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Then there’s Celeste.

Celeste is different. She came to me five years ago running from something she still won't name, and she found me in the marsh at night in my true shape. I was all wings, light, and too many limbs, but she didn't scream or run. Instead, she opened her arms and gave me all of her without fear or trepidation.

She's a beautiful woman. Tall and svelte, muscled like a swimmer. Her skin is like polished ebony, and her eyes see through lies before they're finished being told. Her hunger matches mine. When we release together, it's like two storms meeting. Our love making reminds me of the tide crashing against the shore and the fireflies at the end of the rainy season rising all at once from the mangroves.

The old tales say I'm a soulless beast only capable of feeding and killing, but I’m capable of loving in abundance. I love her and Malik. I love them differently but completely, and I have never once believed that one love diminishes another. That's a human fear. Humans are driven by the fear of scarcity. I'm three hundred years old, and I’ve woven hundreds of souls into mine, and I have never run out of room.

Now that Malik is bound to me, I want him to know her. I want him to see me with her. I want him to understand that my hunger is vast enough for both of them and that being consumed by me doesn't mean being possessed exclusively, but being welcomed into a fullness that has no edge.

I want him to watch so that I can see his face when he realizes that jealousy has no place in my bed. I want him to stroke himself while I feast on her. I want him to see her surrender and recognize his own in it. I need to feel him stroke my silky walls while her blood is still on my lips. I can wait to hear her whimpers of pleasure and his grunts of ecstasy as I bind the three of us together through my body, so they see each other through my eyes. Tomorrow night, I'll bring Celeste to the house.

But first, I rise from the bed without waking him and go to the window. The marsh is silver under the moon. The fireflies are out, thousands of them who are my scouts, my children, and the pieces of myself I've scattered across these islands for three hundred years.

One of them is missing. I felt it die two hours ago, while Malik slept. It hit me like a small bright pain akin to having a tooth pulled. One of my lights had been drifting along the tree line near the Wadmalaw ferry landing, watching a white pickup with Virginia plates until there was flashing and burning until there was nothing where that piece of me had been. Vance used some type of contraption to catch one of my fireflies and kill it. I knew his plan was to study what he believes is left and stand firm in his smugness when he believes he learned something new.

He believes he’s getting closer to me; he isn't. When one of my fireflies transitions, it’s like it never existed. Eleven days in the Lowcountry have become fourteen. He's stopped asking elders where I sleep and started asking where they sleep. Yesterday he drove past Zora's house three times. This afternoon, while I was carrying Malik down Tasha's stairs, Vance was photographing the Praise House on Johns Island through a long lens. He's not just hunting me anymore. He's mapping my family and anyone he believes I've infected.

I could end him tonight. Slip through his truck's cracked window as fireflies. Reform in the passenger seat, giving him just enough time to form one syllable before I snatch his throat from his neck. I've done it before, and I'll do it again if I have to.

But I look back at the bed, where the tall dark shape of Akosua's grandson is sleeping with my mark on his throat and my blood in his veins. I think about the iron knife wrapped in red cloth in a hotel room on Church Street, and I think: not yet.

Let him come so that Malik stands between us with his grandmother's blade. Let him find out what the iron is for. I go back to bed, curling my body around his. He murmurs something in Ewe without waking, causing me to simper and hold him until dawn.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE TRUTH OF BLOOD

Iwoke alone. The bed was cold where she'd been, imprinted with her shape. Sunlight came through the mosquito netting in gold bars. Doves were calling outside—or something that sounded like doves.

I tried to sit up, and my body rebelled. I felt weak and drained yet satisfied in a way I'd never been in thirty-four years of living. My throat throbbed as I passed my hand over it. I made it to the bathroom, where I glanced at myself in the mirror, looking at a different me. There was a youthfulness around my mouth and eyes. My irises had changed. They'd always been dark; now there was gold threaded through them, catching the light the way hers did.

I took care of my hygiene before heading downstairs, where David was cooking eggs, grits, and thick-cut bacon. He looked more solid than he had in the solarium and more present.

"Morning, cousin." He put a plate in front of me like this was any Saturday in Peckham. "Eat. She fed from you properly last night so you’ll need protein, lots of it. Your body's learning to make blood faster."

I ate like a starving man. Three eggs, half a pound of bacon, and a mountain of grits because my body demanded renourishing.

"Where is she?" I asked curiously.

"Marsh. She'll be back at dusk." He sat across from me and studied my face. "You've got her eyes now. Took me two months to get those."

"David, what am I?"

He considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. "You're kept and willing. That makes you one of us but more special—a day husband, since you'll be walking in the sun, educating others of her history, our history, and being her bridge to the living." He reached over, placing a strong but loving grip on my hand. "You can still leave, if you want. She'd let you. She always lets them go, if they really want it. But you're changed now. No matter where you went or how you tried to forget her, you'd always be hers."

"I don't plan to leave,” I confirmed.

"I know." He smiled. "I'm glad you're here, Malik. I've been lonely for family."

We spent the day weaving in the solarium. He taught me patterns Seabrook hadn't—complex spirals that represented the crossing, the holds, the landing at Sullivan's Island, even the rice fields. He told me about the other night husbands that lived in the marsh grass. They spent their days dreaming and aging slowly, only surfacing at dusk to share stories and songs. I learned that while David wasn't a day husband, he was kept for me. Addie knew that with David present, my longing for family subsided.

At dusk, she came back.

I heard her before I saw her—cowrie shells clicking in her hair, heavy footsteps on the porch that made the house lean toward her like a plant toward light. She came into the kitchen damp from the marsh, skin glowing, eyes burning gold.

"Malik." My name in her mouth was a prayer. "You stayed."

"Where would I go? You're everywhere." I responded with a smile.