Ace of Spiders

by Stefan Mohamed

  And you don’t even kill a person.

  Wow. Not a cool thought to have.

  Eddie put his hand on my shoulder. ‘But you can’t fight if you don’t know what you’re fighting.’

  He had me there. I nodded. ‘Fine. Go and do the thing. I’ll be an indoor pet.’

  ‘Does the indoor pet want eggs?’ said Sharon.

  ‘Eggs?’ I waved at Eddie. ‘Cool, fine, bye, I’m good here.’

  ‘Egg delivery,’ said Sharon, floating a pair of poached eggs on to my toast.

  ‘Thanks.’ I sprinkled salt and pepper on them and started to eat. ‘Flying eggs are best eggs.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ She sat down opposite me and poured herself a cup of coffee. Sharon was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. She had long, silky blonde hair and cosmic blue eyes, and an aura somewhere between endlessly comforting earth mother and reluctant warrior woman. As well as her telekinesis, which was a good deal more precise than mine, she had a way of reading people, of sensing their lies and uncovering their real emotions, no matter how well-hidden they were.

  Not that anyone would have needed such skills to work out my mood at that precise moment. I might as well have been starring in an off-Broadway revival of Stanly Is Really Fucking Pissed Off Right Now!. ‘I’m sorry about before,’ I said. ‘The fridge and stuff. It’s embarrassing.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Sharon. ‘Although it has been a long time since I’ve seen you lose control. I half thought we might have to separate you two.’

  ‘Eddie would bounce me round the kitchen,’ I said, although it wasn’t necessarily what I thought.

  ‘Not my kitchen, he wouldn’t,’ said Sharon. ‘I’d bounce both of you around it before I let that happen.’

  ‘Without even lifting a finger.’

  ‘Well, one must keep one’s nails clean.’

  ‘I really thought I was past that,’ I said. ‘Random power bursts. But sometimes . . .’

  ‘Sometimes tempers get lost,’ said Sharon. ‘Happens to everyone.’

  ‘Not to you.’

  ‘Yes it does.’ She smiled. ‘And it’s OK. Most people have it in them to cause damage when they lose their tempers. The problem is, that danger is massively increased for us. So we have to be careful.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I try . . . I will try. Harder. No, actually, I won’t try. Do or do not, innit.’ Thinking of Yoda made me think of Daryl, which dramatically increased the levels of woe-is-me in my bloodstream, and I sighed. ‘I’m sorry about the arguing, too. Seems to be happening more and more these days.’

  ‘You’re pushing your boundaries,’ said Sharon. ‘And Eddie is both intractable and a massive old woman. Albeit one trapped in a young masculine warrior’s body. There are bound to be some sparks.’

  ‘What does Connor think about it?’

  ‘He longs for a quiet life,’ said Sharon, fondly.

  ‘Yeah, I get that impression.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  I had a feeling she knew, but I just shook my head. ‘Doesn’t matter. Look, I just . . . it’s all frustrating.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sharon. ‘And I sympathise, I really do. You’re smart, and you’re powerful, and you want to be in charge of your life, not hanging around while other people sort things out for you. I understand. But you need to put yourself in his shoes.’

  ‘He doesn’t exactly go out of his way to put himself in my shoes.’

  Sharon shrugged. ‘What else can I say? I already said “intractable”, didn’t I? How about “stubborn”?’

  ‘How about you try and put me in his shoes?’ I said. ‘’Cos generally I’m too busy wanting to slap him for treating me like a child to really empathise with his point of view.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she sighed. ‘He feels responsible for you.’

  ‘He isn’t, though. I’m responsible for me.’

  ‘That’s not the way he sees it,’ said Sharon. ‘I remember when I first met him. He was still so angry about how he left things with your parents. He felt so guilty. This . . . I think he sees it as giving them something back for being so difficult, looking after you. Plus the fact that he cares about you and couldn’t bear to see you get hurt.’ She smiled. ‘But I can see how it could become a drag. He shouldn’t have come down on you the way he did. He just . . . doesn’t know how to deal with these feelings. They’re still very new for him. Sometimes his wires get crossed, or steam comes out of the wrong valve. Mix a few more metaphors in there for me, maybe it’ll make sense.’

