"The coven?"
"Yeah, they got some kind of ritual that's going to start later. I don't get it all. But my wife. She can do it, you know."
"Do what?"
"Whatever she puts her mind to. Love spells, blessings, remove curses and change your bad luck. She takes pride in showing people the way."
"The way toward what?"
"The way. The right way. The way of positivity. Mercy and her friends, she welcomed them into her coven so she could…rehabilitate them."
"Do you think that's possible?"
"Yes. My wife is powerful. She's helped people toward the right-hand path before."
"Mercy, Jenx, and Kip call themselves the New Knights of the Black Circle," I tell him. "Do you know that name?"
"No. Should I?"
I would ask him about Ricky, but everyone knows Ricky's name. He's become a cultural icon since his suicide. Parents use him as an example for why heavy metal music can kill. Sociologists publish volume after volume on his case history, proving the power of peer pressure and how kids can keep an awful secret from the authorities so long as they share it among themselves. Teens emulate him, they dedicate songs to him over the radio. Not just heavy metal demonic bullshit, but love ballads. Girls weep for him. They romanticize murder and suicide and insanity. They wear T-shirts proclaiming RICKY LIVES FOREVER. I know it's the truth.
I nod again. I don't know what else to do. I wonder why a man married to a woman who could bless you and change your bad luck would need a case full of guns, but I guess that had more to do with throwing parties with pounds of coke on hand than white magic.
"Is that what the coven's in there doing?" I ask. "Changing people's luck? Sending out positive energy to grace everybody?"
"Not yet. Maybe tonight. I'm not part of the coven, I don't partake in the rituals. But sometimes evil forces try to disturb the white magic, and I'm on hand to make sure that doesn't happen."
"Are those evil forces susceptible to a snub.38 or a 12-gauge?"
"Most things are," he says, and hits me with a leer.
Most things aren't, but there's no point in arguing. He moves back to his recliner and talks to the nerds and I wander around the party a little more.
From another room I gaze over the tops of heads and watch the gathered coven. They're a goofy looking bunch circling the White Queen, making little signs and gestures, spelling words in the air, waving holy plants about. I catch the scent of holly and mint.
They hold hands and chant some kind of prayer or charm, and then the White Queen, all three hundred pounds of her, hugs each of the other members in turn. She blesses them. She points them toward positivity and love.
Mercy makes a beeline for me. She slides up close again. She has no understanding of personal space and makes sure she rubs against me, hard and sexual, pressing her chest to mine, her lips only three inches away from mine when she speaks. She rubs the back of her knuckles against the side of my face, a gentle, soft, meaningless demonstration that makes me want to shut my eyes and let out a quiet groan.
I have been lonely these last two years. Without Linda, without Gwen, without Ricky. I stand before my mother's grave in my solitude and desolation and ask her for advice and guidance. Sometimes I hear her voice, and sometimes I don't.
"We're going to perform a ceremony tonight," Mercy says. She knows how ridiculous it sounds coming from her, and she can't keep a girlish giggle from fluttering free. I know it's the laugh she lets loose when she thinks of garroting boys with the razor wire wreathed in her hair.
"What kind?" I ask.
"A purification rite."
"That sounds…righteous."
"Oh it is," she assures me, her breath cool against my five o'clock shadow. "It certainly is." Then she puts her lips to my ear and whispers, "But I think there might be some sex magic to it." She wags her eyebrows and hits me with a sloe-eyed gleam while I wonder how different sex magic might be from the regular thing. "And some blood sacrifice."
"Sacrifice," I repeat. It's a word that holds more power than she'll ever understand. I can feel the depths of the ocean stir at the sound of it. The trees around the hospital sway with its understanding.
Mercy takes no notice. "Out there in the pines under the moon."
Out there in the pines under the moon, where the shadows crawl, and Ricky still keeps watch. I think of the ancient cemeteries hidden beneath the floor of the forest, the hidden stones bearing names of colonists who'd died of cholera or yellow fever centuries ago. Or the mass graves in potters' fields where they buried the corpses of the patients, dead from too much electroshock, drowned in the hydrotherapy tubs, raped, impregnated by doctors, victim piled on top of victim in cardboard coffins.
"You people certainly know how to throw a party."
"It's not a joke, you know. Not to them. Especially Kip. He's been seriously into this for months."
"And you? Is it a joke to you?"
She just hits me with the grin again, eases up closer, and throws a leg around mine. Some of the nerds perk up and check out her ass. I stand my ground as she slithers around me like the serpent across the branch of the tree of knowledge. The symbols of our lives are everywhere you look. They find us no matter what we do or where we hide. She nips at my throat. She catches a vein between her teeth and licks and sucks.
I glance over at Kip, who's reading through papers covered with symbols, discussing them with the White Queen. They seem to be on the verge of an argument. His shoulders are hunched, his eyes ablaze. He's a little heated as the White Queen points at the instructions and tries to explain them to her own satisfaction. She smiles through it all even while Kip grimaces. Her understanding only angers him more.
Jenks has moved off from the group and sips from a bottle of Jameson's, snickering to himself. I can tell by his expression that he wants to cut something. A stray dog, a person walking by in a crowd. He wants to see blood run. In a pinch he'll bleed himself, just to see the coursing red. His gaze flicks here and there. It finally meets mine. His sneer solidifies. He likes seeing Mercy working me in the corner, up against the wall.
"This blood sacrifice," I say. "You talking about chasing down bunnies or something a little bigger?"
Mercy gives me a final love bite. It hurts. It arouses me. I think of Linda and Gwen and all our scars. Mercy raises her lovely face to me, her features highlighted by all that black makeup set against her wondrously white skin. The razor wreath wound in her hair flashes with reflections of the lights and television.
She condescends and tells me, "Probably something bigger."
"You're not going to let Kip try to reach into his secret pocket for his butterfly blade and slash open my carotid, are you?"
She titters at that. It's the kind of titter that originally sounds adorable the first couple times you hear it, but eventually makes you want to puke.
"That's not for me to decide," Mercy said, "it's for you. How badly do you want to live?"
"Good question."
"Is it?"
"It is. Do you have an answer?"
"I was asking you."
Still grinning, so close that her lips land on mine from time to time as she speaks, she moves her hand to my groin. She rubs and finds me already hard. She smiles and it's her first real smile since I've met her. She's proud of making me want. Our mouths brush together. The feel of her moist breath on my face is starting to make me a little high. It's a good feeling, one I haven't had in a long while.
"I want to live more at certain times of the day than others," I admit.
"How about now?"
"I'm holding out a little hope that the night might turn out to be a memorable one."