Chapter 10 #2
Rosemary’s in an Ankara dress today—green leafy print with the occasional flower in colours matching the beads in her hair.
It hugs every dip and curve of her soft, padded frame, a sweetheart neckline enhancing the plump fullness of her breasts.
Three small straps do the same to her shoulders, framing them beautifully.
The hem of the dress stops mid-thigh, where a short, ruffled skirt ends a few inches above her knees.
I can’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to push that skirt up.
I wonder if her panties are a shade of green.
Fuck. They are. I know they are. They’re probably lace, too.
I’d taken an “accidental” peek into her underwear drawer back in uni; the image of lace and silk and frills is practically imprinted behind my eyelids.
And the waist beads. God. Is it the same one from back then?
The one I’d spied a few times, each illicit sighting making my lower belly burn and clench up tight.
Where it had once settled loosely around her waist in five lines, it’s now in four, pulled snug to accommodate for all that new thickness.
“Are you living the dream, then?” I ask when we’re at the dining table, the fire of my arousal forcefully stomped to ashes. “Being a “holistic nutritionist”? Is that what you really call it?” I try, but I know my smile doesn’t quite reach my eyes.
“Oh. Um. Yes. I actually, officially started last year.” She grins, and as always, it’s enough to soften my mouth and my gaze, to make the barely-there tilt of my lips feel more natural. “I’m actually a rua oerhwu.”
My smile widens infinitesimally. “Impressive.”
“You don’t even know what that means,” she says with a dismissive flap of her hand, but she’s blushing.
“A herbal healer, isn’t it?” I tease. “Or is herbal witch more accurate?”
She’s so flustered, it’s adorable. “Fine, yes. If we’re being literal.
But while we do focus a lot on personal healing of all kinds, we’re more interested in the home.
We believe the place you choose to rest your head is as important is your head itself.
So, we do a lot of cleansings, basically. Then the herbal healing comes after.”
“An all rounder. Not that I expected anything less.” I wonder what it’d feel like to sink my fangs into the corner of her jaw, the bottom of her cheek—if the hint of jawbone and teeth would make the bite more or less satisfying. “That fits you so well.”
She blushes, stuffing a perfectly golden plantain in her mouth like it’d divert my attention. It doesn’t.
I take a spoonful of oatmeal, already mixed with milk and brown sugar. As usual, my portion is three times the size of hers.
I stare down at the food. My mother had eaten portions as big as this, too—sometimes even bigger.
I don’t know why it’s only just occurring to me that our voracious appetites might’ve had something to do with our accursed hunger; a subconscious need to fill it, perhaps, even though it had never worked.
The oatmeal turns to ash, but I don’t stop eating. I don’t want Rosemary to notice.
“What about you?” she asks after a bit. “Are you a personal trainer, yet? Have your own gym?” She waggles her eyebrows.
And suddenly, the oatmeal is back to being warm and sweet and smooth, melting delectably in my mouth. “Yes and no. Yes, I got my license a few years ago; no, I do not have my own gym. I’m going to need to make a little more money, first,” I tease.
“And is it what you wanted? What you dreamed of?”
I think of the few clients I have; the gym had been generous enough to let me pick my clients, and I always go for people who are like me; folks desperately searching for control—to find it or to keep it.
I help them with that control through exercise and yoga and sometimes, meditation, making sure to teach them how to maintain a good balance without it straying into obsession.
Nothing like I’d been my first time straining for control.
“Yes,” I answer, though it’s melancholy. I’d had to stop when I’d—when I’d thought I was simply losing it.
At first, I’d pushed myself harder. I’d brought back the toxic training my mother had used on me as a child, hoping to somehow brutally discipline myself back into being human.
Without her teachings, as awful as they’d been, I’m not sure I would have lasted as long as I have.
Now, though, I know it had been pointless. No amount of training can alter my very blood.
“You said before, that it doesn’t matter if you wear that.” I jerk my head at the twine around her wrist. “Since you can’t be killed. But can you get hurt?”
“Yes and no.” She pushes her glasses up her nose. “I can get hurt, but not for long enough to matter. Besides that, I don’t, um, scar.”
Her scent changes subtly, and whatever the monster senses makes it bristle. There’s something loaded in that last word, something that reminds me of my own invisible scars, woven onto my skin with my mother’s unrepentant hands.
“It’s almost like an accelerated healing, kind of? At least accelerated enough to literally bring me back to life, if we put it that way.”
I stare for a moment, then force myself to focus back on my food. I’m not letting anything hurt her again. I don’t care how impossible it seems right now—in the study, the attack had been sudden, violent, and seemingly unstoppable, done by a powerful, unseen force.
But I hadn’t known what I know now. The monster is awake. Alert. I won’t let her get hurt again.
When we’re done eating, neither of us moves. Rosemary’s squirming a bit, staring down at the table.
“What is it?”
She boldly meets my eyes. “Obviously, I respect your choice, please don’t think I don’t, but …
the longer I think about it, the more I believe the deal with the dagbato isn’t as simple as it seems. Think about it,” she rushes to add when she notices my blank expression, “this deal has been going on for generations, you said. Your mother can’t have been the first to try and end it, right?
And the dagbato demands a sacrifice every ten years for every family member.
Do you really think its going to sit back if you decide you don’t want to continue your bloodline, effectively ending the deal?
Especially after I detach it from the house’s eshé, ruining its delicately-planned escape? ”
I had thought about it. A part of me had known the deal isn’t going to be simple at all.
