“Pretty good,” I said. “She runs a bakery up in Collardsville.”

“I do not know the place,” said the priest. “Is it far beyond the swamp? I don’t believe I’ve seen dry plains in nearly three decades now.”

“Yep,” I said. “Also I just found out she was a witch. Did you know she was a witch?”

“Samantha Annie? Of course I knew she was a witch,” he said. “Only question is how in the world you didn’t. I wager you ain’t the sharpest fang in the mouth, are you?” He turned to Tally. “And now tell me, little one, is the secret you bear of your own doing, a hex, or is it inborn, in your blood?”

Tally flinched back, like she was trying to hide herself in the shadows.

“Oh don’t be scared now,” said the priest. “I am friend of spiders and humans alike. Any little critter, really, even the ones who mean me harm.”

“I was born like this,” said Tally. “Me and my granddad, though it skipped my parents.”

“Extraordinary, what gifts are passed down in the blood,” said the priest. “Fearful to some, yes, but they can also be a marvel. I see God’s hand in all of this, child, do you not?”

“Easy for you to say when it ain’t you that looks like a freak,” said Tally.

“Freak? Freak?” said the priest. He whirled his arms around, pointing at the ruined church, the moldy walls, the cracked altar, the statues of saints slathered in bird droppings. “My child, there does not exist a beating heart that one could rightly call normal. We are all miraculous, each and every one of us. Miraculous and terrible, down to our darkest hearts. Seek the light, and the light shall burn out all the darkness. Seek the darkness, and yet, it cannot swallow all of the light. No, not even in the worst of us.”

“I still don’t like being spider-folk,” said Tally.

“That, my dear, is your prerogative,” said the priest. “But enough talk, enough idleness. Seems like we ought to get you two to Marina’s Place. Though I don’t think she’ll cotton much to that Parsnit deck you’re carrying.”

“How’d you know I had Parsnit cards?” I said.

The priest held his hands together at his chest, like he was praying, and gave me a little bow.

“The cards? I can smell them from here,” he said. “And Marina will sniff them out too.” He twirled the stub of his beard with his fingers. “No, Marina won’t like that one bit.”

“Whoever heard of a witch who don’t like Parsnit?” said Tally.

“Oh it’s not that she doesn’t like it, in some pure abstracted form,” said the priest. “It’s that she doesn’t like what it has become.” He bent down toward us and leaned in close, his eyes darting back and forth between Tally and me. “Want to know the secret about Parsnit cards?”

I nodded at him.

“They’re just cards,” he said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”