by Laura Hankin
“Oh, maybe,” I said.
“Protection,” Iris said. “As the Judge Melton consequences continue to play out.”
“Or,” Margot said, “we could summon your mother.”
I turned my head toward her so fast I nearly got whiplash. “What?”
“Bring her spirit here. Let you talk with her,” Margot continued, her tone almost dreamy, and anger at her flooded into me, anger that she would dangle this in my face when my mother was gone and nobody would ever be able to bring her back.
“Margot, no,” Caroline snapped, the anger in her own voice startling me. “We’re not doing that kind of magic here.” The two of them locked eyes. They’d had this argument before. Already, the power dynamics in this coven were coming into focus. Maybe Margot gave the speeches, but Caroline was the boss.
“I know,” Vy said. “Raf.” We all turned to her.
“What?” I asked.
“At the gala,” Vy continued. “After you sucked face, I asked him if he loved you. He got all red.” So that’s what he hadn’t told me about their conversation. “He does, but he’s scared to say it.”
“Sweet Raf,” Margot said.
“He’s the only good man in the world,” Vy said. “But he’s shy.”
“Aw,” one of the other women in the circle—Ophelia—said. “That’s adorable. Also, his restaurant is incredible.” The women on either side of her murmured their approval of Raf’s cooking.
“And you two were so sweet together at the gala,” Iris said.
“Sometimes he has trouble expressing things. So let’s loosen his tongue,” Vy said.
“The supplies, though,” Margot said.
“I brought a cow tongue.” Vy reached into her robe and pulled a Ziploc bag out of her pocket. The bag was filled with ice and something else: a hunk of meat. Great, she’d just been carrying raw meat around with her all night. I looked at the other women, expecting to see their faces pinched in distaste, but only smiles beamed back.
“Perfect!” Caroline said. “It’s settled, then. Ready, Jillian?”
“Uh,” I said. Eight pairs of eyes turned toward me, bright with anticipation. I couldn’t think of a way to protest now without seeming suspicious. Besides, it’s not like it mattered. It wasn’t real, so I should let them have their fun. Maybe someday I’d tell Raf, and we’d laugh over it, after things had gone back to normal, long after I’d forgotten the feel of his mouth against mine. (The memory of our kiss had slammed into me a few times since the gala, very inconveniently.) “Ready.”
Vy plopped the slimy, cold cow tongue into my unbloodied hand, which didn’t exactly help my nausea. Caroline went back to the altar, where she picked up a vial filled with some kind of oil, plus the knife again. Oh God, I’d hoped we were done with that particular prop. She opened the vial and spilled some of the liquid into her hand, scattering drops of the oil on the cow tongue. She rubbed the rest of the liquid on my forehead. It smelled of ginger and cloves. Then she handed me the knife. Did they want me to stick it into the cow tongue now? How many germs were on this blade? As soon as I got out of here, I was going to have to make an appointment for a tetanus shot. (Yes, I was turning into my mother.) Get ahold of yourself, Beckley, I told myself. Pay attention to it all, so you can write it down.
“Carve your initials in the tongue,” Margot said, her breath hot in my ear. She watched over me, her hand on my shoulder, as I inscribed them unsteadily into the meat: JAB. Jillian Abigail Beckley.
When I was done, Margot lifted the meat from my hand, and held it above the flames. Caroline came up next to her on one side, with Vy on the other. The other women flanked them, linking themselves by putting hands on one another’s shoulders.
“May tongue uncurl and speak its truth,” Margot recited.
“May tongue uncurl and speak its truth,” the other women repeated, and then said it again, the words echoing and growing more urgent. Again and again, they said it, their voices lifting louder and higher until the words became almost a shriek, and the women’s eyes blazed. When it seemed that the words could not possibly gather any more force, the women all took in a breath as one, and then Margot threw the tongue into the fire. Sweating, the women arced their heads back, releasing a guttural yell up toward the sky.
I was sweating too, the heat of the fire flushing my face, as the meat began to char and the panting, shrieking sounds continued. The meat threw off a rich smell—shit, now I was hungry—and the smoke hung heavy around us. I was back in the dream I’d been having when they’d startled me awake, where everything was underwater, the world around me a slow-motion haze. And then Iris took off her robe. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.
What. The. Fuck. Was. Happening. I tried not to stare, but . . . well, I could see why she was so body positive. One by one, the other women followed, shedding their robes, until they were entirely bare. Nipples everywhere: tiny ones the size of dimes, large, puckered ones as big as sand dollars. So many nipples, and a lot of full bush. They tossed their robes to the side and began to dance, leaping and twirling, uncoordinated movements around the fire. They swung their hips and clasped their hair in all their naked, uninhibited glory, while I clenched my body tighter, not knowing what to do, on the outside again.
Margot appeared at my side and put her hands on my face. Eyes on her eyes, not on her boobs, I told myself. Don’t be a perv.
“Sometimes we worship sky-clad,” she said to me, as the women whirled around behind us. Even Caroline was naked, totally hairless and well maintained, her breasts like pert round apples. She danced like someone who’d been obsessed with ballerinas as a little girl and would have wanted to be one herself if not for a total lack of talent. Still, she was unabashed in her ungraceful movements, throwing in the odd pirouette or arabesque, and it was weirdly hypnotic to watch.
