Embers and Echoes

by Karsten Knight

  Ash couldn’t help but laugh, even though she was having trouble returning his intense gaze. “She’s a six-year-old Polynesian girl who’s probably on a leash. I’m sure there aren’t too many of those hanging out in the hacienda.” When he still didn’t look appeased, she added, “And there’s a chance that I can bargain with Lesley if I can get her alone. She has something I want, and I know the location of something she wants. If we can agree on an exchange, there doesn’t have to be a fight.”

  He hesitated at first, but finally released her hands. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Fifteen minutes tops and we meet back at the cart. Any longer than that and Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Douche at the front door are going to wonder where the bakers went.” Wes leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, not far from her mouth. His lips lingered against her skin. “For good luck,” he added. Then he loped up the stairs two at a time until he had rounded the corner out of sight.

  Ash touched the hollow of her cheek where the shape of his lips still persisted. “That’s going to make for some interesting dreams tonight,” she whispered.

  With any luck the bed-igniting-sex-dream phase was something she’d outgrown since she’d left Blackwood.

  Ash slowly pushed the cake cart down the hallway, drawing closer to the voices that were echoing down the vaulted hall. She eventually stopped where the windows opened out into a central courtyard. At first she was afraid that she might be seen if she tried to get a closer look, but then she realized that Lesley’s old-world lighting would work to her advantage. Ash passed her hands in front of the nearest candles and the flames extinguished immediately. Then she ducked down, shrouded in the new darkness, and stared out over the window ledge into the open-air courtyard.

  In the torch-lined courtyard, in the midst of a tropical garden, Lesley sat at the head of a long table with twelve board members gathered around her, six to either side. She was gesturing recklessly with a wine goblet. From the glaze over her eyes and the trickle of wine that dribbled over the edge of her glass as she flailed about, it was clear that Lesley was really hitting the sauce tonight.

  Ash counted the trustee members around her just to confirm that there were in fact twelve. What was this, the Last Supper?

  Lesley’s twelve “apostles” also seemed to have indulged, from the looks of the empty wine bottles that were now scattered around the table like fallen tombstones, and the trustees too were chattering excitedly.

  That is, all except for one. A board member with a Fu Manchu sat rigidly in his chair near the end of the table. Unlike the others, he hadn’t let out his tie or removed his suit jacket, and he was staring into his glass of wine, which was still decidedly full.

  Apparently the man with the Fu Manchu had finally had enough, because he tapped his glass with a fork and then spoke commandingly so that his voice carried over all the others’. “As much as it pains me to dampen the spirits of this celebration over today’s new acquisition,” he said in a French accent, “I was hoping the madame would take this opportunity to talk about last night’s gala at the Villa Vizcaya.”

  Lesley barely acknowledged him. “Please, Arthur, we’ve had enough talk of business for the day. Let’s keep this gathering on the pleasure side of things, shall we?” This seemed to be a definitive answer for the other board members, and the pockets of conversation picked up again around the table.

  But he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. “I’m just curious why it was necessary to spend six figures on a gathering that, insofar as I can tell, amounted to a circus of wizardry and has potentially transformed this company’s name into tabloid fish food.”

  “Arthur.” Lesley leaned over the table, and the conversation around the table died. “We’re currently the number three defense contractor in the country. As of last night local media outlets witnessed that we now have a monopoly on a new, previously unrealized threat to all countries worldwide. We could be number one internationally by the end of the year. Check your numbers again when that happens, and then question my investments.”

  “Threat?” Arthur’s previously restrained disgust emerged. “The way to run a successful defense contractor is to manufacture solutions to real threats, not to fabricate imaginary ones.”

  Lesley, who had been midsip, set her goblet down heavily. Wine showered the white tablecloth. “The only thing that’s imaginary is the need for your concern, especially when it comes to my spending habits and marketing campaigns, unorthodox though they may seem to you.”

  “Listen to yourself rationalize. ‘Marketing campaigns’? Some days,” Arthur said solemnly, “I look at you and I see your father’s daughter.” He stood up. “Today I just see a spoiled girl who likes to throw rocks at the hornets’ nest.”

