Chapter NADINE HAIKAL EL AGAMY, ALEXANDRIA 2004
The baby was due one month from today.
Nadine paced her room, rubbing circles into her protruding belly. They were leaving for California tomorrow. Hatem had booked their tickets, gotten their visas. He’d shown her photos of a tiny house in a town called Ward.
Nadine knew the burst of productivity had as much to do with their new family as it did with losing his other one.
Getting disowned by his parents had hit Hatem hard.
He wouldn’t let Nadine apologize, told her over and over that “they just don’t know you like I do” and promised they’d come around once they had some time.
The personal distaste of Hatem’s parents meant nothing to Nadine. Her mother and Safa were the real danger. They had no idea what she was planning. No idea they were losing one of the last Haikals capable of feeding the curse.
It was all set. Every loose end tied. So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that she’d miscalculated?
Hatem might have the advanced degree, but nobody strategized like Nadine. For her fiancé, she let herself seem soft and sweet, a small-town girl dreaming of far-flung shores. With time, she hoped to become that woman. The soft Nadine Mansour.
But until then, she was still Nadine Haikal, and she would bet her right arm that something was amiss.
An hour before dawn, the animals began to howl. A flicker above her bed stopped Nadine mid-pace. The air warped, folding open like the spine of a book. A girl took shape, perched on the edge of the bed. She frowned at the window and covered her ears.
Nadine froze. The girl phased in and out, her movements stitched together with unsteady thread. Tight curls fell past her shoulders, and she had brown freckles by her temple.
A shadow? But—why was she so blurry?
“Who are you?” Nadine demanded. Her heart beat a frantic staccato, warning her away from the specter, but Nadine was not easily intimidated.
The girl shoved her feet in a pair of slippers at the door and squeezed outside, closing the door with a click behind her.
A sharp, piercing pain shot through Nadine’s stomach. She gasped, catching herself on the wardrobe. What on earth? The pain blossomed into agony, and she doubled over.
Nadine stumbled to the mirror, shoving her blouse up to expose her stomach. As she watched, little hands took shape beneath the thin layer of skin covering her womb. Pushing. Scratching.
Nadine coughed, spattering the mirror in red flecks. Engorged red veins formed over her belly, pulsating ropes of flesh throbbing an inch high.
Another cough. Blood ran down Nadine’s chin, syrupy thick.
The baby. Something was wrong with her baby.
Nadine limped outside, leaving wet red handprints in her trail. Where had the girl gone? She needed to follow the girl.
“Nadine?” her mother gasped. She caught Nadine as she stumbled, laying her gently onto the ground. “Safa! Get over here!”
Her mother smoothed the sweaty hair from Nadine’s forehead. “Darling, it’s time. Your child is coming.”
Nadine shook her head, arms wrapped protectively around her middle. “No, no. No, it’s too early. She’s not finished yet. She needs more time.”
Pain ricocheted through Nadine. She screamed, clawing at the marble floor. A nail snapped, but she didn’t feel it. The pain in her stomach was a vortex, subsuming all else.
The baby couldn’t come now. They were leaving for California tomorrow. Nadine would give birth to this child far away from her mother and sister. Far away from the door and that horrible orange light.
Safa knelt at her feet, laying out towels and pots.
The sight of a baby blanket with a paisley pattern sent Nadine rolling to her side, vomit bubbling forth and mixing with the blood in her mouth.
Her daughter couldn’t be born here. Her mother would lay her daughter—Hatem’s daughter—at the door on the third floor.
If Nadine’s daughter passed, her family would never let her leave this villa.
Nadine’s daughter would be marked for life, as surely as Nadine was marked.
A million wails shredded the inside of Nadine’s brain. She tossed her head back and forth, trying to expel the heinous noise. They belonged to the parents of the children she’d offered. The mothers of the kids she’d laid at the door. Their howls would mix with her baby’s birth cries.
Safa shoved Nadine’s knees apart. The towels went under her hips. A maniacal glee shimmered in her sister’s black gaze.
“Take a deep breath, Nadine,” Safa said. “This will hurt.”