Free Spider-Touched by Jory Strong Page A

brand to her skin. The night she’d climbed aboard the Constellation and taken the name of the demon mark as her own.
    Spider. Araña.
    She dug her nails into her palms, unable to prevent the memory of that first night on the boat from assaulting her. In it she lay huddled in a blanket, too overwhelmed by all that had happened to protest when Erik dabbed salve onto her newly burned flesh with a cloth.
    When it was done, he’d extinguished the lantern and gone on deck. She’d been only vaguely aware of Matthew untethering the boat and silently pushing it away from the dock and into the deeper part of the canal with a pole.
    She understood now that together Matthew and Erik had used oars to maneuver the boat into the black shelter of night on the water. They’d rowed as she ebbed in and out of consciousness, hadn’t stopped until finally the wind stirred to life and was caught by the sails.
    Araña steeled herself. She tried to stop the memory from continuing to play out, but it was impossible. In it Matthew remained on deck while Erik entered the cabin. A match flared, its flame put to the wick of a lantern and trapping Araña in her demon gift.
    She trembled as the reality of the day’s events merged with the long-ago vision of Oakland and death. Felt her heart swell in agony as once again Matthew was cradling Erik in his arms. Only now she knew there would be no going home with Matthew—to grieve and try to pick up the pieces of their lives without Erik.
    Araña rolled over in an effort to escape the pain, the question of guilt. But there was no escape, just as there’d been no escape from the demon gift that night.
    The yellow-orange flame in the oil lamp Rebekka had lit trapped Araña so she couldn’t look away. Her heart raced in her chest, as if its thundering beat could hold her soul against the essence of fire, the birthplace of demons—but it had no power against the gift that was a curse.
    Yellow-orange gave way to red the color of newly spilled blood. Bright red darkened, became a black void as the last thumps of her heart faded along with her awareness of it, leaving her in utter silence.
    The only sense of herself she had was spiderlike, as though she had become the darkness stretching across time and encompassing endless possibility. There was a peace to it, a unity with the mark she didn’t have anywhere else. But there was also a price to pay for it—a terrible price despite the nearly overwhelming beauty that came in an explosion of color.
    Silence yielded to sibilant whispers. Thousands of voices blending together like a rushing stream.
    Black nothingness gave way to strand after strand of color. Thousands of threads given substance, each strand representing a soul, a life. And the urge to grasp them, weave them together into patterns of her own choosing was a tempting, haunting call that had grown stronger as she got older.
    Araña fought against it as she always did, though she knew in the end she would lose. There was no leaving this spider’s place of vision until she yielded.
    And she would yield—sooner rather than later. Before the pain of not choosing grew so intense she would grab wildly, grasping two threads without caring about the result, what the intersection of two paths would mean or how their coming together rippled into the future and changed the design of it.
    Phantom pain slashed through a heart she could no longer hear or feel as she remembered that long-ago night when Erik lit the lantern and the flame caught her, bringing her to this place. She didn’t remember taking up the thread belonging to the witch, but she must have.
    The view of Oakland from the water belonged to the old witch at the bus stop. Even now, it was a clear snapshot in Araña’s mind, an image followed by the memory of pain and nothingness as she’d fought against touching another soul to the witch’s.
    But in the end, she’d lost. She’d chosen a second strand, a deep, rich earth brown, not knowing