Christmas Eve. Bianca woke up that morning with a groan, her body aching, her sheets still sweaty from last night’s ordeal. She glanced at her phone, relieved that no new texts had come in. She lay there for a moment, blinking, thinking about how lucky she was to even be here today after getting mobbed by angry demons, teleporting to the djinn plane, and going across the world to Australia.

Australia, Bianca remembered with a pang. It wasn’t what she had thought it would be. She’d figured that when she went abroad, everything would click into place. That she’d instantly feel at home with her surroundings. But the plaza in front of the opera house had felt too bright and too exposed, the trees there disturbingly different from the ones here in Virginia. Where was the greenery? The lush hills and ­meadows? The feeling of not knowing anyone there, in either the city or the continent, had felt strangely discombobulating.

She had finally been a small fish in a big pond, and she did not like it. She felt ashamed over her failed jaunt around the world. Where was the cosmopolitan Bianca now? The girl who was famously going to leave Ayers and make something of herself? Hiding in Ayers, of course.

“Bianca? Estás listo?” her mamá called up.

Bianca quickly rolled back under her covers, pretending to be asleep just a little longer. Maybe if she stayed quiet, her mother wouldn’t come in to check on her.

She was not looking forward to all the Noche Buena cooking her mamá would rope her into. As an Argentinian, Alma had a strong Italian heritage, and that meant cooking the Feast of the Seven Fishes every Christmas Eve. It was tough to get seven different kinds of seafood without breaking the bank though. Bianca hoped her mamá would spare them this year and cook only one or two kinds of fish.

Christmas was a Christian holiday, and her ­mother’s domain. After celebrating Shab-e Yalda last week, a Zoroastrian holiday from before Persia converted to Islam, Bianca found it easy to switch between the two. Spanish and Persian. Christian and Zoroastrian. Argentinian and Iranian. Having her mother home from work this week meant cor­tados instead of chai, panqueques con dulce de leche instead of flatbread and feta cheese for breakfast. Her mouth watered, her stomach weighing the pros and cons of eating a good breakfast against being forced into Christmas chores.

She shifted in bed, hearing dry leaves and twigs crunch beneath her. She’d been so exhausted that she’d collapsed into her sheets, not bothering to take off her clothes, or, it seemed, the pile of leaves that had stuck to her from the forest bonfire. She sighed, her mind racing with everything she was up against now.

The fact that no djinn had breached their unprotected home before she could put up any wards seemed like a Christmas miracle. Maybe the djinn were too busy licking their wounds after her sister basically torched them. She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. She had all the tools she needed. Now it was just time to trim their house like a bizarre Christmas tree.

Bianca slowly got out of bed and opened her drawer.

Inside were the surplus anti-djinn accessories she’d purchased online. Evil eye pendants. Tasbihs. Esfand. Dates were another recommendation she’d learned about, but they’d been hard to find — the local grocery store didn’t seem to carry them. Pure iron rings were surprisingly expensive, so she’d had to make do. She hung an evil eye pendant over her bedroom door, and again over her window, using duct tape to hold them up. She did the same with Leila’s door, assuming that if iron didn’t affect her now, an evil eye wouldn’t, either.

Slowly, she walked down the stairs, careful not to stir her mother into the chore-addled frenzy she’d enter soon enough. Bianca laced up her boots, zipped up her jacket, and slipped out the front door. She had a package of loose esfand and began crushing the dried leaves and seeds between her finger­tips, the cold making her hands ache. Slowly, slowly, she made a thin line around their home, pouring the small seeds of wild rue like gunpowder for a fuse.

Once the first bag of esfand ran out, she opened the next one. By the time she made it all the way around the house, she couldn’t feel her fingers. She ran back inside, sticking another evil eye pendant above the front door. She left a tasbih that looked so much like her dad’s that she hoped he wouldn’t notice it in the bowl of keys by the coat hooks.

Her mamá’s voice rang through the house. “Bianca? Is that you? Help me get the cartilage out of the squid!”

Great.

Bianca sighed and walked over to the kitchen. She hoped Leila would wake up soon and help. Plus, she wanted to talk to her about last night.

Mamá stood at the sink, her dirty-blond hair in rollers, her arms up to her elbows in squid. Bianca eyed the gloopy tentacles in the bowl and washed her hands. It looked disgusting, but it would soon turn into sopa de mariscos, her mamá’s famed Christmas seafood soup.

Christmas music played on the small kitchen radio, perking Bianca up a bit. She plunged her hands into the bowl, feeling around the tentacles for the hard bits of cartilage.

She unstuck all the cartilage and washed her hands again. Mamá handed her a small coffee cup, and Bianca smiled.

“Thanks.”

“You will need it,” her mamá said darkly.

Bianca took a sip and perked up. They only busted out the stove-top espresso maker for special occasions, and Alma’s cortados were better than any of the fancy lattes at Cup of Joe on Main Street.

“Ahhh,” Bianca sighed. Despite the roller coaster of last night, she was glad to be here in their warm kitchen with her mom and a cortado, next to a bowl of dead squid.

“So, how was your party?” her mamá asked as she began deveining some shrimp that had thawed overnight.

Bianca took another sip of coffee, buying herself some time. What should she say? How could she skirt the fact that they almost got themselves possessed?

