“Blood,” said Granddad.

“Blood?” I said.

“Not just any blood,” said Granddad. “Lucky blood. The blood of the luckiest fella one can find. No good higher priced than lucky blood, no sir. Some witches, they use a drop or two. Others find lucky blood is more potent by the gallon.”

“Tally, what’s going on here?” I said, but she wouldn’t answer me. She turned around in her chair and faced the corner, like she was being punished, like it was too much for her to watch.

Granddad lifted his sleeve and a spider crawled out, to the tip of his long bony finger. Then it spun a web, dangling down like a puppet string, spinning right before me, in front of my eyes.

It was a dark brown skinny thing, its six eyes flashing their blackness at me, like the opposite of stars, a hole that could suck you clean in. It clicked its fangs and I was mesmerized. I could not avert my eyes, I could not lift my arms to protect myself. I was stuck stock-still. Not even my toes could wiggle.

“Tally?” I said again, my lips barely moving.

“I’m sorry, Buddy,” she said. “I really am.”

“Your daddy is David Josiah Pennington, eh?” said Granddad. “I wasn’t sure till I saw the deck, but oh yes, it’s his all right. Davey Boy Pennington, the man with the luckiest blood in sixteen counties. A man infamous for crossing the right folks and befriending all the wrong ones. The man who won and lost more fortunes than could ever be counted. The biggest, luckiest scoundrel that ever crawled the river.”

Granddad rose from his chair. His arms stretched out wide and long and skinny like tree limbs, they seemed to grow. He set his glasses on the table. His eyes seemed to change now, to become darker, black almost. He leered down in my face and smacked his lips. I said he looked like a stick bug, but no, that wasn’t right. Those long skinny arms, those well-black eyes. Naw, he was something closer to a long spindly spider, that’s what he was, same as the spider dangling from his finger.

“You’re his son ain’t you?” he said. “Then you got his heart, you do. Scoundrel you are, through and through. And if you got his heart, then you got his blood.” He grinned at me, two fangs poking over his bottom lip. “Lucky blood.”

Granddad lifted his left arm and more spiders poured out, dozens of them, clattering down his fingers and onto me, spinning their webs around me, cocooning me to the chair. Granddad leaned in close and I could see his fangs grow longer, his eyes separate into sixes, his body lengthen and expand. He clacked his teeth together and lowered his head to my wrist and took it in his hands and bit—just the tiniest little nip, but it hurt.

And he drank my blood. I could feel him slurp it right out of my arm.