I’d never known my father. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother had also been alone. Neither of them had any siblings or cousins or other extended family. When my mother had wanted a child, she’d had one with a stranger—an easily forgotten one-night stand.
Everything in moderation. I understood why, despite that mantra—despite the fact that I secretly believed regulating my emotions had nothing to do with this endless hunger—my mother had refused to let me have anything.
Why, if she’d known about Rosemary, she would have found a way to take her from me, too.
As her mother must’ve taught her, and just as she had taught me, she knew once I let myself want, I wouldn’t stop at a little.
I wouldn’t stop until I had swallowed everything I wanted whole.
So, it hadn’t made sense. Why bring a child into this, knowing they’d be hooked into fulfilling this deal as well?
And doing so for generations? Knowing—knowing you’re passing down this—this thing?
This “curse”? Had the dagbato made them?
Had it been a stipulation of the deal? Or is my judgement clouded because I’d never thrust this affliction upon anyone, let alone an innocent infant?
My grandmother had been so desperate for me to continue this deal she’d let her spirit remain tethered to the house, instead of getting her soul’s long deserved rest. And just like my mother’s tight lips, I know she hasn’t told me or Rosemary everything.
She’d given me the key to the book in the coded language documenting our family’s secrets, but it hadn’t explained the dagbato’s deal in enough detail—it hadn’t shown any downsides.
If there’s anything I know about deals with demons—even with my limited knowledge of all things arcane—its that there are always downsides, and the demon almost always ends up with the better end of the bargain.
But despite all my doubts and suspicions, my mind remains firmly made up. Where there should be grief, or at least some sort of inner conflict, all I feel is emptiness. My mother did train me well in the end.
It takes nearly fifteen seconds to unclench my jaw, the time ticking silently away between us. Rosemary doesn’t try to fill it, for which I’m grateful. She’s always been like that, patient and calm while I try to gather my thoughts without being emotional.
“I’m aware the deal might contain stipulations. That doesn’t change my decision.”
“Genevieve …” She bites her lower lip. God, she’s so fucking lovely.
She’s not wearing any makeup, only her lip balm.
Her dark skin is dewy with a faint sheen of sweat.
Tiny curls line the edges of her scalp, making her look so soft, a stark painting with the edges blurred sweetly out with a sponge.
So vulnerable and easily breakable. “If the deal is as complicated as I suspect, then aren’t you just going to rope more innocents into it?
Like your mother roped you. And her mother roped her.
It’ll no longer be just about you.” I want her to stop talking.
I don’t want to think about this any further.
I can’t. “I …” She braces herself, facing me head on, and my spine stiffens even more.
“Have you ever thought about … accepting it?”
My entire body goes still. Rosemary’s pulse flutters like a hummingbird’s at the base of her throat.
“And what is it that you want me to accept?” My voice is low but emotionless.
She cringes, as she should, but doesn’t answer. It makes me angrier. She wants me to accept this shit and she can’t even say it.
“You want me to accept that I’m literally not a person?” I say with an unexpected calm; my hands are shaking. “Just a thing pretending to be one?”
“I literally can’t be killed,” she whispers timidly. “A lot of people would say that makes me inhuman, too.”
“It’s not the same and you know it.”
“I know that you’re changing—” she starts, and I bark out a laugh so loud and brash it makes her teeth clack as she shuts her mouth.
She still doesn’t understand, it seems, so I’m going to have to make her.
“Legbaju.” She flinches, then flushes and ducks her head like she’d tried and failed not to react.
It fills me with grim satisfaction. “I’m not changing into anything.
” Fuck, fuck, why are my eyes stinging? Why won’t my hands stop fucking shaking?
“I’m literally a fucking folktale. A monster who feeds on the hearts of living things, using that to basically steal their forms, all so it can blend in to keep hunting.
To keep eating. Over the past few weeks, my craving for blood and violence has been constant and growing.
I had to hunt and kill last night, and it still wasn’t enough.
” Rosemary’s eyes are wide. “The deal with the dagbato makes it easier to ignore the hunger and gets rid of the killing intent—it’ll let me keep this human form without me having to eat human flesh to maintain it.
” She doesn’t flinch this time, her eyes fearlessly locked on mine.
I grind my jaw. “If that means one sacrifice every ten years as opposed to murdering hundreds, maybe thousands of people in my lifetime, I’m taking the fucking deal. ”
The silence is loud.
“So …” Rosemary begins tentatively, and I just know she’s about to piss me off.
“A creature of legend who has the inexplicable urge to kill. Who can only remain … human, when it consumes the hearts of other humans. And a human who can … regrow her heart, so to speak. I don’t know, Genevieve; it kind of sounds like fate to me. ”
For a moment, we just stare at each other.
Then my lips twitch, despite myself. She smiles, and we’re both laughing softly.
“Fuck.” I inhale shakily. I don’t know why I’d expected a different response.
Stubborn could’ve been her middle name; yet another reason I’d left.
If I’d stayed, she’d have made me feel exactly like this.
Like I’m the person I know I’m not. Like she loves me, still, when it’s obvious she still doesn’t really see me.
No. She sees the facade of the human she thinks she knows, not the monster shamelessly wearing some human’s stolen and long-forgotten skin.
My amusement fades.
“I’m not going to kill you, Rosemary.”
“All right, Genevieve.”
My heart fucking aches. Every time she’s said those words, in that same, indulgent tone, and with that exact little smile, she’d always ended up getting her way.
I hate that, for the first time, I’m going to prove her wrong.