The Spider Goddess

by Tara Moss

  Mind Movement?

  ‘Telekinesis. Once you learn to harness it, it will come in quite handy, I should think. And just imagine what else you can do. This is just the beginning.’

  I blinked. Was it possible? Telekinesis. I opened my mouth to protest, but fell silent. I thought of how the jar with the tarantula in it had been shaken from my bag, and yet it had ended up in my hand before anyone could see.

  Imagine what else you can do . . .

  ‘How are you feeling?’ It was a male voice, not Luke. I scanned the antechamber until my eyes fell upon a third person. Well, not a person.

  Deus.

  ‘Good evening, young lady,’ he said, stepping into the pool of light thrown by the candles, and grinning his magnetic Kathakano grin. I felt myself lurch forward. ‘Take it easy now. The first drink is the strongest,’ he said.

  First drink? My eyes moved to the glass of red wine and I squinted. I brought my hand to my lips and then gazed at it. There was blood on my fingers.

  No!

  ‘Don’t worry. I only gave you enough to kill Arachne’s poison. Celia’s strict instructions, you understand.’ He crossed his heart.

  I was speechless.

  ‘Remember to be grateful, Pandora,’ Celia told me in a low voice. ‘If Deus was not so talented at flight, he wouldn’t have got to you in time. A lesser Sanguine could not have done it.’

  He could fly. I remembered the shadow I’d seen fly past my window that night, just before our second meeting. And now I’d been drinking his blood . . .

  ‘I have to get up,’ I said. ‘Now.’ I pushed myself forward and felt my ankles wobble.

  ‘Your legs may not be strong enough yet,’ my great-aunt warned. ‘The poison was quite toxic.’

  Just like that, Lieutenant Luke scooped me up off the chaise lounge and into his arms. With effort I linked my arms around his neck.

  I hate the whole damsel-in-distress look, but heck, it’s awfully nice up here. I found myself smiling as full feeling returned to my face.

  ‘I’ll take care of her tonight,’ Luke said.

  My great-aunt gave me a wink. ‘He’s keen, isn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘Well, I should be going.’ Deus gave a courteous bow. ‘I do so hope you won’t let my blood go to waste?’ He eyed the wine glass.

  ‘Darling, are you kidding?’ Celia said. She and Deus brushed lips, and she whispered something in his ear. He bid us goodnight, walked to the casket on the floor, opened it and disappeared inside. He’d no doubt exit via the roof.

  Celia opened the door to the penthouse and Luke walked me over the threshold. I felt weirdly like a bride. A bride in the arms of a dead, yet not dead, Civil War soldier. He carried me down the hallway to the lounge room and Celia followed after us with the jar. She carried it very carefully, I noticed.

  Celia placed the jar on her shelf and turned. Beneath her veil I watched her take in Lieutenant Luke, from his leather boots to his handsome, chiselled face and back down again. The corners of her perfectly painted mouth turned up ever so slightly, I noticed, but she said nothing. Luke did not notice her appraisal. He was too busy watching me attentively.

  ‘Your legs will be fine in a few minutes. How about I fix us some tea, to help wash things down,’ Celia suggested.

  I swallowed. ‘Yes please.’ The less I thought about what I’d been drinking, the better.

  I indicated Celia’s hassock, and Luke gently placed me there. ‘I’m so glad you are okay, Miss Pandora,’ he said, and kissed my hand. I tried to run through what had happened since he’d woken me. The sight of Spektor under siege. The race to the roof. The confrontation.

  Celia soon returned with perfectly prepared cups of tea on her silver tray. ‘I was so worried about you, Great-Aunt Celia,’ I told her. ‘When I entered the antechamber I saw the candles glowing, and I thought you might be somewhere inside.’

  ‘Ah, the offering to the Triple Goddess.’ She handed the tray around and we each took a cup. ‘The Mother was powerful tonight, was she not?’ she said, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  ‘The . . . Triple Goddess?’

