My Soul to Take (25 page)

An hour after she’d bathed and changed, Jessica was still looking for the tiger. Her eyes searched the colorful rock garden and its unpredictable, coral-like formations that reminded her of her dream zoo’s jungle, expecting a blur of white fur to leap at her. It might be another hour before her fingers stopped shaking.

No more Dreamsticks
, Jessica promised herself as she splashed her face with warm water from the garden’s soaking pool. She had promised to stop burning the sticks before, but the tiger might help her keep her word. Her fears had tracked her into her haven. She wanted dreams, not nightmares.

“Michel won’t let her go again,” Johnny said.

No. Michel would not let Fana go. Maybe Fana couldn’t see it, but that had been plain to Jessica in his white silk robe, his languid eyes. Jessica had known he would not let Fana go since she first saw the blood on her clothes. Since she’d seen the look
in Fana’s eyes—the look every daughter’s mother dreads—saying she had been
touched
. Jessica’s pupils narrowed with rage as she thought about the way Michel had played with Fana, sowing lies to trap her.

Jessica couldn’t answer. She stared at the towering stones.

“But I know a way, Mrs. Wolde,” Johnny said.

Johnny’s face came into crisp focus, down to his razor stubble and eyes swollen from half-mad tears. Something irreparable was about to happen between her and Johnny Wright, a moment that couldn’t be backed away from. Ideas became plans. Plans came to life. She glanced around again, this time looking for listeners hidden among the wonderland of stones.

“Go on,” Jessica said.

“I shot two of Michel’s men last year. I rescued Caitlin.” Johnny’s voice as calm as the garden’s pools. “Michel thought he was controlling me … but he lost me for at least ten minutes. I was myself again. I had free will. I’ve been praying, Mrs. Wolde, and God told me a secret. It’s a secret I already knew from Mexico, when I fired the gun, but I’d forgotten….”

Suddenly, Jessica knew the secret, too. Like Johnny, she had only forgotten.

“Fana distracts him,” Jessica said. “When she’s with him …”

Johnny finished, his voice hushed, “He’s vulnerable.”

Jessica assessed John Wright with new eyes: he wasn’t the frightened, confused child fresh from Hell. The oft-told story about Johnny Wright shooting his way past Michel’s men hadn’t fit the jittery young man who had first come to Lalibela. But now,
this
was the Johnny Wright who risked instant arrest every time he went upworld to help spread Glow. This was the Johnny Wright who’d faced Michel in Mexico and fought his way free.

God help them, was Michel listening to them now? Jessica was too weary to be afraid.

“He would take precautions,” Jessica said. “It might not happen again.”

“But what if it can?” he said.

“Fana won’t help you,” Jessica said. “Or Dawit. They’re both
dead set against a direct confrontation. But there might be others.”

“Who?” Johnny said.

“They would never confide in a mortal, Johnny. A stranger.”

“What about Teka?”

Jessica smiled weakly. What a waste! Fana’s teacher knew enough about the weapons in the Life Brothers’ arsenal to wipe Michel from the planet. “Teka would never go against Fana’s wishes,” Jessica said. “Don’t even approach him—he’ll see through you.”

“Who, then?”

“Mahmoud,” Jessica said. Mahmoud’s name tasted like burnt dust in her mouth. She rolled her tongue in the caverns of her cheeks to feel moisture again. Was she fully awake, or still dreaming? Jessica checked her reflection in the water, one of the tricks she’d had to learn after too much time on Dreamsticks: in her dreams, she couldn’t see her reflection.

But she was there. She splashed her face again, trying to forget how Mahmoud had tried to kill her and Kira in her old life, and then Fana, too. Mahmoud had tried to destroy her family from the beginning. How could she speak his name?

Jessica dried her face on her shirt, forcing herself to go on. “Mahmoud would want to see Michel dead, and he wouldn’t care what Fana says. Or Dawit. Mahmoud always does what he thinks is right for the colony.”

Jessica’s stomach gurgled, so she walked to the orange tree a few paces beyond the washbasin. The oranges were as big as grapefruits here, all of them ripe for months at a time. More decoration than food. Jessica chose an orange at random, since they all looked and tasted the same. She buried her thumb in its heart to peel it.

“Then let’s talk to Mahmoud,” Johnny said.