  That made me laugh. ‘Yeah. Well. It just . . . I died, and I came back from it. You’d think that would earn me a sliver of respect.’ To be fair, it was a nine-year-old girl who brought you back, it was nothing to do with you, really.

  Shut up.

  ‘I think it earns you more than a sliver of guilt and overprotectiveness from Eddie,’ said Sharon. ‘He didn’t show it when you told him, but he was furious with himself. He kept saying: “he died and I should have been there”. That’s why he might seem like even more of a nagging old baggage now than he did before.’

  ‘Sounds like someone needs to prune his guilt hedge,’ I said, finishing off my eggs.

  Sharon raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You asked for another metaphor. You didn’t specify a good one.’

  ‘I’m not even sure that was a metaphor.’

  ‘Oh God, whatevz. Step away from the semantics with your hands in the air, or I’ll take a load of apostrophes and put them in the wrong places.’

  Sharon made a big pantomime of clawing at her eyes. ‘I’m afraid you’d be out on your ear if you tried that, boyo.’

  I smiled. ‘Nice to hear a bit of Welsh lingo creeping in. We’ll have you pronouncing double Ls and CHs next.’

  Sharon laughed. ‘I’m afraid that speaking Welsh is one superpower I’ll probably never master.’

  ‘Sbwriel.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It means “rubbish”.’

  ‘Ah.’ She waved her hand. ‘Pfft. It’s a silly language anyway.’

  ‘Watch it. That’s the language of my fathers.’

  ‘Your fathers can have it.’

  ‘Ddoniol iawn.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘It means “very funny”,’ I said. ‘Anyway. Speaking of speaking Welsh, I’m going to go and ring Kloe.’

  ‘Won’t she be in college?’

  ‘She has a free morning on Fridays. And I know she’ll be dying to hear about my brand new death warrant.’

  ‘Stanly? Break it to her gently, OK?’

  ‘Oh I will.’

  ‘You what?’

  For some reason – possibly because, for a generally intelligent person, I can occasionally be astronomically dense – I’d expected Kloe to be calm about the whole thing. It was only after she’d shrieked ‘you what’ down the phone at a nerve-shredding volume that I realised exactly what it was that I was telling her. ‘Um,’ I said. It was about the best I could do.

  ‘A hitman? Why? Who was it? Someone wants to kill you? Who wants to kill you? Why do they want to kill you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some guy called Smith put him up to it.’

  ‘Smith? Smith who? What’s going on, Stanly?’

  Too many very similar questions to which I had no answers. ‘Kloe, I honestly have no idea what’s going on. I’m under house arrest at the moment. Eddie and Connor and Skank are looking into it. They’re going to let me know when they find anything out.’

  ‘So you’re just sat at home waiting for someone else to come and kill you?’ She sounded close to hysterics. I had to make something up to calm her down. It had been a monumentally stupid idea to tell her, it’s just that I’d really wanted to hear the sound of her voice, and when she’d asked what was new I couldn’t very well lie to
her.

  Except that you’re going to lie now.

  Oh shut up.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, lamely. ‘Eddie and Connor will find out what’s happening, and until then I’m perfectly safe here. I’ve got my powers, remember? Plus, nobody knows where I live.’

  ‘Didn’t those Angel people break in that one time to kidnap Tara?’

  Bollocks. ‘Um . . . well, yeah, they did, but that was different. We were all out at the time except for Daryl, and he was kind of in league with them anyway.’ Unfair. ‘There was no-one with powers.’

  ‘What about Sharon? She was there.’

  Bollocks bollocks. ‘Yeah, but . . . well, yeah. Exactly. And she did a pretty damn good job of holding them off. She properly messed that one guy up. And that was just by herself. And she wasn’t prepared. So with a couple of us, if we’re all prepared, there shouldn’t be any trouble. Plus, nobody’s going to try any­thing in the middle of the day, are they?’

