It’s a silly thought but it’s a true one and I almost can’t breathe.
“What is she going to do?” I ask quietly.
“You’ll see,” he replies.
“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.”