When I swing, Jesse catches my wrist, drawing me to him. I cage my breath when my chest bumps into his, my wrist still held fast in his grip. This close, every beautiful shade of brown in his eyes comes to life. Layers of sunshine and honey swirling in the gaze of a boy who would hate to hear what I had just thought about his eyes.
“Finish your story,” he murmurs. He studies me, his lips close enough for his breath to brush my forehead. Once again, my heart performs a complicated flip in my chest and misses the landing, plummeting straight to my feet.
He shouldn’t be looking at me like that.
I use the leverage to drive my fist into his solar plexus. Jesse releases me with a grunt, and I finally smile.
“Fine.” Last I left off, Khalto Safa and I had just arrived at the Haikal villa in El Agamy. “Strange things kept—”
Strange things kept happening on the Haikal estate.
They started small. A mascara wand going missing from the dresser drawer. A pile of cobwebs on a pillow I’d dusted hours earlier. At exactly four in the morning, a bunch of crows perched in the date trees would start to scream. In the streets, the stray animals would join the call, dogs howling and cats shrieking. I didn’t know how anyone could sleep through the din.
The house itself existed in a state of suspended disintegration. Doors creaking on their hinges; an ecosystem of spiderwebs stretching over arches and in every high crevice; slanted tiles shifting beneath my feet. Every banister leaned dangerously to the side, as though aiming to separate itself from the stairs it supported.
“Try not to leave your room at night,” Khalto Safa said, stirring sugar into her tiny cup of Turkish coffee. Doing so ruined the pretty foam layer I’d watched the housekeeper spend five minutes developing, but I stayed silent, picking at the surface of the kitchen table. The housekeeper’s young daughter clung to her mother’s ankle and stared at me. “Parts of the villa are very old, and I don’t want you wandering somewhere unsafe.”
“Which parts?”
Before she could answer, her phone lit up with a call. She licked the spoon and set it next to her coffee. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as my aunt left, the housekeeper yanked her daughter off the floor. “I told you never to come into this house,” she scolded. “Go to your father.”
The girl burst into tears and scampered out the back door. The woman avoided my gaze, pouring boiling water into a tea glass.
I chuckled uneasily. “I guessyouknow where the unsafe parts of the house are.”
The kettle jerked, sending water splashing on her abaya. She ignored it, whirling to face me. “You speak Arabic?”
I blinked. “Yes, of course. If you’re feeling generous, you might even call me fluent.” When she didn’t laugh, I awkwardly pressed on. “I’ve just been speaking English because Khalto Safa seems to prefer it. I’m Nadine’s daughter. Mina. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
The housekeeper materialized at my side in an instant. A hot hand covered my elbow. “Run. Get a car in town and don’t look back. There is nothing safe in this villa.”
I laughed again, expecting her to join me, but she was dead serious. Her horror-stricken eyes fixed on mine.
“My husband will get you out. How—” She glanced through the door, but my aunt’s voice was still far away. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen?”
“Has she tried to take you to the third floor yet?”
Apprehension skittered down my spine. I pulled away from the woman, backing away from the table. “What third floor?” The house ended on the second level.
She clutched her chest, a spasm of pure terror shaking her frame. Terror forme.
“Your mother ran away from this house for a reason. You should never have come here.”
Khalto Safa’s return abruptly ended the conversation. The womansprang to the counter, stacking our breakfast onto a gilded tray with trembling hands.
“What’s wrong?” Khalto Safa asked. I was still standing. “Hamida, what is it?”
“Nothing, ya doctura.” The tea glasses shook in the woman’s hand. Her fear was real. Fear of Khalto Safa, fear for her daughter. Misplaced as it might be, I couldn’t help but be rattled by it.
I reclaimed my chair. “Nothing.”
Khalto Safa and the housekeeper’s warnings spun in my head later that night. Sleep refused to come, and every attempt at a distraction failed miserably. The wi-fi signal barely reached this bedroom.
I’d left the window cracked to air out the musty smell of the furniture. I moved to close it and reconsidered. Khalto Safa had said I couldn’t explore thevillaat night, but my room was fair game, wasn’t it?