  ‘You said that hitman attacked you in the middle of the day.’

  Bollocks shit piss. ‘Plus Eddie and Connor will be back later,’ I said, skipping over that one entirely, ‘and they’ve got powers and guns, and I’ve got my powers as well, remember.’

  ‘You said that already.’

  ‘Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget. I’m not helpless. And I fought that Masters guy off single-handedly yesterday. You can watch the footage online if you want.’

  ‘What?’

  Shitting bollocks pissing crap, why am I suddenly the worst person ever at talking. ‘Yeah, um . . . there might have been a few cameras.’

  Eventually, by some miracle, I managed to calm her down. She even said she’d check out one of the videos later, although she said I should expect another shrieking phone call, just in case she couldn’t handle it. ‘I’m sure you can,’ I said. ‘You’re a tough—’

  ‘Oh no you don’t, boy. Do not try to disarm me with sweet talk. I am allowed to freak out about someone wanting to murder my boyfriend.’

  Fair point, well made. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I promise not to do that if you promise to—’

  ‘And don’t make me promise not to worry, like that’s a thing anyone can ever promise.’

  ‘OK. I promise. But you do have to promise me one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t share the video on Facebook.’

  A pause, then she laughed. ‘Fine. Good.’ OK. Think you just about managed to salvage proceedings. ‘I just wish you were here,’ she said. ‘Why do you stay down there? Where all that stuff happens? Assassinations and monsters and stuff?’

  ‘It beats wasting away in Tref-y-Celwyn.’

  ‘I suppose. Hold on . . . does that mean that I’m wasting away in Llangoroth? Is wasting away in Llangoroth better than wasting away in Tref-y-Celwyn?’

  ‘By a mile. Llangoroth has way more pubs than Tref-y-Celwyn. And the recycling centre’s loads bigger. I don’t know if ours even does cardboard.’

  She laughed. ‘I’ve actually been looking at universities in London.’

  ‘Really? Despite all the assassinations and monsters and stuff?’

  ‘Well, that’s your stuff. I’d be doing other stuff.’

  ‘Are they any good?’

  ‘I got a few brochures. They all look good, and there are loads of wicked courses. I’m a bit torn at the moment. Plus there’s the whole being-in-debt-for-the-rest-of-my-life thing to consider. But I guess my children can pay it off after I’m dead.’

  That made me think of Tara, and I felt momentarily dizzy, as I generally did when my temporally confusing familial situation came up. ‘When do you need to decide?’ I asked, managing a pretty good approximation of a normal tone.

  ‘Needs to be sorted out by February, I think.’

  ‘Well, what have you looked at?’ I seemed to have managed to get her off the topic of assassinations and monsters and stuff, which was good, and we spent about half an hour talking about various things, conspicuously avoiding any potentially sore subjects. It was lovely, although I felt guilty when she talked about university, about the healthy, normal, wicked things she wanted to do. At some point things were going to get really messy, and we’d have to take our newborn daughter and travel back in time. And deep down I knew that in some way, however tangentially, it was going to be my fault.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, after a while. ‘I’ve got to go and meet Lynsey.’

  ‘Blonde Lynsey?’

  ‘No, the other Lynsey who we know.’

  ‘Haha. Ha.’

  ‘So I’ll speak to you over the weekend sometime?’

  ‘Yup. Take care.’

  ‘You too. Stay out of trouble. Please.’

  ‘Oh, you know me.’

  ‘Yeah. I do.’

  There was a brief pause, pregnant with things better left unsaid. ‘Love you,’ she said, softly.

  ‘Love you too.’

  ‘Don’t say “too”. It sounds like you’re just saying it ‘cos I said it.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re welcome. Bye.’

  ‘Hello.’ Click.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Sharon when I returned to the kitchen.

  ‘Note to self,’ I said. ‘In future, do not appraise girlfriend of assassination attempts.’

