to be barred from ballet classes, lest she launch into a loud running commentary on the male gaze and female self-suppression. Bea had learned this to her cost when she’d begged for ballet lessons at age five and, finally consenting, her mamá had handed out copies to the other mothers of How to Self-Hate Your Way to a Size Six, an ironic self-help book she’d written and had published by a small feminist publisher.
“You think sympathy is a virtue,” her mamá said. “It isn’t. In a war, do you think the sympathetic will survive? Or do you think they’ll be wiped out by the ruthless, the cold-blooded, and the cutthroat? ¿Entiendes? Animals suffer none of this—nature is ‘red in tooth and claw’—remember that.”
“Sí, Mamá,” Bea said, glancing down at the dead and unctuous snail. “But why do I have to fight a war? Why can’t I just live like other people and—”
Her mamá’s falcon features sharpened and she fixed Bea with furious eyes. “Because, thank the Devil, you’re not normal,” she said. “You’ve been born with skills and strengths unparalleled in mere mortals. And how will you use those unique talents? Will you squander them? Or will you support your father’s great mission to purify the human race?” Cleo handed Bea the rock. “Come now, niña, enough stalling.”
Bea held the rock above the next victim, making a too-slow bid for freedom across the stone-slabbed terrace. She watched it, studying the lengthening trail of slime the retreating snail left in its wake.
“¡Por amor al . . . demonio!” Cleo reached out to pinch her daughter’s chin between forefinger and thumb. “We’ll stay here all day until you do it, so you may as well get it over with now.”
“Ow.” Bea squirmed. “Stop, that hurts.”
Her mamá squeezed harder. “I’m doing this for your own good. You don’t want to be unprepared when it comes to the Choosing, trust me.”
Bea clenched her teeth, glaring at her mamá, thinking how deceptively beautiful she was—half Spanish, half Colombian—so no one would have guessed at the cruelty concealed within.
“I won’t be there to protect you, niña.” Cleo let her daughter go. “You’ll have to fight for yourself.”
Bea said nothing.
“That’s why you need to harden your heart now. If you can’t kill a snail, then how are you going to kill a man?”
“I still don’t understand why I must kill a man,” Bea said. “What’s the point? If we are Father’s daughters and they’re his soldiers, why does he make us fight each other? I don’t—”
Cleo waved her hand, as if the inevitable slaughter of either daughters or soldiers was of no matter. “Because he only wants the strongest to join his army, of course. It’s a test—like a job interview. ¿Entiendes?”
Bea nodded. Not because she did, since she didn’t, but because she was sick of it all and wished she’d never have to hear any more about it ever again. She wanted to be an adult; she wanted to make her own choices about her life. So, for all her mamá’s scaremongering, Bea looked forward to her eighteenth birthday like a prisoner looked forward to parole.
Leo
“What happens after we die?”
“I don’t know,” his mother said. “Some people think we go to heaven. Others believe in reincarnation, but most don’t believe in anything at—”
“What’s reincarnation?” Leo asked.
“It’s the belief that we lead many lives. That, after we die, we’re born again and again as another soul.” His mother smiled. “In fact, when you were little, soon after you learned to talk, you used to tell me that you’d lived before.”
Leo sat up, wriggling out of his blankets. “I did?”
“Oh, no, young man,” his mother said, tucking him up again. “I’m not falling for that old trick again. It’s time for bed.”
“Please, Mummy,” Leo whined. “Please tell me, just for five minutes. Please . . .”
His mother sighed. “All right, but then it’s lights out. Okay?”
Leo nodded. “Promise.”
“Well, when you were about three years old, you used to tell me about your other life as a star.”
Leo frowned. “A star?”
His mother nodded. “You were very earnest about the whole thing and gave me plenty of details. You answered every question I asked. I was most impressed.”
“You didn’t think I was mad?”
“No, I only thought you were an excellent storyteller. I thought one day you might grow up to be a writer.” His mother bent down to kiss his cheek. “Sometimes I still do,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell your