Page 31 of Magnus
Nah, it couldn’t really be Henry. Because Henry was still in the bathroom of the apartment she and Angel had so recently hurriedly vacated.
It had to be a realistic impostor?—
What the hell…!
Why would animpostorspider in a clear plastic box obviously designed for the purpose and which Sapphie had never seen before suddenly appear in Magnus’s apartment?
More precisely, appear in the bedroom Sapphie and Angel were sharing in said apartment?
She leaned back. “Where did you find him, darling?”
“He was sitting in this case on top of my bedside cabinet when I woke up,” Angel told her gleefully, her tears for the spider from the previous evening completely forgotten. “How do you think he got here?” she asked.
Luckily, her daughter was so busy smiling and talking to her beloved spider that she didn’t see the expression of absolute horror on her mother’s face.
Because Sapphie could think of only one way in which the spider, and the specially designed case, could have suddenly appeared at Angel’s bedside.
Magnus.
Sapphie hadn’t heard him leave the apartment, despite having trouble falling asleep. But, as she looked at the industrious spider, she was absolutely convinced that sometime during the night, Magnus had indeed left the apartment.
That after leaving he had somehow managed to buy a see-through plastic case for keeping arachnids in before going to the house where Sapphie and Angel had lived until recently. Once in the apartment they had rented, he had to have caught and collected Henry from the bathroom. Then he had brought the-no-doubt-disoriented spider back here safely ensconced in the case, before leaving it on the bedside cabinet for Angel to find when she woke in the morning.
Unbelievable as that all sounded, Sapphie was absolutely convinced that was how Henry the spider came to be here.
“Care to explain how a common spider, one that looks suspiciously like Henry from our old bathroom, is currently sitting in your spare bedroom being cooed over ecstatically by my daughter?” Sapphie challenged minutes later when she joined Magnus in the kitchen area, where he stood waiting for a pot of coffee to finish percolating.
He was leaning forward with his hands resting on the edge of a worktop, wearing those black biker boots and a long-sleeved black henley top with faded black jeans resting low on his hips.
He looked tired, the lines fanning out beside his mouth and eyes more pronounced, dark circles beneath the latter.
That, along with the guilty look on Magnus’s face, was enough to confirm that it was indeed Henry, and not a spider who looked like him, in that specially designed, and no doubt expensive, plastic arachnid case.
“Let me just reiterate,” Sapphie said slowly when he didn’t answer her. “You actually went out in the middle of the night, bought a suitable case for small arachnids?—”
“There is nothing small about that fucking spider!” he protested. “Neither of you told me the damned thing isenormous!”
She nodded before continuing. “You bought the case from…somewhere. You then collected Henry from our old apartment and came back here to put him on the bedside cabinet in our bedroom for Angel to find when she woke up.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he muttered.
Neither could she, and probably for the same reason. Which they probably shouldn’t talk about right now, when Angel could join them at any moment.
“Is that what you did, Magnus?” she persisted.
“Angel was upset he wasn’t there when she had her bath,” he grumbled.
Sapphie gave an incredulous laugh. “She was overtired and emotional after all the traveling. A good night’s sleep and she would have been fine again this morning.”
“I couldn’t bear to see her crying over something that was so easily fixed.”
“Easily?”
He grimaced. “Okay, that spider is a bloody nightmare. But he’s here now, and you said Angel is happy?”
“Very,” she confirmed. “It was very kind of you, and I also appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
“But…?”
