I don’t know how long I stood leaning against the door with my eyes closed. Too many feelings. If this was how it felt to be human, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going down that road.
“Kelly?”
The smell of cinnamon was stronger. I opened my eyes. Kess stood in front of me. She offered up a frosting-drenched roll from a beat-up pan.
“Do I smell my rolls are done?” Lina’s voice practically roared from the back bedroom.
I grabbed the pan from Kess and raced down the hall. Lina and Grandma sat next to each other on the bed like two old friends catching up.
Lina laughed at me. “Slow down! Don’t go sliding and falling on your ass, Shug. Be a shame to drop those rolls before I get one.”
Grandma took the pan as I hugged Lina. I felt like the little girl I never had the chance to be. I looked out the window at pink and white blooms the size of my open hand. Magnolia bushes normally didn’t do well in Denver, but this one was tree-sized. Everything thrived under Lina’s care.
“I’m okay, Shug.” She whispered exactly what I needed to hear. “Now. Give over one of them rolls. They’re my own recipe.” Lina took a cinnamon roll out of the pan and set delicacy aside. She was always ravenous after a healing. This one had to be especially taxing.
Lina offered me a roll. Nothing ever tasted so good. And Brand wasn’t there to have a bite. That made it even sweeter. Petty, I know.
I studied Ramona’s Grandma, the woman who brought about this miracle. She smiled back at me and I felt a prickle go up my spine. “Lina needs her rest. Let’s go chat in the other room.”
Fresh coffee and more cinnamon rolls waited for us in the parlor. I heard Kess humming as she cleaned up the kitchen. Lina would be happy. Nothing cleaned as thoroughly as a ghoul.
Grandma poured the coffee. I got right to the point.
“There’s something about you. Even beyond the weirdness I’m used to meeting.”
The old woman sat back with her coffee. “What is my name?”
“It’s…it’s Grandma.” But that was ridiculous. I tried to remember everything Ramona had said about her. Oh, right! “Got it. It’s Doctor…Grandma?” Wow. Mad deductive skills there, Kelly.
Grandma laughed and slapped her knee. “Oh, that’s better than most people in your position do, little warrior. I like you. You remind me of my grandsons, also warriors. But they’re funnier. You’re a little dry in that department.”
I gulped my coffee, strong and hot the way I liked it. “You would have liked my friend, Jonathan.”
Grandma nodded. “I may still meet him. He’s only dead, after all. Hardly an excuse not to meet.”
That prickle started up at the back of my neck again. I couldn’t look Grandma in the eye. Too much in there. Whole worlds floated behind her pupils.
“You’re a goddess. You’re Grandmother Spider.”
She blinked and I could look her in the eye again. “I knew you’d name me.”
“Ramona doesn’t know, does she?”
“She does, but she won’t let herself realize it. For all her research and questioning and scientific method, my granddaughter is good at hiding the truth from herself.”
“If she’s your granddaughter, does that make her a goddess?”
“Not yet.”
Not yet. I thought of Gloria. And, reluctantly of Daphne, so recently changed back to normal. “So…Ramona’s transforming, too.”
Grandmother Spider laughed. “You say that like it’s something unique, and something bad. Everyone transforms, all the time. Even you, Kelly Chan. Especially you. Why are you afraid?”
No use pretending I’m not afraid. She sees me. “Sekutar are made to be strong. I’m made to be strong. But if I’m changing…I don’t ever want to be weak.”
“Then don’t be weak.” Grandma shrugged. “Transformation can make you feel powerless, but that’s the illusion. You choose what you want to be. I think you will find new ways to be strong.”
Her words comforted me. “You’re different from other gods I’ve met.”
“Let me guess. Selfish, vain, aloof.”
“Fixated on their hammers.”
“Oh, so you’ve met Thor?”
I grinned. “Guilty. Or, rather, not.” I’d actually flown away on a dragon before that party could get started.
Grandma laughed again.
“But like I said, you’re different. You’re—”
“Helpful, I hope you’re going to say? Some of us gods haven’t forgotten we’re meant to serve.”
“—down to earth. Relatable.”
Grandma pursed her lips in consideration. “Relatable, no. Because you don’t know me well enough, you only think I’m relatable. But I’ll claim down to earth.”
“I disagree. You’re an immortal I can understand.”
Grandma raised an eyebrow. “Do you? Then let me tell you something about myself and see if you still understand.”
She straightened up. “My body is a cleft rock that juts out of the earth. It was a joke my grandsons played on me and the selfish men who once tried to follow us. My grandsons changed my body to stone and now every man who passes the rock has to stop and copulate with it.”
She spread her hands, indicating her body. “But as you can see, I’m also right here. I was born, I grew up, I went away to college in Seattle and became a doctor. I married, had babies. I saved the lives I could save and cried for the ones I couldn’t. My hair turned white and I retired. One day this shape will go back to the earth. But I’ll still be here. I’ll be my granddaughter. I’ll be Ramona.
“And one day she’ll tell someone her body is a cleft rock that juts out of the earth. She’s not ready to accept that yet. But she will be, in time.”
I bowed my head. “You’re right. I don’t understand. You’re Grandmother Spider. A goddess. They live forever.” I thought about my last encounter with a couple of immortals. “Well, unless I come along and help kill them. So, did your spirit pass from the rock to another body? Will it pass to Ramona’s next?”
Grandmother Spider shook her head. “There is only one body. You weren’t listening, little warrior.”
“Fine, don’t explain.”
She chuckled. “Do me a favor?”
“What?”
She looked out the window, considering her words. “Let Ramona down gently. She’s not ready for that, either. My granddaughter’s rarely fallen in love. Nothing could be harder.”
Don’t I know it? “I wasn’t trying to lead her on.”
“No. But sometimes we have to fix the problems we didn’t mean to create.” Grandmother Spider looked back at me. “Like this problem I created with Kokopelli.”
I set my coffee down hard. “You? How? Ramona said you lived on the west coast. You weren’t even here.”
“That’s the problem. Too long away, and my children get into trouble.” She poured herself more coffee. “Will you help me fix my problem, Kelly Chan?”
“You saved Lina. I’ll do anything you want.”
Grandma reached out, squeezed my hand and smiled. “I may ask for more than you want to give.”
“That’s a gamble I have to take.”
She tilted her head. “Funny that you put it that way.” Grandmother Spider glanced down at her coffee. She nodded to herself. “Yup. Too long away. But I do love the ocean so much.” She looked back up.
In her eyes, the sun and moon danced in a dark night over a rain-slicked rock. A man approached, stopped.
I looked away.