Magnetite Tonight (pt 3).

You and Jay knock at the door, ducking moths that dance around the porch light and watching the shadows moving behind the curtains; the door opens and a woman leans out: her hair is black and streaked white, and on her head is a pointed witch’s hat. You gape; she laughs uproariously, pulling the wig off. Hi, she says, sticking out her hand. I’m Victoria.

She folds her arms around Jay, smothering him with kisses until he protests. Nephew, she says. How is your mother? But Jay turns red and can’t speak so she’s left without an answer. They follow her inside into hurricane rooms crammed with people and hazy with incense – she is saying something over her shoulder, her flowing sleeves glittering with little rhinestones as she flaps them, but you can’t hear her over the blaring Rolling Stones record: there are mohawks and pierced noses and ripped black stockings here, and dreadlocks and Africans and blue jailhouse tattoos; every single person is talking so fast that it’s like they’re trying to eat the world.

Victoria takes you to the kitchen and pours you rum drinks, sliding them to you across the counter; you gag at the taste. Where’s your cauldron? you ask, trying to be funny.

In the garage, she says, lighting a cigarette off a pillar candle set on a saucer. I only break it out during the Sabbats, when I drink the blood of virgins.

She winks and blows you a kiss. Jay told you on the way over that his aunt was a sort of family outcast, though he wouldn’t be more specific than shrugging it off as a religious thing. She fills a colander with grapes and washes them, teasing Jay about this thing or that, her bangles raining up and down her arms and her bare feet leaving ghost prints on the linoleum before fading. She is the most interesting person you’ve ever met, and far out of place in thrown away Rain City.

Big things for you coming up, little man, Victoria says to her nephew, and then points at you, too. Same for you, big sir. She does a little twirl as the song changes. You know, I was listening to the goddess before you came over, she says, and she told me to play this but I think I might have been wrong. I think she meant The Beatles.

There is a crash in the other room accompanied by rising voices; she rushes out, calling over her shoulder that Katrina is in her room.

Jay is worrying the buttons on his cuffs. See? he says. She loves that crap.

Will she do something for us? you ask him. Like a spell or something?

Go ask Katrina, Jay mutters. She’s dying to show you.

He gives you a dirty look; you know now that he knows that you’ve been fucking her.

There are too many people lining the back hallway, their clothes and their hands rough and scraping like the skin of a shark; the two of you are passed along by them as they huddle around the bathroom door and pile in the shadows, putting sugar cubes on their tongues and kissing. Katrina’s bedroom is at the end, her door outlined by chili pepper lights and the interior as thick as London fog; she’s lying in the arms of a black skinned guy she introduces as Dinesh; there’s six more guys on the floor, slumped over pillows.

Did you meet my mom? Katrina asks you, playing with the guy’s black fingers.

Yeah, you say. She showed us some craft. Everybody got turned into frogs.

Bullshit, she says, disentangling herself and sitting up. Even she doesn’t believe in it, she only puts on the act so she can sell her shitty pottery to dykes.

Dykes are forward thinking, Dinesh says dreamily. You look at Jay; he hates him too.