The glow from the monitor casts the sharp angles of Jesse’s face in a ghoulish blue. The knots return with a vengeance. “And? What did she find?”
“She found other families who had struck deals like the one Bamba made. She traced the curse all over the world.” Jesse angles the journal toward me and taps a line of numbers with his pen.
“Once I found this family, it was easier to figure out what she was looking for.”
He presses a number on his keyboard, and a series of paintings show up. On one of them, an unsmiling set of parents stand behind two somber young children. The palace around them is nothing short of grand, rendered in hues of red and gold.
“This was a military general’s family in the Ottoman Empire. He was nobody. No wealth, no reputation, no well-to-do family. Then out of nowhere, he’s appointed to a top political position in the region. He builds a mansion so spectacular, the townspeople start mistaking it for a royal post. But soon after it’s built—”
“Children start to disappear,” I finish, unable to tear my gaze from the man in the uniform.
“Yes. It continues for six generations.” Jesse points to the line of numbers in my mother’s journal again, to the left of the dates. A simple ? marked the generations.
“What happened after the sixth generation?”
He taps the keyboard again, and a translated black-and-white headline fills the screen.
MASSDEATHS OFDEMIRFAMILY: ESHAKPALACE INRUIN
“When the curse finishes with a family, it doesn’t just end. It eliminates every living member of that family and destroys the host home. Look at your mom’s markings—each of these rows is a place where the curse traveled and the number of generations it lasted. Families across the world: Germany, Portugal, Libya, Nigeria, New York. Your mom traced at least a dozen. The longest the curse lasted in a family was nine generations.” He swivels back to the monitor and hits the arrow. Another image loads, this one a black-and-white photo of a large family posing in front of a beautiful countryside estate, their smiles aimed at the camera and each other. In the corner of the screen, Jesse has pinned a row of scannednewspaper articles under the heading “Possibly Linked Disappearances.“ I might’ve gathered the energy to make a crack about how if Jesse showed this amount of discipline with his schoolwork, he might be graduating as valedictorian instead of Aida.
But my eyes fall on the photo of a small boy at the bottom of the screen and freeze.
“I know him.” My voice echoes between the mortuary’s sterile walls. “That’s the boy I saw in your room—the shadow!”
“Him?” Jesse enlarges the photo, and I nod, tears pricking my eyes. The headline is in French, but thanks to a language app and a two-year obsession withAnna and the French Kissin middle school, I can decipher “missing” and “dead.”
That smiling family had killed him.
How many children has this curse taken? How many lineages has it ended at the expense of maintaining its favored one?
“I wonder why the shadows showed you this kid in particular,” Jesse muses.
I swipe a tear from under my eye before Jesse can see. “I don’t know. Who took the curse on for this family?”
“I couldn’t find records tracing back to the origin, just that the first recorded owner of the estate came into wealth suddenly and held on to it for decades. This thing, this curse … it always picks someone broken down, no money or family. They have nothing, and then the curse gives them everything.”
“And in exchange, they get to take away everything from people who have nothing.” The bitterness leaks into my voice, and Jesse finally glances over, brows knitting in concern.
I don’t look at him. “Did the curse always end the same way?”
Silence follows.
“So it is going to kill me,” I say dully. “I’m not useful to it, and KhaltoSafa is sick. When she dies and there’s no one left to satisfy the conditions of the curse, every Haikal in the world dies with her.”
“No.” The harshness startles me, and I find Jesse’s boot at the bottom of my stool, his burning gaze inches away. “I didn’t bring you here to show you how you’re going to die, Mansour. Your mom had a plan. She was trying to find a way to break the curse without, you know, killing Bamba’s entire bloodline. I’m guessing she used your dad’s access to the National Archives to find some of these dates.”
“Why would she think she could end it? She has a younger sister who seems pretty happy giving the curse whatever it wants.”
Jesse watches me for a minute. The scent of acetone and alcohol wipes tingles in my nose. “Do you not remember what the housekeeper said the night you saw the door?”
Why else do you think she brought Nadine’s daughter here?
The house has been in ruins for years.
Safa’s sick.
“Your aunt is dying, Mina.”
