A Little Superstition

Magda stuffed her hands into the pockets of her peacoat, hunching her shoulders against the chill air. The city smelled like rain and wet leaves, and the grey, post-dusk gloom of the late autumn sky threatened further precipitation soon.

Magda ducked her head as a gust of wind blew strands of her midnight black hair from her ponytail. A shiver rippled through her slender body as the cold tried to work its way through the heavy fabric of the peacoat. Brown leaves swirled on the sidewalk, and a raven perched on a telephone line squawked as she walked by below.

These days, it seemed like Magda was cold more often than not. It was as if a chill had seeped into her very bones.

It doesn't help that I'm basically wearing dental floss under this thing, she griped. Aside from her coat and high, black boots, Magda's outfit largely consisted of hoop-shaped earrings and a set of lingerie that left so little to the imagination she wasn't sure what the point of it was.

"You look perfect," Brock had said earlier in the dingy apartment he shared with Christine. Magda had spun to display the lacy, insubstantial outfit, looking critically at herself in the mirror. She didn't have much on top in the way of tits, but she had to admit the panties showed off the firm peach of her ass pretty well.

"I look like a total slut," she said. Brock just nodded his head.

"Exactly," he confirmed. "You'll fit right in." He must've seen the hesitation in her eyes, for he took a step forward, a desperate look in his puppy-dog eyes. "It's all for Christine, remember?"

Oh don't worry, I remember.

Magda could already hear the sounds of the party underway as she walked up the flagstone path that cut through the garden, heading towards the ornate front door of Hawthorne House.

It was still relatively early; the sun had only just slid below the New Haven skyline, but the bassy throb of music already emanated from the ivy-covered brick edifice of the house. The noise was somewhat at odds with the staid, stately appearance of the mansion, not to mention the well-heeled atmosphere of the neighborhood at large.

Magda shook her head as she ascended the marble steps of the portico. She wondered how the prim New Haven luminaries who'd founded Hawthorne House would have felt about a bunch of college kids drinking cheap vodka out of red plastic cups and trying to fuck each other among the sumptuous rooms of the mansion.

Red Bull is probably a real bitch to get out of the upholstery, she thought as she rapped the ornate, snake-shaped knocker against the white-painted door. So is cum.

The boy who answered her knock was young, perhaps in his sophomore year. He was dressed up in a black cape and ruffled shirt, and a set of fake plastic fangs slurred his speech. Magda resisted the urge to roll her eyes when she saw the outfit. It was clear the kid was going for recognizability, not realism.

He was already a little glassy-eyed, and the expected red cup he held smelled strongly of orange juice and alcohol. Poor sucker. Door duty was a shit job, and the neophyte members of the Skull and Bones saddled with it probably took whatever solace they could get.

"Damn girl," he said, giving Magda a once-over. "What are you supposed to be?"

She gave him a sweet smile and batted her mascara-thickened lashes at him. "Tonight," she said, "I'm part of the help."

Even in his state of increasing inebriation, the code words from the ad had the intended effect on the boy. His eyes widened, as did his fake-fanged grin.

"Yeah?" he said. "Right on, right on. Just follow me, I'll take you to Spencer."

The boy stepped aside to let her in, and as Magda entered the house she felt the kid's eyes linger on her. She could guess what he was thinking.

What kind of a girl would sign up for a job like this? Likely followed by, And if she's willing to work a shift at Hawthorne House's All Hallows Eve party, what else might she do for a bit of cash?

Once inside, the music grew loud and raucous, the party clearly in full swing. The boy led Magda through room after room, each filled with students in various states of inebriation and undress. She saw Yalies dressed in a wide variety of costumes; slutty cats, slutty angels, and a few plain old sluts thrown in to mix it up.

They drank, danced, and necked with wild abandon. She knew that Yale wasn't a cheap place to go to school, and Magda wondered what the starched-collar parents of these college kids would say if they could see their children, red-faced and shouting over a beer pong table or calling for another round of jello shots.

As she followed her guide through the house, Magda was once again struck by a strange feeling of dissonance. Hawthorne House was nice, maybe one of the nicest places Magda had even been in, aside from that summer she worked as a maid at the Continental downtown. She watched two kids making out on a loveseat carved from what looked like mahogany, the wood shaped into intricate flowers and climbing vines. The contrast seemed almost profane.