“Were there any boys there?” her mamá prodded. She had on a thick bathrobe and slippers, along with a matching pajama set. Even while deveining shrimp, her mother still looked put-together.

“Oh,” Bianca replied. Her mom was just snooping. She just wanted to know about their love lives. Well, that was much easier to handle. “Yeah, there were a bunch of boys from school.” Which reminded her — she needed to get her truck back from Steve.

“Any you like?” she wheedled some more.

Bianca considered the question. Were there any boys she liked at school? No, not really. But she did like how it felt to protect Steve, to step in front of fire and see the awe in his eyes when she had shielded him. That, she had to admit, felt pretty good.

“Not really,” Bianca said, though it still felt like lying.

Just then, Leila shuffled down the staircase into the kitchen. Normally it was Leila who woke up early and helped get food ready for the day, but today she looked like she’d had a late night. There were bags under her eyes, and her glossy hair looked flat and dull. Whatever glow-up that freakish djinn had given her, he’d taken it away.

“Buenos días,” Mamá said. She handed Leila a cortado and then motioned to a pile of herbs that needed to be cut for the sabzi khordan. Even though tonight was an Argentinian feast, they couldn’t resist adding a few Persian touches. Sabzi khordan was a pile of fresh herbs, radishes, flatbread, feta, and walnuts that accompanied just about every meal, giving the kitchen an herbaceous smell along with the aroma of coffee and desserts baking in the oven.

Leila gratefully took the cortado and sat down, taking small sips.

Are you okay? Bianca mouthed to her.

Leila smiled at her sister, some color returning back to her face. Just tired.

That was the last private conversation they got to have.

The rest of the day was spent cooking and cleaning, with their mom barking out orders the second they finished each task. They unearthed Christmas decorations, swept and steam-mopped the floor, and washed the rice. Mamá made Leila iron the nice linen tablecloth and had Bianca figure out how to open the flue in the chimney so they could light a real fire. Meanwhile, their baba puttered in and out, stringing fairy lights on the outside of the house with a ladder and a staple gun, or making trips to the root cellar for supplies. If he saw the evil eyes, he didn’t say anything. Whenever there was a spare minute, everyone would sporadically run up to their room to wrap last-minute gifts without anyone else prying.

Even though they had no family here, Mamá always invited students who had nowhere else to go over the holidays, and Baba would invite anyone who was remotely Middle Eastern in Ayers or the surrounding area to come over. Both parents took hospitality very, very seriously.

Bianca vacuumed and scrubbed using their dad’s homemade vinegar spray to wipe down windowsills and door­handles. It was her job to polish the banisters and then wrap them in pine garlands, wash the quilts on the couch, and move all their shoes from the front door to their respective rooms. All thoughts of last night were banished in exchange for this cleaning frenzy that happened once every year.

Leila didn’t have it much better. Since Bianca wasn’t much of a cook, her twin was the one who ended up assisting both parents in the kitchen.

The turkey that their father had soaked in brine overnight had to be dressed and roasted. The trout needed to be gutted and cleaned. The combination of Argentinian and Iranian celebration foods meant chopping, so much chopping that the sound of the knife on the cutting board began to make Bianca’s head throb.

Then there was the rice. Baba had soaked it in huge tubs overnight, and Bianca helped him strain each tub so that they could keep the starchy water for their plants and for the garlic shoots overwintering out back. Iranians were fastidious about washing rice, and by the time they were done it had probably gone through three or four full cleaning cycles.

There was so much rice that instead of cooking it inside, Baba placed a big camp stove on the back patio and boiled it in a pot that could have fit an entire toddler. Before pouring the drained rice back in, Bianca watched, mouth watering, as he covered the bottom of the pot in a few inches of oil, then placed sliced potatoes on the bottom. When the rice was done, the bottom of the pot would reveal crisp, perfectly steamed potatoes that were both crunchy and soft. Potato tahdig was what Christmas tasted like to Bianca.

The sun set without the family noticing, they were so busy with preparations. Guests were invited for six p.m., though of course that meant seven p.m. for their crowd. There was just enough time for everyone to clean up and put on their nice clothes. Bianca chose a sleek black dress that gave her perfect Wednesday Addams vibes. Leila went with a traditional red dress that helped make her pale complexion glow a bit more, though Bianca noticed her sister still looked exhausted. Today’s marathon of party prep probably hadn’t helped.

Someone knocked on the front door. Bianca wondered if they’d seen the evil eye she’d put over the threshold. Then their dad turned on the music, and all thoughts of djinn and horrible creatures evaporated. It was Christmas Eve, Bianca was hungry, and she was safe and happy with her family’s Persiantinian celebration of Christmas.

“Nenas!” their mother called out. “Come grab everyone’s coats!”

“That’s our cue,” Leila said at the top of the stairs.

“We haven’t had much time to talk,” Bianca began. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Leila said, her eyes crinkling as she smiled. “For the first time in a long time, I feel really good. I’m just tired.”

Bianca registered Leila’s small, confident smile, the general air of contentment surrounding her. Her sister looked less tortured somehow, less like a tightly wound spring that threatened to pop at any moment.

“I’m starving,” Leila added.

Bianca chuckled, her heart lifting a tiny bit too. “Same.”

Tomorrow, they could deal with the monsters knocking at their door. But right now, they would enjoy Christmas Eve.