  ‘I could have told you that.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to deal with things yourself?’ Her eyes glowed with mischief. ‘And actually, having said all that, it’s good that you told Kloe. It’s not fair to keep things from her.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So, anyway. What was it like jumping from a moving bus to a moving truck?’

  ‘It was brilliant,’ I said. ‘I had a lovely time, and I hope to do it again very soon.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Sharon. ‘Now I believe you have some washing to do?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘Don’t ever call me that.’

  ‘Sorry, Grandma.’

  ‘That’s Eddie.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  I did washing and tidied my room and half-heartedly surfed the internet, but I felt too restless to concentrate on anything properly. It’s weird how you can find pretty much anything on the internet, but if you’re not in the mood it might as well just be a holding page that leads to nowhere. I didn’t have any new books to read or films to watch, and there was nothing on TV. Sharon had some paperwork to deal with so I ended up meandering around the house, fidgeting from sofa to chair to chair, sitting for a while staring into space, then moving on again. After about an hour and a half of this I felt a sod it spark in my brain, and I went downstairs and grabbed my coat from its hook. Sharon looked through from the kitchen. ‘Stanly. Eddie said for you to stay in.’

  ‘I’m going nuts in here!’ I said. ‘I need to be out doing stuff. I need to find out who wants to kill me! And I need to buy Tara a present.’

  ‘Stanly . . .’ Sharon stood up and came through. ‘I understand. Honestly, I do. But the safest thing for you to do is to stay in.’

  ‘But I’m bored!’ I said, adopting the whining tone of a ­petulant seven-year-old girl from New York.

  Sharon smiled. ‘All right. Let’s do something, then.’

  ‘Something?’ I wasn’t really in the mood for our usual games, which included psychic DIY (more fun than it sounds), psychic Lego (exactly as fun as it sounds), psychic chess (the novelty wears off surprisingly fast) and psychic high or low (fun even though Sharon always won).

  ‘Something different.’ She beckoned, and I followed her back to the kitchen. She grabbed a packet of self-raising flour from the cupboard, turned and faced me. ‘Dexterity practice. And imagination practice. I’ll throw som
e flour into the air. See what you can do with it.’ She raised a finger. ‘But if any of it goes on the floor, you have to clean it up.’

  ‘OK.’ Could be a laugh, I guess.

  Sharon reached into the bag and pulled out a small handful of flour. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Hold on.’ My mind felt blunt, and I spent a few seconds with my eyes closed, sharpening, focusing, visualising what I would do, how it would feel. ‘All right,’ I said, opening my eyes. ‘Shoot.’

  She threw the flour into the air and I concentrated. The small mass that she had kept enclosed in her hand expanded, coming apart into thousands of dusty white particles, and I stopped them all, leaving a cloud frozen in space between us. I didn’t miss a molecule. ‘Good,’ said Sharon. ‘Now what can you do with it?’

  Keep concentrating. I kept my gaze focused on the floating mass of powder and let my mind extend and wrap around it, feeling every part. Slowly and delicately, as if manipulating a tower of glass shards, I pulled the cloud apart and re-arranged the flour into the shape of a question mark. Sharon smiled, but didn’t speak. Good. No distractions. I let the question mark hover in the air for a moment, tore it apart and formed a circle.

  Now for the tricky part. I took a second to feel my brain inside my head, to stay completely aware of the tool that I was using for this operation, before slowly splitting the psychic action in half so that one invisible force was holding the suspended circle of flour in place, leaving another free to play. I used this second force to grab an apple from the fruit bowl on the table, throw it through the centre of the circle, catch it and bring it back through. After repeating this a couple of times I moved the flour downwards so that it was hanging around the apple like a ring around a planet, and slowly I started to rotate the two, one clockwise and the other anticlockwise. I could feel a slight strain on my brain, as it wasn’t used to controlling separate movements at the same time with such delicacy, but I maintained my concentration for about a minute before pulling the ring apart and assembling the flour into a small ball, which I dropped back in the bag.

  Finishing touch?