I felt it leaving me, power or light or life, something important that ran through my heart and veins all day. I wondered if this was it, if this would be the end of me, if Pop would rot off in jail or wherever Boss Authority had him, if there was no hope for us left.

But then Granddad clacked his fangs together twice and spat. My blood smudged the dust on the ground.

“It’s tainted,” he said. “This boy’s been hexed.”

“Hexed?” I said.

Granddad whirled around and faced down Tally, who was cowering in her chair. “Cursed! Spoilt!” he screeched, waving his hairy arms around. “You brought me a boy with hexed blood!”

“I didn’t know, Granddad,” she said. “He said he was Davey Boy’s son. He didn’t say nothing about being hexed.”

Granddad coughed and spat again onto the floor. “Hexed blood, in my kitchen! Useless girl!”

He leered over her, eyes upon eyes, his fangs brushing her face. Spiders swarmed off me and scuttled over to Tally, climbing up her legs where she sat, transfixed in that chair like she was terrified for her life.

“This is the last time I let you fail me,” said Granddad. “I give you one task, bring me something I can use. Something valuable. Something I can sell. And all I get are a few coins nicked from a fisherman and some brat with spoiled blood. Hexed blood is poison, don’t you know that? You could have killed me! I could be a heap writhing on the floor right now, no thanks to you. I ought to give you exactly what you deserve.”

“No, Granddad,” said Tally, big tears running down her cheeks. “Please don’t.”

He lurched forward and sank his fangs into her neck. Tally screamed.

I found I could move. It must have been those spider eyes, that gaze that held me to my chair. I gathered up Pop’s cards quick as I could, stuffed them in the knapsack. Tally kicked and punched at her granddad while he gouged at her with his fangs. I could have left right then. I could have sprinted out of that spider’s lair and never looked back.

Maybe Tally deserved it, whatever was going to happen to her, for tricking me, for bringing me up here to have my blood sucked. But I saw how scared she looked, how terrified she was, and I started to imagine her life, right then and there. I wondered where her mom and pop were, what happened to them, how she got mixed up with this big magic spider fella. Maybe Tally’s life had been one long starving struggle, an awful spider-person knocking her around all day. Maybe my life was cake compared to poor Tally’s, even if she did just try to have me killed.

I don’t know. It broke my heart.

I grabbed the lantern off the table and flung it right at old Granddad. It burst onto his back and his shirt exploded in flames. He shrieked this horrible bug yowl and scuttled up the wall, flaming, through a hole in the ceiling.