“I fear that’s what motivates most men,” Soraya said. “I spent so many years hearing all about that. I spent all of youth group being told I had to dress a certain way. That I had to be careful not to tempt any men with my ... bare shoulders and front hugs.”
“Front hugs?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. You can’t hug a guy from the front because he’ll feel your breasts.”
“They said that to you in youth group?” Nora asked, her jaw slack.
“Yes.”
“I mean, they were the ones sexualizing you. Just by thinking of it that way. Making you think of your own body that way.”
Soraya sat and stared at a spot on the floor. “Well ... oh.”
“Like seriously, who says that to teenage girls?”
“Youth pastors. Then after you get told to cover up, never think about sex, never let yourself get turned on, don’t be a temptation, don’t be tempted, you get married. Then you get told to put out. To be a good wife who has sex with her husband whenever he wants it. I did that. I did it, and I still wasn’t enough. I was pure and perfect for him, and it still wasn’t enough.” Soraya wiped angrily at her tears. “Maybe if I’d had more experience ...”
“I was by no means pure or perfect for Ben,” Nora said. “I give an awesome blow job. He still cheated on me. It has nothing to do with you, what you know, what you don’t know, how many men you slept with, how many men you haven’t slept with, or what size you are or how old you are. It isn’t about anything but a man’s own goddamn selfishness. No. It isn’t you, Soraya. It’s not me.” Nora’s voice broke. “It’s just that you can’t trust anyone. I was right, it turns out. I thought I could trust him. I thought that because I loved him it meant that he loved me.”
“Exactly,” Daisy said. “I thought that because he was the love of my life, I was the love of his.”
“It isn’t our fault.” Nora was seething. “It’s theirs.” She looked down at the coffee table and sprang forward, grabbing the book of matches. She lit a candle, then took her phone out and started typing. “I wish I had the grimoire.”
“What are you doing?” Soraya asked.
“I’m putting a spell on him. No. Not a spell. A hex.” Nora’s pupils were so large her eyes were black. “I don’t want karma. I don’t want balance. I want revenge.”
She held her phone up, the light of the candle reflecting on her face, her goth makeup even more dramatic.
A chill went down Soraya’s spine, but she didn’t feel like she wanted or needed to turn away from this. Nora’s anger was dark, but all of this was dark.
They’d been abandoned. Cast aside. Lied to. Lied about.
They had each other. And they had this. This one place where they’d found a way to reclaim their power. So far, it had been working. Except Nora had just wanted her husband to love her and she couldn’t get that, so why not get payback?
Why not?
Soraya had spent all her life trying to be good in a very specific way.
She’d turned away from intuition. From power.
From rage.
Right now, she felt it all coursing through her like fire.
“What you did to me, be returned but times three,” Nora said. “Head to toe. Skin and bone. It is time for fate to reverse. It is time to feel the pain you inflicted on me.” Nora took off her wedding ring and dropped it so it encircled the flaming wick, the fire burning around it. “And so it is.”
Daisy took her ring off and dropped it over the top of Nora’s. “And so it is.”
Soraya looked at them, her heart thundering hard.
Then she took her own wedding ring off, which she hadn’t done since the separation. Because it had felt like something final. Because it had felt like giving up.
But this didn’t feel like giving up. It felt like something else entirely.
She held it over the flame and dropped it over the wick, flame encircling all the rings. “And so it is.”
Daisy reached out and took Nora’s hand, Nora took Soraya’s, and then she closed the circle and took Daisy’s other hand, the rings around the flame, not melting, not scorching, just there. A symbol. A sacrifice.