  Lesley rose out of her seat so fast that her chair slid backward. Its metal feet grated dissonantly against the stone patio before the chair clattered to the ground.

  Arthur didn’t look impressed. He picked up his wineglass and irreverently poured the remaining cabernet onto the ground, drawing lazy circles on the tiles. When the last drop had been poured out, he said, “I know a waste when I see one.” Then he turned and stormed out of the courtyard.

  Ash realized almost too late that he was heading in her direction, so she hustled back to the cake cart and pretended to apply more icing. Arthur, however, paid her no heed, and soon he was gone.

  When Ash scurried back over to the window, Lesley was still standing in silence. She had a vise grip on her own wineglass, and Ash was surprised it didn’t shatter in her hand.

  Then Lesley’s outrage slowly dissipated into the night, and she found her way back to a pleasantly intoxicated smile. “Frenchmen,” she said, and pointed to the pool of cabernet on the pavement. “They never appreciate a good Napa wine.”

  The rest of the board laughed uncomfortably. “That laughter sounded far too sober.” Lesley shook her head. “I have a great Chianti for dessert that should remedy that. In the meantime . . .” Lesley clapped her hands twice, and a swarm of caterers emerged from a second courtyard entrance, armed with pastry dishes. “Enjoy this white truffle cheesecake that my favorite chef made fresh this afternoon. I shall fetch the wine.”

  Again Ash hurried over to the cake cart and busied herself, with her back to the courtyard. If Lesley started down the hallway in her direction, then Ash would just have to improvise.

  Instead Lesley hung a right out of the doorway and wandered with visible imbalance in the opposite direction. Ash followed close behind. All she needed to do to corner Lesley was wait until they were out of earshot of her party guests, and the millionaire wouldn’t stand a chance.

  They weren’t alone for long, though. Lesley stopped at a door partway down the hall and pounded on the wood. Ash dove into the nearest alcove, and held her hand up to the torch over her head. Her volcanic powers siphoned off the flames until the torch was extinguished with a quiet hiss, cloaking Ash in shadows.

  Not a moment too soon either. The door that Lesley had been so vigorously pounding creaked open, and Thorne’s angular nose poked through the opening. As usual he had a cigar clenched between his teeth. “Well,” he said, his eyes taking in Lesley, who was tottering from foot to foot. “Looks like someone’s been hitting the sparkling water hard tonight.”

  Any merriment Lesley had shown to her board of trustees was gone. She waved her finger sloppily at Thorne. “Having a relaxing night off, are we?” Lesley barked. “Are you and the Four Seasons just chilling around the hacienda, playing Monopoly?”

  He lazily tapped his cigar ashes onto the floor. “Trust me, Lesley—we’re using all of our resources to locate your Polynesian storm goddess, and we have some solid leads. But the girl isn’t exactly writing her name in the sky with lightning.”

  “I don’t care if you have to fly a kite in a storm or run down the street with a lightning rod to find her.” Lesley leaned in closer. “I risked my reputation to put your little Four Seasons religion on display in front of some very important people,
and now I’m about to put you in front of the world. So now that I’ve done what you’ve asked, it’s about time that you get off your ass, do your damn job, and bring me Evelyn Wilde!”

  Thorne leaned in and massaged Lesley’s shoulders in a way that made Ash feel icky, even thirty feet down the hallway. “Just wait until Sunday,” Thorne said calmly. “After that, wherever Eve is hiding, I’m sure she’ll come storming into town looking for the little one. Then it’s just a matter of following the trail of electrocuted corpses.”

  Sunday? Ashline thought. “The little one” was clearly a reference to Rose, but how did they think they could use Rose to lure Eve out of hiding? If only Lesley knew that the only way she could get Eve back was to storm into the Netherworld and steal her back from the Cloak . . .

  Whatever they were talking about had obviously calmed Lesley down. “I’ve waited forty years to get my revenge,” she mumbled. “I guess I can wait out the weekend.” She patted the side of Thorne’s face and then staggered away.

