Tangled Webs

door, then looked at Jaenelle. “Lady, would you mind holding the door?”
    Jaenelle followed him up the steps. She was the one who opened the door and kept her hand on the latch while he walked past her into the house. He stopped in the middle of the hallway, nothing more than a shadowy figure.
    Somewhere in the house, a gong sounded. One, two, three, four.
    I guess the count starts over when a new game begins, Surreal thought.
    She lost count. She wasn’t sure if there were echoes in her head or if the gong was really sounding that quickly.
    Daemon walked back to the door, holding a pen in his hand. “Twenty-eight?” he asked Jaenelle.
    “Twenty-eight,” she agreed as he slipped the pen into a jacket pocket.
    He nodded at Lucivar, who dragged Jenkell up to the door.
    “According to your rules, there are thirty exits in this house. Twenty-eight have now been closed. You have seventy-two hours to find either of the remaining two. I guarantee that no matter what you meet in this house, you will live through those seventy-two hours.”
    Surreal shivered, hearing the threat beneath the words.
    Jenkell, the idiot, looked relieved.
    Then Daemon stepped out of the house, grabbed Jenkell by the shirt, and flung him into the front hallway.
    Jaenelle released the latch and skipped back.
    The door slammed shut.
    Jaenelle and Daemon came down the steps to join her and Lucivar, and all four of them looked at Tersa.
    “Why?” Jaenelle asked, her voice gentle. “If you wanted to help with the spooky house, why didn’t you say something to Marian or me? We would have been glad to have your help. We would still like your help.”
    Tersa wrung her hands, looking lost. “I saw…in a tangled web. Surprises for my boys. Not to harm, just little surprises. But there were other boys. That’s why I came to this place, this house. When the Langston man said he was building a surprise for the boys…I saw it in the web. One boy lost because I didn’t make my surprises.”
    Lucivar looked back at the house, then looked at Daemon. “I think I met that boy. And he would have been lost in every way if it wasn’t for one of Tersa’s surprises.”
    Daemon studied Lucivar for a moment, then nodded before he looked at the Coach across the street. “And I think Jaenelle and I found the other boy who needed help.”
    “Yes,” Jaenelle said. “I think you’re right.” She smiled at Tersa.
    “But you didn’t answer the question. Would you like to help Marian and me finish up our spooky house? Maybe you could put in the same surprises.”
    No, no, no, Surreal thought. Not the damn beetles. “The skeleton mouse was kind of cute. Very clever.”
    “The spiders were good too,” Lucivar said.
    “But you can’t have them pouring out of a drawer,” Surreal said. “If you do, you’ll need to assign someone to keep mopping the floor.”
    A beat of silence. Then Lucivar burst out laughing. “That explains why I smelled piss in the kitchen.”
    The ground melted. Suddenly Jaenelle was holding her up.
    “We need to finish this discussion later,” Jaenelle said. “I’ve done as much preparation as I can on Surreal and Rainier. Now we need to get them into the Coach so I can do the actual healing.”
    Preparation? Come to think of it, she had been feeling a phantom hand over the wound, easing the heat and pain.
    “Yes,” Lucivar growled. “Our little cousin got herself poisoned.”
    “You can’t yell at me if I’m sick,” Surreal said. “It’s a family rule.” And if it wasn’t a family rule, it was damn well going to be—starting now.
    “Since when?”
    That was Lucivar. In a pissing contest, he not only stepped up to the line; he pissed on the other person’s foot.
    Since she was the other person, she balled up her fist, threw a punch—and didn’t come anywhere close to hitting him.
    “Lucivar and I will bring Rainier and the children to the Coach. Can you handle Surreal?” Daemon asked.
    “Don’t need to be handled,” Surreal muttered.
    “Do you really want Lucivar to help you into the Coach?” Jaenelle whispered.
    “No.”
    “Tersa?” Jaenelle said. “Give me a hand?”
    With Tersa on one side and Jaenelle on the other, she didn’t trip or stumble on the way to the Coach. Of course, Jaenelle was floating her on air and they were just tugging her along, but that was a small and insignificant detail.
    “How bad is it?” Surreal asked when the Coach’s door opened and a young boy stared at her.