Embers and Echoes

by Karsten Knight

  Then again, her first instinct had been to check him out as well.

  Prisoner boy was hot.

  He grabbed a handful of cigars and forced them between the boss’s teeth, and when he was done, the man had a tobacco bouquet blooming out of his mouth.

  As the boss attempted to spit out the cigars, the boy said, “Oh, come on. I gave you the expensive ones. You’re just going to waste them like that?”

  The man coughed the last of the cigars out onto his lap. “Vanderbilt won’t just let you get away, you know.”

  “Then you can pass along a telegram, from me to her,” the boy said. “That I’ll snoop around her boat whenever I damn well please, and if she has a bone to pick with me about it, we’ll find out how solid the construction is on that three-million-dollar hacienda of hers.”

  “Who’s the bitch with you?” The boss allowed himself a smile as he turned his blindfolded eyes in Ash’s direction. “That your pet canary I’ve heard so much about?”

  “Pet canary?” Ash mouthed to the boy.

  He shrugged, which Ash hoped meant I’ll explain later. “Don’t own any pets,” he said. “And I have an allergy to feathers.”

  “You two will pay for this,” the boss said. “Nobody treats Raphael De La Cruz this—”

  The rest of his words were lost as the boy cupped his hands on either side of Raphael’s face, and whispered, “Sleep. . . .”

  Raphael’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. Whatever magic the boy possessed passed from his hands into Raphael’s body. With a small shudder Raphael’s chin dropped to his chest, and he fell silent, except for a light snoring and a whistle through his teeth. He was out cold.

  Something buzzed to life behind Ash. One of the underlings had regained consciousness and was now wielding a single UV lamp he’d somehow gotten hold of while they’d been distracted with Raphael. He had the lamp aimed in the boy’s direction, and the man’s legs quivered as he waited for the boy to react.

  Ash was instantly offended that the trembling man standing beside her didn’t consider her a threat. So she reached across, put her hand on the back of his leg, and promptly set his pants on fire.

  The UV lamp slipped out of his hands and shattered on the floor. He shrieked and sprinted off into the storefront. It wasn’t long before Ash heard the chug of the van’s ignition and then the rumble of tires on uneven stone. She wondered whether he’d bothered to even extinguish his burning pants before he drove away.

  “Well . . .” The boy was staring at her faintly smoking palm. “I guess that answers my first question.”

  “Your first question was whether or not I could light people on fire with my bare hands?” Ash leaned around him just to make sure that Raphael was actually asleep before she introduced herself. “I’m Ashline Wilde, by the way. Ash for short.”

  “Wesley Towers—Wes for short.” His hand engulfed hers, and Ash was disgusted with herself for feeling a trickle of excitement when his other hand gently touched her elbow. “Actually,” he continued, “my current question involves whether or not you have a getaway vehicle. Because I think our flame-broiled friend might be calling for backup as we speak.”

  Ash nodded. “Follow me.”

  Outside, the night had finally descended on Miami, but the oppressive summer heat was only beginning to vent into the clear sky. Once they had stepped out onto the street, Wes tilted his head back to the stars. As he drew in a deep breath, his skin pigment darkened ever so slightly. When he opened his eyes again, they swam with an inky black before the white coalesced again.

  “Oh, no,” she said with mock concern. “I’ve saved a vampire. The UV lamps, the way you were hanging upside down, your murky eyes and almost erotic fixation with the night—”

  Wes snorted. “I’m the Aztec god of night—Tezcatlipoca.”

  “Texting a cat with a what?” Ash asked.

  He ignored her. “I draw all of my power from the night sky, power that increases the closer we are to a full moon. But during the day, and in environments that mimic the sun”—he jerked his thumb back at the cigar factory with the UV lamps—“I’m just like everyone else.”

  “That’s not a bad gig, you know,” Ash said. “To get to be human part-time.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” He touched his stomach gingerly where the brass knuckles had pounded him. “Not when someone’s trying to make mashed potatoes out of you. Where’s your ride?”

