Just because she had an affinity for that shadow energy, drew it to herself unintentionally, magnetically, didn’t make it hers. She hadn’t asked for it, no more than the shadow energy had asked to be used. They were stuck together, along for the vengeful ride.

Look, Rebeka. Wasn’t it what their mother was always telling her? (Had always told her, she corrected herself.) Look at what’s in front of your face. Stop trying to get ahead of yourself—you’ll only trip over your own feet.

It was true. As a little girl back when they’d attend synagogue on the High Holy Days, she was always squirming, waiting for the closing prayer, eager to rush out and feel the cool Berlin air on her face, the possibilities of the empty night ahead like a gulp from a crystal mountain stream. By the time they banned Jews from attending movie theaters and concert halls, she’d already charted a different life for herself. Business school in Switzerland, accounting classes, all the ways she would take over their butcher shop and turn it into a bustling enterprise, maybe somewhere other than the hateful streets of Berlin, their shop becoming a good thing instead of a leash that kept snapping her parents back.

But her visions weren’t enough to stop the night of smashed windows, of their neighbors being marched through the streets like cattle. Their flight to Luxembourg hadn’t been part of her plans. While their uncle tended his crops and Ari rolled up his sleeves to enjoy their new life, she felt ready to burst out of the too-tight cocoon of her skin. Every day she tried to formulate a new plan, bringing her parents news of a ship bound for America or signs that London was pushing back the Blitz, and wouldn’t it be better if they found something more permanent, somewhere they could truly begin again? She was so tired of being derailed, her plans thrown out of gear, so that sometimes she couldn’t even see what was staring back at her from the darkness, from that humming aura that crowded her sight and tunneled her into another world . . .

She stopped, and breathed, and looked, and felt.

Humid air, swampy and fetid with the endless cycle of vegetation flourishing and dying and rotting and feeding life anew. A rumble in the earth, the steady percussive beat of giant feet or hooves or claws in the distance. Look, Rebeka. Look and see what’s watching you.

She forced her gaze to lift.

In the distance, flickering. A faceless thing, a behemoth hunched down like a massive mountain, calling her, begging her to look. But her stomach tightened every time she tried.

The darkness shifted. Swallowed her. Became infinity.