The stray looked up at me and panted.

“Hey pup dog,” I said. “I think you might be my only friend.”

He yipped happily, his eyes bright and black and knowing, the way a good dog’s eyes are. I realized he was hungry then, that he was asking me for food.

“I’m sorry, pup dog,” I said. “I ain’t got any food for you. I ain’t got hardly a scrap.”

The dog yipped again, like, That’s okay, I still like you, I didn’t figure you had anything anyway. Dogs are good like that, I wager. Dogs don’t know how not to love you.

I sat there sweating, my stomach starting to tighten and churn, feeling sick and fevery, like I got the flu but ten times worse. I was spider bit and ill for sure, and if these were my last stars and my last moon, I was happy they were so bright and lovely, that the moon glowed down on me with my mom’s face, that the stars were a map of all the places my soul would go when it up and left my body. That was a good thought. The journey never does quite end, does it?

The dog yapped again and it was like it was saying, Get up, Buddy. You ain’t got time to die yet.

“Okay, pup dog,” I said. “If you insist.”

I straggled myself to my feet and headed off toward that old lady’s house, hoping something else good would work out for me. It took me a minute but I found her shack. The whole place was dark and empty, just a rotting nothing on a busted pier right on the edge of the water. It looked like the old lady had cleared out, it looked like she’d never been there at all. A dozen feral cats loped around in the darkness, their tails swishing little question marks in the air.

And then I saw it, among the heaps of old rotten wood half-sunk in the pier—an honest-to-God skiff, perfect for wallowing through swamp water. I could have shouted for joy, I would have done a dance right then and there if I hadn’t been all sick from my spider-folk bite. I looked up to Heaven and I said some thank-yous, don’t you doubt for one second. Somebody was looking out for me, that’s for sure. Maybe that would overcome the hex on my blood and get me out of Gentlesburg in one piece. Regardless, this skiff right here was the first bit of genuine good luck I’d had in ages.

I was probably gonna have to repent a thousand times for borrowing it, but at least I wasn’t stealing it. After all, I did have the intent to return the skiff, somehow, someday, right back here where I found it. Surely, that belief was somewhere in my heart.

I hunched down to loosen the knot that tied it to the dock and felt something cold slide up against my throat.