In Laymon's Terms

Kent looked down at the girl, sleeping soundly after their energetic sex (or ritual, as she kept insisting), weird bitch...Kent had run into women who liked getting slapped around, but this was the first one who had asked him to cut her with a razor while he was fucking her. Just another kink, Kent had no problem with that as long as she was buying the X and had beer in the fridge...The fact that she’d left her purse in plain sight was an added bonus.

At the Cafe Sepulchre, he’d spotted her immediately, low-cut blouse showing the intricate spiderweb tattoo on her back and black jeans that looked to be painted on the shapely long legs. That got his attention...What held his attention was the roll of bills she’d extracted from her purse when she went to pay for a drink. He’d brushed into her and made a comment on her silver jewelry and spiderweb tat and had started spinning a web of his own...

She cut him off quick. “Look, I know you just wanna fuck me; that’s okay, I can be into that if you’re willing to help me with something...”

Kent looked her over. “Help” could mean just about anything: money, drugs, protection from a violent ex-boyfriend, whatever...“Help you with what, exactly? Not that I’m saying ‘no,’ but I wanna know just what you’ve got in mind.”

“It’s not money or anything like that, if that’s what you’re thinking, I’ve got money; here, let me get us a couple of drinks and I’ll explain, then if you’re up for it, we can go over to my place...” With that she vanished into the crowd in the direction of the bar...

Pretty brassy, he thought. At least he wouldn’t have to waste time talking about relationships or any of that shit. She was probably a rich girl from the Eastside out playing Goth so she’d have something to brag about with her girlfriends...Fine, she had money and she had a place; it would be almost too easy.

“Chartreuse!” she announced, plunking two glasses of green liquid onto the table. “Really strong, but great stuff. Here!”

That was impressive. They charged something like seven bucks a shot for that stuff here...Yeah, she had money, or at least was trying to convince him that she did. That was kind of puzzling; she was good-looking, not the type who had to get attention from guys by buying them booze; that made the angle about “help” all the more interesting...

“What do you know about Magick?” She pronounced the word with an emphasis on the last syllable, leaving no doubt that she was talking about Magick with a “k” as opposed to magic...

“You mean Crowley and Satanism and stuff like that? A little, I guess...Why?”

“I’ve found something, something that was in an old book. It’s an incantation for raising a demon...I want to try it, and I need help for it to work...”

“Bullshit, even if that stuff worked you think that real spells are going to be in a book that you can buy off of Amazon?”

She took a long pull of her drink. “No, it’s not like that, not like that at all...I got this book from an Estate. You ever heard of Brentwood Grey?”

“The millionaire? The guy who disappeared a couple of years ago to beat a murder rap? Sure, I’ve heard of him, there was a bit on America’s Most Wanted or something. What’s that got to do with your spell?”

“Grey was a Magus, he was an adept of the highest possible degree. Yeah, he was about to be charged with murder, but it wasn’t really murder. He was engaged in sacrifices. Grey was the real deal, and I found this incantation on a sheet of paper folded up inside a book from his collection!”

Kent took another long look at her over the rim of his glass, feeling the fiery bite of the liqueur working its way into his bloodstream. Maybe this would be more interesting than he’d thought...

“So, how did you wind up with a book from Grey’s collection? Somehow, I don’t picture you hanging out at Estate sales...”

“The book was in a used bookstore. I don’t know how it got there, maybe his maid ripped it off and sold it or something, but the book had his bookplate in it, and about halfway through there was a paper with the directions and words to this spell. He must’ve stuck it in as a bookmark and forgotten about it. It’s gotta be the real thing, I mean, we’re talking about Brentwood Grey...”

She ordered more drinks, several more drinks. She was obviously getting hot just talking about this stuff. Kent thought about dragging her into a stall in the men’s room for a quick suck and fuck, but there was more at stake here than just getting a nut off.

She had to be getting ripped, slamming shots of chartreuse as though they were water, and the shit she was talking about...Tantric sex, demonology, all kinds of weird stuff. Apparently this spell required that she say “words of power” at the moment of orgasm.

The night shifted and faded into a green-tinted haze of chartreuse and X; he was struggling to maintain, to keep focused on what he needed...