CHAPTER TWELVE PRESENT DAY #2
The only shadow I’ve ever pulled was for Janna’s mother, and it hasn’t followed me since the day we found her body hanging outside.
I see other ones lurking sometimes, but like Mama says—guide your eyes forward and point your feet straight, and they won’t follow you.
In her uncle’s journal, he gives the shadows a bunch of names.
A side effect. A tangle in time for every life we cut short.
The stripped pieces of our soul for each child we feed to the door.
Bla bla bla. If you ask me, they’re just a bad aftertaste that needs to be spit out.
Anyway. Another doorwoman and her husband quit last week, and Mama hired a new couple this morning. The woman seems skittish, so I can already tell she’s smarter than her husband, who’s walking around like the only rooster in a hen house.
Let’s see how long they last.
A tear lands on the faded blank ink and sinks into the page.
“They called the shadows side effects,” I remark without looking up from the first page. “Do you think that means they’re not necessarily part of the curse?”
Jesse considers. “Maybe. They seem more interested in scaring you than actually hurting you.” To his credit, he picks up on my silent signal and doesn’t address the tears collecting in the corners of my bloodshot eyes.
“Plus, I don’t see how it would benefit the curse to have these shadows hanging around, haunting the people in charge of keeping the curse alive. ”
I hear Mama in my head with crystal clarity, as though she’s sitting beside me in the booth.
Everyone always underestimates guilt. They think fear is the fastest way to incentivize someone, but fear disappears when the danger does. Guilt… guilt never goes away. You can’t undo time and fix your mistake. Guilt, ya eyun Mama, is a hole in the ground, and time is the shovel.
A shudder works through my shoulders, traveling to my knees. Mama died when I was nine—most of my memories of her have been worn away, the little details fading with each recollection.
This memory is pristine. Complete. It sits away from the others, as though its proximity might taint them.
“Mansour?”
I startle. Jesse leans forward, head tipped to the side as he scrutinizes my face. “You should go home. Sleep, eat—”
“She has around twenty or so time entries here,” I interject, ignoring the absurd suggestion.
How can I sleep when every shadow sends my heart plummeting to the ground?
How can I force down a single bite? “Some of them are only a few minutes apart. Do you think she was keeping track of the shadows?” I shake my head.
“She says they followed Khalto Safa a lot more than her. Why would she go hunting them herself?”
“She could have been trying to figure out their movements. When they come and go. How long they stay.”
Why? I want to ask, snidely. It isn’t like she gave a damn about them or her little sister.
Rage swells inside me, vaster and more unstable than any of its predecessors.
It surges through my chest like a volcanic eruption.
Reaching through time and space to devour my memories of Mama, burning through them with molten red fingers.
In the ash, my mother’s face appears as it had in the photo Jesse showed me. Cold and clinical.
A stranger.
The woman from my memories doesn’t exist anymore. She never did. Nadine Mansour was a character, an actor reading lines from a script, and I was the only one who bought the act.
If only I could understand why. Why leave the villa and come to Ward if she had no issues with satisfying the demands of the creature? If she was so proud to be Nadine Haikal, why would she marry my father and become Nadine Mansour?
Why would she pretend to love me for nine years before going back?
Jesse raises placating hands. “We’ll see what we can learn from the journal.”
Appeased, I pull the carafe toward myself and pour a fresh round of murky black coffee. The bell over the door jingles, bringing in another blast of cold air. I lift the mug to my soon-to-be-frostbitten cheek.
“Mina?”
The mug jerks in my grip. Hot coffee spills onto my lapel, but I scarcely notice it.
Frozen next to our booth are Rainie, Aida, Alex, and Lucia.
I stare at them, stunned. Despite twenty-four hours of shadows and mortuaries and curses, somehow, their presence feels like the most unrealistic part of the entire ordeal. Figments of my imagination sprung straight out of my head and dropped in the middle of the morning rush at Grease just having him this close risks unraveling me. “Just a long night, Luce.”
Aida wraps her arms around her sketchpad, pressing it tight to her chest. She’s studying Jesse with an intensity I’ve only seen her wear when she sketches.
