“That’s a pretty good trick,” said Tally. “Too bad ain’t anybody ever going to see you do it again. Not in this town anyhow. You got that?”

“Durn spider-folk, you are,” he said, his gums smacking. “I heard about you.”

“Then you heard about my granddad, ain’t you?”

The magician nodded, his eyes gone wide as a frog’s.

“Skedaddle,” she said. “And I’m keeping this knife to remember you by.”

The magician scuttled off, his shoes pounding the pier boards before he turned a corner and was gone. Tally stood there, half spider, her six eyes staring down at me.

“You gonna let me cut them ropes off you or what?” she said.

I turned and she sliced me free.

“Thanks,” I said. “Did I kill your granddad?”

“Nope,” she said. “He didn’t hardly catch fire. Though that don’t make him any less furious at you. Or at me.”

“It ain’t your fault,” I said. “I’m the one who chucked a lantern at him.”

“And I’m the one who brought him hexed blood,” she said. “That makes us about even in terms of guilt. At least in Granddad’s eyes.”

I lay there in the skiff, feeling about as sick as I ever could. Tally held the magician’s knife in her furry hands. She climbed into the boat, hardly rocking it at all. Ol’ Tally was a real pro at boats, I decided.

“You come to finish the job?” I said, my voice gone whispery and harsh from the sickness. “Get back on his good side that way?”

“Don’t think there’s much to finish,” she said. “Granddad’s venom is about the most powerful there is. ’Course, he wouldn’t have spit it into you if he hadn’t been so surprised by the hex in your blood. Granddad doesn’t usually poison folks whose blood he draws.”

“Guess I’m just that unlucky, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Tally spit into her palms and rubbed them together until they formed some kind of paste, white and sticky, like a spider’s web.

“Nice thing about being what I am,” she said, “is that I don’t just poison folks, you know? I got the cure in me too.”

She rubbed the paste on my arm, right over the bite marks. It stung a bit, and I hollered out.

“Shhh, now,” she said. “I know you’re tougher than that.”

“Trying to be.”

“Trying is good enough.”

Tally massaged my arm, blowing soft on it. She bent over it and I got nervous again, like she was going to bite me same as her granddad did. I tried to yank my arm back, to swat her away. Heck, I was so sick I probably moaned a little too.

“Hush already,” she said. “If I wanted you dead I would have just let that magician do the job. Trust me now.”

She spat into my wound and rubbed it in some more. It hurt, a whole lot, it stung and burned and was some kind of awful agony. But then the pain began to cool, to soothe, like cold water on a sunburn.