My Soul to Take

  Yacob raised his eyebrow, surprised. YOU HAVE DECIDED A POSITION.

  “Can you sever him?” Mahmoud said, impatient.

  For a moment, Yacob’s thoughts were silent as he meditated for his answer.

  I CAN IMPLANT THE ILLUSION OF A MASK FOR YOU, Yacob said finally. TEKA WILL KNOW IT’S BEYOND YOUR CAPACITIES, BUT IT MAY GIVE YOU A BIT OF TIME.

  “A bit of time is all I need,” Mahmoud said. “If anything is to be done, it must be done quickly. That much Wright says is true. Put up the mask.”

  I ALREADY HAVE, BROTHER. FOR MY OWN SELFISH REASONS.

  Another silence. Now that they were free to speak, what would they say?

  “What is the council’s position on the Cleansing?” Mahmoud said.

  Yacob closed his eyes and sighed. He’d dreaded the question. “Mahmoud …”

  “No more debate, Yacob. Does he debate? We must learn decisiveness from Sanctus Cruor and the mortals. What is your position?”

  HOW CAN YOU ASK? I AM AGAINST THE CLEANSING, OF COURSE.

  No surprise. Over time, Yacob had collected enough mortal offspring for his own nation. Mahmoud had brought Yacob back to the colony three times in fifty years, and each time he’d begged for more time with his mortals. It amazed Mahmoud that it had been Dawit, not Yacob, who first broke from Khaldun over his ties to the mortal world.

  “Their herd needs thinning,” Mahmoud said, testing Yacob’s rationality. “Never mind their destructiveness. If you love them, how can you watch them starve?”

  THEN LET US INTERVENE. BUT MICHEL’S INTERPRETATIONS ARE MORTIFYING. WHERE DOES IT END?

  “Perhaps it ends here,” Mahmoud said.

  The air in the room was hot. Mahmoud realized his heartbeat was jogging, increasing his blood flow. His heart rarely stirred—not since Adwa, when Dawit had persuaded them to join the Ethiopian forces to repel Italy and Sanctus Cruor. If Khaldun had told them they had immortal cousins in Sanctus Cruor’s ranks, they might have vanquished them a century ago. And Michel would never have been born.

  In last year’s skirmish against Michel’s men, he and Dawit had been cut down far too soon when they came for Fana and Dawit’s family. Michel had known they were coming.

  “How was your visit to Addis?” Yacob said, as if to change the subject.

  “Addis is a congested bore,” Mahmoud said. “But Selam was the new flower to take my breath away.”

  Yacob’s knowing smile drove Mahmoud mad, but he couldn’t deny the reason. He had seen Selam’s shade of skin countless times, and legs that mirrored hers, and faces her ancestors could have worn—and yet his eyes feasted on her. She barely knew her own body, much less how to please his—but her nakedness excited his loins. She was ignorant of history, her mind was cluttered with trivia and politics, and she knew only three languages—and yet he was fascinated by everything she said. There was a kind of music in her voice. In her face. If he sired a son with Selam, how would he look?

  Mahmoud shuddered. “Dawit has poisoned me,” he said. “Or you did, perhaps.”

  “Wait until you love a child, Mahmoud. Your child.”

  “‘The disease of attachments,’” Mahmoud said bitterly, quoting Khaldun. “‘As the sun shuns the night, so too shall we be separate.’” He had treated them all as children.

  “Will you spend all your days searching for Khaldun?” Yacob said. “To what end?”

  “To tell us why!”

  “Forgive him without knowing why, Mahmoud. Walk free.”

  Mahmoud had often wished he could.

  “There are millions of Selams upworld,” Yacob said. “Others, men or women, who would intrigue another as she intrigues you. You came for me when I was so happily married in Paris—”

  “You can’t possibly call that happy,” Mahmoud said, remembering his cow of a wife.

  Pain quivered on Yacob’s face. RESPECT MY MEMORIES, MAHMOUD.

  When Mahmoud bowed in apology, Yacob went on. “You asked me, standing outside in my garden, ‘What do you love about them?’ I love the homes they make for themselves. So many needless kindnesses toward each other. Their cleverness—like Fana said, they learn so much so fast. Their laughter—we have too little here.”

  “Laughter! We have known different mortals, Yacob.”