"Spencer!" her guide shouted across a crowded hallway. "Hey, Spencer! The girl who answered the ad is here!"

Several pairs of curious eyes turned towards them.

Thanks, fuck-face, Magda thought sourly. She didn't embarrass easily, and these kids probably had no idea of what the real All Hallows Eve party entailed, but still, she had her fucking dignity.

Well, maybe not a lot of that left, she admitted to herself.

"I don't think he can hear you," she shouted in the boy's ear, struggling to be heard over the thump and grind of the music. "Maybe we should get a little closer?"

The boy gave her a blank look for a moment, then comprehension dawned in his eyes and he nodded his head. "Oh yeah, that's a good idea!" he agreed.

Magda followed in his wake as he forged ahead down the packed hallway, pushing aside sweating, gyrating bodies.

Christ, she thought. Don't you have to be smart to get into Yale?

Although she couldn't see the DJ, the thump of the music sank into Magda's bones. People in the hallway danced and moved to the beat, and for a moment Magda imagined what it might be like to let go and join them.

How different would her life have been had she been born into this world, a member of the privileged class instead of just a townie? She'd had the fantasy before, but now, among those whom she'd envied, the contrast she felt was an even sharper knife.

Would he have chosen me all those nights ago if he thought I'd be missed?

Her melancholy was interrupted by a strange sight. Magda thought she saw a shadow flickering among the youthful, sweat-soaked bodies which danced in the hallway. The darkness pulsed between a girl with a beanie and a boy sipping straight from a Jagermeister bottle. Both of them were oblivious to the tenebrous form, but Magda froze in place, watching.

The shadow flickered in time to the instrumental samples in the track that blared out over the speakers; some kind of classic riff that Magda assumed she might have known if she'd been educated in the same places these people had access to.

What the fuck?

The shadow shivered and shook, reaching out with a darkling limb in Magda's direction. She got the sense that it was trying to stretch across some vast distance to be born into the world of sweating, heaving life. Was it drawn by the harsh music, desperate to hitch a ride along with one of the warm, vital bodies crowded into the passageway of the house?

She recalled something her abuela used to say, a technique for warding away the evil eye, la Mal de Ojo.

Spit three times and turn your head, to repudiate the dead.

"Hey!" A voice drew her back to reality. "You alright?"

Magda glanced away from the shadow to look at the boy who led her through the press of bodies, but when she turned her gaze back to the space between the girl with the beanie and the Jaeger enthusiast, the darkness was gone. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind.

Focus Magda, she remonstrated herself. Christine was depending on her, after all, and it wasn't like she hadn't seen some seriously weird shit in the last few years.

"I'm fine. Where's this Spencer guy?"

Spencer turned out to be a good looking senior boy with a shock of golden-blonde hair and a jawline so sharp Magda was pretty sure she could've cut herself on it. He looked like a lacrosse player, the type of guy that wouldn't have given a girl like her a second glance in New Haven High.

Not that he's a townie himself. The boy named Spencer smelled and dressed like he came from privilege and old money, the kind that started in Europe and only intensified by long years of American investment.

For his Halloween costume, Spencer had chosen to wear a greek-style toga, with a bit of gold leaf painted on each cheek. He looked like some kind of classical statue, all hard planes, and soft, golden curls.

"Yo," the golden boy said as the sophomore in the vampire costume approached with Magda. "Why the fuck aren't you at the door?"

The kid blushed, looking embarrassed. Spencer was holding court in front of a gaggle of similarly good-looking sycophants, and clearly, Magda's guide felt awkward at interrupting them.

It's a pow-wow with the whole fucking lacrosse team, Magda thought, looking from face to handsome, well-bred face.

"It's her," her guide said by way of explanation, a whining tone entering his voice. "The girl who answered the ad. She said the password and everything."

Spencer rolled his eyes. "Fantastic, the whore is here. Do you want a fucking cookie? Now get back to the door before you miss someone. And drop that drink," he ordered, pointing at the red cup in the young man's hands. "I need you to be coherent. Remember, you will not embarrass the Skull and Bones tonight."

