Page 13 of The Spider Queen
“Password,” Hunter said.
“Wow, how do people ever remember that?” I joked.
“It’s really just a formality.”
The lock turned and then the door opened. A gargantuan man stepped back to let us in. I followed Hunter, expecting to see a junk store stuffed to the max with odds and ends, not a bar that resembled a speakeasy.
Lighting was dim and sensual, the furniture leather and oak. The age group was fifteen years older than the average college student, and I wondered how Hunter knew about this place.
I looked at him. He was grinning like he’d been waiting forever to use this well-kept secret, hoping to impress a girl.
It was working.
“This is really cool,” I said, “but I was expecting a junk shop.”
“In the back,” he said, gesturing to another door.
“How did you find out about this place?”
“A friend of a friend of a friend.”
“Oh, sure.”
“So, you want a drink or—”
I dragged him toward the door separating the bar and the junk shop. “After. I want to look around.”
The junk shop was just as I’d hoped it’d be. Wall to wall bric-à-brac. Everything from musical instruments to shrunken heads in jars.
“This place is awesome!” I breathed, taking my time, my fingers trailing along the shelves. “I’ve lived in Charleston three years. How did I never know about this place?”
“Secret,” he replied, leaning against the closed door, arms crossed over his chest.
“What do you do if you find something you want to buy?”
“I’m not sure.”
I moved deeper into the room and looked at him over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve never seen anything I wanted to buy. I assume you take it to the bartender and he’ll ring you up. But come on, you don’t come to a place like this and expect to find anything you actually want to buy. It’s all about the hunt.”
“All about the hunt,” I repeated. “You are such a guy.”
“Loaded statement much?” he asked on a laugh.
“Caught that, huh?”
He stared at me, blue eyes open and friendly. “I pay attention.”
I turned my gaze back to all the marvelous things I’d never know what to do with. “You’re right. You’d never buy this stuff. Where would you put it?”
“Exactly. You’d have to become a full-time hoarder just to do it all justice. And take your time, there’s no hurry.”
I spent the better part of an hour combing through the shelves. Most people might’ve hurried through the space, but I treated it like a museum. Hunter and I were silent most of the time unless one of us discovered something so weird we had to show the other.
Hunter was the one who found the spider.
It was in a glass cube, and it was bigger than a tarantula but wasn’t at all stocky. The spider was almost translucent. Positioned on its back, its thin legs were wrapped around an oval, ebony stone.
