Ready now, he took my hand and placed it on the scar on his arm, the burned imprint of another hand, the left hand of the Darkness. Do not die tonight, I repeated, though he wasn’t listening anymore. I watched him go, down the hallway, the stairs, and I caressed the caburé feather that Juan had handed me before going, the payé I gave him long ago and that he never brings to the Ceremonials, where the small spells of this world are worth nothing. Alone, listening to the screams of the Initiates as they were mutilated and eaten, locked in with the implacable Darkness, I was coming to understand the power of a secret. You walk among others but are not one of them. Some—I suppose Florence, for example—must feel that they walk above the rest, but not me. I feel I walk along passages of colors no one else knows; I feel like the others are lit by a weak little bulb, while I am lit by a blinding light. It’s strange I would think of light, because it was always explained to me that we are for the darkness.

After the Ceremonial, which by Florence’s standards had been a success, Juan decided we would go a few months without entering the Other Place, and I would dedicate that autumn to starting my thesis. It already had a title: “Bone Worship among the Mbyá People: Origin and Urban-Migratory Redefinition: The figure of San La Muerte in the creole culture of the Littoral.” I was missing much of the fieldwork and interviews, of course. I was planning a trip to Misiones exclusively to gather testimonies: Tali had promised to help me, and had already put me in touch with a Paraguayan anthropologist who knew more than anyone about Guaraní religions. Juan wanted to study with Laura, and she was entranced. The house filled up with circles and the two of them were like kids, locked in the bedroom or strolling the cemeteries of London, as if dealing with spirits were a game. Stephen and Juan were perfect as magical androgynes: the double current, as the ritual sexual encounter is called, worked to perfection between them. They took my breath away: they were capable of convoking several entities in a single day, and they did it with such carelessness and abandon that my scrupulous nature made me resist. I was the girl of books and lists: though I would take risks, I also liked order. One day I refused to draw the circle and seal because, I told them, this is all just fun and games to you, and I’m sick of it. Juan picked me up, laughing, and promised that as soon as he learned of a suicide, he would get me that Hand of Glory I was so obsessed with. And he told me to quit being so serious. He told me that.