I don’t regret any of it, sha. I did what made me happy, whatever filled me up inside. I even remember one time, before I arrived, when Ada was talking to some friends in Virginia and she said, “You know, I’m glad that I haven’t started having sex yet.”

Her friends had laughed. “How come?” they asked, and Ada shrugged.

“It’s just that if I start, I know how I’ll get,” she said. It’s like she knew what kind of hunger I would arrive with, the way I would release it on an unprepared world if I ever made it past the veil. I don’t know if she would have ever let me out, or if she had, if that would have been me, or something else. But I came into the world the way I did because of Soren, and whatever chance I had of being anything else was lost in that. I was a child of trauma; my birth was on top of a scream and I was baptized in blood. By the time Ada brought me to Georgia, I was ready to consume everything I touched.

I started with Itohan’s younger brother. He was tall and beautiful, with smooth dark skin wrapped over muscle, but more importantly, he was there and it was easy. This was the first lesson I had learned from the third birth, about human men. I knew what they valued, I knew where they wanted to be, and I knew what price they would pay for a small death. So I fucked him on the short carpet of Itohan’s apartment, a few feet away from the kitchenette where Ada ate frozen Tampico that she had mashed up in a plastic cup. I could almost see her standing aside as I used her body, stabbing the orange cubes with a metal teaspoon, the taste bringing Nigeria back into her mouth, memories of Fan-Orange she used to buy from the yogurt vendors who rode bicycles past her secondary school. I didn’t care about her nostalgia; I had only been a seed then, it was a different world. My world now was the boy above and beneath me. I fucked him in the suburbs on the plain sheets of his bed, running Ada’s fingernails down the tightness of his chest and stomach, amazed at how he could come and still stay hard. He snuck into the guest room of his mother’s house to fuck me, where I cracked my hips open and faced away from him, and that was the only time I came.

Ada was never there. I had already promised; she would never be there, not again. It was my job to protect her. But I liked Itohan’s brother, and I liked choosing a body for the first time. Soren didn’t count—no one chose him. So I used Ada’s face and practiced smiles on it, and to my surprise, Itohan’s family couldn’t tell the difference. I was that good. It’s not difficult to pretend to be someone you’ve been watching since she was born, but I was a little insulted to be mistaken for Ada. She was so gullible: she went and threw herself right into the arms of people who broke her; she would see danger and instead of avoiding it like a person with sense, she would walk behind its teeth. As if she would be safe. As if her childhood shouldn’t have taught her better. I refuse to believe that I looked anything like her—it must have been the humans who just couldn’t tell the difference. Me, I made my mouth as red as silk, I turned my eyes black, and I made sure no one could trick me. When I did cruel things, I did them with my eyes open. I’ve never been ashamed—I always looked at myself without blinking. But as much as Ada loved me, she avoided meeting my gaze. We would both materialize in her mind, the marble room, cool veined white walls and floors, and she would look away. It was understandable: I had arrived and I was so deep inside her, locked into her flesh, moving her muscles. Suddenly she had to share with something she couldn’t control. I understood, but at the same time, it wasn’t my problem.

I was selfish back then. You can’t really blame me—it was my first time having a body. Humans don’t remember the time before they had bodies, so they take things for granted, but I didn’t. I remembered not being myself, just being a piece of a cloud. I was careless with her body, sha, not thinking about the responsibilities of having flesh. Consequences were a thing that happened to humans, not to me. This was their world. I wasn’t even really here. It’s no excuse—I know I wasn’t fair to Ada—but it was still a reason.

The first few times with Itohan’s brother, he didn’t wear a condom. When Ada brought it up, he was reluctant, he didn’t want to go and buy them.

“Why on earth not?” Ada asked.

He looked uncomfortable. “If I buy them then it’s like I know I’m going to sin, like I’m planning to go and have sex.”

Ada stared at him. Inside her head, in the marble room, I came up and stood at her shoulder. We were thinking the exact same thing, and in that moment, it pulled us together, rippling electric.

I leaned over and spoke to her. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She forgot to ignore me this time. “Be quiet. You know how religious they are.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense! He knows he’s going to do it, so why is he pretending?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. He was only a human—what else could I expect, realistically? He wanted to pretend he was somehow better than he knew he was; he wasn’t ready to throw himself into sin. Humans find it easier to just lie and lie to themselves.

Ada made him get the condoms anyway, and he told her how awkward it had been when the cashier asked him what size he needed. I watched him tell the story, his mouth split into a shy smile through full lips, and I listened to Ada say whatever she was saying to him. Honestly speaking, I didn’t care about the condoms, but then again, it wasn’t my body. I should’ve cared, though, at least for Ada’s sake.