Khalto Safa crosses her legs, folding her hands over her knee. If it weren’t for the unnatural orange glow in her eyes and the repugnant odor wafting off her, she’d be the most elegant person to ever enter Ward. “I know you have questions about your mother. About the Haikal villa. I can answer them for you.”
“I have all the answers I need.” I slink an inch back. Her reptilian gaze tracks the motion.
“Fantastic!” She claps her hands once. “Then you must be all caught up on what happened to your mother eight years ago.”
I go still. An icy finger of dread drags down my throat. Reason insists that trusting anything she says is a mistake. Khalto Safa is a consummate liar. Amurderer, worse than almost everyone in her family. Only poison falls from her lips, as naturally as the ash flaking from the end of a burning cigarette.
But if anyone knows what really happened to Mama during her visit to Egypt, it’s Khalto Safa.
“She died in a car accident.”
A ghastly grin spreads over Khalto Safa’s face. A black shadow darts from the fireplace to the kitchen wall. Another swirls beneath my feet, causing me to stumble backward.
“I’m afraid not,” Khalto Safa hums. She beams at the shadows. “Would you like to see?”
She crooks her finger, and the shadows rush to me. Vying for attention. Snippets of sound leak from the swirling pockets of black. I screw my eyes shut.
“They won’t hurt you, Mina. They just want you to see.”
“Whatarethey?” Mama had studied the curse’s movement over centuries, and she still hadn’t found an answer for these shadows. “What do they want?”
Khalto Safa’s laugh rings like music. “They don’t want anything, habibti. Every legacy needs a record, and these shadows keep ours. Our shame, our regret. Our choices. If it weren’t for Bamba, we wouldn’t exist. Every scar we leave on this world creates a shadow.”
Breath drifts over my cheek. I need to open my eyes to see an attack coming, but the shadows are all around me. Disaster waits in any direction I turn. The only choice they’ve left me is to decide how much I can bear.
“Open your eyes, ya umri,” my mother’s voice whispers, and I obey.
Standing inches away is me.
Or a version of me. One more beautiful than I’ve ever been—more beautiful than I can bear. Shadows lick at her edges, slipping tenderly through her shiny curls.
I hold my breath, unable to shrink away. Khalto Safa moves to stand by the other Mina. “There’s still a chance for you to have everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Come with me. Come back to the Haikal villa and claim the legacy your geda Bamba built for us.”
“Legacy?” I bark a harsh laugh. “Bamba stole her legacy.” Even from her own bloodline. Our lives were hinged on this curse; our existence tied to the debt Bamba opened in our name.
Khalto Safa rolls her eyes. “You spoiled little child. Don’t you understand that it takes sacrifice to build something great?”
The other Mina curls her lip. I hold perfectly still as Khalto Safa uses razor-sharp fingernails to lift my chin. “Bamba accepted this debt because she wanted to be someone. She wanted power, and this bargain is power. Everyone is born with a debt, Yasmina. Every choice has consequences, and sometimes, we are asked to pay for the choices others made. It isn’tfair. It isn’t just.” Her eyes soften as she studies my face. “All we can control is our own choices. Our own fate.”
I’ve heard that before you die, the world around you sharpens. Isolating sounds, smells, sights. A last bright imprint of the life slipping away, burned on the inside of your fading eyes.
Orange light rings the halo of shadows. Spreading inward, reaching for me.
Hot breath moistens my neck. I whirl around, fists raised to protect myself from the other Mina, and stare directly into the shredded face of my mother.
Bloody slashes the width of my thumb gouge across every inch of Mama’s face and neck. Half her skull is missing, the indents around the hole suggesting teeth marks. Her eyes melt, sludgy orange rivers dribbling down ravaged cheeks. She opens her mouth, revealing a swollen, pocked tongue. Tiny creatures wiggle on the roof of her mouth.
A scream catches in my throat and expands, choking me slowly.
“When your mother returned to the villa, she never planned to leave.” Khalto Safa regards the monstrous version of my mother without flinching. “She knew I was sick. She knew that if there wasn’t anyone willing to serve the curse, it would claim every Haikal life still roaming the earth. Including yours.”
Khalto Safa sighs, scratching her eyebrow with a thumb. The cigarette’s red tip comes alarmingly close to her hair. “You were my last hope, you know. When you passed the test, I was ecstatic. I thought … I thought it might go differently.” She perches on the arm of the couch, and the orange drains from her eyes. The glimmer of ethereal perfection wavers. For a split second, Safa Haikal just looks like a woman. A tired, ill woman.
Passed the test?
“Khalto Safa—”
“It’s time to make a choice, Yasmina,” she says.
