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“No,” I said. “Tonight.”

My head still singing: Give me your lips, the lips you only let me borrow . . .

My first punch caught him where jaw meets cheek, smashing his glasses like paper: The wire-rimmed frame slicing deep, embedding itself into the flesh and sticking there, a proverbial knife through butter. I picked him up bodily, threw him inside—he went down kicking, but couldn’t find enough purchase to break himself free. One hand shoved down his pyjama pants, found the elastic, ripped, groped for my fly; I kept the other over his mouth while I kneed him in the chest, winding him before he had a chance to really scream.

. . . love me tonight, and let the devil take tomorrow . . .

And when I finally got his leg up high enough to cram myself inside, all he gave was a weird little shriek of outrage—before biting down on the web of skin between my thumb and forefinger, so hard and deep it seemed to explode with a gush of capillary-fed blood.

. . . I know that I must have your kiss although it dooms me, though it consumes me . . .

Jesus, it makes me sick just to remember. Sick at how good it felt. How good it still feels. My secret love for Beck made sudden, awful flesh, through dead Mrs. Silas’ gift—a torch song dream whipped high and hot, let loose to burn down the whole waking world.

Love, this candy-coated, bright red lie that killed my life.

Love, my very own personal . . .

. . . kiss of fire.

* * *

In the alley now, watching the Temple’s red windows flicker; breathing deep for the last of Beck’s exhaust, the only thing of his I’ll ever have again. Left two uniforms on stake-out in front, but I could get by them blind, never mind just drunk. I spent a year waiting for them to resurface, another casing this dump, before I finally gave up on the idea of revenge: Long as Mrs. Silas is still dead, I’m fucked no matter what happens to Herson and the rest. As well I know. Nothing they can threaten me with anymore, them or their Goddess.

But Beck’s a whole ‘nother subject, even going by that bitch Aphrodite’s rules—and that’s where the Temple fell down, back when they taught Mrs. Silas how to work this spell of theirs on poor, dumb, shield-wearing assholes such as myself.

They took it all, everything—all except the one thing that makes me capable of doing what I’m gonna do.

A shed out back. Fuel cans, for the Temple g

enerator. Easy to carry. Easy to set in clusters around the walls, run a trail from pile to pile. Easy to soak myself and walk on in, stinking—Herson’s smelled me drunk before, though never on gas.

“Just wanted to tell you freaks you were right all along,” I’ll say. “’Cause the fact is, I never loved anything till you put this thing on me. Not even myself.”

Singing along, silently, in the gathering red/black dark of my head:

Just like a torch, you set the soul within me burning . . . I must go on along this road of no returning . . .

After which, I think I’ll give Herson a smile—give them all one, just like the day we picked up Mrs. Silas. Wide, and sweet, and waaay too happy to be anything but real bad news.

Saying: “But I do know what love is, real love. Now.”

And then, right then . . .

. . . though it burns me and it turns me into ashes . . .

. . . is when I’ll light the match.

The Diarist

DAY ONE. STARTING small. I went to your driveway, just before dawn, and picked out eighteen uneven white stones from the area falling under your car’s shadow. One for every letter of your full name. Took them home, made the sign of the Cross reversed on their dusty skins in stolen gasoline—my own personal brand of unholy water. With eyes, lips, flesh between nail and finger, back of my throat all burning, breathing out fresh curse with each inverse word: Thee baptize I, Holy Ghost and Son, the Father, of Name the in.

The water was already boiling when I dropped them in. No salt necessary.

When it was all gone, I wrapped the stones in a clean dishcloth, put them back in my purse and walked six blocks down to the nearest sewage drain, which I was pretty sure would count as a river. Assuming the original recipe allowed at least some metaphoric leeway for we poor, unfortunate, city-dwelling practitioners of the Craft.

Then I went home again, and wrote this down.

* * *