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That was Friday. And a day or so later, I come ‘round a corner in the library—mail-cart in hand—to find Dionne waiting on me between the stacks, arms crossed and scowling, with Samaire looming right behind.

“…We might need your help, after all,” was all Samaire had to say, after a moment.

And: “Oh, Princess,” I said, “tell it to me again, will ya? Slower.”

—

“What do you know about Abramelin the Mage?” Samaire asked, as she pumped a thirty-pound barbell in the southmost corner of the weight-pile, with Dionne spotting. I sat down nearby, took up a pair of ten-pounders and started doing curls, to cover my reply:

“Abramelin? He thought all worldly phenomena were produced by demons working under the direction of angels; we all come with a guardian angel and a demon attached, the one liftin’ us up, the other suckin’ us back down, like gravity. Thought initiates could make ‘emselves into angels, for as long as it took to control the demons…”

“…by using spell-squares. Five-line palindromes that read the same up and down, forward and back. The most famous of which being…”

“…the SATOR box? SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, ROTAS: Hold this in thy right hand, ask what thou wilt, and it shall be delivered.’ No tools necessary, ‘sides from pen, ink and willpower. But the thing also repels witches somethin’ fierce, so too damn bad we can’t either of us use that…”

“That’s right, we can’t.” She pumped up one more time, shelved it, and lay there a moment, sweating. Before adding—

“But Dionne can.”

We both shot Dionne a glance, like we’d been choreographed that way; Dionne—who’d been watching this little back ‘n forth of magickal esoterica like it was a Satanic tennis game—flushed deep, looking uneasy for maybe the very first time since I’d made her acquaintance.

“Hey, man,” she said, “I don’t…do magic. Ain’t my style. I just don’t got it in me.”

Samaire nodded. “You’re not trained, no—but seriously, Dee, once it’s made, this item’s pretty much idiot-proof.” A beat. “No offense.”

“None taken. If it repels witches, though, then how are you guys supposed to make

it?”

“Take turns. A-Cat does a character, I do a character, out of order. You hold the paper, so we don’t even have to pass it back and forth. Easy.”

Dubious: “Oh yeah, sounds it.”

For once, I had to agree. “Yeah, it’s a neat little concept—‘cept we’d have to shield ourselves, somehow, just to stay in the same damn room while Lady Di here worked her will on the thing. You got any bright ideas about that?”

“…Not yet. I thought, though, with both of us going full-bore—”

“Princess, I can’t shield myself from the sator box, let alone you too.”

And there it sat, for a minute; I could see her thinking on the problem—hard, straight white teeth just denting her lower lip—which was a sort of pleasure in itself, for all it went on just a shade too long for comfort.

“We’d need a jolt, then,” she said, at last. “Some sudden extra burst of power, like jump-starting a…car battery, or whatever—”

“Sacrifice, sure. So kill somebody.”

Dionne, without even thinking twice, like she’d just remembered she was the big sister here: “We’re not gonna do that.”

I looked right on past her, straight to Samaire, the more innately practical of the two. “Let me, then; you know I’d do it. Do it in a damn minute, I thought it’d get us outta here…”

“Well, demonstrably, Alleycat!” she snapped back. “But we won’t.”

“Okay, then: Fuck someone, that’d work almost as well. Or are you too damn good to do that, either?”

Now it was her turn to blush. “Not with you,” she said, shortly. Adding, as I looked back at Dionne, cocking one eyebrow: “And not with her, either—I mean, Jesus! Just what the Hell is wrong with you, anyways?”

Quantifying that one’d’ve probably took us all night, so I just shrugged. “Does sort of limit our options then, don’t it?” I pointed out, instead.