  “I don’t deny I’m no warrior; you’ve tasted more war. I know how they destroy—”

  “They would cage us, given a chance,” Mahmoud said. “Their envy alone—”

  Yacob held up his hand to bat away conflicting politics. “But there’s an essence about them. Look at Wright. So frightened and ill-prepared … and such lofty goals! It’s stirring.”

  And Johnny Wright might have pulled himself free of Michel once. There was that.

  “Yes,” Mahmoud said. “Wright is a promising piece of fortune.”

  Mahmoud opened himself to Yacob so he could hear the details of Johnny Wright’s plan. Yacob hadn’t realized that the rancher had already agreed to meet with Wright. The boy was silly in a dozen ways, but he had use of Fana’s network. The Glow network was effective.

  “If Michel is distracted, he might be surprised,” Mahmoud said. “Overwhelmed.”

  NOT BY US, Yacob said. HE EXPECTS IT. LALIBELA CANNOT STRIKE.

  “But an army of vaqueros dispatched by a druglord … at the behest of Wright,” Mahmoud said, imagining cowboys charging the mountain on horseback. The sound of the plan alone was ludicrous. “If Michel heard of it, he might only laugh. He has too much pride.”

  HUBRIS SLAYS THE GODS, Yacob said.

  Mahmoud felt the strange heavy thump in his chest that he’d felt when Salem opened her door to him and the streetlamp caught her smile. He had seen that same smile hundreds or thousands of times before, he was certain, and yet …

  “If we use our weapons and fail to kill him, he’ll drain all of Lalibela in his Cleansing Pool,” Mahmoud said. “You’ve heard the atrocities. Don’t tell me you think Alem suddenly woke with the idea to go to Mexico and join Sanctus Cruor!”

  Yacob’s grief shone in his thoughts. Michel had chosen Alem because of their Brother’s sharp mind for viruses.

  “The theft of Alem was an act of war,” Mahmoud said. “We cannot declare war on Michel. But we can help end him, Yacob.”

  THERE ARE MORTAL WEAPONS ENOUGH. FROM MORTAL HANDS.

  If Wright’s attack was effective enough to disable Michel and create disarray, perhaps Mahmoud would incinerate Michel to ash. And his new bride, if he must.

  Mahmoud’s racing heartbeat slowed, and dimness fell over him. Dawit might be stirred to join an attack, or would Mahmoud and his dearest Brother be poised as foes again? He might face worse than Michel in Mexico.

  WHAT OF FANA? Yacob said.

  “She gave Wright our Life Gift! With her own Blood. Would Michel engineer such a comic sacrilege? She chose to go to Michel, and now she will marry him. The obvious speaks best for itself. With Michel, she may feel at home at last. Dawit has never seen what she is.”

  AS A FATHER, I CAN TELL YOU WHAT DAWIT SEES—HIS CHILD.

  Mahmoud had faced Fana in the Lalibela tunnel with a gun when she’d been small enough to be carried in her mother’s arms. He’d seen her eyes wake with effortless power, and heard her siren song to a wall of howling, angry bees.

  “Fana,” Mahmoud said, “has never been anyone’s child.”

  Thirty

  Nogales

  2:30 a.m. Wednesday

  Jessica couldn’t find a flashlight. Instead, she’d resorted to the sturdy white votive candle from her night table. As the flame withered and grew, mammoth shadows frolicked along the marble walls on both sides of her. She wasn’t sure she’d slipped past the others, but it didn’t matter. Nothing they could say would change her mind.

  Jessica nurtured the fragile flame with her palm, walking past darkened doorways and stairwells, some winding up, others straight down. She softened the sound of her footsteps while her eyes raced along the walls. Jessica was sure she would t
urn a corner and find herself in her own doorway again, or see Fasilidas striding the hallway. Or Michel.

  The lavish, well-staffed palace was surprisingly dark and still at night, as if it had stood empty and abandoned for years. Jessica couldn’t find the white door she’d noticed behind a partition during the walk to dinner, when she had already been looking for a way out.

  The flame dimmed, collapsing toward the wick. She was moving too fast. “No, no, no …” Jessica whispered, standing still, and her flame breathed again.