The sophomore blanched and set his cup down on an antique-looking end table. "You got it, Spencer," he stammered, already walking away backward, as if he could blend into the crowd packing the hallway. "You can count on me." With those final words, he turned and almost bolted, presumably scurrying back to his post.

Magda wished him well and hoped he managed to snag another drink. She'd been bullied enough by boys like Spencer to know what that was like.

"So, you're her?"

The blonde man was staring at Magda with a critical eye, as were his jockish compatriots. Go ahead and look, she challenged him silently. She undid a few buttons on her peacoat, and let the flaps of the jacket part just enough to give them all a view of the black lace of her bra. One of the boys whistled.

"Looking fine girlie," he declared, and there was a general round of agreement from the young men of Spencer's court.

Spencer just nodded. "Alright," he said. "Follow me. Let's put you to work."

Magda allowed herself to be led to a door near the back of the house. Two burly, rugby-player types stood outside of the portal, doing their best to not look overtly menacing and failing miserably. They nodded to Spencer, standing aside without comment as he opened the door.

"You ready?" the blonde boy asked her.

Ready or not, here we go.

"Yeah," she replied. "Let's do this."

I'm coming, Christine.

***

Christine had long chestnut hair that made Magda wild with envy, and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. She and Brock were both Yale kids, although Christine was one of the rare breed of students who'd gotten into the school on merit, rather than a tide of cold, hard cash or pedigree. She came from nothing and had clawed her way out of that with only her smarts and blind ambition. Magda respected the hell out of that.

Magda had met Christine when she applied for a job at the pizzeria she worked nights at. It turned out that although Christine's scholarship was nice, it still didn't pay for everything, and the chestnut-haired girl needed to make ends meet if she was going to finish her four years in the ivy leagues and get the hell out of New Haven.

"I'm going to New York. Those Wall Street fucks won't know what hit them," she'd declared as she tossed another pie into the air.

Magda believed her. She'd never met someone quite so hungry as Christine.

Magda wasn't sure why she'd been so drawn to the other girl. She was beautiful and intelligent, sure, but there were a lot of pretty, smart women in New Haven. No, Magda suspected there was something in Christine that reminded her of who she herself had once been; vital, ambitious, and a little arrogant.

Not anymore. She'd been as good as dead inside since the dark man had stolen her away two years ago, then subsequently abandoned her on the streets of New Haven without so much as a goodbye. She hated him as much as she missed him. Stockholm Syndrome, she thought they called it.

The first time Magda met Brock was when Christine invited her back to their apartment for a threesome. Of course, Chris hadn't exactly phrased it like that.

"Just come back to the spot, have a bite, smoke a bowl, and chill. I never see you outside of work, and you won't answer my texts during the day."

Still, the moment Magda had walked into the seedy apartment and saw brown-haired Brock standing there in his tank top, Magda knew what was going to happen.

They'd smoked and eaten a shitty pizza from the restaurant that some customer never came to pick up. Of course, Magda didn't take a slice. She couldn't stand pizza anymore.

Later, they watched a movie on the couch together. Halfway through the flick, Christine had slipped her hand underneath Magda's shirt, and when she hadn't stopped her it had all been fair game after that.

The two girls had made out while Brock got hard, tearing at each other's clothes with an enthusiasm born of pent up lust and a desire to explore. Magda had fucked girls before, but she'd never been with someone quite as eager as Christine.

Nor quite so pretty.

Chris's long, chestnut hair fell in a flowing river of soft curls across her shoulders to the tops of her breasts, and Magda couldn't get over how cute the little band of freckles across the bridge of the girl's nose made her look.

With women going at each other like wildcats, it hadn't taken Brock long to reach full mast. The brown-haired boy had groaned in ecstasy as the two girls took turns on him, alternating between sucking his cock and slobbering all over his balls. Christine pushed him back onto the couch and rode him like a bucking stallion right up to the precipice of his endurance, then hopped off so that Magda could get a taste. His cock had felt nice, filling out the velvety clench of her channel, but Christine's probing tongue up her ass was what had sent her over the edge.

