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K IDAN A DANE GAVE HERSELF EIGHT MONTHS TO DIE.

The schedule was quite generous, if she was being honest. Two months would have sufficed for the violent act. The extension was a poor attempt at a dream. A dream she wouldn’t entertain if she wasn’t currently dehydrated and fading in and out of her room.

She wanted to live with her sister again inside that odd little house. Live in a time when innocence didn’t need to be proved at every turn. That last thought pulled her out of her haze, made her chuckle. She sounded wronged and, if she dared think it, a victim.

Her laughter rattled again, a clogged chimney inside her chest sounding painful and raw. How long had it been since she’d spoken? The curtains remained closed because of the cameras, so a bulb had become her only source of light. Like any artificial sun, it overheated and burned the air around it, forcing her to work half naked on the apartment floor.

Sweat gathered on her dark forehead now, wetting the file she was reading, her folded leg buried somewhere in the swarm of papers. She couldn’t afford to switch off the light. Not when there was so much to do. Not when she was this close. In Kidan’s mind, she was trapped in one never-ending night and hell was not dissimilar to this.

Movement—she needed movement. She stood too fast, stumbling, and blood rushed to her folded leg, paralyzing her. She shook off the numbness and walked to the small kitchen.

Murderer.

The word jumped from the newspaper article plastered on her fridge, branded above the image of a Black girl.

Kidan Adane was a murderer. She waited for the prickle of remorse she should have felt at those words. She even pinched her mouth and scrunched her nose, trying to force the emotion out of herself. But just like that fiery night, she failed to cry. She waited for a sliver of humanity to slip through. She was completely dry. A statue carved out of obsidian.

Kidan poured herself a drink. The shutter clicks of a camera snapped, accompanied by tiny flashes of light. She swung sharply to the window, drink nearly slipping from her grasp. The curtains remained drawn, but the reporters clawed at the gaps, like seagulls scratching for bread.

Be patient , she thought.

It would all be clear soon. In eight months, exactly. That was when her trial date was set. Kidan had no plan to attend. Long before any of it, her confession would be found taped to the underside of her bed and the violent workings of her mind unveiled for all.

The camera flashed again, making her wince. It was unlikely they could get her picture, but maybe she should put on clothes. It wasn’t her full chest or her wide hips that she wanted to hide. A racy picture of her might actually work in her favor: a gross violation of her privacy making the rounds. It didn’t sound bad at all. She shook her head. There she was again, thinking of ways she could manipulate sympathy.

She met her reflection, and a thin, frail voice slipped out of her. “You are not like them. You are not like them.”

Them.

Aunt Silia called them dranaics. Vampires.

Despite the heat of the apartment walls, Kidan shivered. Dranaics appeared no different from humans. It was the very source of all her disturbance. Evil shouldn’t go around in human skin. It was a desecration.

Kidan loathed her aunt. Loathed her inaction. She had waited too long to rescue them from that vile society. Maybe then evil wouldn’t have seeped into Kidan as a child. June had fared better, but Kidan had feasted on it. Her morbid curiosity with death, her sick fascination with and collection of films depicting its art, and now committing the final act itself—all this came from vampires. If she could dig into her chest and pull out her twisted heart right now, she would.

Eight months.

Relief punctured through with those two words. All she had to do was wait eight months to die. Make sure June was found. Bear this wretched existence a little longer.

A picture of June beamed at her from her open laptop. They looked nothing alike, despite being born within minutes of each other. June’s disappearance received no coverage, not even a whisper in the neighborhood. Where would Kidan be if these reporters had hunted for her lost sister the way they hunted her? No, Black girls had to commit horrifying acts to earn the spotlight.

The papers on her floor were the frenzied tracking of a place called Uxlay University. Kidan had searched for twelve months and twenty days. Her eyes darted to the recording taped under her bed, and the temperature of the room dropped. It held the last, tortured conversation between Kidan and her victim.

Better , she thought, almost smiling. She was assigning blame where it needed to go. Kidan’s victim.

The recording held the proof, the name of the person—no, animal—responsible for taking June. It was only a matter of finding the fucking place. And him.

Kidan squatted and studied the trail of her search. She reached for a pen, pulled off the cap with her teeth, and started another letter to Aunt Silia, who never wrote back.

If there was even the slimmest chance of finding June again, she’d spend the rest of her life writing.

Her fingers tensed, digging into her palms. Thin arcs of blood irritated her skin. With her forefinger, she traced a continuous square inside her palm. Nerves. She recognized the emotion. So she wasn’t completely lost yet. The jagged mirror across the room cut an ugly shape along her dark throat. A cool, unimpressed expression gazed back. If only she could master crying before her trial, the world might forgive her. She might live longer.

Cry , she ordered her image.

Why? it asked. You would do it again.

An hour later, once the reporters outside left, Kidan dressed in a large hoodie, grabbed her earbuds, and locked her small apartment. She’d moved here for precisely one reason.

Across the street, at the corner of Longway and St. Albans Streets, waited a single parcel locker. One key belonged to Kidan, the other to Aunt Silia, who resided in Uxlay. After Kidan deposited each of her letters, she’d hide and wait. Sometimes she’d wait for days, sleeping in the café nearby or the alley, but someone would always come and take her letters. Each time, the hooded figure escaped Kidan, either climbing over the park gates with frightening strength or disappearing into traffic.

Every week she played this cat and mouse game. Aunt Silia was reading her letters but, for some messed-up reason, kept ignoring her.

After she put the new letter into the empty locker, Kidan went to wait by the bus stop, a new spot, and hoped blending in with the passengers would give her enough time to identify the messenger.

As she waited, June’s sweet voice crackled through her earbuds. Kidan’s world jerked into balance.

“Hi,” her sister whispered. “I don’t really know how to start this, so I’m just going to say a generic intro.”

June made fifteen videos before she disappeared. This was the first, and she’d been fourteen. Kidan listened to the videos daily, except for the last one. That one she could only bear listening to once before deleting it so it wouldn’t hurt her.

Inside her pockets, her fingers traced the shape of a triangle, enjoying the scratching sound it made. The triangle changed to a square when June mentioned Kidan in the video.

Kidan’s attention never strayed from the parcel locker, but there was a shadow in the corner of her eye, unmoving.

A woman under the crooked branch of a tree. Her skin was an aged bronze in the streetlight, and she wore a dark green skirt paired with a slicked bun.

The woman stood remarkably still, no different from a tawny owl perched on a ledge, staring right at her.

The back of Kidan’s neck prickled. She had the oddest sensation that this woman, whoever she was, had been waiting for her.