Casey yanks back the sheet over the stand to reveal a massive portrait of Adolf Hitler, throwing the heil.

My hand tightens around Renée’s. Nazis. Nazi punk rockers. I’ve somehow fallen in with a crew of Nazis obsessed with tarot cards, and tonight they’re going to induct me into their white brotherhood. Tollevin’s just a red herring. It all makes sense. I need to leave, to get-

Casey takes one last drag and flicks his cigarette.

There’s a whiff of lighter fluid, and then the picture goes up in a ball of flames to the tune of everyone in the room cheering, screaming, celebrating the death of ignorance and rigidity and all things old and evil. After a few seconds, Casey produces a bucket of water, puts out the fire, knocks the picture over, and stomps the ashes until Hitler is nothing more than a slimy black stain on the stage. Once finished, he wipes his brow and steps back up to the microphone.

“Glad we could clear that up. Now, on to other business,” he says, suddenly appearing solemn. “Shall we talk tarot?”

Approval booms around us.

“I thought so. As you know, the tarot and its meanings have become an important part of what we stand for. And as you know, we occasionally bring folks we’ve taken a liking to into the Major Arcana.”

Oh my God. My card. I get it.

“We have the Tower manning the bar, a Fool playing a guitar recital uptown, a Hierophant in a beautiful white dress, an Emperor running the show, and a Hermit as our wonderful host. If you ask around, I’m sure the Devil will teach you some fun drinking games, and the Hanged Man will sell you some, ahem, party favors later. But tonight we initiate a new individual into the Major Arcana, a newcomer to our little group, who I, personally, am rather enamored of.”

Renée’s hand tightens on mine.

“If Renée, Randall, or myself have not yet introduced you to this wonderful boy, we will eventually. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we present to you: Locke Vinetti, the Strength.”

The crowd reaches a frenzy. Applause and exaltation fill the ballroom, and a hundred hands rise into the air, throwing fists in celebration to my acceptance. I’m totally dumbstruck by the reactions. A feeling rushes through me unlike any other, and I almost start to choke up. There is no gnawing anxiousness, no seething displeasure-just joy.

Renée kisses my cheek softly, and then gives me a sharp slap on the ass. “Get up there, you silly boy.”

I make my way slowly to the stage, hands patting my back and shoving me forward, almost carrying me to the stage. When I finally reach the edge, Casey pulls me up. And when at last I stare out into the crowd, I see an ocean of pierced faces and colored hair gathered together to honor me, only me, Locke. Pushed into my hand is a tarot card, a depiction of a woman in a white gown, wrenching open the jaw of a fierce lion, her face twisted in a spasm of determination. Casey, at my ear, says, “Welcome to the tarot, ya big hottie.”

The venom is gone tonight, but for the first time that I can remember, I am not alone.

A few hours and a couple more drinks later, I’m making out with Renée in the hallway of her building.

The rest of the party was a whirlwind of celebration. We tore the ballroom to pieces once the music started again, a punk-rock symphony of biblical proportions. At some point they played the Cabaret soundtrack, which absolutely destroyed any sanity left in the crowd. People appeared to be having sex up against a few of the columns while a couple of Goths dueled with jagged bottlenecks. Pandemonium, pure and unfiltered. Then Renée introduced me to the wonders of tequila body shots; the salt, lemon, skin, and tongue making the liquor somewhat palatable. Randall even called her cell just to send his blessings to me. “Welcome to our fucked-up world, Stockenbarrel!” he shouted. “My work is done!”

And so now I have Renée pressed hard up against the wall across from the door to her apartment, with one of her hands cradling the back of my head and the other one kneading one of my butt cheeks. We’ve gone from kissing to making out to no-holds-barred dry-humping in less than an hour. I’m not drunk, just tipsy enough to forget everything but this girl. Our tongues are dueling in each other’s mouths. Sweat and makeup’s just being ground into my face, and I couldn’t care less. I’ve never been so consumed with lust in my entire life. All I want, all I need, is her touch and her taste.

Abruptly she ducks out from between me and the wall and giggles as she unlocks and opens her apartment door. I try to recover my senses and mumble, “Well, um, guess I should get out of here-”

“Oh no, you shouldn’t,” she says, twirling on one of her heels.

“What…I mean, it’s late, and I don’t want your aunt-”

She reaches behind herself, and I hear the distinct sound of a zipper.

“Aunt Marie is gone for the night,” she says, biting her lip. “Andrew is over at a friend’s house. The apartment is mine.”

The dress hits the ground with a soft whoosh. She stands there, clad only in a white satin corset covered in buckles, a garter belt, her stockings and her heels.

“And I’m yours.”

A million reasons why I shouldn’t do this swim through my head. My mom’s expecting me. We haven’t been dating for long enough. I’m drunk, or drunk enough to know I’m a little drunk, which means that I’m perhaps too drunk, and she’s a little drunk too, and there’s nothing wrong with just a quiet evening, which this evening certainly hasn’t been so far, but-but-

“Renée, maybe we should think-”

“I’ll tell you what,” she says to cut me off, “I’m going to go to my room and light some candles and some incense. You stand out here and think. Think all you want for as long as you want. I’ll wait in my room. And when you’ve thought good and hard about everything, you come inside and I’ll make love to you real slow.” She blows me a kiss and walks slowly into the blackness of her apartment, giving me a shot of her rounded ass bobbing slowly after her before darkness engulfs her.

I think for about twelve seconds, then make sure to lock the door behind me.

H OW?” I said, snatching him by the collar and shoving my face into his. “What happens to Renée?”

“My God, your eyes…”

“HOW?!”

“She-she becomes the second Blacklight,” he stuttered, scared. “When it escaped you, the venom looked for the nearest possible person who your darkness rubbed off on, who you left a-an impression on, and it was her.” His face twists in both terror and grief. “She’s the one who does the most damage, who destroys half of the city. With a fresh host, it was unstoppable. God, if you could’ve only seen her, she was magnificent, this mass of black lightning and burning dark light, like some sort of fallen angel from Hell…” His eyes glazed over, and I could almost hear him imagining Renée, a spirit in black wiping out half of New York. “I remember how she laughed when she killed most of the people in Times Square, it was this huge pile of bodies-”

“And you?” I managed. “How’d you become this…thing?”

“Locke.”

“Tell me.”

His eyes squeezed hard shut. “I killed her,” he whispered, “and the venom moved on to me.”

That was all I needed to hear.

“How do we stop it?” I blurted out. My costume rippled, crackled, swirled with my agitation. “We need to stop it. I need to know how the venom can be stopped. There can’t be another Blacklight, do you hear me?”

“I know, I came back here to-”

“SPEAK UP, DAMMIT!”

“TO MEET YOU!” he screamed. “I just wanted to meet you! To see you face-to-face, to tell you what was going to happen, and maybe you could stop it… They-they wanted me to-to try and make you, convince you to kill yourself, you know, or try and kill you, so the world wouldn’t-”