  Around the corner two teenage boys and an apprehensive-looking girl were admiring the Vespa a little too fondly, but when they saw Wes approaching the scooter, they quickly changed direction.

  Wes climbed on the front. Given his enormity compared to the tiny scooter, he looked like a bear riding a unicycle.

  He held out his hand patiently for the keys, but Ash just fixed her hands on her hips. “Who made you driver?” she snapped. “Are we going to have to have a talk about how sexism is alive and well in the new millennium?”

  “Or we can have a talk about how practicality and logical thinking are alive and well. I know where we’re going, while you’re clearly a tourist.” He passed her the half-helmet, like it was a basketball.

  She caught it and slipped it onto her head. “I have a GPS on my phone,” she grumbled. But she slipped onto the back of the scooter and handed him the keys in silent agreement. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “To where I parked my Cadillac before I was abruptly captured aboard that stupid boat.” He angled the Vespa away from the curb, and it began its put-put-put up the bumpy road. “Speaking of which, can I borrow your phone?”

  She handed it to him, and he tapped in the numbers with one hand while he steered with the other. When the person on the other end picked up, he said, “Yeah, Aurora, it’s me.”

  An anxious female voice echoed through the receiver loud enough for Ash to almost make out the words. Wes winced and held the phone away from his ear. It sounded like she’d been worrying.

  “I got careless,” he admitted, finally interrupting her tirade. “But I’m safe now, thanks to a little help from a friend.” He glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes bubbled black again when he met Ash’s gaze. “Yes. Like us.”

  Like us.

  That was the exact moment when Ash had an epiphany: When she’d left the West Coast for Miami, she hadn’t escaped the insanity.

  She’d just traded one supernatural stomping ground for another.

  How many gods and goddesses could there possibly be? And wasn’t there anywhere in the country she could go that wasn’t overcrowded with them? Like the mall, or a ball game, or . . .

  “Meet me at rendezvous point C in ten minutes,” Wes finished saying to Aurora—whoever she was. He flipped the phone closed and passed it back to Ash.

  “So,” he said. They turned a corner out onto the parkway, and Ash recognized the Miami River alongside them. “You want to tell me how you ended up in the right place at the right time to be my guardian angel?”

  “The short version,” she replied. “Lesley Vanderbilt—who it sounds like you know already—kind of rescued, kind of kidnapped my six-year-old sister from Central America. When I went searching for her on the ship they used to smuggle her into Florida, I found you instead. The end.”

  “A story to tell the grandkids,” he mumbled. “Well, I guess we’re looking for the same person. My partner and I have been tailing Lesley and her cohorts for a while now. We knew she was looking to bankroll another god . . . but I would have never guessed it was a child.”

  “Bankroll another god?”

  They turned onto a bridge, heading toward the north side of the river. To the east she could see the tall, sleek skyline of downtown Miami, stalagmites of glass rising up to the sky.

  “That,” he said, “is a story that will take longer to explain than a five-minute Vespa ride. Your sister, is she a fire goddess like you?”

  “Volcano goddess,” Ash corrected him. “And no, she’s some sort of war goddess, I guess. But more like a fifty-pou
nd ball of destruction. She blows things up, and opens portals into hell. . . . You know, typical six-year-old behavior.”

  He was looking at her again, and frowning this time. “You okay back there, Pompeii? You’re looking a little queasy.”

  And she was. She swallowed hard. Being on the back of the scooter again . . . “Last time I was riding behind someone, we got into a bad accident.” She omitted the part about it being only twenty-four hours ago.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. “Was the other passenger okay?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” she blurted out.

  He shook his head. “You and the short versions of your stories.”

  They rolled up over a curb and into a little park that was boxed in by palms and shrubs on three sides but open to the south with a view out over the river. As they climbed off the scooter a ship was making its way under the bridge, a small yacht with people partying so heavily that their voices carried over the water into the park.

  But Wes was looking up at the stars. “Ah,” he said calmly. “Here she comes.”

  Ash couldn’t help but scream as the girl fell out of the sky. Like a human meteorite, she landed in the dirt with such startling velocity that earth and grass spewed out from beneath the heels of her knee-high leather boots.

