An hour later, it was getting dark. The park was filled with the flashing blue and red lights of a dozen police cars. Yellow tape cordoned off an area around the entrance to Ceci’s apartment. She sat in the back of one of the cars, being questioned by an elderly detective smelling of coffee and cigarettes.
“Miss Carre,” he asked, “tell me again why you had to fire ALL five rounds into the assailant, your former husband?”
Undaunted, disgusted by the man’s odor, she answered, “Because I still had more bullets left. What don’t you understand?”
The detective shook his head and got out of the car.
Ceci recognized a man amongst all the uniformed and plainclothed law enforcement officials. It was John Carozzi, a city councilman who happened to be one of her dance partners at the tango parlor they both frequented. She liked to call him Johnny. She caught his eye and shot him an appealing glance. It worked. Johnny went over to one of the officers and, a minute later, a uniformed young man opened the door to the squad car.
“Ma’am,” he said, gesturing back towards her house, “you can go back inside. There might be follow up questions later but you were obviously defending yourself. Do you need a counselor? We can provide one….”
“No,” she said, “I’ll be alright.” She exited the car and walked past the councilman. “Are you coming tonight?”
He pretended not to notice, then glanced her way and winked.
Three hours later, the young witch was seated at a small cocktail table in a large warehouse in South Philadelphia. Adorning the walls were giant doorway casings from mansion houses and castles, seeming like giants towering over the gathering of about one hundred tango dancers. Two huge fans, halfway up the cavernous ceiling, hovered forty feet above the crowd, each the size of a commercial airliner’s propeller, circulating the air with soft whooshing sounds as they swung their enormous blades.
There was a wall in the center of the dance floor and the couples moved around it counter-clockwise, in two lanes of traffic. The place was dimly lit and seductive tango music emanated from speakers located somewhere in the darkness of the ceiling space.
She spied Johnny, seated ten tables away, and waited until he looked at her. When he did, he held her gaze and nodded towards the dance floor. Nodding in affirmation, she waited until he got up and came to her table before joining him in a tango embrace.
Ceci loved the tango. Before she knew about her special powers, tango helped her deal with the strange force growing inside her. She loved the anonymity, wrapping her arms around strange men, their smells, feeling their energy. Maybe, she thought, her attraction to this imported folk-dance from Argentina was a desire to play with men’s sex drives and still be able to escape before they turned into lust-crazed wolves, kind of like playing chicken with the devil.
The politician was not the best lead but she wasn’t here to win any contests. At 6’2”, she found the dark-haired man enjoyable company to waltz around the track to tango music. His hands wandered a little too freely, she thought, but, since he’d done her such a big favor today, she decided to let him run around the yard without a leash, at least for just a little while.
His libido was strong this evening, she surmised. She wondered if he was married, if he had any kids. She loved his smell, the feel of his muscular frame, the power that emanated from him. This was a man who made weighty decisions that affected the lives of many people: highway construction approvals, shutting down mass transit, preparation for emergencies. Each one left a residue that gave him a unique cosmic scent. Taking a deep breath, she melted into his embrace and lost herself in the complex rhythms of tango music.
Ceci felt something stab her in the hip, she knew right away what it was. Yuk! She said to herself, he’s aroused. I shouldn’t have let that happen. When the music ended, Johnny propositioned her for dinner and asked if he could he walk her to her car, .
“Yes,” she replied to the first question, “and no. Go sit down, calm your jets, Tiger.” With those words, she parted his company and walked back to her table to find it was occupied by a lovely woman with long, dark curly hair.
When Ceci approached the table, the woman stood and looked her straight in the eye. She was slightly taller than herself, dressed in a blue-ish black skirt that was short and tight. The strange lady wore a black blouse so sheer Ceci could see her peach-sized breasts bobbing around inside, unencumbered. She wore little makeup on her face except deep black lipstick and some eyeshadow. Her eyes were dark brown and she had several piercings, one in her nose that sported a small diamond and one in her eyebrow that bore, what seemed to be, a tiny black pearl.
The stranger glanced towards the dance floor and back to her.
