Magnetite Tonight (pt 7).

The spring of 1977 slides into the summer of same; the three of you slide just as easily into one another, turning into a single organism, meeting for lunch, eating dinner together, taking walks around the lake, seeing movies, driving on back country roads and singing at the top of your lungs, watching the stars come out, sitting on the docks, talking and talking and talking, and laughing and laughing and laughing, and finally one night, fucking after tequila shots in Victoria’s kitchen. She is trying to teach you magic. Magic only works with the properties that already exist in the world, Victoria tells you many times, smoking a joint over her laundry room sink. You can’t create something new, you have to work with what you got.

Why are there so many rules? you say. You can’t use it to hurt somebody and you can’t use it on somebody without their permission and a billion other things.

It’s not a gun, she says, shaking her head, her read braids swinging. Baby it makes the world extraordinary, but it’s not for fighting. You can see things the rest of these morons will never even know about, but if you tried to go to war with that you’d be really sorry.

You’re in a war, you tell her.

Oh, she says, looking disdainfully out the window at the wandering cats. That’s not war she says, that’s just family. You don’t have to be a witch to fight with your mom.

She teaches you candle and card and skin magic; she shows you how to read the wind.

You’ll be ready to read fortunes at the Holiday Inn in no time, Katrina says, naked and riding you in her bedroom while Jay, already used, sleeps on the floor. She takes your hands and guides them to her neck, leaning forward, her nipples grazing yours.

She’s never going to show you anything good, she says. But I can.

She uses your hands to squeeze her neck tight while she picks up her rhythm, gripping your cock so hard while she pumps; she’s gagging because you are choking her on your own, so close, so close, and she gags and claws at your wrists as you let go –

And there is someone else in the room. In the bed with you. Something. It is hard and small and sharp, and the force of your orgasm goes into it, not into her.

You rip your hands away; she gasps, coughing. Jay moans but doesn’t wake.

She sits up, reaching for his hands that hurt like they are broken. There’s something in his palms, a pooling gossamyr film that is turning to vapor and disappearing.

Next time we’ll have to try harder, she says. This one didn’t take.