I marched down the hall and threw the conference door open. Eight people, four of them middle-aged, sat and crawled on the floor. Matilda and Ragnar stood to the side, looking shell-shocked.
“What’s going on here?”
“She’s gone!” A white man in his sixties moaned at the table, his hand over his eyes. A white woman a few years younger in a mint Chanel suit protectively draped her arms over his shoulders.
“Who is gone?” I demanded.
“Jadwiga,” Matilda volunteered.
“The two of you, out into the hallway.”
I ushered the kids into the hallway and shut the door behind us. “What does the first queen of Poland have to do with whatever this is?”
Ragnar stared at me in awe. “How do you even know that?”
I had no idea how I knew the name of the first Polish queen. It was just one of the random facts that occasionally got stuck in my brain.
“Jadwiga is a spider,” Matilda explained. “A very special spider.”
Oh no.
“Is that the Dabrowski family?”
Ragnar nodded.
Jadwiga was a very special spider. About the size of a pumpkin patch dwarf tarantula, she was glossy, like polished mahogany. Unlike the abdomen of a typical spider, Jadwiga’s rear segment ended abruptly, as if cut in half, terminating in a hardened disk with a pattern that looked like some ancient mask. It gave her a unique hourglass shape.
That distinctive disk was found in exactly one species: the Giant Hourglass spider. It was exceedingly rare—only seven specimens had been found so far—and hideously expensive. Trefon Dabrowski, the Head of House Dabrowski, had purchased Jadwiga for the cool sum of $250,000 from a Chinese orange farmer who found it. Trefon somehow got this precious spider through customs and installed it in a luxurious terrarium at House Dabrowski’s mansion to be the star of his dazzling arachnid collection, only to have it stolen one week later.
Thanks to Cornelius, our firm had earned a reputation for resolving difficult animal cases, so when House Dabrowski misplaced their spider, we seemed like a natural choice. They practically threw their money at us.
“Last I checked, we declined to take this case. Matilda, your father explicitly said that spiders required a specific arachnid mage, and both you and he specialize in birds and mammals.”
Matilda raised her chin. I knew that look. I was about to be hit with a long logical argument. If I let her get going, we would be here all day.
“Not only that, but this spider was smuggled into the US. Matilda, what is the definition of smuggled?”
“Illegally brought into or taken out of a country,” she said.
“Illegally being the key word. Neither House Baylor”—I looked at Matilda—“nor House Harrison”—I looked at Ragnar—“nor House Etterson can be complicit in the smuggling of rare, endangered species.”
“Technically . . .” Matilda started.
“No.”
“I felt the spider. She was scared and stressed out.”
I looked at Ragnar. “Explain quickly.”
“Matilda wanted to find the spider to see if she could connect with it.”
“Her,” Matilda said.
“Bazyli Dabrowski stole the spider from his brother. We found it and we tried to give it—her—back. They had a fight in the conference room. Trefon told Bazyli he would never see Jadwiga again and then Bazyli attacked him and tried to pry the terrarium out of his brother’s hands. It fell and Jadwiga ran away into the vent.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Matilda is ten. She is allowed to be irrational and to not think through the possible consequences of her actions.”
Matilda looked as if she had been slapped.
“You are sixteen years old. You’re less than two years away from legally being an adult.”
“We’ll find it,” Ragnar promised.
“How did you even get involved in this? Both of you are contractors, so neither of you have the authority to accept cases. Who signed off on this contract? Whose name is on the paperwork?”
The kids clammed up.
It couldn’t have been Cornelius. He had been very uncomfortable with the entire affair. Who in the world would give a ten-year-old animal Prime and a sixteen-year-old poison Prime free rein on an illegal spider kidnapping . . .
Of course. He would be the only one who’d do it.
My phone vibrated on my desk. An unfamiliar number. I took the call.
“Deputy Baylor,” a deep voice said.
In the entire state of Texas, only a handful of people knew I was the Deputy Warden. I pointed at Ragnar and Matilda and pointed to the floor to indicate I wanted them to stay there. Right there. Then I slipped into my office and shut the door.