Once the fire dies in the bowl, Arti lifts Oshhe’s chin and pours the thick black remnants down his throat. “I await your grace,” she bows her head. “Send me your servant.”
A strong wind blows my braids across my face. As a foul odor overwhelms the air, I slide to the floor and wrap my arms around my knees. My head swims as a sensation of prying eyes overcomes me. The hot breath of the unseen demon touches my lips. I recoil against the stone wall until it digs into my flesh.
Oshhe’s back arches, almost as if it’ll crack in two. Then he collapses and moves in fits and jerks. Tar foams from his lips; his face twists in pain. When he screams, two voices come from his mouth. One that is my father’s and one that is primordial and dark like the belly of a murky well. He struggles to sit up, his breathing labored. His spine curves so much that his head hangs limp between his shoulders. “The souls . . .”
His voice splits again, both tones grating against my ears. “Give them to me.”
“Take them yourself, Shezmu,” Arti spits. “I don’t answer to you.”
Shezmu lifts his face, my father’s face. “A tribal witch . . . how interesting.”
His eyes glow sickly green. The demon from my vision—her eyes were the same.
Sweat drips down Shezmu’s forehead as he turns to the children and their kas. He reaches his hand to them and the tops of the jars fall away. I scream as their kas drift to the demon’s open mouth—a mouth wider than should be possible.
Like a great serpent, Shezmu eats the children’s souls. I want to look away, but I can’t. I can’t stop staring, tears lapping down my cheeks. Kofi still has that crooked grin on his lips as his ka flows up from the jar. He doesn’t feel it. He’s at peace. The thought stabs me in my heart. His ka funnels to Shezmu, and Kofi’s smile fades. The lines of his forehead smooth until all the muscles in his face fall completely still. I beat my fists against the stone, wishing it was the demon instead. Kofi’s chest rises and falls and . . . stops.
I can’t breathe. The room tilts. He’s gone. My pretend-brother is gone. I couldn’t save him.
Sweat glistens upon Arti’s brow, her face blanched. She is a blur of shadows through my tears. “You will grant me a favor in return for this small gift.”
Shezmu’s spine cracks as he straightens up. “Unless you’ve found a way to give me a permanent body, I have no use for you.” He scowls at her, then with a look of indignation, he adds, “I’m not strong enough to expel the soul from this one.”
I release the air aching in my lungs. My father will be okay; he’ll come back to me.
Arti clucks her tongue. “I can set the Demon King free.”
“Tell us how,” Shezmu commands, his voices both a high-pitched screech and my father’s deep tenor.
“If it were as easy as that, I wouldn’t need you.” Arti grimaces and looks down her nose at him. “We need magic that is more powerful than you or I have. Only demon magic and Heka’s combined is strong enough. I’m in a position to collect a debt on behalf of the tribes who share their souls with Heka in return for the gift of his magic. I am the true Mulani chieftain. Heka will answer my call.”
A sharp pain cuts across my head. Each year at the Blood Moon Festival, the Mulani chieftain calls Heka down from the sky to the tribal lands. No other person, not even the other edam, can call upon him. For Heka first bestowed his gift upon a Mulani woman a millennium ago—and the Mulani became his emissary. Why would he answer Arti now when she begged him for help before and he didn’t come? She’s been gone from the tribal lands a long time, but could it be that when she left, she never stopped being the Mulani’s true chieftain?
Heka can’t answer her now—a traitor to his name, to her people, a servant of the Demon King. But Heka isn’t an orisha, and he doesn’t have a reason to despise the demons. He came to our world and gave us magic four thousand years after the war. He can’t help her if he knows what she intends and the consequences of releasing the Demon King’s ka. I don’t understand why she wants to do this. As a seer at the Almighty Temple—the orishas’ temple—she knows the history of the war better than anyone. She knows the devastation the Demon King will wreak upon the world. But if the Demon King has been her confidant all these years, she doesn’t believe it.
“I’m listening, tribal witch.” Shezmu narrows his eyes at her. “What do you propose?”
“While you inhabit my husband’s body, you will give me a daughter.”
I cover my mouth to cut off another scream, and my pulse thunders in my ears. Arti can’t be asking something so vile, something impossible. She shouldn’t be able to conjure a demon if the orishas killed the entire race. But the scripts in the Hall of Orishas got it very wrong. That much is obvious now. I shake my head, but denying the truth won’t make it go away.
“You know that I can’t.” Shezmu grumbles between gritted teeth. “None of us are strong enough in this state.”
Arti steps closer to him. “With the full glory of Heka’s magic you can.”
Shezmu breaks into a cold, unfeeling smile.
Conjuring the demon has stretched Arti’s magic too thin, and there’s slack in the rope that tethers me to her. Freedom taunts me like a mirage shifting in desert haze. “Don’t do it. She’ll find a way to cross you too.” I spit out the words against an unwilling tongue.
“She’s a curious one,” Shezmu says. “She hides her secrets. I want her soul too.”
“Out of the question!” Arti snaps, her magic sparking in flashes of lightning.
Shezmu laughs. “Touchy, touchy, tribal witch.”
What he says doesn’t make sense—but I think of my own gifts, the ones that I’ve brushed off as weak and unhelpful. My mind resists the influence of magic, and for once I’m relieved that it does.
I don’t know why my mother cares about my soul, when I’m so much of a disappointment, so much that she wants another daughter. Shame simmers in my belly as I push back more tears.
“I’ve been told you haven’t the sense to honor a deal unless you’re bound,” Arti tells the demon.
Shezmu’s green eyes brighten with amusement. “You have spoken to my master.”
Arti snaps her fingers, and another flutter of her magic brushes against my skin. “Then I bind you to Arrah. Trick me and be forever trapped in her shadow.”
“I have terms,” Shezmu counters. “Should you fail, I will consume your ka and hers too.”
“I agree to your terms,” Arti answers without hesitation. “I will not fail.”
The demon smiles again, knowing that either way he has won. Arti smiles too. She’ll have no intention of honoring her promise should she fail; she would’ve planned for that contingency, too. But I don’t care about my ka right now . . . Let the demon have it if it means stopping my mother.
Arti raises her arms to the ceiling and speaks in a terrible voice that quakes through my body. “I call upon the son of he who gave birth to the stars. He who was born before his mother yet existed. He who belonged to the universe before orishas had yet come into being. Descend upon us, Heka. Come so you might pay your debt to the tribal people, who share their souls with you so that you may reveal your magic. I compel you on the pact you made. Create for me your prestige. I am the rightful Mulani chieftain; you must heed my words.”