  I thought of the red candle. I had woken staring at it. And the low table. And then it finally occurred to me that there might be a word for what my great-aunt was. I’d at one time worried fleetingly that she was a vampire – or Sanguine. But a witch? It hadn’t crossed my mind until now, though looking back, perhaps it should have. There were signs I might have picked up on, had I not been blinded by Hollywood’s Wicked Witch of the West with her pointy hat and green warty skin. The witch was always depicted as the embodiment of female ugliness and evil; polar opposites of the attributes my great-aunt possessed.

  Celia returned to lean on the leather arm of her reading chair. ‘Ah, The Wizard of Oz,’ she lamented, and sighed. It seemed Celia knew precisely what I was thinking. The thought made me blush. ‘You didn’t think we all ride broomsticks, did you?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I muttered awkwardly. After my childhood exposure to history and mythology, I knew better, and yet the cliché had popped into my head in all its neon-green Halloween hideousness.

  Great Aunt-Celia – telepathic, half-Sanguine witch?

  But of course, my great-aunt was never one for labels. True to form, she changed the subject. ‘Now darling, our guest requires rather a better home, don’t you think?’

  I turned to Luke, who stood just next to me, politely sipping his tea as if it might still be 1860, and he’d been taken home to meet the folks.

  ‘Not him,’ Celia said. ‘Her.’

  Arachne. The jar was on her shelf.

  ‘But where did all the other spiders go? The web they were creating around the building?’ I asked.

  ‘The spiders were extensions of her, and when her powers vanished, so did they.’ Celia looked around the lounge room and frowned. ‘Though the shattered windows remain. Shame.’

  It was quite a mess.

  ‘So they weren’t real spiders?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by real. They certainly weren’t imaginary, were they?’

  ‘No wonder it wouldn’t eat,’ I remarked of the spider I’d brought home.

  ‘The tarantula. Yes.’

  It had spied on me. It had led her straight to me.

  Celia walked across to her bookshelf and took down the spider’s vivarium. ‘Now, help me put her in here,’ she instructed, and pointed at the jar. ‘Your legs should be fine now.’

  I stood up slowly and circled my ankles and wrists. The poison did seem to have worn off. I exchanged glances with Luke, who carefully watched what Celia was doing.

  I walked up to the jar, and looked in. Arachne scuttled along the round base of her glass prison. The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. What if she became the spider goddess once more and tried to devour me?

  ‘And when she’s in the vivarium, um . . . assuming we get her in there . . . what if the spell you cast wears off and —’

  ‘Have you no trust in me yet, Pandora?’ Celia calmly asked.

  I blushed. Of course I trusted her. She had only ever helped me, despite my naivety and, at times, my resistance. And now she had used her powers and her connections to well and truly save my life.

  I raised the glass jar and marvelled at the moment – here I was with my unnaturally youthful, stereotype-defying witchy great-aunt, holding a spider that used to be a woman and a goddess, and talking about spells wearing off. Oh how my life had changed since leaving Gretchenville.

  ‘She is in stasis. Neither dying, nor transforming back into her original human self.’

  ‘How did you do that? I mean, transform her?’

  ‘Well, she was already half-transformed, and like I’ve said many times, I’m not so powerless. Besides, magick works well on magick, especially when the timing is right.’ Celia had laid the vivarium on the floor. ‘The same magick that allowed her rather showy entrance into our little neighbourhood also helped transform her into what we see now. The moon
is full and the magick is high tonight. The Mother is at her most powerful. Thankfully she picked our side. This time.’

  We both gazed at the little jar, and the spider trapped within it.

  ‘Go on. It is for you to do,’ Celia told me.

  I unlocked the top of the beautiful castle, placed the lid on the floor of the lounge room and, holding my breath, unscrewed the top of the little jar. I placed it inside and tilted it, and the spider slid into her new home. I quickly retracted my hand, placed the lid back on top, and locked it. When it was done I breathed a deep sigh.

  ‘See, it’s perfect for her.’

  Thousands of years ago, the spider had been a mortal woman, then an immortal goddess, and now she looked like nothing more than a common black widow spider. Was she self-aware? I wondered. Did this little spider know who she had been? I suppressed a shiver at the thought of being trapped in another creature’s body. My experience of being paralysed in her web was bad enough. I felt a rush of sympathy, until I remembered that she’d aimed to eat me.