  “If you’re paying a visit to the wine cellar,” Thorne called after her, “I recommend the ’87 vintage. It’s my favorite.” Then he disappeared back into his room.

  Ash let out a long breath and emerged from her alcove. At the end of the long hallway, Lesley hauled open a large oak door and descended uncertainly down the staircase inside.

  This was it. With Lesley alone in the wine cellar, Ash couldn’t ask for a better opportunity. She hurried past Thorne’s door and followed Lesley into the cellar.

  As Ash padded softly down the steps, she was grateful that the staircase wasn’t truly as old as it looked. It didn’t creak once, and neither did the door as she pulled it closed and locked it from the inside. No one was going to interrupt this conversation.

  Down the stairs, under the dim wine-protective lighting, Lesley was browsing a wall that was filled floor to ceiling with a staggering collection of bottles. Down here the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees, and Ash tried not to shiver while she crept up behind the older woman. She stepped carefully over a white drop cloth that was partially unfurled on the ground. On the back wall of the cellar, some new stonework and a shiny stainless steel door had clearly just been installed for what Ash guessed was cold storage for Lesley’s collection of chilled wines.

  Finally within range, Ash slipped her hand around Lesley’s mouth and whispered harshly into her ear, “Don’t move. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Rather than listening to her, Lesley let out a short scream into Ash’s hand and then elbowed her hard in the chest. The blow was enough to make Ash release Lesley, who grabbed a bottle from the wine rack and swung wildly at Ash’s head.

  Ash caught Lesley’s wrist just as the bottle came within an inch of smashing across her face. In that moment Ash panicked and lashed out with her free arm.

  The punch connected solidly with the side of Lesley’s head. Her eyes rolled back and she slumped back into the wine rack. The bottles rattled in their slots under the weight of her body before she collapsed to the floor.

  Ash dropped into a squat and caught the bottle Lesley had been brandishing. Any later and it would have smashed against the floor.

  Ash shook her head at the unconscious woman, then at her own hand, which was still balled into a tight fist. “So much for having a quiet, polite discussion.”

  At the top of the stairs, the door rattled. When it failed to budge, whoever was behind it knocked on the oak. “Lesley?” Thorne’s voice called. “Lesley, are you in there? Why did you lock the door?”

  Ash froze. This guy, again? The lock on the cellar door was just a big dead bolt. Thorne could break through it with a strong gale if he wanted to. Ash searched around the room for an alternate escape route, on the off chance that Lesley had built the cellar with a contingency plan. No dice. The oak door was the only exit.

  Anxious from the silence, Thorne pounded on the door with a sense of urgency. “Lesley, what’s going on?”

  Ash cleared her throat and attempted her best impression of Lesley’s voice, letting her voice drop half an octave into Lesley’s husky alto. “Just looking for the dessert wines. Everything’s fine. Return to your post.” She held her breath. It would be a miracle if he actually bought it.

  “Return to my post?” Thorne echoed. “Lesley, what the hell are you talking about?” He jimmied the door handle hard, and then began to slam his shoulder into the wood. On his third attempt Ash heard the door crack.

  Ash grabbed the unconscious Lesley by her lapel and heaved her across the floor and onto the drop cloth. Lesley hadn’t even finished rolling across the cloth before Ash grabbed the corner and dragged it into the shadowy nook beneath the stairs. The slamming against the door ceased, but Ash knew what was coming, so she piled on top of Lesley and folded the canvas cloth over her to conceal the two of them.

  The door came right off its hinges when the gale struck it. Through the peephole she’d left in the drop cloth, Ash watched the door land just shy of destroying part of Lesley’s wine collection. The ensuing wind nearly ripped the covers right off Ash’s head and, worse, sent a plume of dust her way. Ash covered her mouth and tried her best not to cough or sneeze.

  Thorne took the steps four at a time and landed at the bottom of the stairs in a crouch. His eyes vigilantly searched the room. Thankfully he glossed right over Ash’s hiding spot.

