Chapter Thirty

Willow

“Hi,” I greet meekly as we make our final few steps, crossing what felt like a long distance in no time at all.

“Sorry it’s late, Elisi,” Nokosi says, kissing her cheek.

The old lady’s eyes don’t leave me, she looks as cautious as I feel. Her pale eyes, so light it makes them fade into the white, scan me up and down. The woman beside her urges her on, a cigar-like object in her hand and a matchbox in the other.

“Elisi,” she utters and finally the old woman holds out her hand to me.

It’s trembling visibly, shaking like beads in a bowl during an earthquake. She hesitates and so do I.

“I don’t think…” I whisper to Nok, pulling back but the old lady moves quickly and snatches my hand before I can go anywhere.

Her other hand closes over the top and her eyes hold mine.

I wish I’d run because the noise she makes has my heart racing and my palms sweating. She screams into the night startling us all and then she glares at me.

“DEMON!” she bellows, her voice croaky but strong.

“Elisi,” Nokosi tries but she throws my hand back at me and grabs her grandson, clinging to him desperately.

“Evil!” she hisses as Nok battles to free his shirt from her grasp. She yells at him in her native tongue, throwing around words I don’t understand all the while keeping him in a tight grip. They argue back and forth loudly as I back away to the truck, feeling shaken and mad that I ever let Nok bring me here.

He promised me he’d protect me.

“No! You mustn’t be alone with her,” Elisi begs, clinging to him for dear life. “She is death. She is evil. She wants to harm you!”

“You’re being silly, Elisi, it’s Willow, Lilith’s sister… you love Lilith,” he tries, looking at me sadly. “Please try to heal her…”

“No,” the old woman snarls and spits at my feet. “The sooner this one dies, the better.”

“Elisi,” Nokosi gasps and so does the woman by her side. He says something else in his own tongue and then turns to me after prying her from his body. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

The woman shrieks after us but his aunt guides her away, soothing her with kind-sounding words and a soft tone. But the despair and panic that I can hear in the old woman’s voice is genuine fear. She really is magic. She was so right about everything she said.

Maybe she could have healed me if I were a better person.

Maybe I do need to die. Maybe she does for speaking to me like that.

He guides me back to his truck, both of us visibly shaken, and helps me inside. He even leans across me to strap me in and I get a strong whiff of his hair. It smells like coconut and pineapple. So sweet.

“I am so sorry; I don’t know what came over her. She has never done that before.”

I don’t reply, I just want him to drive us home so I can forget this ever happened. He drives and we sit in the dark silence for a while, not even the radio crackles in the background.

“Maybe… I mean… I don’t know,” he stammers for the right thing to say but at this point, what can be said? “I wish I’d never taken you. I should have left it all alone and just taken flowers to your funeral like a normal person.”

Despite my racing heart and confusion, I laugh because that was a bit funny. I love dry humor and Nokosi comes with barrels of it.

His hand closes over mine on my thigh and my skin beneath it quivers and tightens at his touch. I remain impassive, trying to deny the fact that his hands can make me feel anything.

I hate men.

I hate him.

He pulls over at the side of the dirt road we’re on, the headlights highlight the trees and I see the eyes of animals in the far distance, glowing like the tiny demons I feared back at his grandmother’s house. Really, I’m the scariest thing in these woods, and both I and the old lady know it.

“I’m really sorry, Willow,” he whispers, squeezing my hand tighter. “I feel… I’m not one to feel bad usually but I feel fucking awful right now.”

I turn to look at him in the truck, chewing on the corner of my mouth.

“I know you are,” I breathe and place my hand over his, holding him in place. “Old people are crazy… but… maybe your grandmother was right.”

His light brown eyes scan my face in the darkness, and I wonder what he sees in the shadows of my profile.

“I’ve done bad things, Nokosi, when I die I know I’m not going to heaven and I’ve made my peace with that.” My voice is but a whisper in the silence.

“I’m sure you did what you had to do, Willow.”

I shake my head sadly. “I didn’t. I did a lot that I never had to do.”

“Maybe you can redeem yourself before… before you go?” His hand is still on mine, on my thigh, and I’m still coiling inside. I’ve never felt like this before.

I shift in my seat and feel his fingertips brush my inner thigh. My entire body shivers, my soul lights a fire that hasn’t burned for so long.

This isn’t okay. I don’t want to feel this way. Not about him, not about anybody.

He has his hooks in my sister, but not me. No…

I could do it now. I could end him and take my sister away forever… but she’d never forgive me, would she?

Because I’m finally starting to understand what she sees in him.

“There’s no redeeming me…”

He wets his lips gently, eyes still on mine. “Was she right?”

“About?”

“About you wanting to hurt me?”

I laugh lightly and look ahead again. The silence stretches between us endlessly. “Do you love my sister?”

“I—”

“Do you love her?” I demand, my lips a flat line. “Would you protect her with your life?”

He takes a moment and clicks his tongue against his palate, then he sighs and rubs his face with both hands, releasing my thigh to do so, making me feel cold and alone again. “Love is… not something I understand… or something I ever understood. I get familial love for my sibling and father. I get loss love for the mother I never knew but even that’s shadowed by guilt over the fact I killed her as she birthed me. But soppy love between two people that hardly know each other, it’s not something I ever believed in or wanted. When I met your sister I thought…”

He laughs gently and looks away.

