I woke up because my brain had decided to replay every awkward thing I’d said to my friendly neighborhood succubus, Lily, on loop, as though it were a late-night infomercial for social humiliation.

  Yeah, I said succubus. As the neighborhood Null, an otherwise regular human with the dubious ability to cancel out supernatural energies with my body fluids, I’d come to the attention of several powerful entities in the city, most of them female. It made my general social awkwardness that much more painful. It was things like that that had be reliving my greatest hits regularly…

  Every. Single. Line.

  “Hey, you look kinda lost?"

  "No, no, I wasn’t staring, I was… surveying the sidewalk for cracks."

  And, the pièce de résistance: "So, do you, uh… smell nice professionally, or is that a hobby?"

  Yeah. Try living that one down. My subconscious wouldn’t let me.

  By two in the morning, I gave up on sleep. I lay there in the dark, listening to the tick of the cheap clock on my nightstand, Elly’s voice echoing in my head from some smartass remark earlier that day, and Eury’s unbothered smirk frozen in my memory like a smug statue. Three women, three different gravitational pulls from the supernatural realm, and me stuck in the orbit like a defunct satellite, pinging between atmospheres until I burned up.

  Sighing, I hauled myself out of bed. The floor was cold, the apartment smelled faintly of laundry detergent and Dorito dust, and my stomach had decided that being awake meant demanding food.

  Insomnia snack runs are supposed to be simple: fridge door, leftover pizza, or even Pop-Tarts if you’re desperate. Instead, I walked straight into the nightmare I kept forgetting lived in my pantry, another casualty of my living on the fringes of Alterkind society.

  It was perched on top of the fridge like a grotesque fridge magnet that had hit its third mutation. Eight legs braced against the peeling paint, too-many eyes glittering in the half-dark like sequins, and a frosting sheen across its carapace like someone had dusted it with sugar and despair.

  The Pop-Tart Spider.

  I froze. My hand was mid-scratch at the waistband of my sweatpants. Real dignified.

  We stared at each other. I wasn’t sure which of us was more disappointed by the encounter.

  Finally, it moved—slowly, deliberately, like it knew I was watching. Its mandibles clicked once, twice, and then… it spoke.

  One word, croaked like static filtered through a broken speaker:

  “TOASTED.”

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  I hadn’t heard the thing speak or do much more than eat out of my pantry since we’d trapped the creature with crystals weeks ago. It was like we’d cut off the controlling voice, and it had to figure out things on its own, rather than being part of the collective. Borg much?

  Its mandibles twitched again. A glob of something—sugar? spit?—dripped onto the fridge door.

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  “BEST WHEN… TOASTED.”

  I gawked. “Did you just—? Oh no. Oh hell no. You did not just quote the box at me.”

  The Spider shuffled down the side of the fridge, claws scraping softly, like nails over linoleum. Its abdomen gleamed faintly, sprinkles glittering faintly under the weak light. One of its eyes—just one—fixed on me like a flashlight beam.

  “THE FEEDER.”

  My skin went clammy. “…The feeder? No. Absolutely not. We’re not doing this. You don’t get to give me a title, critter.”

  But my voice was shaking, and the thing knew it. It chittered in what could almost be laughter, the sound like marbles rolling around in a tin can.

  I backed up, hand instinctively patting the counter for a weapon. Closest thing was a butter knife with a little peanut butter still stuck to it. Not reassuring.

  I am not,” I said firmly, pointing the knife, “your feeder. You’re a… a surveillance horror made from shadows and carcinogens. I’m just… a guy who can’t sleep.”

  The Spider crept along the counter edge now, eyes glinting, legs ticking like metronomes.

  “FEEDER BRINGS… FLAVOR.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  It paused. Tilted its head. One of its legs reached out and tapped the box of Frosted Cherry Pop-Tarts sitting on the counter. Then, in that same crackling, box-slogan tone:

  “ARTIFICIAL COLORS. NATURAL FLAVORS.”

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. Instead, I just pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and muttered, “Great. Wonderful. My spy monster has turned into the world’s worst late-night commercial.”

  I edged toward the fridge. My stomach still growled, but my appetite was shriveling. “Look, I don’t know what this is. Some side effect? Food dye hallucinations? Maybe I’ve finally snapped. But you—” I jabbed the butter knife at it. “You don’t talk.”

  The Spider twitched, almost offended. Then it spoke again, more confident now, like a toddler who’d just learned a new word:

  “LIMITED EDITION. COLLECT THEM ALL.”

  I choked on a laugh. “Oh my god. You’re sentient now because of… Red 40 and high fructose corn syrup. I’m going to die surrounded by cartoon slogans.”

  The thing skittered closer, its eyes brightening, catching every twitch of my expression. It was listening. Learning.

  And then, in a lower tone, almost thoughtful:

  “FEEDER… HUNGRY.”

  My stomach growled on cue.

  I rubbed my temples. “This is ridiculous.”

  But here’s the thing: I couldn’t look away. Its words weren’t random. They were… contextual. It knew I was hungry. It knew I was here, in the middle of the night, alone, worried, twitchy. It was pulling phrases out of some collective pantry vocabulary, sure—but it was understanding.

  That was new.

  I slumped against the counter. “Fine. Okay. You talk now. Big deal. What else do you know? Got relationship advice hidden under those sprinkles? Maybe stock tips? Wanna tell me how to get my Wi-Fi to stop dropping when Elly ‘accidentally’ overloads the router?”

  The Spider clicked, then very deliberately tapped its abdomen against the counter.

  “BERRY. HOT. WILD.”

  I groaned. “No. No, no, no. Don’t even start with the innuendos. You’re not helping.”

  But of course, my brain immediately betrayed me with the image of Lily’s hair in the sunlight, the memory of that kiss that hadn’t been just a kiss. My chest tightened.

  The Spider twitched again, tilting its head, mandibles clicking slowly. And then

  “LIMIT TWO… PER CUSTOMER.”

  I barked out a laugh I didn’t mean to. “Okay, that’s… terrifyingly accurate. You have no idea what you just said, but—yeah. That’s exactly my life.”

  I dropped the butter knife. The Spider didn’t move to attack. It just… waited. Watching. Its eyes—so many eyes—reflected me back at myself in fractured pieces.

  And I wondered, not for the first time, why me. Why always me.

  You’re not supposed to be smart,” I said softly. “You’re supposed to spy, take notes, scuttle back to whatever hellmouth you came from. You’re not supposed to… get it.”

  The Spider crept closer still. It stopped within arm’s reach, mandibles flexing. I didn’t move.

  Then, with something like gravity, it whispered—

  “FEEDER… BROKEN.”

  The word hit me like a slap. My chest tightened. My throat dried. I laughed weakly, but it cracked halfway through. “Yeah,” I whispered back. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  The Spider didn’t answer. It just crouched there, eyes gleaming, like it had already said enough.

  I was going to have a very, very weird day.

  Again. Story of my life.