  A large space had opened above her, Jessica realized. Banners gleamed in gold in the dark, hung from the rafters where a hidden bird cooed softly, the only sound except that of her heartbeat. She realized she was in the main foyer and public cathedral of Michel’s palace—she would never call his home a church. Empty pews sat next to her, brooding in dark wood. If she kept walking straight, she would end up at the palace’s massive double doors.

  But the doors won’t open, she told herself. You’re a fool if you think they will.

  The surreal moment swamped Jessica. It was too dreamlike; the pews, the banners, the palace itself. She yanked her mirror out of her back pocket, flipped it open. The mirror gleamed an empty space at her, and Jessica gasped.

  Where was her face? Was it a dream?

  Then she blinked, and she saw her eyelids’ movement in the dim flicker. No dream, only dark. Jessica wanted to sit on the closest pew, but where would her prayers go here?

  Mom and Dad, I’ve offered to marry him Thursday morning, Fana had told them with her hands folded in front of her, businesslike. She’d said it as if marrying Michel Gallo was right and necessary, as if she expected congratulations. Once we’re fused, I’ll sway him against the Cleansing, Fana had said, sounding like every doomed woman who had married a man to change him. My path won’t take me around Michel—I have to go through him.

  This was not her child.

  This was not the girl who had sobbed in her arms over Michel’s lie named Charlie, finding solace in a mother who had fallen in love with a fiction, too. This wasn’t the girl who had vowed she would not lay eyes on Michel for a decade, if then. Fana hadn’t been herself in so long, she might not know her own face in a mirror.

  But Jessica did, so far. She was still here. She rushed ahead, grabbing the large brass handle, venturing a prayer. “Please please please …”

  The door clicked and fell open, an inch’s width of moonlight. Jessica smelled gardenias

  Dear God, he was going to let her leave!

  Regrets came. Why couldn’t she have found a way to bring Fana? Or Phoenix, who never left Fana’s side? Or Dawit? Leaving alone filled Jessica with new wretchedness, but she slipped out of the palace.

  Moonlight painted the empty courtyard gray. Even without man-made light, it was so bright outside that it looked like dawn. No chorus of frogs, crickets, and cicadas; everything holding its breath. The woods beyond the courtyard were still.

  Jessica raced down the wide steps.

  In the moonlight, Jessica saw a ghostly animal in the center of the pebbled driveway, thirty feet from where she stood frozen. It sat Sphinx-like across the stones, staring into the woods. Jessica’s hand was water suddenly, and she dropped her candle.

  The tiger from her dream!

  Her heartbeat rioted. She tried to check her mirror again, but her hand couldn’t fish its way inside the back pocket of her jeans, fumbling and patting. The creature didn’t move.

  Wait—

  Jessica stared long enough to realize that the tiger was only Michel’s dog, Caesar. Was the dog sleeping in that strange pose? Caesar was a big dog, but he was no tiger. He might not have seen her yet. Or smelled her.

  Jessica veered away from the front path, walking gingerly toward the long, vine-draped carport on the side of the palace near the kitchen entrance, where the three majestic Rolls-Royces were parked shining in the moonlight. She had thought about those cars after Dawit left their room to meet with Teka, realizing she had a plan.

  Jessica pulled the door handle of the car closest to her—it was unlocked!—and met the antiseptic scent of overcleaned leather when she opened the door. An odd blue light from the dashboard made her check the rearview mirror for her wide-eyed face. Still here. No dream.

  Jessica bent over the steering column. She nearly swooned when she saw the gleam of a single key on a golden key ring dangling for her, waiting. Jessica reached over to touch the key, to make sure it was real. It was.

  Caesar had better get the hell out of her way.

  Jessica saw herself climbing into the car, slamming the door shut, turning the key. But a sudden riffling in dry leaves above the carport made her realize she was still standing in the open doorway. A shift in the breeze whipped her head around to look back at the palace.

  Michel was standing just beyond the awning. Five steps from her.

  The moon brightened above him as clouds drifted free. He looked like a fresh-faced boy, nineteen at most. His face seemed too smooth to grow hair, obscene in clean handsomeness. He was barefoot, fresh from bed. His silken crimson pajamas shone on his legs. He had a woven white poncho slung over his pajamas, wearing it open like a cape.