“Sky-clad?”
“Naked. When the body is released from all the things that constrict it, it has a power unlike anything else. Try it with us.”
“I’m not quite comfortable with my body,” I said quietly.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t . . . love it.”
“Oh, Jillian,” Margot said, with such sympathy in her voice. “That’s exactly why you should do it.” She stepped even closer to me, and the sounds and people around us blurred, growing smudged and fuzzy like the two of us were a photograph at the center of an Impressionist painting. She reached out and grasped the bottom of my pajama shirt. “May I?”
I nodded, my throat dry, trembling. Slowly, she drew the shirt up, lifting it over my head in an unhurried movement, so that the fabric scraped against my far-too-sensitive skin. I started to cross my arms over my chest, but she cocked an eyebrow, and I put them back down at my sides. She made no attempt to avert her eyes like I had. Instead she ran them over me, a lazy, contented smile playing around her mouth, then looked back up into my face.
“You’re beautiful, Jillian,” she said. Next, she combed her fingers along my hips. My skin prickled and sent off sparks as she drew her fingers underneath the waistband of my leggings and hooked them on the cotton band of my underwear. We rested like that for a moment as the other women continued their worship. Then, gentle and deliberate, Margot pulled the fabric down until it rested at my feet. She held her hand out to me, and I took it, our hot, sweating hands pulsing against each other’s. I stepped out of my clothes and into the circle, which opened up to welcome me in.
Enthusiastically, Margot jumped into the dancing. I moved stiffly, trying to copy her ease, so that no one would realize their mistake in letting me in here. Dance like no one’s watching, you dumbass, I told myself. And nobody was watching. No one was rating my movements on a one-to-ten scale. The other bodies passed in front of me. Up close, they were a feast of imperfections. Cellulite dimpled some of their thighs. I saw a birthmark here, a stretch mark there, and yet the dancin
g women didn’t care, didn’t try to hide it in the shadows, because they were too busy moving in an ecstatic communion.
I rolled my shoulders back. I dug my toes into the dirt below me. I went into the smell and the fire and the humming, and my body was no longer some ungainly shield I used to keep the world out but a flowing thing all of its own. I forgot to pay attention, I forgot everything except the rush of my arms and feet, moving in ways they never had before. I was in my own private world and I was terrified and alight all at once.
We danced for I don’t know how long, until they handed me back my pajamas to put on, then led me down a warren of stairways and out onto the street. They kissed me on my cheek, put me in a cab, and disappeared into the dark.
THIRTY-THREE
Margot had given the cab driver my address, and for a minute as he headed toward the West Side Highway, I sat in the backseat, drenched in perspiration and frozen still. I’d been turned inside out and then right side in again, but some of my veins had been left on the outside of my body in the process, and now they throbbed. The driver asked me if I was all right, and I just sort of whimpered and shook in the backseat. Then I leaned forward and gave him a different address and sat in a daze as he took me to the only place I could possibly go.
“What the hell, Jilly, it’s after three a.m.,” Raf said, rubbing his eyes, when he finally opened his door after a minute or two of my pounding on it. “You almost gave me a heart attack.” Then he took me in—my wild eyes and hair, the sweat-drenched clothing, the bloodstains on my sleeve—and he immediately threw off any remaining sleepiness. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Who did this to you?”
“No, not hurt. But maybe not okay. I don’t know. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” he said, and swung the door open wide for me.
“What happened?” he asked as I paced around his living room. Just being in his presence—my familiar, solid beanpole, someone who was going to stick a knife in my hand only so I could help him chop onions—allowed me to anchor myself back to the Earth, although my blood still pinged around inside of me, bouncing off my skin, making everything buzz and tingle. Imagine the feeling you get when the hair on the back of your neck stands up. Now imagine it doing that for an hour straight.
“So it turns out that they actually think they’re witches. That they do real magic. Not, like, card tricks, and not just sending some positive energy out in the world, but that they can truly influence events.”
“They . . . what?”
“Yeah. They’re out of their minds. And now I guess I’m one of them.”
“What did they do to you?” he asked.
A strangled noise erupted from my throat at the thought of having to tell him any more details, having to relive the chanting and the knife and the cow tongue, so I just shook my head. Raf came over and put his arms around me as I tried not to cry. “I’m not sad! I’m just kind of overwhelmed,” I said, my face against the threadbare T-shirt he’d worn to bed.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“Yeah, it’s fine, it’s just that I got freaked out by it all and I didn’t want to be alone in my apartment because they showed up there and kidnapped me earlier and”—here I caught a whiff of myself, reeking of the herbs they’d burned and the oils they’d pressed onto me—“Oh God, I smell like a feral child who’s been raised by wolves, so here I am stinking up your apartment and I’m sorry but I didn’t know what else to do.”
He stepped back and looked at me, a little overwhelmed himself. He nodded a couple of times, quickly, and then asked, “Would a shower help?”
My whole body drooped with relief. “A shower would be amazing.”