  When the dust cleared, Ash was looking at a girl with a striking Mediterranean face, a Rapunzel-length braid, and a curvaceous body that might have made Ash envious.

  That is, if Ash hadn’t been too busy gawking at the girl’s wings.

  Not large fluffy light ones like the goose-down wings an angel might have, but sharp-edged demonic things, webbed like a bat’s. They were speckled with dark patches, like the fur of a snow leopard, but when they passed in front of one of the gas lamps, they glowed slightly translucent.

  Instantly Ash recalled Raphael’s reference to the “canary,” and how the boy guard back at the dock had wanted to “see them,” while staring intently at her shoulders. (Ash still didn’t feel bad for knocking him out; he was just a different kind of pervert.)

  The winged girl didn’t even notice Ash at first. She just took three giant strides across the park and struck Wes across the face with a hard slap.

  “What were you thinking, sneaking aboard that ship during the day?” she snarled.

  When Wes turned around, he was cupping his cheek gingerly but smiling. “You Italians and your quick tempers.”

  She crossed her arms. “Don’t even start with the stereotypes. You don’t see me blaming all of Mexico for your persistent ability to make rash decisions and worry me to death.”

  Wes cleared his throat and nodded to Ash.

  Aurora turned. “Oh.” Her wings slowly deflated and folded onto her back like a convertible retracting its hood. “Company.”

  “Aurora, this is Ash,” he said. “She’s a volcano goddess.”

  “Of course. Pele, I’d guess.” Aurora smirked. “Ash, huh? Is your name just a cosmic coincidence, or did you burn down the house when your parents first adopted you?”

  Ash shrugged. “Haven’t seen any baby pictures of me melting coffee tables yet.”

  “Count yourself fortunate. I discarded the name on my adoption papers for my true name—Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. My adoptive parents gave me an old family name that, to this day, I loathe and refuse to share with anybody.”

  “Alma,” Wes mouthed to Ash.

  “What brings a volcano goddess to our sunny beaches? And more importantly, to the rescue of this careless moron?”

  “Ashline’s little sister is the goddess that Vanderbilt smuggled in on that ship,” Wes explained.

  Aurora cupped a hand over Wes’s mouth. “Unless you’re Morgan Freeman, why don’t you stop narrating the girl’s story and let her tell it herself?”

  “You guys make a cute couple,” Ash said, hoping it didn’t sound like she was fishing. Part of her really did hope they were together. The last thing she needed the day after a violent breakup was to entertain any sort of attraction to another god—tall, dark, and handsome though he might be. She was in Miami to find her sister, not to indulge in a rebound.

  “We’re not together,” Aurora said.

  Wes flicked her braid. “You know, when you deny it so quickly and make that same scrunched-up disgusted face you do when you see cheese, you hurt my feelings.”

  Aurora swatted his hand away.

  Wes crossed the grass so that he loomed over Ash—Towers was definitely a fitting last name for him.

  “I have to go debrief the canary on a few things.” His hand touched her wrist, and she had to actively stop herself from taking a step forward. “There’s something I think you should see, though. Tomorrow. Which hotel are you staying at?”

  Ash told him, and he wrinkled his nose. “Really? That place? I hope you chose a second-floor room with a good dead bolt. Anyway, keep your evening wide open tomorrow and lay out a white dress if you have one.”

  “Right,” Ash said, “because I always pack a wedding gown for my trips to the beach. Why, are you taking me to prom?”

  Aurora laughed so hard that she snorted. “I like this one, Wes. Can we keep her?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything. Just promise me”—that touch of his again, this time her shoulder—“that you’ll scooter home safely.”

  She winked at him. “You’re the one who ended up chained and masked in a cigar shop, getting a nice tan. I don’t think it’s me you have to worry about.”

  “Mañana,” he said. He backed away, allowing their eye contact to linger before he and Aurora started toward the opposite end of the park. “You’re not going to fly back to the apartment?” he asked Aurora.