  Jessica’s hand closed around the car key, and she pulled it free, hoarding it in her palm. She wouldn’t give up the key. As long as she was hanging on to the key, she knew she was herself. Jessica propped the door between herself and Michel.

  He might still let her go.

  Michel crackled in front of her as if his poncho were static-filled. Jessica hadn’t experienced anything like the way the hairs on her arms pulled toward Michel. Poor Fana! Something like this was pulling Fana to him. Worse than this.

  “You’re up late, signora,” Michel said. He sounded concerned.

  Words tumbled out of Jessica’s mouth so quickly that she wondered if they were hers. “I was doing an experiment to see if I could get up and walk out of here,” she said. Having Michel so close made her tongue heavy, hard to move. “I see I have my answer.”

  “I don’t lock my doors,” Michel said. “Or my cars, as you see. No one steals from me.”

  Jessica heard Caesar rise and shake himself in the driveway, rows of thick fur snapping. He’s going to kill me now. What was the point of trying to hide thoughts from someone she couldn’t hide from?

  “Where will you go?” he said, still playing the worried host. She heard his soft Italian accent in the singsong of his voice. “The roads are dark.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You’ll know when I get there.”

  He took a step toward her, and Jessica recoiled although she didn’t try to run. She still had the car door. She could hit him with it if she had to. She could try to. Her breathing was accelerating. She could feel it, and he must have, too. She turned the key over in her palm, comforted by its slickness and warmth.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, signora,” he said. “You’re Fana’s mother.”

  As if that explained everything.

  “I’m not afraid for me,” Jessica said. She hated the sound of tears in her voice; she wanted to sound like Judgment Day. “Do you love her, Michel?”

  Michel was silent. Maybe he didn’t always lie.

  “If you love Fana, or even think you do, let her go,” Jessica said.

  “You’ve tried,” Michel said. “You know she won’t leave.”

  “Make her go, Michel,” Jessica said. She almost choked on his name.

  In a long silence, Michel seemed to consider it, or Jessica’s frantic hope said he was. Caesar trotted up to Michel, his tail wagging weakly, and sat beside him. Waiting.

  “I cannot,” Michel said in a long sigh. “Only Fana controls Fana. I think you may have learned this once or twice.”

  “For how long?” Jessica challenged him.

  Michel didn’t answer. The woods and courtyard slept, silent.

  Jessica’s rage surged. “How dare you!” she said. “How dare you stand there and say Fana is
in control, you pompous hypocrite. She wants to heal the sick. She won’t do the horrible things you want from her, and she never will. Then who’s in control?”

  Jessica was close enough to see his pleasant expression peel away as his jaw flexed. Michel stayed silent so long that Jessica was sure she had severed their communication. Her heart’s drumming started again. She eased herself toward the leather driver’s seat, ready to slide in. The key was hot in her hand.

  Michel walked in front of the car’s grille, leaning. He planted his palms on the hood.

  “I understand your anger. Believe me, I do,” Michel said finally. “Neither of us wants to find ourselves here.”

  “Yes, you’re so helpless, aren’t you? You poor, sweet thing.” Her coo had thorns.

  Steel crept into Michel’s voice. “I’m far from helpless, signora. You were not helpless when your husband told you he was a liar, he wasn’t quite human. He said you and your little girl were in danger because of him, no? You wish you had gone, but you chose to stay.”

  When Jessica heard the car door slam, she was shocked to find herself still standing in the carport. Had she slammed the door? She had the key in her palm. She was so senseless with anger, her sight blurred. Michel was roaming in her mind and memories. Of course he was!

  But she had weathered taunting from Fana’s demons before. Michel could tell her nothing about her mistakes that she didn’t already know.

  “I see,” Jessica said. She stepped toward Michel, an arm’s reach from him, ignoring the way he made her skin vibrate. “You like to hear begging, don’t you, Michel? You won’t be happy until you see me on my knees, will you … Most High? Is that what you want?”

  “Often, I like begging very much,” Michel said, with unashamed candor. “But not you.”

  “Let’s try it anyway. You might enjoy it,” Jessica said in a seductive whisper. She was ready to kneel, to pour her hatred into wailing tears, but Michel held her arm to keep her standing. His slender, gentle fingers on her bare arm gave a warm shock. She yanked away.

  “No,” Michel said forcefully. “You will not beg. My men are watching. So are yours.”