Magnetite Tonight (pt 8).

You swallow. The lining of your throat feels like it’s covered in burrs. You don’t have to ask her what she means because she’s going to tell you, and you wish she wouldn’t.

We make demons, she says in your ear. Sell them. It’s what we do, well some of us anyway. The ones who aren’t scared of black cats and our own fucking shadows. She kisses your earlobe. My mom’s out of it but I still talk to the old family. She probably knows. She knows everything and she wastes her life on fucking cats.

Her sweat has cooled and her skin feels clammy; you want her to get off of you, but at this angle she is the stronger one. You open your mouth; of all the questions the only one that makes it out of you is why. Should I sell trinkets by the highway? she says. Little turquoise bracelets? There’s a high market for demons and they’re hard to make. Dangerous, too. I’m good at making them, really good. Quality work. Why should I feel bad about it?

Doesn’t it seem wrong, you say. Somehow you know Jay is awake now, and listening.

Wrong’s just the word we use for when right lets us down, she says. The same is true in reverse, too.

She stretches, her breasts rising; god she is magnificent. She rolls over you and steps off the bed, padding out into the hallway and returning after a moment with something cupped in her hands.

Jay clears his throat. Don’t.

Oh shush, Katrina says to him. She opens her fists and you see it’s just a pendant, a disc of slag metal the size of a quarter tied to a string. It’s magnetite, she says. It’s the best thing for holding them, I’ve found.

Jay throws his covers off. Don’t. Don’t do that.

Irritated, she forks her fingers at him, and like a curtain closing his eyes snap shut and he falls back on his pillow, sighing.

Dinesh showed me, Katrina says softly. Put it on. It’s the same thing we did the other night, that crazy Hindu shit. It’s so easy once you get the hang of it.

I don’t want a demon, you tell her, and she thinks this is funny, and tells you to grow up, everybody wants a demon, they spend their whole lives trying to get one. And you ask her what is going to happen and she touches your eyes and your nose and your lips and says, Everything will happen. All at once. Every moment of time and every feeling in the world that will ever be and ever was. Isn’t that worth it?

Of course it is. You take the pendant and slip it on, then think better of it and pull it back off; you start to tell her that this can’t be fun for her because you’re such an easy mark, and you’ll fall for it every time – but you are not in her bed anymore, you are out in the yard, and the sun is coming up meaning that it is hours later. Katrina is standing nearby and the both of you are filthy and slashed with cuts, and she has a black eye, and you realize that your hair has all been cut off.

And all around you, quite a few of the cats are dead. She is still eating one.

Katrina? you ask hoarsely.

She chews thoughtfully, glancing at you. No, she says. Not yet.