“I thought she was a pain in the ass, and I’d take what I could while she let me. But I don’t know… now I feel like if she ever walks away from me I’ll be a shadow of the person I am now. I’m young, I get told this by Anetúte a lot. But not so young that I can’t feel a connection to her and know what it means.” He smiles at me, slightly embarrassed. “And I know without a doubt that I would die for her before I ever let anybody take her from me. And I know that as much as she’ll deny it, she’d die for me too. There are only a handful of people in my life, even less so, that I would trust with my very soul, your sister is one of them. She was made for me, I don’t care how fucked up that sounds. She was made for me and she is mine.”

Fuck…

“So,” he continues, grinning at me now, pink tinging his cinnamon-colored cheeks. “Was Elisi correct in thinking you want to hurt me?”

I stare at him, openmouthed like a fish, eyes brimming with tears. His words affected me more than I’d ever like to admit. My sister is safe. My sister is loved. My sister loves.

This is the moment I’ll remember forever, until my body is no more and my memories are all I have in the abyss.

“Willow?” he urges, looking nervous now.

I wipe away a stray tear that trickles down my cheek. “I don’t want to hurt you, Nokosi.” He looks relieved by that fact. But then I finish, “I want to kiss you.”



***



Lilith

I hold back my sister’s hair as she vomits into the basin. She’s deteriorating at a rapid pace and Mom is worried. She wants to take her to a hospice to live out her final days, but I just can’t bear it.

“Go,” Willow tells me when she’s stopped puking and is feeling a bit better. “Mom’s got me. Just go.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You’ve been planning this beach trip for days. Please just go,” she gives me a strong shove and grins at me. “Please… it would make me happy if you would go.”

“Let me get you comfortable first.”

Mom takes her other arm and we guide her to bed where I set her up with her laptop and phone.

Mom sits by her bedside, not looking at me, unspeaking. She’s not taking this well.

“I should stay.”

“No!” Willow yells and I can tell I’ve annoyed her. “Just go. Be with Nok. You’ve abandoned him enough for me lately.”

I’m surprised she’s suddenly on his side, up until now she has only ever spoken about him with animosity. I wonder what changed. Maybe she’s finally willing to stay?

“Besides, I’ve got shit to figure out. I don’t need you breathing down my neck.”

“What shit?”

The look she gives me has me raising my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay… sorry I asked.” But then I panic and swing back around. “Wait… please don’t tell me you’re going to…”

“No,” she replies, frowning. “Nothing like that. It’s just something I need to know about. Something unrelated.”

Satisfied with her answer, I head out. My sister has never been a liar, not with me. She evades the truth but she doesn’t lie. I trust her that much. That and as selfish as it is, I really want to go to the beach.

It’s cold, I mean, it’s February so of course it is, but they like to build a bonfire with driftwood and some of them surf while the rest of us watch. Though I can see myself surfing if we can rent a wetsuit. I’ve never surfed before and I love a thrill.

He’s outside, leaning against the side of his truck waiting for me, looking at the invisible watch on his wrist.

“Impatient,” I admonish, leaning into him to kiss his lips.

Grinning, he wags his brows, opens the door for me, and smacks my ass as I climb inside.

I love it when he does that.

“If only we had bikini weather.” Nokosi sighs heavily once in his own seat. His eyes linger on my breasts which are hidden behind two layers, my white top that gets floaty at my stomach, and my thick bra that makes my tits look a bit rounder.

“You see me in my underwear all the time,” I point out, helping myself to his soda in the cup holder below the stereo.

He snatches it from me. “It’s not the same as a bikini.”

My head hits the headrest as I laugh. “It’s exactly the same thing.”

“Agree to disagree,” he declares with extra elongation of each word. His hand goes to my thigh. “How’s your sister?”

“Not good today, but I think it’s because of all the sneaking out she’s been doing.” His hand on my thigh squeezes harder for a moment. That’s weird. Is it a reaction to what I’m saying or is it meant to be comforting?

“Sneaking out?”

I think she’s up to something, which worries me, but I also don’t want to start questioning her if she’s getting herself back into the world. She’s been so afraid of connecting with people for so long. Could this finally be it? Could she be healing? Or is she continuing the legacy I was hoping she’d leave behind? “Yeah, she’s a hermit… she’s terrified of people.”

“Why?” he asks gently, giving my thigh a different kind of squeeze this time.

“Not today, Nok. I don’t want to ruin the day.”

“But you’ll tell me?”

I think about it for a moment, considering it. It’d be nice to speak to somebody about it, but then it’d lead to questions I can’t answer. Questions that could put my sister in danger.

“If I tell you,” I say, looking at him. “At any point… do I have your word, on your life, that you won’t ask me any questions.”

He frowns, his eyes ahead as he navigates the car with ease. I love driving with him. I just love being near him. He’s an anchor to my calm. He helps keep me grounded.

“Because if I don’t have your word, I won’t give you even one.”

“No questions? Not one?”

“No. Not one.”

“That’s going to be a hard promise to keep.”

I nod with understanding. “Trust me, I know.”