“Granddad!” screamed Tally. She turned to me. “What did you do to him?”

I started to reply, but then I couldn’t. See, Tally’s face had changed. Her eyes grew black and separated, and now there were six of them. Her arms seemed skinny and shaggy with hair, and two little fangs jutted out from her lip. She was a spider-folk, just like her granddad.

I bolted down the stairs and out into the street.

I ducked past people hawking hot foods and cheap wares, I dodged women and men street dancing while a boy scraped out a rhythm on a washboard, I tripped over a tuba player, I hopped over a foot-long rat with black bright eyes. My arm was throbbing something awful, two deep puncture holes where Tally’s granddad took a nibble at me. I splashed through puddles and sprinted past old men tossing dice in an alley. I had to get back to that old lady’s shack, to that pier. I’d seen some old half-rotten boats lying around, dismal and forgotten. Maybe I could borrow me a nice one, Lord willing, and I’d be able to find my own way out of Gentlesburg.

I was scared those spider-folk were after me, I was afraid they’d spin a web around me and finish the job, slurp out my blood till I was withered as jerky, all drained out and empty. I ran harder.

I started feeling woozy, the world going bright and strange. Faces changed, twisting, everyone grinning at me with big cheeks and dark scowling brows, like they were a bunch of clowns, like the town was full of circus folk and scarecrows with knives for fingers, like every person had horned ears and a lizard’s tail, like their tongues were flicking in and out of their mouths like baby snakes. A man reared back and howled at the moon like he was a wolf, and a woman smiled at me with a mouth that was all teeth same as a skeleton would, like she was nothing but bones. I was running so fast I stepped on a cat’s tail and tripped, nearly tumbled down, and the cat looked up at me and began to cry, big fat wet human tears, and my arm was throbbing, my arm hurt so badly.

I flopped over against a boarded-up doorway and took a deep breath, and then another, and then another. I saw the stars shining little blue eyes in the street puddles, a few feral dogs licking at the water, and I liked that, I hoped those little puppies lapped up whole galaxies while they were at it. One of the strays came up and licked my hands, and it felt crazy, like little ants crawling on my skin. A red line was streaking from my bite marks up my arm, and I wondered if now my hexed blood was poisoned with spider venom, if it would just swoll up all nasty and huge and explode on me, if I wasn’t a goner already.