Mama Lou, Mama Otter, would be ashamed to see her like this, all dolled up and perched on the edge of a sink, shadowed eyes in purple and green and bracelets clacking, clacking around her wrists like scarabs. Ipanema finds she doesn't care, and with each sip of her yellow cocktail, each burn of the tequila, she feels proud even, happy. She's been making eyes all night across the rooms at a man with slim hips, a man with gleaming black hair like the Trickster's wing, and all that frou fra her teachers like to preach is right out the boarded up windows of the club.
Somewhere, the music pauses for a pregnant moment before the heartbeat picks up again, and the crowd roars, caught back up in the dramatic tension. Just like Ipanema's caught up in a little spell, she figures, caught up in the grind of the floor, the grey eyes of the man who won't quite look at her. She's a bit bitter, maybe, sweet twenty with a fake ID. Sweet, sweet. Just as sweet as the door she's jammed carefully behind her. It's rattled maybe once or twice, fellow dancers looking for somewhere to fuck, but she's too busy working on her magic.
She's got the eyeliner pencil out and on the polished little ledge of the mirror, she's setting up the ritual. Magic circle. Pinch of powder, her magic dust, all ready to go, and Aphrodite tells her she'll get lucky tonight, all the way down the inhale, nose pinched delicately shut. Ipanema barely sneezes, and when she comes up for air, she's got all the King's horses in a rush straight down.
Invulnerable, she primps in the mirror, presses a kiss to it, whirls, gives a little shimmy as she unjams the door, pretty as anything, goes strolling past the dagger eyes of a few dozen girls who've been slamming at the outside. Elbowing past another, she licks her redone lips, lowers her eyes, looks up through the lashes right at Mr. Raven himself on the dance floor just as he turns. Electric. Sizzling.
Her magic powder sees her striding through the path in the crowd just as he makes eye contact, just as her lips curve in a knowing smile, just as the beat catches and sends it higher.
Got a black magic woman...