“I can’t
know
about this, Johnny. Fana wants me and Dawit to go with her to Michel. I could hide from Fana, I think, but Dawit can’t filter as well. And I couldn’t hide from Michel. Once we’re near Michel, he’d be a fool not to know us inside and out. Assume they’ll all know we’ve had this conversation.”

“That’s not a problem,” Johnny said. The determination in his eyes didn’t dim.

“Michel doesn’t have to be near you to kill you,” Jessica said. “Remember?”

“We’re just talking,” Johnny said. “I’m not worried about anyone except Fana.”

Jessica remembered when her sister, Alex, brought her the idea to open a clinic in South Africa to distribute the blood Dawit had forced into her veins. In one glorious instant, the world had opened itself up, and Jessica finally understood why Kira had been taken away from her: Kira’s death was her daily reminder of loss, so she could help others heal. Now, Jessica understood again. She might not be able to free Fana from the tiger, but she had to try.

Sometimes a mother’s power wasn’t enough, but Fana needed her.

Jessica clasped the young man’s clammy hand between hers. “There’s no such thing as true immortality in the body. Evaporation. Incineration. Telepathic exsanguination; I’ve seen Fana do that, when she was only three. If Michel even loses consciousness …”

He can be killed
, she finished to herself, hesitating to speak the words.

“I need your blessing, Mrs. Wolde,” Johnny said.

Jessica’s heart pounded the way it had when she’d seen the tiger, flushing her veins with adrenaline. Johnny was still a kid, no more prepared than Fana, who could be so impulsive and childish. But children always fought for the future, full of imagination, uncorrupted by doubts.

“
Only
Michel,” she said. “If Fana is in danger, you have to stop it. Give me your word.”

“I promise never to do anything to hurt Fana,” Johnny said. “But I need the Blood, Mrs. Wolde. I need to be one of you.”

The Blood would not keep Johnny alive if Michel went after him, but it might save him once. Or twice. It might buy him enough time. Jessica’s heartbeat sped.

“Lucas and I don’t know the ceremony,” Jessica said. “I’ve asked about sharing the Blood with you all, but Dawit doesn’t want to bypass the council. He’s a pragmatist deep down, Johnny. There’s only one person who might do it for you.”

“Fana?” Johnny said.

“Yes. You’d have to convince her. And you won’t have much time.”

“I’ve asked her before.”

“Why did she say no?”

Johnny sighed. “She said I didn’t know my reasons yet.”

“Give her good reasons, then,” Jessica said. “As much as you can, tell the truth.”

Now it was Johnny’s turn to look sick to his stomach. “I’ll need time alone with her.”

“I’ll get you the time. You have a chance, Johnny. She’s in love with you.”

Johnny Wright’s wide eyes swept her like searching floodlights.

From the way he looked at her, Jessica might have thought he didn’t already know.

B
ells tolled somberly throughout the colony to signal the Lalibela Council meeting, one of the colony’s few acts of spontaneity. The courtyard before the entryway to the Council House was crowded and giddy, everyone barefoot and dressed in white.

Fana had never attended a meeting, although she’d held an honorary seat on the council most of her life. In the year since she had moved to Lalibela, Fana had missed three meetings while she was upworld on Glow business or meditating, leaving Dawit to speak on her behalf.

Not a great record, Fana realized. She’d kept away from colony politics, preoccupied with her race with Michel; meditating for strength through the Rising and building her Glow network so she could fight Michel’s agencies’ work to slow them down. It was exhausting.

But Fana wanted to win over her own people before she could work on Michel. To most of the Life Brothers, she was an enigma; to others, a stain.

It was time to make her mission official.

Fana walked the wide corridor, trailed by her teacher, Teka. Beyond Teka, her guardians Fasilidas and Berhanu walked in formation. The Life Brothers’ intense curiosity nibbled at Fana as she passed them. Her presence elicited extreme feelings, from bright-eyed worship to hot loathing. Which was worse? How could she deserve either?

Fana was wearing a ceremonial white robe from the House of Mystics, with three intersecting rows of cowrie shells sewn on the
hem, brushing her bare ankles. The shells represented past, present, and future, all interwoven. Many of the Mystics believed they had been prophesying her birth for four hundred years.

Three wiry dancers from the House of Mystics cleared a path for her, singing the prophecy in flawless harmony while drums and shakers played at a frenetic pace. Each drum had a different pitch, the voices eerily human, in dialogue with one another as well as the dancers.

