Nightwise by R. S. Belcher

window, “right now. And if you look back here again, I know several very reputable rakshasa in this town that I will personally invite to feed on your liver. Now drive.”
    The cabbie muttered a prayer in Hindi and turned the radio back up.
    â€œPsychic is a word,” I said. “My granny called us Wisdoms. Geri’s kin call us Secret Men or Initiated Men. Wizards, warlocks, witches—lots of w ’s there. Magus, Illuminate, hoodoo, Drabarne…”
    â€œDrabarne. My grandmother used that word,” Magdalena said. “You are saying I can do magic? I’m some kind of witch?”
    â€œI’m saying you have the potential to open yourself up to a wider universe, to new perceptions, to power, real power. Yeah, darlin’, I am.”
    She looked out the window into the darkness between the islands of city light. She placed her hand on the cool glass, and I could see her shadowed reflection in the window, a face filled with rain. “Why me?” she asked softly. “I’m not anything special, I’m nobody.”
    â€œI don’t know why,” I said. “I don’t think there is a why. You have choices now. Decisions about what you want to do with it.”
    â€œCan I just ignore it?” she said, the ice cracking in her voice. “I don’t want anything to do with it, okay? This is fucking crazy. Magic isn’t even real. This is bullshit.”
    â€œYou don’t believe that,” I said. “Not even as the words are falling out of your mouth. You know it, you feel it, and you’ve felt it most of your life. You can run from it, pretend it isn’t real, and ignore it. It won’t ignore you. It’s no coincidence that we found each other. The people who exist in this world—most of us call it the Life—can sense each other. We’re like lodestones. The Life tends to drag us toward one another, and toward trouble, weird trouble.
    â€œThe power doesn’t really give a damn what you want. I’m surprised you haven’t run into one of us before. So, yes, you can keep on keeping on. But even if that is your choice, you needed to know about all this, so when the weird shit comes a-knockin’, you can at a least be ready to run, not just piss yourself and lose your mind.”
    The words seemed familiar to me, and when I realized their origin was my grandmother, a terrible sadness filled me. I wish I had listened.
    We were quiet for a bit. Her hand found mine and I took it. She was tough, I’ll give her that. Most people who just find out that all the paranoid, schizophrenic shit they thought was bad juice in their heads was actually not madness but hyperreality, they tend to lose it. She didn’t. She took my hand and we rode through the endless city.
    â€œI was with someone for a long time,” she began. “I … enjoy submission, I like having someone take control and take me out of my head. I had a lot of bad things happen when I was a kid … that doesn’t really matter. I like it and, at times, I need it. This woman, I met her, and we fell in love, and she gave me that, and I gave her what she needed too, I thought—a sense of being in control of me, of protecting me and caring for me. I thought…”
    She was fighting the tears, and so far, she was winning. She turned away from the night and looked me in the eyes.
    â€œShe was like you, into all this occult shit. She was powerful, like you, like Didgeri, maybe more powerful. She scared me. She was building a cult around submissives who worshiped her like a goddess. She was buying up land in Mexico, recruiting medical personnel, military types, as her slaves.”
    â€œShe have a name?” I asked.
    â€œYes,” Magdalena said, nodding, “but I don’t want to say it. I can still feel her regard sometimes, like she’s looking for me, and if I think about her too hard, if I say her name, then she