Ceci was taken aback. She marveled at the audacity of this newcomer to invite her to dance tango as a lesbian couple. She had danced with women before, usually at practice sessions when men were in short supply. This, she thought, was an obvious come on. The woman nodded her head once more and brought her feet together with a click, causing her breasts to bobble around in her shirt. Ceci stared at them and found them enticing. Then she noticed an unusual aroma that reminded her of pine trees. Was it patchouli?
She had crossed a threshold today, when she pumped that last shotgun blast into her ex-husband’s chest. She decided then that there was no turning back and, to go on, there would have to be no barriers. She accepted the invitation and nodded her head in acceptance.
The second their bodies embraced, Ceci knew the other woman was a witch. Discerning no immediate threat, she let herself be led around the room by her fellow Wicken. She closed her eyes and pressed her head into her partner’s cheek to get a better connection. Visions of dark, choppy waters lapping at rocky shores beneath hillsides covered in tall pine trees, filled her mind. She experienced the intense emotions of a little girl being raped by her father, beaten by her mother and endless toil. A great sympathy welled up inside her and she let it flow into her partner. This was a sister, she thought, astonished.
For a moment, the other lady looked at her with disbelief that faded to relief.
Ceci felt as if the stranger had just let down her guard and let her into her soul. She noticed her mood change from sadness to joy to playfulness, as her partner led her into a variety of delicate, sensual movements. The music slowed and the two women held each other gently. Ceci turned her head and saw the councilman staring at the pair, slack-jawed. The other woman must have noticed too because she stopped dancing.
Then the two ladies looked at each other and shared the same thought. Ceci turned back to Johnny, made eye contact and nodded towards the door. His jaw dropped even further. The dancers looked at each other and laughed, then looked back to the councilman to reassure him they were serious.
Thirty minutes later they were back at Bryn Mawr Park, standing in front of a nine story building. Ceci learned the other woman’s name was Nadja and that there were two other women in her building who were also witches of shades of black. One lived on the third floor, the other on the sixth and Nadja’s apartment was on the ninth. She didn’t have to tell Ceci that this meant she was more powerful than the other two.
Inside the apartment, Ceci found it was decorated with oriental rugs, brass urns and a few paintings of men adorned with odd small hats that she guessed were Turkish in origin. Nadja led her two friends into the bedroom and sat them down on a large circular bed, covered with satin pillows of different sizes and colors.
“You,” she said to Johnny, in her thick Balkan accent, “stay right here and vatch. Don’t move until vee are ready. Don’t vorry, eet von’t be long.” She dove across the bed, her long dark hair exploding on her back, and opened a cabinet door on the headboard. She pulled out a long pink scarf.
Ceci guessed it was some sort of cashmir but it was softer and more pleasing than any fabric she had ever touched.
Sitting next to her on the bed, Nadja stated, “Thees ees troll-fur, you vill like eet. Very, very good! I had to keel three of dem to get eet…not easy.” She looked at Ceci with an expression of loss and sadness. “But, vee vill eenjoy eet now!”
Nadja took Ceci’s hand and wrapped the end of the scarf around her wrist. When she completed one wrap, the clothed seemed to move by itself to complete several more revolutions. It wound itself around her forearm, then her elbow and bicep, like a snake winding its way up a tree. She found the sensation of the fabric’s touch against her skin stimulating, arousing. Blood rushed to her arm and she saw her skin flush and goose pimples sprout.
The scarf kept going, seeming to have a mind of its own. It wound itself around her head, tickled her ear, made its way down her shirt, around her torso and beneath her breasts. There seemed to be no end to its length as it snaked its way around her body. Soon it was racing around her limbs like a train on an endlessly winding track, circling her pelvis in a figure eight around her hips and thighs with its sensuous touch. Blood flowed like a raging river to all parts of her body.
Ceci’s vision blurred. All around her were groping limbs, warm tongues and the ever-moving scarf. Every orifice in her body was engorged and filled. Every sexual desire she had ever conceived was satisfied. She slipped into a state of consciousness where she couldn’t tell if she was dreaming or awake. The orgy continued until she couldn't take it any more and her vision faded from her eyes.
