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one still chanting.
    I opened my eyes.
    The other dancers stood frozen in place. Their auras shimmered like a collection of neon lamps.
    The wall of palm fronds before us had split apart. Carmen (who else?) glared at me from between the fronds. Her gaze burned through the eye slits of an elaborate feathered headdress.
    A dozen cowrie-shell and glass-bead necklaces looped across her naked torso. Gold bells on her bracelets and anklets tinkled softly. A brightly colored loincloth dangled between her thighs.
    In one upturned hand she carried a glass jar the size of a coffee cup. She swung her arm in a small circle, the torch lights refracting through the glass jar into rainbow bursts of jewellike colors.
    The music started again, jumping back to the same loud tempo as a moment ago. Carmen dipped left and right in exaggerated postures, with the jar as the focal point of her movements. Her breasts trembled beneath the layers of cowrie shells and glass beads.
    Vampires somersaulted in gravity-defying leaps. Chalices wailed as if speaking in tongues, threw themselves to the floor, and bounded back up.
    The music became louder, the dancing more frantic, and the atmosphere more charged with hedonistic frenzy. Jolie and a couple of chalices stood hunched over, hands on their knees, and twirled their hair while ululating like Arab witches. The fragrance of pheromones was as thick as the smoke.
    I didn’t know how well this shindig kept to Santeria traditions but I was having a hell of a time. And I still had my pants on.
    We stamped our feet, faster and faster, and just as the beat couldn’t get any more rapid—I was ready this time—we all stomped once. The music stopped. The silence seemed as deafening as had the music. Heaving, glistening bodies surrounded me, the body paint mottled by sweat.
    I found myself standing directly before Carmen.
    She faced me, the glass jar raised in offering. “Felix Gomez, Her Majesty Oshún channels me to summon you.”
    Carmen pushed the jar in front of my face. “Behold the secret to our protection from the sun. Oshún has given us this wonder, the Florida chartreuse-pine spider.”
    My head cleared slightly. This is what all the music and theater was about? I took the jar and held it up to the light of the tiki torches. Inside the jar scurried a small, bright green spider the size of my thumbnail. “Powerful medicine?” I fought to keep the sarcasm out of my question.
    “Very powerful,” Carmen answered reverently.
    “Quite a show. The last time I bought aspirin at Walgreens, they did nothing like this.” I tapped the jar. The spider reared back. “Where did you find this critter?”
    “In the trash outside the kitchen,” Jolie answered.
    Carmen cleared her throat. “Oshún’s blessings are everywhere.”
    “Is it poisonous?” I asked.
    “Of course.” Carmen removed her headdress and handed it to a chalice. “But to us vampires, the venom in its tiny fangsis magic. One bite from this spider and our flesh is made new. We get color.” Carmen lifted one side of her loincloth and flashed a sliver of pale flesh. “See, tan lines.”
    It was an exciting glimpse of white skin against a brown leg. I looked with admiration at the spider. “One bite? That’s all?”
    The little spider seemed to study me in return. Its tiny eyes sparkled like grains of sand.
    A bite of its minuscule fangs and I could again enjoy the caress of the sun upon my naked skin. No more slathering on the sunblock? I could walk among the humans without a mask of Dermablend?
    “What have I got to lose?”
    Carmen gave a twinkling smile. “Good. Give me the spider and hold out your arm.”
    I returned the jar and extended my left arm.
    Carmen removed the lid and upturned the jar on my forearm. The spider dropped onto my skin and stretched its tiny legs. I got a creepy tickle. I kept my arm steady to refrain from giving an embarrassing shiver.
    Antoine moved behind me, wrapped his strong arms around my torso, and