Dirt and moisture seep into my palms and knees. When I push back, resting my backside on crossed ankles, there’s nowhere to wipe the grime off my hands. My fingers curl into fists. I’m tired of being manhandled by Chanticos. Let them put a final end to our battle tonight. I won’t carry this impotent hate anymore. Everything is an annoyance, the dirt, the scent of jasmine in their garden; even the sound of their water feature makes me want to dig out their eyes with chopsticks.

Adriana Chantico arrives on the same path Galen took to bring me here. She carries a man draped in a fur cloak and wearing gladiator sandals. His bare ass peek-a-boos with each of her footfalls. It’s my brother, but I’m more surprised by how the five-foot-five-inch woman carries my six-foot twin with no effort at all.

She deposits Anwar beside me. Her smile is wicked. Her skin luminous, as though internally lit.

Anwar scrambles backward. Then, seeing me, dives to throw his arms around my neck. “This is how a house dies. Yes, Lu?” he says with enough bravado to make me proud.

“Yes.” I kiss his cheek. “I’m glad I’m going with you.”

“Well, hell,” he says, examining his manicure before biting his thumb. “We arrived together. We might as well do-si-do.”

A glow at the edge of my vision draws my attention away from our dysfunctional I-love-yous. Headed by Santiago, the three Chanticos step down from the paved patio behind their house as a unit. Galen sits down and rests an elbow over his knee. Adriana throws out her arms in a stretch and perches on the side of a lawn chair. Santiago glares.

A gasp escapes my brother. I know the feeling. The Chanticos have changed and they’re putting on a grand show in vintage fashions from every era. Authentic fashions. My eye can’t be fooled. The looks are worthy of ovation, but they aren’t the reason I can’t close my mouth. Beyond the clothes, the Chanticos’ aspects have transformed. Their rapacious features are smoother, better defined, unnatural, and the three gleam, metallic gold, with shimmering oxblood eyes.

“I thought about giving a speech,” Santiago says, “but I can show you better than I could tell you.”

A fourth figure, an impossible one, exits the house and takes a seat beside Galen.

Anwar whispers to me. “Clearly, I’m acting out and you’ve had me committed. Right, Lu? Otherwise, I think you should. I cannot be looking at a young Oscar Chantico right now.”

“But you are looking at him,” I say.

This is what I know; fifty years ago our grandpapa and Oscar Chantico took up the family feud with such skill their strategies against one another are taught as a course at Pratt. When Oscar retired to Mauritius, and never returned, grandpapa mourned him. Both men were supposed to be dead now. I know my grandfather is. Yet I know Oscar Chantico is not, and the word gorgeous will need to be expanded to define him.

I’m not dense. I don’t need another example to tell me what the Chanticos are, but she walks out onto the second floor balcony. Her light is seductive and I close my eyes as her glow falls on me. The hair is longer. The ensemble—an exquisite lamé tuxedo with nothing beneath—wouldn’t have been worn in the 20s. The face, however, and the sapphire are eternally hers. My brother slumps against my shoulder. I think he fainted. Opening my eyes to check I find CeCi’s gaze on me, unreadable yet too golden to be called cold.

My awe is galling.

“Look at her,” she says. “This Nommos probably thinks we’re vampires.”

Santiago glances at the balcony and down to me. “Certainly my rival has more imagination than that.”

A delicate shrug in response. “It’s not like what we are hasn’t been featured in movies, to one extent or some other.”

“Given,” Santiago says to her. For me he expounds. “We are the children of an Aztec blood god, one of treasures, pleasure and pain—”

“Vengeance and sacrifice.” CeCi laughs. Damn me, I love the sound, and I wonder what kind of madness it is that I find comfort in being murdered by my idol, the blood goddess.

Santiago covers his face. His grimace seems self-directed but after a moment his shoulders square. As he approaches he is clearly resolute.

“I cannot do this without you,” he says.

What? I scan his face to make sense of his words.

“By ‘you’ I mean the House of Nommos. I cannot run Chantico without you.”

My hand unwittingly grips Anwar’s relaxed form. To Santiago I give my finest sneer. He approves because he smiles. “Who would push us? Who would turn our hearts to jealousy, give life meaning, make us burn?”

