MAJOR ARCANA: Part Two, Chapter 5

I Will Not Let Thee Go Except Thou Bless Me

Major Arcana is a serialized novel for paid subscribers. For more details, both about the novel and about subscriber amenities, please see the Preface.

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PART TWO

Chapter 5. | I Will Not Let Thee Go Except Thou Bless Me

We could debate—some have already debated—whether or not Marco Cohen should count among Simon Magnus’s great loves, despite their apparently never having felt anything for one another but mutual suspicion, annoyance, antipathy, distaste, contempt. Given how it all turned out—the domestic apocalypse that gave rise to Overman 3000—such a debate would be perverse; but perversity hasn’t detained commentators on the comic-book mage’s career. Simon Magnus touched Simon Magnus’s flesh to the flesh of Valerie Karns, Ellen Chandler, and Diane del Greco, but Simon Magnus and Marco Cohen, for all that they despised each other, penetrated one another’s minds, even souls.