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K IDAN THREW THE ADMISSION LETTER ONTO HER CLUTTERED FLOOR and kicked the pyramid of noodle cups she’d made in one corner. There wasn’t enough space for them to scatter, so they bounced off the wall and hit her shin. Gently, she sank to the floor and hung her head, braids curtaining her. The room pressed in until she grew uncomfortably aware of her body and its labored efforts to breathe. Paint peeled in the corner of the tight space, the toilet worked only when other renters didn’t overuse it, and there was a mysterious stain on the carpet that reeked even after being drowned in bleach. The heat in this place could fry a scorpion. She couldn’t take another day of this. Not without her sister. Absentmindedly, she ran her finger along the ridge of her butterfly bracelet. She wanted to go home. Even if it was that cardboard box of a home.

Houses reminded Kidan of a feral pet. They were unclean, often infested, and no matter what decoration was placed in them, they never liked to be owned. Not truly. She found the idea that they rushed to others to feed them when one slacked a horrible disloyalty. Their foster mother, Mama Anoet, had agreed, and so, even when they were young, June and Kidan had gone into the business of making money to pay the rent. By the time she was ten, Kidan was selling the weird bracelets she made, and June baked her addictive, bite-size doughnuts. The memory made her mouth water, then go dry.

With stiff fingers, she reached for her parents’ and aunt’s will. Fire shot through her veins with each traitorous word. Her family knew vampires were dangerous. Why tear June and Kidan away from everything they knew, erase their identities, and beggar them if that wasn’t the case? In her softest moments, Kidan used to wait for her parents to appear at Mama Anoet’s door, ready to run away together with them. She had to forgive them for this failure, because they’d died. This inheritance could have been the thing to protect Kidan and her sister, but instead they’d done the unthinkable.

They’d left everything to him.

The vampire’s name was signed, the s curling itself like a snake.

Susenyos Sagad.

Kidan heard her victim’s pleas echoing around the room and inside her chest.

“Susenyos Sagad! That’s his name. He… he took her.”

She scratched a shape against the carpet, the flesh of her finger burning against the rough fabric. Again, and again and again. A triangle imprinted itself on the carpet. Good. Her mind and body were in sync. There was only pure white fury in regard to Susenyos Sagad.

Sometimes, Kidan’s mind hid things from her, and only her fingers could translate them. Triangles for anger. Squares for when the fear became too much, and circles for moments of joy.

Ever since she was a child, she’d used these symbols to unravel her thoughts.

She could barely understand the entirety of the will with the blocked-out sections. Dean Faris had picked the parts of Uxlay she wanted to share. What had she left out?

Laws of Inheriting a House

A vampire inheritor must occupy a Family House for a consecutive set of twenty-eight days in solitude so the will becomes rocis, that is, in effect.

Kidan read it again. Twenty-eight days. How long had it been since her aunt had died? A week? Two weeks? A sickening image of Susenyos Sagad sitting at a dinner table with June spread out as the meal, counting the days until he’d fully occupy the house, turned her stomach.

Rejection of the Will

If a human descendant of a Family House wishes to inherit, they must attend Uxlay University and receive education in human and vampire coexistence.

If the human descendant has not yet graduated but wishes to lay claim to the house, they can take shelter in their Family House during their study of Dranacti.

Dean Faris had highlighted the last line. A loophole: Stay in the house to interrupt the vampire’s solitary occupation. Kidan would have to live with him. Acid filled her mouth.

She stood and parted the curtains slightly, glimpsing a reporter and his camera, currently distracted by a smoke break. Out of habit, her eyes slid to the parcel locker.

Someone was there. Opening the locker. Taking out her letter. Kidan jerked to attention.

“Hey!”

The moment the word left her mouth, she was out the door, taking the stairs three at a time. When she burst outside, the figure was already gone.

“Fuck!” Her scream startled an old lady and captured the attention of the reporter.

He ran toward her, and she hurried across the street to the locker. She pulled the key from around her neck, fumbling to unlock it.

A thin man with sour breath, the reporter flashed his camera near her. Her instincts were to shove it down his throat, but remarkably, she restrained herself.

“Kidan, neighbors heard what happened. Did you plan this for a long time?”

She ignored him. Because for the first time in years, something had been left in the locker—a bound book. Her fingers shook as she tucked the heavy book under her arm, secured the locker, and quickly crossed back. The reporter was on her heels. Just when she was about to slam the door, he shouted.

“What does killing a member of your own community feel like?”

Kidan’s gaze lifted from the ground and stared straight at the camera. For a moment, she was June, fourteen and hiding in Mama Anoet’s bathroom, itching to tell the world all the things that made her afraid.

Evil , she thought. That was what it felt like. And all evil must die.