He slaps me. My head whips to the side with the force. I turn back to him slowly, not bothering to wipe the blood away. “But you won.”

“Winning is nothing. It is a byproduct of superiority,” Santiago says. “How could we claim to be the best if we aren’t constantly challenged by you?”

Anwar should be awake for this. Santiago Chantico has admitted we are their equals, the measure against which they prove themselves. And it’s about time.

He slaps me again. I’m too pleased to feel it.

“We are so cold, Nommos. Only blood sacrifice and our hatred of you warms us.” His lips curl. Both his canines and incisors are daggers of bone. “How could you give up? Don’t you remember our glorious battles?”

I’d standup if I were that stupid. Instead I shrug. “I wasn’t alive for most of it.”

Santiago taps a finger against his mouth and the others chuckle. CeCi calls out, “But you know our histories because of me. Don’t you, Nommos? You adore me, you live for fashion, and you love your family line. Without doubts this impasse troubles you as much as it does us.”

I adore her a little less for taunting me, but she’s right.

A silent exchange takes place between Santiago and CeCi before he looks back at me. “We cannot allow your house to die. Therefore we’ll give you time. Among other gifts.”

Galen rises and goes into the house.

White noise fills my head and I realize I’m afraid. “I don’t want your gifts,” I say.

Living forever isn’t something I crave. It’s not the blood that scares me. The risk of failing over and over again, without end, is something one lifetime makes bearable. Beyond that I couldn’t account for my sanity.

The third Chantico returns with a woman in his arms. Her body is a testimony of cuts, old and new, some scarred over, others barely healed. Santiago makes room and Galen lays her down in front of me.

I hate them, these Chanticos. I let them see it in my eyes, and embrace her, my sobs muffled by her hair. Auntie Soma. She’s alive and she paid for it.

“I regret taking her from you,” Santiago says. “I will make up for it.”

I’m tempted to believe him. He lost a great opponent when he took Soma down. “The blood transforms,” he says, “and for the first fifty years or so you’ll be able to spawn.” Adriana pretends to retch. Santiago nods and continues. “Some of your seed will bear the gift and some will not, but it is enough to begin again. To become strong and challenge us again.”

With glances at each of his siblings or kin—I don’t know what to call them—Santiago lifts his pointer finger. The nail grows and thickens, taking on the shape of a leaf blade. With it he slices a long gouge into his tongue. A drop of blood falls from the tip of the nail and flowers on the cuff of his white shirt.

Fascination overtakes my fear. He kisses Soma first and drops her to move on to my brother. After tossing Anwar away, Santiago curses, slicing his tongue again. His fingers dig into my scalp when he lifts me. His mouth seals over mine. The blood pours down my throat. It is poison, a cold venomous deluge. Santiago lets me fall. Convulsions wrack my body and I think I bite through my tongue, but there is too much hurt coming from too many places to be sure. They tricked us with all the talk of immortality and the need for our rivalry. Nothing hurts this badly without killing you. I twitch, face down in the courtyard, and accept death.

The beast, Santiago, spits and it lands centimeters from my face. I’m as disgusted as he is, so I close my eyes to it all.

Flame is the first thing I see. It is my own fireplace in the sitting room of Nommos Manor. To my left my brother sleeps, flung across a couch. His skin is now dark bronze with golden highlights, like mine. Behind me, my aunt is propped in a chair. Her scars heal over while I watch and her skin takes on the same glow as ours.

I’m the only one Santiago chose to leave sprawled on the floor. Game on, sir. I stagger to the stairs; confident my family will rise when they’re ready. In my rooms, I shake the buns from my hair and set the mass loose. A blue glint catches my eye. CeCi’s sapphire rests on my second finger, as though I’m affianced to immortality. Yes.

After a shower I put on the patterned Pucci halter dress I found on my last visit to the vintage shop. The pink ruffles, from bodice to hemline, compliment my glow and I admire the ring again. The Chanticos meant it to remind they’d ultimately won and I’d forever chase their lead. That isn’t how I see it. For me, the ring is a symbol of my succession to CeCi’s throne. The Chanticos will rue my deathless state and we’ll duel with every collection, leaving blood on the runway.