The thought entered Nadine’s head, so familiar yet so foreign:He would make an easy target.Young, nervous, shy. He was too old, of course. Kids his age left too many tracks for the authorities to follow.
Nadine swallowed hard, clutching the necklace hanging between her collarbones. Mina had made it in art class out of beads and string, and she’d danced when Nadine put it on. She loved dancing, her daughter.
I’m not that woman anymore, Nadine reminded herself. She didnot strategize and scheme as easily as a fish breathed underwater. She did not look at a person and immediately identify their weakest points of attack.
She was not Nadine Haikal anymore. She’d left her for dead nine years ago, and Nadine Mansour was only back to finish the job.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll pay you to drive me to El Agamy.”
The boy hesitated. “Which part of El Agamy? Sorry, I only ask because some of the roads wreck my tires.”
“Don’t worry.” Nadine lifted her chin. “I’ll show you where to go.”
In the car, Nadine folded her hands in her lap and gazed at Alexandria. The beautiful city she’d longed for in her childhood. The buildings had grown higher, the beaches more cluttered, but the rest was the same.
What if she had raised Mina here? Would her daughter be one of the little girls sitting on the concrete benches along the sidewalk, watching the waves crash below and buying cotton candy from the street-cart vendors rolling along the shoreline?
What a silly thought. Yasmina Haikal would’ve spent her life in the Haikal villa if she’d passed the test, just like her mother and aunt. If Mina had failed, Nadine didn’t know if she would have been strong enough to hand the baby to Hatem while she remained behind.
Nadine rarely thought about her. The daughter who never was. The other daughter she might have raised in the Haikal villa.
“Wait!” Nadine called suddenly, startling the driver into slamming on the brakes. She rolled down her window and rummaged around her purse. “Hey! You with the tiaras!”
The street vendor pointed at himself. Nadine nodded. He pushed his two-wheeled cart to the edge of the sidewalk, and Nadine gestured at a bright pink tiara. “How much?”
“Fifty pounds, ma’am.”
Nadine rolled her eyes. He was fleecing the seemingly rich lady inthe private car, but she wasn’t exactly in a haggling mood. She held out the money and accepted the plastic tiara.
They resumed driving. “For your daughter?” the driver asked.
Nadine swept her thumb along the rhinestones studding the cheap crown. “She wants to be a princess when she grows up.”
The boy laughed. When Nadine didn’t join in, it trickled into an awkward cough. “She sounds very special.”
Nadine slid the tiara into her purse. “She is.”
Beads swung gently from the rearview mirror. The driver tapped the steering wheel, black flecks of its leather peeling under his nails. Static hummed over the radio, tuned to a twenty-four-hour Um Kalthoum station.
Traffic thinned out the farther west they drove. They passed the salt lakes, stunning streaks of pink whirling over their surface.
When last Nadine lived in El Agamy, this stretch of the highway had been silent as a tomb. Not anymore. The neon lights of a shopping center flashed to her right. Cars vied for a spot in front of three-story restaurants. Parents waited to pick up their children from a private academy across the street from a deteriorating public school. Tailors and cafés and mechanic shops, crammed within feet of each other.
If Nadine needed any further proof that Safa had weakened, here it was. El Agamy—the parts of it outside their neighborhood, at least—thrived. The parasitic influence of Nadine’s family had waned, reviving the blood flow of the dying creature they’d preyed upon for over a century.
An insatiable hunger, that was the Haikal villa. Never satisfied, never finished. It consumed the life around it. Left behind half-built homes and partly paved roads like grave markers of humanity.
Signs of civilization disappeared as they approached the villa. The driver gritted his teeth when Nadine pointed to the slim opening leading to her street. Probably dreading the damage to his tires. If Nadine were a better person, she’d offer to get out here and walk.
The car rocked, buffeted by uneven slopes of dirt. It crested over a speed bump, and Nadine inhaled sharply.
Hundreds of dead children blocked the road ahead. Many in outfits and hairstyles nobody had seen in centuries. They stared at Nadine. Baleful. Furious.
Several of the ones in the front Nadine recognized. She’d fed them to the curse herself.
At the helm stood Janna, still clutching her feeno sandwich.
As Nadine watched, the little girl’s pale lips mouthed one word.