Lucia fidgets with the bottom of her fuzzy cardigan. I would bet every hair on my head she’s resisting the urge to pull me into a hug. “Well, we’re going to be just over there, if you need anything.”
Before Rainie can do more than curl her lip, Lucia ushers her away, Aida trailing behind them. Alex lingers by the table, and I force myself to look up. But his attention isn’t on me—he’s glaring at Jesse, pure murder glistening in his eyes.
“What did you do to her?” Alex growls.
Most people, when confronted with a fuming athlete slotted for D1 stardom, might take stock of the situation and decide it would be best to proceed carefully. Even if Alex couldn’t win an outright fight against Jesse, he could cause some serious damage.
Jesse sets an elbow on the table, propping his temple against his fist. A lascivious smirk twists his full lips. “Nothing she didn’t beg me for.” It emerges low and husky, the meaning unmistakable. A flush of aggravation—and something else I refuse to examine closely—heats my skin.
Alex reddens. Before he can make a move toward Jesse, I catch his wrist, forcing his attention to me.
“There is nothing going on between me and Jesse. I promise you.” I pray it isn’t a wasted reassurance. It shouldn’t be—I was Alex’s girlfriend for three years. Surely that’s earned me more credibility than the obvious jibe of a guy he doesn’t even like.
Alex yanks out of my grasp. His glower burns me, loaded with a scorn I have never seen him aim in my direction. “Don’t make any more promises, Mina. Haven’t you broken enough?”
The waitress swerves out of Alex’s path as he turns to storm away. He mutters an apology, polite even in his fury, and rounds the row of booths to the other side of the restaurant, where Rainie and the others have claimed our former Sunday table.
I knead the booth’s cracked leather cushion to distract my hands from their urge to wrap around Jesse’s throat.
The current bane of my existence drops his chin on his open palm, watching me beneath infuriatingly long lashes, looking for all intents and purposes like I’m his favorite cable network and not ten seconds away from attacking him with a crusted ketchup bottle.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“True.”
When my mask of rage refuses to crack, Jesse sighs, slumping back in his seat. “Don’t be mad, Sour Patch. The guy just rubs me the wrong way.”
“Awesome. With that C minus apology, I’m going to the bathroom,” I snap.
Hauling my backpack over my shoulder, I stride into the narrow hall behind the breakfast bar, where an abundance of thrift store artwork covers the yellowing wallpaper.
Three doors face each other, dim beneath the single bulb dangling from a wire in the center of the ceiling.
Two doors for the bathroom, and a glass door marked EMERGENCY EXIT: ALARM WILL RING at the very end.
Without a second’s hesitation, I push the emergency door open and step outside. The only sound is the screech of the hinges fighting the door’s weight. Grease & Grind hasn’t fixed the emergency exit in years, not since a brawl broke out after our high school soccer team lost to Mount Shasta’s.
I stride across the parking lot and onto the curb, where I come to a sudden stop.
It hits me that I have nowhere to go. Baba should be at work right now, but it’s entirely possible he’ll take the day off to nurse his post-possession migraine.
All of my friends are in the diner, probably dissecting me like a frog on a lab table.
The trees across the street rustle. A gray veil cloaks the sky over Ward, and through the lattice of clouds, a couple of watered-down rays of sunlight break through.
Beneath the trees, a shadow forms.
My chest ices over. The breath trapped between my teeth turns heavy, reshaping itself into a scream.
I fix my gaze on the shadow, the instinct to run battling against the need to know what the shadow hides.
If Jesse’s theory is right, more of my mother’s journal will reveal itself if I look into another shadow. If I let it manifest.
The street lays quiet. I can’t bring myself to walk toward it.
But I know it’ll come to me.
I close my eyes, and I wait. Mama’s journal thumps like a heartbeat in the back of my head.
But it isn’t a shadow that finds me.
A rough bag closes around my head, encasing me in darkness. Multiple arms haul me backward, and I only remember to struggle when the unmistakable shape of a car door bangs into my hip. I thrash, but it’s too late—the door slams shut.
I don’t stop struggling when the car screeches away, taking me with it.