Another spider leaped from the plant to the table, circled the puzzle. Then another. Spider after spider gathered. Jaime knelt in front of the table, brought the magnifying glass over the puzzle to better see what the spiders were doing. They swarmed the silvery cube, their bodies almost blending into the surface. Their tiny legs clicked and worked. Together, they flipped the puzzle over, and once again swarmed the surface. Then, they dropped the cube to the surface of the table with a thud. A shimmering wave of spiders raced across the table, off the edge, and across the floor.

The last spider crouched under the magnifying glass. “Hello!” it warbled. It seemed to Jaime that it had one less eye now—two shimmering green eyes rather than three. Then it giggled, before it jumped from the table and raced away, leaving the puzzle in front of them studded with gleaming, multicolored jewels, just like new.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tess

Tess heard Jaime and Theo exclaim over the puzzle, examine it, wonder aloud if anyone’s spiders would have done what Aunt Esther’s had done or if Aunt Esther’s spiders were special, and what that meant. If the colored stones were real jewels, and if they were, how much the puzzle would be worth. And she saw them scramble to solve it, turning the individual cubes this way and that, trying to match up the stones on each face.

But she didn’t really hear them and she didn’t really see them because she wasn’t really there. She was eleven years old again, and she’d had Nine for only six months. Nine was only twelve pounds then—still just a kitten, really—smart and fast and mischievous. Though she got Nine a license from the city, Tess’s mom hadn’t been convinced that Nine would make a good therapy animal until she saw the cat in training, how attentive and alert she was, how very clever and very strong, how she kept Tess from stumbling into traffic, how she kept Tess from spiraling into an anxiety attack, how she comforted Tess during her endless nightmares. When Nine went missing one snowy winter afternoon, Tess was frantic, but her mother wasn’t worried. Nine was too smart to get lost, she said. She’s playing a game, she said. Until they searched the whole building, the elevator, the roof, and the basement. Until the hours started to tick by, and darkness fell like a rough blanket over their heads as they roamed the alleys outside. Then the expression on her mother’s face moved from concern to alarm to resignation to acceptance, ticking through the emotions quick as the minute hand of a clock.

“Tess, it’s freezing. I need to get you inside. I’m sure Nine has found a place to . . . hide.”

“No,” Tess had said. “She’ll find us. Wherever she is. I know it. We just have to keep calling.”