Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [51]
It had been dark an hour when Byron finally returned, found them in the living room listening to Bach, and he’d sent Walter back out to the car for the bags while he’d bitched about a cashier at the supermarket who had looked at the credit card and wanted to know if he was Robin Elizabeth Ingalls.
“Did you get everything on the list?” she’d asked, and he’d rolled his eyes.
“I’m not totally fucking incompetent.”
“If I’d thought that you were, Byron, I’d have gone myself.”
Revived by her bath and the food, by Spyder’s gentle ministrations, she’d finally felt the first twinges of excitement, adrenaline promises and a tightness deep in her belly. When Walter came back in with the bags, she had him set them down on the floor, and she prowled through them, one by one, checking their contents against the list in her head. And yes, Byron had found everything she’d asked for, the spices and salt, the paints and olive oil and two dozen white candles.
“Okay, Walter, if you’d please take this all down to the basement now…” But then Spyder’s eyes had gone wide, lightning swift passage of dread across her face before she’d turned suddenly away, and Robin had known that look, that special silver panic that rode piggyback on her madness, that flashed itself like a warning display. She’d glanced at Byron and known that he’d seen it, too. Spyder walked away from them, stood by a window and stared out at the dark between them and the house next door.
“Spyder? What’s wrong? Did I say something wrong?”
Nothing for a second, hearts beating and sluggish time, and then, “I don’t want you to do this in the basement. Anywhere else is okay, Robin, but not the basement.”
Robin had stared at Spyder’s dim reflection in the window—Spyder reversed and so maybe that Spyder was sane—feeling her concern melting into annoyance, and anger not far enough behind.
“Why? What’s wrong with the basement?”
“I don’t want you to use it, that’s all, okay? I just don’t want you to use the basement.”
Robin had taken one step closer, still some hope of defusing this, if she didn’t get pissed, if Byron and Walter kept their mouths shut.
“It needs to be the basement, Spyder. I’ve worked this all out very precisely, and your basement is the only place I know that’s even close to what we need.”
In the window glass, Spyder’s eyes were just shadows beneath the ridge of her brow, her dark eyebrows, unreadable smudges, and she didn’t say anything.
“Come on. At least tell me why you don’t want us to use the basement for the ceremony—”
“I don’t want you to use the basement. You can do whatever you want in any other part of the house, okay? But I don’t want you to do this in the basement.”
“You said that already,” Byron mumbled, then, and Robin had glared at him, dry ice and razors, had given him a rough shove and silently mouthed Shut the hell up; he’d sneered and given her his middle finger in return.
“Just tell me why, Spyder, and maybe we can figure something out—”
“No, Robin. There’s nothing to figure out. I don’t want to do this in the basement. You’ll have to think of some other place.”
The finality in Spyder’s voice, the mulish resolution, and to her fleeting surprise, Robin had discovered that this time she didn’t really care if it was because Spyder was sick, if she couldn’t help these unpredictable barriers and taboos. She loved Spyder and had always walked on eggshells and china plates for her, had always been so careful, so mindful of the places and things and words that you could never know were off-limits until you’d already stepped across