Genevieve looks pale. “And the ritual—the sacrifice won’t be enough to stop it?”
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “But your grandmother must’ve called me for a reason. If I perform a powerful enough cleansing, I think I’ll be able to untangle it from the house and send it back to the crossroads it came from.”
Genevieve’s chest rises and falls gently. “And what happens to the deal when its gone?”
“The deal will probably remain,” I say quietly. The dagbato must’ve taken advantage of Genevieve’s ancestors, somehow, swindling its way into their home so it could entwine with their eshé over generations—waiting for that eshé to build and build until it had enough to eventually drain it to gain true freedom from the crossroads.
“Right.” Genevieve straightens her shoulders. “Like I said, I literally came here to uphold the deal. You do whatever it is you need to do, and leave me to mine.”
“I think we should stay in the same room.”
“Rosemary.”
“What if it kills you?” The question makes bile fill my throat. I desperately swallow it down, my hands fisted at my sides. “It killed your motherandyour grandmother, Genevieve. It’s already killed me once.”Twice, I think vaguely, remembering the taste of dirt in my mouth when I’d woken up that morning. It had probably suffocated me, reduced my oxygen so slowly my conscious hadn’t realised what was happening until it was over. “Clearly its starting to care more about gaining its freedom than upholding this deal. I’m not going to risk you.”
Genevieve’s chest heaves. “I’ll stay in the sitting room.”
“Genevieve.” I don’t care that I’m begging.
“We can’t stay in the same room, Rosemary. You don’t understand.”
“Thenmakeme understand.”
She crowds into my space. I instinctively back away until she has me caged against the wall. Her eyes are still entirely black, her cheekbones sharper, her teeth pointed.
“I want to kill you.”
I gasp quietly. My pulse flutters madly at the base of my throat. And despite that flat, black gaze, I canfeelher staring. Heat burns in my lower belly. Between my legs. In my cheeks.
“Every time I look at you, all I can think of is how your blood will taste. How easily your flesh would tear underneath my teeth. The many ways I can make you scream. Make you sob in pain and terror.” I’m trembling. I can’t help it. “You keep repeating that you can’t be killed,” she scoffs, “as if I can think ofanythingelse.” The hoarse admission makes my stomach tighten with filthy desire. “Do you get it?” She snarls through sharpened teeth. “I’m afraid I’m—” She inhales shakily. “I’m afraid there’s literally no difference between me and the dagbato. Thisthinginside me wants to watch you die, over and over and over again, just for its sick pleasure. It wants toconsumeyou.”
“Maybe Iwantto be consumed,” I confess breathlessly, shamelessly, all my inhibitions gone.
“Are you really that desperate?” she spits, her black eyes bright, her jaw clenching.
“Aren’t you?”
The pause is heavy, taut with exquisite tension.
Then Genevieve breaks it, turning and taking the steps two at a time. I sink against the wall behind me like my strings have been cut, one hand pressed to my heaving bosom. Desperately ignoring the thump of my heartbeat in my clit. The tingle that shoots down to my belly every time my stiff nipples rub the insides of my bra.
The fact that, for the first time in my life, I actuallywantsomeone to kill me.
And I want that someone to be her.
It should horrify and disgust me, how desperately I want it. How much the thought turns me on. Oh God, there’s obviously something very fuckingwrongwith me, with how easily I’m letting myself sink into this twisted desire.
When I was five, my grandmother told me a story that has stayed with me to this day; it’s one of my clearest memories of her, a few months before she’d died. When she’d caught me shoving pieces of asaeme—spiced dough mixed with pounded, sweet, overripe plantains, fried into thumb-sized golden balls—underneath my bed, where even more untouched pieces lay, the oil in them melted away in the Delta heat, each old sweet covered in ants.
She’d wiped my oily fingers clean with the edge of her wrapper, and taken me to the back of our hut. I’d sat on the mat, she on her favourite wooden stool, both of us bathed in the moonlight as she carefully re-braided my hair.
“Once upon a time, there were two hungry little frogs. They travelled far and wide, trying to find anything that would stop the pain and rumbling of their empty little bellies. But no matter how far they travelled, they could not find any food. One day, the gods took pity on them. They sent them all kinds of food—somuchfood it would last for their entire lives.
“The first frog was too hungry, and too afraid. What if tomorrow, all the food disappeared? So it ate all of its share of the food—stuffed its stomach so full it burst, and it died. The second frog thought, what if the food does not last my entire life? What if it is not enough? So it did not eat at all, deciding to save its own share of the food for a rainy day. The rainy day never came, and the frog starved to its death.
“This is a story about moderation,” she’d finished, gently stroking her fingers through my afro—like my mother, she always started at the tips, never from the roots. “Saving your special treats for later is a good habit, but not when it turns intohoarding. Into waste. You don’t want to end up like the second frog, do you, edémi?” She’d tickled me, and I’d laughed as I’d squealed a loud, “No!”
Unfortunately for her, it seems I’ve ended up like the first.