  My wise and beautiful great-aunt placed the little castle back on the shelf in her lounge room, alongside her other curios. I found myself looking at each item – the small vase, the tiny figurine carved of bone, the art deco nymph, the Venus flytrap plant – and I wondered what or who they were.

  ‘Great-Aunt Celia?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘Are there any other goddesses here in your lounge room?’

  She only smiled.

  ‘Now, I have a certain someone to catch up with,’ Celia said, and I knew she meant Deus. ‘Don’t you two do anything I wouldn’t,’ she told us. She turned on her elegant heel and left Luke and I alone.

  I looked at my companion. The Hunger Moon was still full, shining through the broken windows behind him, silhouetting his frame.

  We had tonight. I knew that much. We had tonight.

  On Monday I arrived at work to find a gorgeous white orchid on my desk, wrapped in a large, red bow. I assumed at first that the beautiful flower was for my boss, Skye, but to my surprise, I found that the card had my name on it.

  PANDORA ENGLISH

  Can ghosts send flowers? I wondered at once. The morning after the Hunger Moon I’d woken alone, with Luke’s sword on the floor of my room. I hoped he would be back. I hoped . . .

  It can’t be from Luke.

  I opened the card to find I was right. It wasn’t from my soldier friend. It was a thankyou card from Laurie Smith, of Smith & Co. After a lifetime of being underappreciated in the real world, I was unprepared for this show of thanks. My surprise, of course, didn’t match the bafflement of my deputy editor, who stood over me as I opened the card.

  ‘Laurie Smith? Why would he send you an orchid?’ Pepper said.

  ‘We got on pretty well,’ I answered.

  I wondered how much he remembered.

  ‘Oh.’ She seemed thrown by the attention I’d received. ‘What information did you get?’ she asked, and put out her hand.

  ‘Just the basics, like you asked for,’ I told her. ‘But I didn’t get anything from the other studio,’ I said. ‘No one was there.’

  No one human, anyway.

  ‘And I wasn’t able to get anyone on the phone,’ I added.

  ‘Oh. I’ll check it out. The Smith & Co quote is probably more important anyway. Thanks.’ She walked back to her desk with the notes I had transcribed.

  This time I was the one thrown. I was impressed, hearing that six-letter word from her.

  The knitwear piece was going to print, and there would not be one single mention of the missing designers, whom I knew perfectly well were never coming back. The cover and fashion spread would feature fashions by Victor Mal, Richard Helmsworth, Sandy Chow, Smith & Co and a lesser-known knitwear company called Arachne, which I was sure didn’t have much of a future.

  I had the feeling Smith & Co were about to corner the market.

  At twenty minutes past five, hours after the latest issue of Pandora magazine was put to bed, I stared intently at an ordinary ballpoint pen on my desk.

  Come on, Pandora.

  Come on . . .

  ‘Nothing,’ I muttered with disappointment when it was clear the pen was not going to move. Mind Movement? Could I really do it? Maybe if I started with something smaller? A paperclip?

  I was distracted from my failed attempts at telekinesis by a chime at the door. To my surprise, Skye DeVille walked in. I’d written her off for the day, and was ready to start packing it in myself, but in a way I was kind of glad she was finally making an appearance. I’d snuck the stolen Chanel jewellery back into her office, and I wondered what she would say when she found it. And I was even more curious about how she would be after a weekend off from Athanasia’s parasitic attentions.

  That woman has a lot to thank me for, not that she will ever know . . .

  Skye sauntered past reception in a trailing outfit of black and maroon, chin in the air like nothing was amiss, and made her way straight towards her little office without a word. And all the time as she approached, I found myself staring. My stomach grew colder, and colder. With some effort I tore my eyes from the pallor of her skin, her change of dress, the way she seemed so indefinably separate from the rest of the office.

  I took a glance at the window. Twenty past five. That was very late. The winter sun was low.

  Oh boy.

  Pepper saw her boss hide away in her office, and she marched straight over and knocked on the door. I heard the doorknob turn. On instinct, I grabbed my things and stood up, as if to greet her and bid her farewell for the day. When Skye opened the door I pretended to drop my satchel.

