Her words fell on ears that refused to listen. Just from the tiny droplets of her blood I could sense her panic. I could taste her fear of the unknown and the known. The guards around her hesitated only a few seconds to see if Nana would counter Elder James’s instructions. When her back remained turned and she said nothing, they took it as a sign that she agreed and reached out to take Hailey.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, taking a step toward them. “I said leave her alone.”
Hailey fought against the hands grabbing at her. She begged to be let go, telling us it was a mistake and she didn’t know the vials were still in her bag. That she didn’t see anything. That she wouldn’t tell.
There was movement to my right. Sekou finally pushed himself from his anger, activated by the commotion beside him. He seemed to see the struggle for the first time, realizing that this was not okay. As much as Hailey had done, she’d been caught up in it too.
She jerked away from my fellow Kin as they fought to get a better grip and began to drag her away.
“Nothing will happen,” I called out, but she didn’t, couldn’t hear me. “I’ll talk to my grandmother.” I would. I could reason with Nana Ama, make her understand why it would be best to let Hailey go, why death was not the answer here… I’d convince my grandmother to listen to me because to not listen would make Nana Ama a monster, andwewere not that.
Hailey saw me coming and her eyes grew double. She began to hyperventilate. My fangs were gone. My body, human. My mouth was not on her neck, and yet all she saw was me as an adze, or a version of one.
She threw herself backward, her mouth forming ano, wanting no part of me.
On the other side of her, Sekou looked at me, his face mirroring what mine must have looked like. Horror. Confusion. What the actual fuck? A fissure of anger sizzled in me. Her fault. If only she’d stayed in her quarters like I asked. If she’d just listened… then she wouldn’t know a secret big enough to destroy me and all the Kin.
He made a beeline for the interior group that surrounded her. I came in from the other side, hoping to meet in the middle and grab Hailey, go to Nana Ama, implore her to listen to me and not to Elder James, whose eyes were wild with hungry power. The circle around Hailey closed in on her. She moved, her hand diving into the pocket of her jeans and lashing back out with a flash of pink in the palm of her hand.
I heard the alarm before I could register what she was doing.The device I’d seen dangling from her key fob in her car. The contraption she never left home without. Good girl. She hadn’t left home without it still. But no—the sound. It pierced at decibels incomprehensible to me.
Nothing had been this high or painful. It ricocheted in my brain, knocking through my mental defenses, opening me up to a world of voices and everything else crashing in. It startled the people around her, and she knocked into them, the surprise of her sudden movement making them fall like dominoes and her with them.
Sekou had reached her first, taking hold of her elbow despite her struggling. She slapped him hard and his face contorted in anger. He gritted his teeth, swallowing down his disdain for her, and pulled her up while Elder James shoved people out of his way, trying to get within the commotion.
Nana Ama moved from Nyame’s stool, her face a mask of pain, anger, and confusion, echoing my own. Hailey pressed down on the nozzle of the alarm again. She inched away from those guarding her, away from the crowd she rendered senseless, their heightened senses from Nana’s elixir becoming their Achilles’ heel. The older Kin who had been taking the elixir the longest were more sensitive to the shriek of noise and dropped to the ground, clutching the sides of their heads. My hands clamped on either side of my head too, but the noise came through, as if she’d released the alarm inside my head.
Her alarm wasn’t just around us; it reverberated through the trees, forcing its shrillness to echo and ping back in stabs of pain.As if we were one, we shrank away from her and that thing as it sliced through our brains, immobilizing our every molecule.
My knees weakened from the way the shriek sliced through my brain, thundering in my head, setting my teeth on edge. Around me, Sekou, his granduncle, and the other Kinfolk contorted in varying degrees of suffering, all gripping the sides of their heads, grimacing in pain from our heightened hearing, once a perk of my being half adze and them consuming the elixir for years, now our kryptonite.
Nana Ama placed her fingers to her forehead as if she had a slight headache. She propped herself on the back of her wicker chair to keep herself upright. Her lips pursed in consideration of the chaos going on around us, watching as the people around Hailey receded from the front like a low tide.
Hailey used the chaos she created to make her move. She didn’t hesitate to take it. I considered chasing after her, caught between preservation for our secrets and doubt that the solution for Hailey was right. That’s what I got for thinking I knew more than I really did, like I had everything figured out. Watching this scene unfold in front of me, I knew one thing. Even if Hailey knew the truth about me and Nana Ama, it wasn’t worth her life. To take it just to shut her up would go against everything my grandmother taught me. But I needed to protect Nana, the Kin, and the Isle too. I had to find another way to fix my mistake. Quick.
Hailey exploded out of there, whipping around the Gathering Tree with a speed I didn’t think she had in her. She barreled through anyone in her path, overturning a table that had held atray of empty cups of Nana’s elixir. The cups and Kin scattered like matchsticks after barely recovering from the brain assault she’d just delivered.
Hailey mowed over them, arms windmilling, back into the hell she’d just emerged from, one hand gripping her canister of screams like a life preserver. She ran like the devil was at her heels.
And I guess we were.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hailey needed to get off the island and back to the mainland. I needed to regroup and get space from my grandmother, who apparently was not above intentionally harming someone to protect the Golden Isle and the Kin. I stepped in the direction where Hailey ran, Sekou having gone after her. But a sharp, debilitatingpopwent off in my head, the buzzing pinprick that had annoyed me like a gnat destabilizing me. I staggered, and Nana Ama glanced up, her eyes homing in on me, blazing gold orbs.
Again my hand went to my head. Then I heard it. Or her. A voice as clear as if it were next to me, as old as time, as wise as my grandmother, spoke to me from within my head, my defenses obliterated if only for a moment.
Your friend, she lives, the woman said, her voice recognizable from two nights ago when Hailey and I were surrounded by bloodthirsty zombies.
I looked around, wondering if anyone could hear what I heard. If anyone could see that I heard. If Nana Ama could. She had turned from me, rendering aid to Elder James, who tapped at his ear.
The voice—otherworldly, terrifying, mesmerizing—continued.Bring me her golden cuffs and you can have your Naira back.
I wasn’t that easy.Prove she is with you.
There was a pause. It stretched forever, each second pushing my heartbeat faster.
Then a voice I had yearned to hear for so long.Ada! Don’t, Ada. Don’t give her the cu—
