Shay sighs and places the feather next to the raccoon's previous deliveries: an assortment of leaves, stones, shards of pottery, and one small animal skull. If this exercise is any indication, her plan is never going to work.
Shouts ring out, coming from the front of the house. Shay wraps Najla in a blanket and quickly ties the baby to her back. As she rounds the corner of the cottage, the brothers come into view. They're crowded around a body slumped on the ground.
She jogs up to them, panting. Hunched shoulders shift aside, giving Shay the sense of reliving a memory. Tarik lies sprawled on the ground as the brothers take turns kicking him.
“What is going on here?” The infant squirms against her back, and Shay sways side to side in a soothing motion. “Someone, please explain.”
Aidi plucks his reed hat from the ground and smashes it over his balding skull. He flings his arm out, pointing a gnarled finger at Tarik. “He's the one who gave Snow to your mother.”
Shay gasps, the words cracking in her ears, spreading like a fissure over ice through her mind as she slowly comprehends their meaning. She looks from one brother to another and finds confirmation on each face. “How do you know?”
“He admitted it,” Bono growls.
Shay raises an eyebrow, needing to be certain. “Was that before or after you knocked him senseless?”
“What did you think?” Tarik strains to lift his head. He coughs, pinpoints of some blue-black substance flecking his chin. “There would be no consequence for your ill manners?”
“My what?” Shay sputters.
“You could have accepted my gift,” Tarik moans hoarsely. “But no, you thought you were too good for me.”
Shay shakes her head in disbelief. “Are you telling me my mother, my baby sister's mother, is gone because I didn't want a pair of gloves that were literally stained with the blood of a dead woman?”
Tarik coughs again, spewing more gunk. “She was a terrible mother anyway.”
A metalclankrings out. Kabeer brandishes a dagger, the long steel blade glinting in the afternoon sun. Shay's belly tightens, everything soft inside her turning hard.
“Brothers, hold him down so I may pierce his heart.” Kabeer shakes the dagger. “Let's see how immortal he really is.”
“Wait!” Shay holds her arms out and turns to Aidi. “Will that actually kill him?”
Aidi nods solemnly, the wide brim of his hat layering his face in shadow. “It is one of the only things that will. Even sunlight and starvation do little more than weaken them.”
For a fleeting moment, Shay imagines the life that could have been if Hind stayed purged. Perhaps, once the Lallat reawakened, Shay would have moved to the Cerabbi region and returned to midwifing. They could have raised Najla near the sea, playing with sand between her toes and salt tangled in her hair. It would have been a simple life, but a good one.
Or maybe it would never have happened that way. Maybe Hind didn't have what it took to give up Snow, to put in the necessary work to build a better life like Khawla's mother had. Maybe Tarik was right, and she was a terrible mother.
Shay will never know.
This vile, heartless creature robbed them of any possible future. Anger uncoils inside her like a poisonous snake. Staring at Tarik, she unfastens the blanket and carefully passes the baby to Dasri.
She strides to Kabeer and stops in front of him. “Give me the knife.”
Kabeer hands her the dagger without a word, his face unreadable. With a nod, the other brothers understand her intention and leap to restrain the bloodsucker before he skitters away. Shay stands over him, straddling his body. She shoves back the stray hairs stuck to her sweaty face. Heat beats down on her head like a molten crown. She squeezes the dagger in two hands, her arms held straight and stiff in front of her.
Tarik stares up at her. Something in his black eyes quivers, but his voice is smooth as honey. “You're no killer.”
Najla begins fussing, and Dasri coos to her in an adorably exaggerated voice that would make Shay smile under less severe circumstances.
“I wasn't before,” she says, her voice a calm match to Tarik's, gentle as a cooling breeze. “But that's the thing about people, Sidi—they can change. If given the chance, or the right reason.”
“If you kill me, you'll regret it,” the bloodsucker blurts, speaking so quickly that his words run together. “I have information that will help the Sisterhood in their mission.”
Despite Dasri's earnest efforts, Najla's fussing progresses to low, drawn-out cries. Without turning her head to see, Shay hears the increasingly familiar sound of the baby sucking hungrily on her own hand.
“Do you think I'd believe anything you say at this point?” she snarls. “Or that I would allow you to live, knowing you could come after my baby sister next?”
“I—I would never,” the bloodsucker stammers, now plainly afraid.
