. Ralph Warren, I presume.” He held his hand out toward Ralph.
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, smiling a little at the archaic greeting. He took Mark’s hand and shook it. “And you are?” Their eyes met, and Ralph swallowed hard.
“Pleased to finally meet you, Ralph. My name is Ma—”
Ralph ripped his hand out of the handshake, as though he’d been struck by a baseball bat in the shins. “Mark!”
Mark recoiled in surprise, his hand still suspended in the air. “You know me?”
Ralph’s face flashed red. His eyes were wide and aghast, like he was witnessing a murder.
“Ralph?” Mark said. “Is something the matter?”
He shook his head, feet shuffling backward until his back pressed against the door. “What are you doing here?” His voice was little more than a feeble whisper.
May probed him with a steady gaze. “Ralph? What’s wrong? Do you know this man?”
“Oh, I know him alright,” he said with a small choke. His eyes darted to May’s face, and again back to Mark’s. “I mean . . . no, I . . . ”
May glanced over at Mark. Then she studied Ralph’s expression. A frown tugged the edges of her lips downward. “Ralph, what’s the matter with you? Do you know him or not?”
Ralph’s mouth drifted open and he shook his head no. “I’ve never . . . I haven’t . . . ”
Mark saw fear in the man’s eyes—a fear that didn’t quite make any sense. And the man’s contradictory statements gave him even less to go off of. He gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Well, forgive me for barging in like this, but—”
The fear in Ralph’s eyes flashed into anger and he jerked his head toward the hallway. “You. Meet me in the study. Right now.” Before Mark could answer, the man pushed past the two of them and headed down the hall. Mark watched him go, utterly confused by his behavior.
When Ralph had vanished from sight into the first door, May turned to him. Her good humor was gone. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a low tone. “Usually he doesn’t act so strangely. I wonder what’s gotten into him.” Her eyes narrowed and she seemed to snarl the last bit. Mark thought it sounded like an accusation.
He shrugged, unsure if her anger was pointed at him, but nervous nonetheless. “I suppose I shouldn’t keep him waiting.”
The door to the study clicked shut. Ralph peered at Mark, his hands coiled into trembling fists. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said, barely above a gravelly whisper. Mark gave him that same confused look, and so Ralph bared his teeth in as menacing a scowl as he could summon. “Don’t give me that face. I know exactly why you’re here and I won’t have it. So get out of my house, you and your goddamn curse.”
A hint of understanding shone in Mark’s face and then vanished. He considered Ralph with a probing glance that made his skin crawl. “Forgive me, but have the two of us actually met before? Because if we have, you’re going to have to remind me.”
Ralph shook his head, trying to conceal his fear. “Don’t think for a second I don’t recognize you, Mark.” His lips quivered in fury. “That’s right, Mark the-motherfucking-Chosen Warren. It’s been a long time, but I still recognize your goddamn eyes. Whatever Golgotha sent you here for, I want no fucking part of it. So get out of my house before I call the police.”
Mark grew silent, that hint of comprehension returning. “Your line still knows of Golgotha, then. Good. That will make things easier.”
An icy chill bloomed in Ralph’s stomach as he remembered the last time he’d seen those tan eyes. “No. It will not make anything easier. Leave. Get out of here.”
The young man crossed his arms. “Listen closely, Ralph. I’m not here because Golgotha sent me. I’m here because I’m looking for someone. And I need your help to—”
Ralph blew a hot breath through his teeth. “Bullshit! It all goes back to Golgotha. I’m not interested in rejoining the Vigil. First Golgotha, then that shithead Victor, and now you come along to strong-arm me? Listen to me, Mark Warren,” he said, taking a menacin
g step forward that failed to impress anyone. “I don’t give a damn if you are the motherfucking Chosen, I have no business with that clan. Now just stop talking, turn around, and—”
Mark’s head rocked to the side, his expression bored. “Surely you must know, Ralph. Golgotha’s dead. So is Victor.”
Ralph fell silent in disbelief, his tongue hanging in mid-sentence. “Bullshit.”
The young man closed his eyes and shrugged. “Your blood still runs from the line of the first Golgotha. That means that you should be well equipped to tell for yourself.” He opened his eyes again, and their severity startled Ralph. “The clan died six years ago. If you don’t believe me, then check your Sight.”
Ralph stared at him, mouth kneading syllables he could not vocalize. “I can’t. Equipment’s rusty.”
The corner of Mark’s mouth twitched. “Rusty?”
“When you don’t use something it tends to not work right. I haven’t used the Sight in ages. Not since . . . ” He swallowed hard. That wasn’t a particularly welcome thought, either.
“Then scrape the rust off your Sight and try it. I’m telling you now, you won’t find them. Even as diluted as your Sight should be, it’s true enough to find Golgotha. That is the point of it, after all.”
Ralph shook his head dismissively. “Well, if you’re telling the truth then what the hell happened to them all? Typhoon come and blow them away?”
Mark narrowed his eyes. “Something like that.”
A bead of sweat caressed the back of Ralph’s neck, and he fell back the step he’d advanced. “Well, d-don’t act like that changes anything. I want you out of my house. I’m not going to—”
An impatient sigh interrupted Ralph’s tirade. “Let me ask you something,” Mark said. “I didn’t even know you existed until recently, after a long while of searching. So, would you mind telling me how you know of me? With how distant our lines have grown, I find it unlikely that we’ve chanced to meet before.”
Ralph glared at him. Of course Mark didn’t remember. He kicked at the carpet, pacing in place. “About twelve years ago, I paid a little visit to Arbordale. Was lured back by all the old stories my grandfather used to tell me. And I might’ve gotten sucked back into that death-town, were it not for Golgotha’s pride and joy—exalted Chosen, you little bastard. So proud was the old man that he personally invited me to witness some bullshit ritual of the Gate by you, so adept was your talent supposed to be. Golgotha’s favorite child, the Chosen, faithful shepherd to us lost children of the Gate . . . !” A violent tremor racked his body as his mind flashed back to that night. On occasion he still awoke from dreams filled with tormented wails, unable to imagine the shadows coating the walls as anything other than blood.
The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1) Page 5