  “As if I’d let you out of my sights again . . . ,” Aurora said, before their voices faded off into silence.

  Rather than heading straight home, Ash crossed the park until she was at the river’s edge, and sat down, with her legs dangling toward the water below.

  And as she looked at her hazy lamp-lit reflection in the water, she began to laugh. This was the second time recently she’d saved a boy from being chained and tortured.

  “Let’s hope I don’t regret saving this one,” she whispered to no one at all.

  Back at the motel Ash climbed onto her stiff mattress, ready to put her first day in Miami to rest. Between the crappy AC unit in the window and the extreme heat of the Miami summer, it was far too hot to sleep under the covers, which was probably for the best. The quilt on the bed crinkled disgustingly whenever she moved, like it was stuffed with a layer of rice paper and shredded plastic bags.

  She closed her eyes, but as she descended into slumber, she felt something strange taking shape in her mind. Maybe she was just delirious from exhaustion, but it sounded a lot like the echo of that final, eerie chord Colt had sung to her before she’d abandoned him in the forest. Whatever he had planted in her brain, she could now feel it digging its roots deeper into her memory, growing branches, unfurling leaves. And through it all the chord grew louder until it unfolded into a haunting melody, twinkling softly and assertively while it carried her off to sleep.

  While the song played, Ash felt herself being drawn into an island of memories in a dark corner of her mind, a part of her brain she never even knew was there. Her last sensation before she drifted off was that she was falling, falling toward a single, stranded memory. It was from a day nearly a hundred years earlier, during her last reincarnation—

  Back when she still had the same face, the same copper skin.

  Back when she had a different name, a different life.

  Back when a familiar fire still smoldered within her.

  THE SCARECROW MURDERS

  1924; Limerick, Maine

  You always come back to look at this scarecrow because it’s not like the others.

  All the others sag on their wooden posts, made tender by the rain of a thousand New England storms, wilted from years in the wet summer heat. Their flannel and denim have fa
ded, and their stuffing spews out of holes pecked by the very crows they were sworn to protect against. Worst of all, they always seem to be facing slightly down, even though their winged foes come from the sky. Whether they’re ashamed of the job they’re doing, or just downright depressed, you’ll never know.

  But this one stands tall with intrepid lines, pulled taut arm to arm on its cedar crucifix. Its corduroys look freshly pressed, and the tartan could have come straight off the clothesline. The straw pokes out only at the knees, where the corduroys are knotted, and at the throat, puffing proudly out like a mane of chest hair.

  Perhaps this is why this scarecrow looks arrogantly up and to the west, toward the setting sun.

  Perhaps this is why Horatio McGrath has the most spotless crops in all of York County.

  Perhaps this is why you almost feel guilty that you’re about to burn this scarecrow alive.

  “Are you absolutely sure he’s gone to church?” you ask your older sister, who at fifteen years old—one year older than you—is boss in this jurisdiction.

  Violet smirks. “He’s a good Baptist. Now get a move on, Lucy, and throw some wood on that little stove of yours.”

  You stare at the scarecrow one last time and silently apologize to it. Then you drop down onto your hands and knees in the dry grass, which crackles under your weight. It’s been an exceptionally dry summer, and it’s been weeks now since there was a good rainfall. Even Horatio McGrath’s famous maize, the sea of corn husks behind you, is seeing the first invasions of yellow and brown on its normal healthy green, the onset of wither.

  Violet stands at attention beside the scarecrow. She begins in the theatrical voice that you’ve heard many times before—twelve times, in fact, once for each scarecrow that you’ve consumed in flame in the towns of Limerick and nearby Cornish.

  But those scarecrows were just practice.

  “Horatio Arnold McGrath.” She holds her arms out as if she’s reading from an imaginary parchment. “Otherwise known in these parts as the Big H.A.M., a man as ugly as his crops are spotless, flaunter of wealth, husband to a shrewish wife, and father to insufferable offspring.” As she says the last one, you glance back at the McGrath residence, an imposing white farmhouse on the hilltop, and pray that Melinda and Mary are both at church with their father.