“And her name shall be called Light!” one Mystic sang, waving his arms to the sky.

“And she will bring rains from the sky!” another sang, scooping imaginary water.

“And she shall be born with the Blood!” The third leaped to show the Blood’s strength.

The Mystics were as enchanted by the Letter of the Witness as Michel, and they considered her the rightful heir to Khaldun—his Chosen. Even the Brothers who didn’t believe in the Letter as prophecy respected Khaldun’s special presence in Fana’s life.

The flea thinks it is the camel’s master
, Fana remembered Khaldun telling her, and they often had debated whether Fana was the camel or the flea. As a child, she’d been sure she was the camel. Today, she seemed like neither. Or both.

Or was Michel the camel, and she the flea?

The twenty-foot statue of Khaldun stood prominently in the courtyard beyond the Council Hall’s archway, and Fana followed tradition by stopping to reflect on the colony’s creator. The statue’s marble shone like new, but Dawit said it had been built before he and his Brothers arrived in Khaldun’s underground kingdom more than five hundred years ago.

Despite its height, the statue looked puny. The rendering was stylized, Khaldun’s facial features heavily lined, his beard cropped, so he didn’t resemble the man Fana and her parents had met in Lalibela. He looked nothing like the dreamlike figure who had guided her when the world overwhelmed her, when even her parents had been locked out.

Her father said that Khaldun had spoken through this statue in
years past, with a greeting for every Brother. But Khaldun’s statue had gone silent when he’d left Lalibela. Fana reached up to wrap her palm around the smooth marble hand, three times the size of a man’s. She dropped her chin to her chest, eyes closed.

Khaldun, I need your guidance as much as I did when I was three
, she said.

The statue was lifeless stone, cold to the core, as if Khaldun had never touched it. Had Khaldun found a way to die? Freed himself to his Rising? That would explain why she’d never been able to find his thoughts, and a part of her was always searching.

Fana understood why the Life Brothers felt abandoned. Khaldun hadn’t prepared her for Michel, or explained the prophecy he’d saddled his two Bloodborn with. The silent statue almost made her as angry as it did many of her Brothers, but what was the point of anger?

Fana moved beyond the statue when she thought a respectful time had passed, but she noticed several glares from council members who thought she had not lingered long enough.

PATIENCE, FANA
, Teka said, walking closely beside her to share his thought privately.

But I knew Khaldun
, she said.
What’s the point of pretending I found him in the statue?

THE POINT ISN’T TO FIND HIM. THE POINT IS TO SEEK HIM
.

The stares and riot of speculations made Fana lonely, so she was glad when she saw her family huddle—Teferi’s wives Abena and Sharmila, Teferi’s boys Miruts, Natan, and Debashish. Her aunt, uncle, and cousin were still upworld, but where was her father?

The women showered Fana with hugs, draping her in beads and flowers. Fana ignored the nearby thoughts, wondering why a gaggle of mortals congregated so near the Council Hall, and the complaints exaggerating their smell.

Abena’s eyes danced. “Today you are taking your throne, my daughter,” she whispered.

“It’s only a courtesy call,” Fana told her. “I’m not here to lead Lalibela.”

“And yet you will. You do!” Abena said, and kissed her cheek.

Fana wondered when she would see them again. She’d been upworld only a week for the concert and Glow visits, and Natan already seemed three inches taller, past her shoulder at only ten. Natan’s ocher face dimpled when he grinned and handed Fana a sewn doll with three heads with nests of black hair. Each head was shorter than the last, but the doll shared a single body.

“See?” Natan said. “That’s me. That’s Deb. And Miruts. For good luck.”

“Yes, you’ll always be with me,” Fana said, hugging him. Children’s energy was like no other, floating straight through her. No masking. So few regrets. Bright and vigorous. Fana knew she could never be a child again, and wouldn’t want to—but if she had a child of her own one day, would she be a Bloodborn, too?

“Best good-luck charm ever made,” Caitlin said.

Caitlin was at the edge of the huddle, dressed in white jeans and a white tank top—her nod to ceremony. Fana hugged Caitlin a long time. The spike in her Brothers’ thoughts sharpened as they watched her with Caitlin—hugging mortals! This one not even an African! And Caitlin was helping her spread the Blood, which was controversial in Lalibela, too. Fana had already scandalized her Brothers without a word.