He fumbled the key into the lock while looking back down the hallway. The door opened and Billy fell into the room just as the monster rounded the corner behind him.

He kicked the stiletto heel off his good foot, vaulted up and hopped across the empty room to the sliding glass door. The safety bar was set. He fell to his knees and began clawing at it. The only light in the room was coming from the hallway, and suddenly that was eclipsed. The monster was working its way through the doorway.

“What the fuck are you!” Billy screamed.

The monster stopped just inside the room. Even crouching over, its shoulders hit the ceiling. Billy cowered by the sliding door, still clawing under the curtains at the safety bar. The monster looked around the room, its huge head turning back and forth like a searchlight. To Billy’s amazement, it reached around and turned on the lights. It seemed to be studying the bed.

“Does that have Magic Fingers?” it said.

“What!” Billy said. It came out a scream.

“That bed has Magic Fingers, right?”

Billy pulled the safety bar loose and hurled it at the monster. The heavy steel bar hit the monster in the face and rattled to the floor. The monster showed no reaction. Billy reached for the latch on the door and started to pull it open.

The monster scuttled forward, reached over Billy’s head, and pushed the door shut with one clawed finger. Billy yanked on the door but it was held fast. He collapsed under the monster with a long, agonizing wail.

“Give me a quarter,” the monster said.

Billy looked up into the huge lizard face. The monster’s grin was nearly two feet wide. “Give me a quarter!” it repeated.

Billy dug into his pocket, came out with a handful of change, and timidly held it up to the monster.

Still holding the door shut with one hand, the monster reached down with the other and plucked a quarter from Billy’s hand with two claws, using them like chopsticks.

“Thanks,” it said. “I love Magic Fingers.”

The demon let go of the door. “You can go now,” it said.

Before he could think about it, Billy threw the door open and dove through. He was climbing to his feet when something caught him by the leg from behind and dragged him back into the room.

“I was just kidding. You can’t go.”

The monster held Billy upside down by his leg while it dropped the quarter into the little metal box on the nightstand.

Billy flailed in the air, screaming and clawing at the demon, ripping his fingernails against its scales. The monster took Billy into its arms like a teddy bear and lay back on the bed. Its feet hung off the end and nearly touched the dresser on the opposite wall.

Billy could not scream; there was no breath for a scream. The monster let go with one arm and placed one long claw at Billy’s ear.

“Don’t you just love Magic Fingers?” it said. Then it drove the claw though Billy’s brain.

18

RACHEL

After Merle died and Rachel observed a respectable period of mourning, which was precisely the same amount of time it took the courts to transfer Merle’s property to her, she sold the Cessna and the trailer, bought herself a Volkswagen van, and on the advice of the women at the shelter, headed for Berkeley. In Berkeley, they insisted, she would find a community of women who could help her stay off the wheel of abuse. They were right.

The women in Berkeley welcomed Rachel with open arms. They helped her find a place to live, enrolled her in exercise and self-actualization courses, taught her to defend herself, nurture herself, and most important, to respect herself. She lost weight and grew strong. She thrived.

Within a year she took the remainder of her inheritance and bought a lease on a small studio adjacent to the University of California campus and began teaching high-intensity aerobics. She soon gained a reputation as a tough, domineering bitch of an instructor. There was a waiting list to get into her classes. The fat little girl had come into her own as a beautiful and powerful woman.

Rachel taught six classes a day, putting herself through the rigors of each workout along with her students. After a few months of that regimen, she fell ill, waking one morning to find that she had just enough strength to call the women in her classes to cancel, and no more. One of her students, a statuesque, gray-haired woman in her forties named Bella, appeared at Rachel’s door a few hours later.

Once through the door Bella began giving orders. “Take off your clothes and get back in bed. I’ll bring you some tea in a moment.” Her voice was deep and strong, yet somehow soothing. Rachel did as she was told. “I don’t know what you think you’ve done to deserve the punishment you are giving yourself, Rachel,” Bella said, “but it has to stop.”

Bella sat on the edge of Rachel’s bed and watched while Rachel drank the tea. “Now lie on your stomach and relax.”

Bella applied fragrant oil to Rachel’s back and began rubbing, first with long, slow strokes that spread the oil, then gradually digging her fingers into the muscles until Rachel thought she would cry out in pain. When the message was finished, Rachel felt even more exhausted than before. She fell into a deep sleep.

When Rachel awoke, Bella repeated the process, forcing Rachel to drink the bitter tea, then kneading her muscles until they ached. Again, Rachel slept.

When Rachel awoke the fourth time, Bella again served her the tea, but this time she had Rachel lie on her back to receive her massage. Bella’s hands played gently over her body, lingering between her legs and on her breasts. Through the drugged haze of the tea, Rachel noticed that the older woman was almost naked and had rubbed her own body with the same fragrant oils that she used on Rachel.

It didn’t occur to Rachel to resist. Since Bella had come through the door, she had been giving orders and Rachel had obeyed. In the dim light of Rachel’s little apartment they became lovers. It had been two years since Rachel had been with a man. Trading soft caresses with Bella, she didn’t care if she was ever again.

When Rachel was back on her feet, Bella introduced her to a group of women who met at Bella’s house once a week to perform ceremonies and rituals. Among these women Rachel learned about a new power she carried within herself, the power of the Goddess. Bella tutored her in the machinations of white magic and soon Rachel was leading the coven in rituals, while Bella looked on like a proud mother.

“Modulate your voice,” Bella told her. “No matter what you are saying it should sound like a chant to the Goddess. The coven should be taken with the chant. That is the meaning of enchantment, my dear.”

Rachel gave up her apartment and moved into Bella’s restored Victorian house near the U.C. campus. For the first time in her life, she felt truly happy. Of course, it didn’t last.

One afternoon she came home to find Bella in bed with a bald and bewhiskered professor of music. Rachel was livid. She threatened the professor with a fireplace poker and chased him, half-naked, into the street. He exited clutching his tweed jacket and corduroy slacks in front of him.

“You said you loved me!” Rachel screamed at Bella.

“I do love you, dear.” Bella did not seem the least bit upset. Her voice was deep and modulated like a chant. “This was about power, not love.”

“If I wasn’t filling your needs, you should have said something.”

“You are the most wonderful lover I have known, dear Rachel. But Dr. Mendenhall holds the mortgage on our house. That loan is interest free, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“You whore!”

“Aren’t we all, dear?”

“I’m not.”

“You are. I am. The Goddess is. We all have our price. Be it love, or money, or power, Rachel. Why do you think the women in your exercise classes put themselves through so much pain?”