  ‘Oops!’

  I picked up the bag clumsily, letting some things spill.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Skye demanded in a shrill voice.

  The little bag I always carried with me had fallen out, and a handful of rice grains were spread out across the floor at Skye’s feet. My face turned a deep crimson, despite the purposefulness of my act.

  ‘I, uh, dropped my leftovers from lunch,’ I said lamely.

  ‘You eat uncooked rice?’ Pepper asked.

  I knelt on the floor, and watched Skye for a reaction. Nothing. There was no reaction from her but an obvious and predictable disdain for me. She didn’t begin counting grains. This was good news because it probably meant she wasn’t on her way to becoming a Fledgling vampire. It was bad news because she now thought me even worse of an idiot than before.

  ‘What on earth is wrong with that girl?’ I heard Pepper say under her breath as she stepped inside the door of Skye’s office.

  What indeed.

  And then the worst possible thing happened. Skye DeVille followed Pepper inside, and then paused. She turned and cocked her head, looking at the ground where I knelt.

  I saw her lips move. One, two, three . . .

  My god, she’s counting.

  This is the bit where I gush about how fortunate I am to have amazing people in my life.

  I need to firstly thank Rod Morrison, who came to me years ago with the idea that I ought to branch into a new series. Thanks for coming around on the supernatural, and for letting me build Spektor. I’ll always treasure the sight of you in plastic fangs. You are missed. A special thanks to Cate, Claire, Joel, Caitlin and the team at Pan Macmillan for your support and hard work, and for believing in Pandora.

  I count myself truly lucky to have friend/literary agent/fairy godmother/Great-Aunt Celia inspiration Selwa Anthony in my life. You and Brian are family. Thanks also to the support of the Foxtel family, 13th Street and CI Network. It’s been an awesome year.

  I am blessed to have the most wonderful friends, including the Gothmother Alison, Aunty Hels, Mindi, Sarah, Caroline, Amelia and Desi, Misty, Kelly and Mick, Jacinta, Lizzy, Lauren and Josh, Tessa and Shane, Martin, Josh, Nige and Brig, Penelope and Karim, Jody and Simon, Jack and Venetia, Charlotte, Jenny and Linda (Forever Miss J). Whether there are trees falling at my doorstep, my crazy ho
use needs warming or I need a word of encouragement, you are always there. And to my precious family Dad and Lou, Dorothy and Nik, Maureen, Jacquelyn and Annelies, I love you. Mum, I never forget you. To my beautiful husband Berndt and our girl Sapphira Jane, thank you for making me such a happy woman. This year has been the best of my life.

  Thank you Wiccan goddess Fiona Horne for the obsidian. And thank you to Charles Addams, and of course The Spider Goddess herself for the inspiration.

  We all have a hidden Spektor.

  Tara Moss is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels Fetish, Split, Covet, Hit, Siren and The Blood Countess. Her novels have been published in seventeen countries in eleven languages, and have been nominated for both the Davitt and the Ned Kelly crime writing awards.

  Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Moss is a dual Australian/Canadian citizen. When not writing her next novel she enjoys reading voraciously, spending time with her pet python, Thing, collecting morbid memento mori and Victoriana, serving as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and ambassador for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children, and presenting shows on Foxtel’s Crime & Investigation and 13th Street channels. She is married to Australian poet and philosopher Dr Berndt Sellheim with whom she has a daughter. Visit her on the web at www.taramoss.com and pandoraenglish.com.

  Also by Tara Moss

  The Blood Countess

  TARA MOSS

  THE BLOOD COUNTESS

  Pandora English is no ordinary small town orphan. When she’s invited to live with her mysterious Great-Aunt Celia in New York City, she seizes the opportunity to escape her stifling hometown, break from her tragic past and make it as a writer.

  Things, however, are not what she is expecting. For starters, her great-aunt’s gothic mansion is in a mist-wreathed Manhattan suburb that doesn’t appear on maps. And then there’s Celia herself – a former designer to the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age – who is elegant, unnaturally young and always wearing a veil.