I followed him to the bathroom, watching as he knelt down and turned on the water for me. He knew that his tricky faucet confused me to no end. I stood there shivering while he adjusted the temperature.
“Okay, that should be good,” he said, turning to go, and I so desperately didn’t want to be alone that I just said it without thinking it through:
“Will you stay in here with me?”
He hesitated. Then he nodded, put the toilet lid down, and sat on it. I pulled the shower curtain—a solid, shiny blue—and he turned away as I took off my clothes and stepped in.
Raf’s shower was not the cleanest place in the entire world. Of course he had a three-in-one body wash/shampoo/conditioner. I was grateful for all of it, for the bits of mold blooming on his tile, for the stupid boy bath products that I used to dab the cut on my palm, which had already begun to scab up. Through a crack between the wall and the edge of the shower curtain, I could see him sitting, jiggling his leg, his head turned away from the shower for propriety even though he wasn’t going to see anything anyway. He swallowed, then adjusted his athletic shorts.
“I have to keep going back,” I said as I soaped up my hair, as my heart continued to pound against the walls of my chest. “It’s good for the story, right? That the tastemakers of New York are in this weird cult?”
“It’s definitely not what I would have expected,” Raf said. He adjusted his shorts again.
My skin still prickled, sensitive, as I tried to scrub the night off it. Faint streaks of red marked my hip bones where Margot had moved her fingers. “But the wildest thing is that when you’re in there with them, it feels . . . almost real. They sweep you up in their delusion, even though I know that actually, they’re all having this mass psychotic break.”
“Well . . .”
I paused in my scrubbing. “What?”
“I don’t know if they’re having a breakdown. A lot of people believe in things that we can’t prove.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know . . .” I started. “Some of what they were doing was just . . . Oh, I can’t think about it anymore tonight.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not saying what they . . . I just mean, my grandma practiced Santeria when she was growing up, so she was always making potions and stuff when my mom was a little girl. And you know my mom. She’s a realistic person. But even now, she swears that she saw ghosts in her childhood bedroom. I don’t think that makes her crazy.”
“No, I didn’t mean to say that—”
“And I don’t mean to . . .” He let out a breath of frustration at himself, at his imperfect words. “This shit is scary and weird, and I get why you’re freaked out. I just mean that I don’t know if you can say for sure one way or another what’s real and what’s not.”
If I’d been with Miles, we would’ve snarked about this like snark would save the world, and everything would have seemed less real and less terrifying. But instead Raf was saying in his sort of stumbling way that there was no certainty, that maybe I’d just fully insinuated myself with an all-powerful coven, and the tingling feeling was growing all over my body instead of going away like it was supposed to.
I turned the water off and stood still, staring at the shower mold, water dripping off me, my body covered in goose bumps. In the sudden quiet, I became very aware of Raf’s breathing on the other side of the curtain. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s probably not helpful right now.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to apologize. You’re being so kind to me. You’ve been so kind to me this whole time.”
As if to prove my point, he handed me a large, fuzzy bear of a towel through the gap between the curtain and the wall. I wrapped the towel tightly around me and emerged, face-to-face with him.
“Well,” he said, “I care about you.” His dark hair was mussed from sleep, a single curl falling over his forehead. He had a slight line, an indentation from his pillow, on his cheek.
“I care about you too.”
He looked at me for a moment more, then averted his eyes. “You want to sleep here?” I nodded, and he paced out of the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll get you something to sleep in.”
I toweled off, then fol
lowed him to the door of his bedroom, waiting at the threshold like a vampire who couldn’t come in unless invited. His sheets were rumpled from when I’d startled him awake. A few different baseball caps sat scattered on top of his dresser. On one wall, he’d hung up a corkboard on which he’d pinned notes to himself, an article announcing the restaurant opening, and some pictures—his family at Christmastime, him with a group of his guy friends hiking in the woods, and a photo of a block party in our neighborhood years ago, where I’d slung my arm around him, my mother on the other side of me, his parents on the other side of him, and we all grinned, naive, no premonitions about the sadness that was coming our way.
He rummaged around in his drawer, then pulled out an oversize T-shirt and a pair of mesh shorts. “Here,” he said, handing the clothes to me. “I’ll take the couch.”
“No, you take the bed,” I replied.
He shook his head. “You’re taking the bed.”
“We could both take the bed.”
My breath caught in my throat for the eternity in which my words hung in the air. Then he nodded and climbed in.
I pulled the shirt and shorts on quickly, hung my towel on his doorknob while he turned off the lamp, and got in beside him, still shivering. We lay there, both looking up at the ceiling, his body heat radiating from a foot away. I scooted a little closer to him and turned onto my side, craving the warmth of him, hoping that he would turn too. After a moment, he did, and wordlessly lifted his arm to wrap it around me. I nestled into him. Behind his wall, the pipes clanked and murmured softly, the only other sound besides our shallow breathing. The ice in my bones began to melt, coursing and rippling around, an almost ticklish sensation inside my skin.
But still we hadn’t crossed a line. Still, this could all be explained away in the morning, just another hazy thing that had happened on this unexpected night.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.
“It’s all so much . . . more than I expected,” I said.
