I want it. I want that life more than I want my next breath. When I passed the test, the curse gave me the ability to make my fantasy a reality. It put the power of choice in my hands—a power and burden not every Haikal bound to the curse gets to claim.
I open my eyes, and in front of me is the third-floor door.
My muscles finally unfreeze. I throw myself back, away from the door.
I CAN GIVE HIM HIS SOUL.
I yank my gaze from the door to the monster. I don’t need to ask, and it doesn’t need to explain. We both know whose soul it means.
“And the cost?” I whisper.
As one, the shadows rise, filing into neat formation.
The room blurs, and before me appear dozens of children. Each shadow melts into one of the lives lost at the hands of Bamba’s curse. The price paid for the deal she struck so long ago.
In front of them stands the little girl with the feeno sandwich. The daughter of the woman on the beach.
YOU WILL WANT FOR NOTHING. THIS HOUSE AND THIS TOWN WILL BE YOURS.
I stare at the little girl’s mournful eyes, and her mother’s words ring in my ears.
… not all the people who stay are good.
It wants me to carry on Bamba’s curse. To live out my dreams by the anguish of the families I destroy. Another small town to feed on, more families with little to their name to steal from.
I wish I could say I didn’t consider it. I wish I could say there wasn’t a second where I imagined accepting. That I cast aside the life it offered with force and certainty. That I immediately looked past the thread to the cruel hand unspooling it.
At the top of the stairs, the third-floor door cracks open. Orange light spills down the steps, creeping closer. Reaching for me.
CAN YOU PAY THE PRICE?
The life it offers is beautiful. It’s beyond what I might have dared dream.
Which is why when I speak, when I utter the single word that puts scissors to the thread, it leaves my throat bleeding.
“No.”
Jesse has a soul. Whatever he says, whateveritsays. He has more soul than anyone I have ever known. Jesse’s problem is not the lack of a soul, but the excess of one.
At the bottom of the stairs, Khalto Safa appears. She climbs the steps, her fingers gliding over the banister. She glances back at me, then to the children still gathered around us.
“Foolish girl,” she whispers. “You could havelived.”
The door opens wider, and Khalto Safa slips inside.
“No!” I shout. I struggle to my feet. “Wait!”
Small hands grab onto my clothes, my ankles, restraining me as I try to chase the door. The children converge around me as I weep, and for the second time, everything goes dark.
Irouse to gentle hands smoothing my hair.
“Mina, binty habibty.” Baba cups my face, pushing away the tangles of my curls. “Can you hear me?”
He sounds so worried. I should open my eyes and let him know there’s nothing left to worry about.
A gruff voice cuts in. “She needs to see a doctor. I’m quite confident she had a preexisting head injury.”
“What?!” Baba’s exclamation finally jolts me the last few inches into wakefulness, and I pry open my eyes to the unlikely sight of my father and Elias Talbot looming over me.
