Yes, she absolutely would.
“I would have never done it. If I was going to do that.” Hailey found me again in the crowd. “If I was going to do something, I would have done it when you were in my home.”
Elder James looked at Nana Ama, his body practically vibrating, his eyes wild and shining, his voice elevated and excited, likehe was drunk on power, on bloodlust, on the chance to show his strength to Nana Ama.
He bellowed, “You see! She is nothing but an invader. They’re trying to repeat history, Ama. They’re trying to invade us again. To colonize what we’ve spent years building, cultivating.”
Nana Ama was barely looking at him. She was looking at me. I held her gaze. What else could I do? All my bad decisions were on display for everyone to see.
“Where is this amulet you think belongs to my ancestors?” Nana Ama asked Hailey, but her eyes remained on me.
“It was gone when we went there,” I answered. “Taken.”
Nana barely registered a flicker. “By whom?”
“A scientist from the lab—Dr. Franco. He’s—he’s missing now, but we launched a massive investigation to try to recover it,” Hailey said.
“A familiar.” She spit the word out like it was garbage.
That word made no sense because Nana never mentioned it before in all her teachings about how to live as an adze. In books, movies, and typical vampire lore, familiars were human servants who served their vampire master and brought them victims.
She continued, “Do you even know what you have done, child? Here and there on Mainland? Your Endowment plays in things beyond its comprehension. And now?” She rubbed at her cuffs. “Now you have undone centuries of protection, of living quietly among humans undetected. You have brought her back.”
She is gathering.
The square was silent. The only person who knew what she was saying was Nana Ama, and she didn’t care to explain.
Nana Ama said nothing for a long time. Just stared with eyes that betrayed nothing. Her singular focus was boring into Hailey’s center, as if determining if Hailey was lying or not. Hailey, trembling from exhaustion and terror, managed to stay upright beneath my grandmother’s withering glare, one even I cowered at and didn’t want to be the object of.
No one here, except maybe Nana Ama, James, and some of the really old elders, had ever dealt with something like this, an intruder and what to do with them. Not even me. I could sense their unease. They weren’t sure if they wanted to know, or if they wanted to see what might happen.
The onlookers buzzed with nervous energy, unsure of what to make of this situation that I had caused. They whispered questions that worked their way through the crowd like a virus, their apprehension amplifying.
James wanted heads to roll, but I couldn’t read Nana Ama. She wasn’t throwing her weight like James. But she wasn’t forgiving either. Not when it came to this island.
Nana Ama paused, regarding Hailey for another length of time.
“This is a most unfortunate matter,” Nana Ama said gravely.
In that way of Nana’s that let me know this was the end of everything I’d ever known, she said, “Take the girl.”
This had to be some kind of sick joke. My grandmother wasn’t about to agree to the execution of a mainlander, a young one at that. Never in my life had I disagreed with anything she said, but this… this went against everything we believed.
“Nana, please. Wait.” I glared at James, and if I could will it,he’d combust where he stood. He pushed this harder than it had to be. There could have been a way to solve this with Hailey that kept us all safe.
He lifted his chin, daring me to speak against him in front of everyone, something that was never done to the unofficial consort to Nana Ama’s queendom and her supreme power. I was not the matriarch, the Queen Mother, and should still be in deference to him. He was itching, had always been itching, to knock me down a couple pegs. His grandnephew was my best friend, and the two of them couldn’t be further apart.
Elder James returned my glare with his own air of superiority, and with something else just below the surface I hadn’t seen before. A malice that in the heat of the night among all the torches and bottles burned like hypothermia. He motioned for the guards to take hold of Hailey.
Nana Ama stood, facing Nyame’s stool in silent contemplation as if Nyame would materialize on his seat to give her guidance. The decision she made tonight, to kill Hailey or not, would change the tide of the Kin, would vault us back a century or guide us to compassion and understanding that sometimes rigidity wasn’t always the route to follow. I learned that the hard way, and now one of my best friends in the world was gone.
The buzzing in my head intensified, the pinprick enlarging. Nana Ama hadn’t moved. She wasn’t Lighting, wouldn’t do it in front of the Kin anyway, so where…
James instructed, “Take the girl and hold her until Nana Ama has given her final word. We cannot let the others on the Isle seeher again. The story will be that she left during the night, eager to return home.”
Through Elder James’s own words, he was giving me the start of an idea. I leaned over, trying to catch Sekou’s eye. He wasn’t looking, continuing to stand stock-still and glare out in front of me. A thousand I-told-you-sos probably still ran a marathon through his thoughts. I couldn’t call his name. I didn’t want anyone to see me trying to get his attention.
Hailey turned in a circle. “Wait. Please. Not in there. Please, please. I promise I won’t tell. I won’t say a word. I won’t!”