  Then she watched his posture relax as he straightened up, no longer on red alert. “Oh, now I get it. . . .” A carnal smile spread across his face. “You want to play a little game of hide-and-seek. Well, you know I’m always on board for some after-hour festivities.”

  Between the seductive way he was talking and the shit-eating grin on his face, it immediately dawned on Ash what he was implying.

  Him . . .

  Ash looked down at Lesley’s regal but clearly age-worn face.

  And her.

  Ash’s face convulsed with disgust, and she resisted the urge to retch right then and there. A teenage wind god “mating” with a forty-something bloodthirsty corporate cougar. Disgusting.

  If she escaped the hacienda alive, Ash made a note to look up Florida’s age of consent.

  Thorne wandered over to the side of the wine rack and peeked behind it. “Where, oh where could you be?” His boots passed in front of the drop cloth, but he didn’t give it a second look. Instead he seemed fixated on the steel refrigerator door, which was so new that it gleamed even under the dim light.

  “I wonder . . . ,” he whispered as he trekked across the stone floor. He pulled the lever and hauled the steel door open, which was so big it looked heavy even for him. Then he disappeared inside.

  This was Ash’s chance, and she knew she would get only one shot. Ash sprung from beneath the drop cloth and headed straight for the door. She grabbed hold of the handle and with all her strength heaved the door shut.

  Almost immediately Thorne was back at the door, pushing and pounding from the inside.

  While Ash pinned it closed with her feet and shoulder, she focused on last night’s dream, how her hand had melted right through the bank vault door. She reached out with her free hand, tapped into her inner fire, and pressed her hand to the metal.

  Like an acetylene torch, her fingers made raw, molten slices into the steel as she raked her fingertips from the top of the door, through the lock, and all the way down to the bottom. The igneous metal spilled out over the door frame and leached into the porous stone. The lock itself liquefied under Ash’s touch.

  And just as easily as she had poured the heat from her hand, her fingertips vacuumed the heat right up again.

  When she was confident that the door no longer needed her support to stay shut, she stepped back and admired her handiwork. The entire edge of the door was warped, bubbled, and now cool to the touch. It was going to take another torch to cut Thorne out of there. She could hear his weak attempts at wind already thudding up and down the interior of the door, but in such a confined, nearly airtight space, it was going to
take some real ingenuity for Thorne to get out.

  “I know it’s you!” he screamed from the inside. “I can practically smell your kerosene stink from in here.”

  “You might want to crack open a bottle of that overpriced wine in there to stay warm,” Ash suggested, and patted the metal door. “Oh, and I’d conserve your air if I were you. You’re going to need it.”

  The thumping against the metal door picked up with renewed vigor.

  Ash crossed the room and grabbed all four corners of the drop cloth where she’d concealed Lesley. “I’m going to apologize in advance for this,” she whispered.

  With Lesley cocooned in the drop cloth, she pulled her up the stairs one step at a time, then out into the long hallway, like a net full of fish being hauled out of the sea.

  Fortunately, the trustee members out in the courtyard were too involved in their raucous conversation to notice Ash towing her load down the hall, or to hear the hiss of the drop cloth against the adobe floor tile.

  When Ash finally reached the tangerine cake, she rolled Lesley’s body up into the underbelly of the cart, where she would be concealed by the long tablecloth.

  With impeccable timing Wes jogged down the stairs right as Ash began maneuvering the cart down the long hallway. “No dice,” he whispered. “No sign of any Polynesian orphans or any arrows pointing us in the right direction.”

  Ash sighed. “So much for the days when crooks kept a paper map on their wall with pins in all the locations you should look.”

  Wes pointed at the cart as he walked alongside her. “Did you . . .”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, and kicked the cart’s bottom shelf.

  “How are we going to explain to the guards why we still have the cake?”

  “Push the cart and leave that to me,” she replied.

  They switched places, and Wes slowed the cart down enough so that Ash could cut two big pieces from the cake’s lowest tier. She scooped them onto the serving plates they’d brought along just to further their ruse as bakers.