I got my bra on under the covers and then pulled on my shirt. “I’m going, Fish Lips! It was an act. I wasn’t trying to get into his bed for real.”

Crash just watched me dress the whole time. If he thought I was going to blush and get flustered, he had another think coming. How many doctor’s exams had I had up to this point? Too many to count, and most had involved a speculum, which meant now a little bit of skin showing was nothing.

“Thank you for the weapons,” I said, yanking the last of my clothes on. “I’ll come back when I get my first paying job.”

“It’ll be months away,” he said. “Maybe a year. You won’t have a reputation until then. That’s how this goes.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I couldn’t afford to wait that long. “I tend to break rules as I go, so we’ll see about that.”

I brushed past him, my arm bumping up against his side. I took note of a tattoo that curled around to his back, something I hadn’t seen before because of the way the sheet was wrapped. Flames, just flames winding around his torso. Feish harried me all the way to the front door, pushed me out, and slammed it shut behind me.

I stood there in Factors Row thinking things couldn’t get any weirder, any worse.

That was a terrible way to test Murphy’s law, in case you were wondering.

I checked my watch. Five! How could it be so late? The walk back to Corb’s place was easily twenty minutes. I had to hurry if I didn’t want to be late.

A tapping on the cobblestones behind me turned me around.

There was Robert, watching me, swaying where he stood. “Robert, what are you doing here?”

“Warning.”

Just that one word, and then he was gone between one blink and the next.

Warning, huh? Warning for what, though?

I turned in the direction of Corb’s loft, then let out a shriek as I stumbled backward from the literal horror in front of me. A spider of enormous size, perched on long, hairy legs. The size of a freaking horse, legs stretched out a good ten feet in either direction.

I hated spiders.

Almost as much as I hated Himself.

“Oh, fresh meat.” The spider ducked its head under the bridge that led into the walk and scuttled toward me.

“You can’t be seen!”

“You’re right, I can’t be. Trick of my magic keeps the unseeing from seeing me or my victims. Only allowed to chase those who can see me now.” The fangs that flicked out from under its mouth were the size of my thighs. As thick as them too.