Afterward, covered in sweat and Brock's cum, Christine had giggled and declared that she thought the whole experience had been the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

And so it had been, Magda mused as she followed Spencer through the door, ignoring the heated looks the two football-player bouncers were giving her. Right up until the point she went missing.

Magda still remembered the look on Brock's face when he came into the pizzeria a week ago. She'd always thought he kind of looked like a labrador; a big, goofy, guileless dog of a man. But when he burst into the pie shop that night, he'd been in full kicked-puppy mode.

One look at his tear-filled eyes and Magda said, "I'm taking a break," and clocked out. She sensed something was very, very wrong.

"They took her," he'd blabbered, barely coherent. "She's gone!"

"What the fuck do you mean, 'she's gone'?"

"Those bastards at the Skull and Bones took her!"

Brock had laid it all out for her in the parking lot of the pizzeria. It turned out that Christine had more ambition than either of them expected; Brock had learned that she'd been actively courting one of Yale's storied 'secret societies,' an organization called the Skull and Bones.

Presidents, justices, and titans of industry had all held membership in the shadowy group, and despite her humble beginnings, Christine had wanted in too. To say that the Bonesmen were selective in who they accepted was an understatement, but apparently, Christine had a plan.

"There's some party on Halloween," he'd blubbered. "She volunteered to be a part of it."

That had been a week ago, and neither of them had heard from her since. Still, displaying an unexpected amount of insight, Brock had noticed an advertisement in the Yale Daily News, the premier rag among ivy-league kids in New Haven.

"Hawthorne House needs caterers to supply dessert for our All Hallow's Eve bash," it read. "Call this number, if you think you can help."

According to Brock, it was an open secret that Hawthorne House was a front for the Bonesmen. So Magda had called the number, found out what would be required of her, and signed up, all in the hope that she'd be able to learn more of what had happened to her friend.

She knew the police would be of no help. New Haven PD had a distinct incentive to protect their Yale-shaped cash cow, especially when it came to lost girls of dubious moral fiber. It was much easier to sweep that kind of thing under the rug, rather than risk a scandal that would draw the attention of the provosts and the press alike.

Christine's fate was foremost on her mind as Magda followed Spencer onto the dark staircase. As it turned downward in a lazy spiral, the fluorescent lights of the staircase gave way to incandescent bulbs spaced evenly, set into the low ceiling. The whitewashed plaster changed to rusty red brick the color of blood, and the air began to grow cold.

"How far does this basement go?" Magda wondered aloud. Spencer chuckled.

"Farther than you'd think, girl." He paused, half-turning towards her. "So, I gotta ask," he said. "Why are you doing this?"

Magda thought about her answer.

A girl is missing who has her whole life ahead of her, and I want to make sure that nothing like what happened to me two years ago is done to her.

There was no way she could tell him the truth of course, so she decided to go with what she thought he expected to hear.

"Honestly," she said, "I need the money."

Spencer shook his head, blonde hair gleaming like spun gold in the electric light.

"Always the same with you girls," he said, a condescending edge to his voice. "It's all about the cash. You know, there are more important things in life than a full wallet."

Spoken like someone who had a silver spoon jammed up their ass since they were born, she thought but kept her comments to herself. She just shrugged.

"Hard to eat self-righteousness," she couldn't resist saying.

Alright. Keep the rest of your comments to yourself, puta.

Spencer frowned. "C'mon," he said. "We're almost there."

***

They walked until Magda thought they must have reached the center of the earth itself. She undid the rest of the buttons of her peacoat as if to cool her skin, and affected an air of exhaustion.

She was in excellent shape and in truth the hike down the stairs was a walk in the park for her, but Magda sensed it was best to let this perfectly coiffed and chiseled specimen of a Yale man think he held the advantage.

Out on the streets of New Haven, Magda knew that she'd be invisible to a boy like Spencer. Her clothes weren't designer-brand unless that designer was Target, and her hair usually smelled of pizza sauce and grease after a long night at the restaurant.

But now, with her eyes shadowed smoky purple and the black sheaf of her hair gleaming? A glimpse of what she wore under her peacoat was more than enough to spark the aching hunger in his eyes that she caught whenever he looked back at her, ostensibly to make sure she was keeping up.