Embers and Echoes

by Karsten Knight

  “Seriously?” Ash said. “The girl you just poured your heart out to stripped and jumped into the ocean, and you’re just going to stand sheepishly on dry land? Are you Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of night? Or are you a barnacle?”

  Wes laughed darkly, almost as if to say You asked for it. Then he stripped off his shirt and tossed it onto Ash’s clothes pile. It wasn’t until she heard the gentle jingling of his belt as he unclasped it that she felt the familiar heat returning to her ears. Still, she couldn’t look away.

  Wes loped into the shallows and dove, though not gracefully like Ash had done. His massive body sent a plume of water right into Ash’s eyes and mouth. By the time she’d finished choking and had wiped her eyes clear, Wes had vanished.

  A hand tugged on her ankle, and she screamed, even though she knew it was Wes. Sure enough he popped out of the water behind her and slipped a wet hand over her eyes. “Guess who?”

  Ash elbowed him in the ribs and swam a few strokes away. On the beach a rowdy group of teenagers was stumbling along, possibly drunk. Some privacy would have been nice. “I want to try something,” Ash said.

  Ash closed her eyes and extended her arms so that her fingers just grazed the water’s surface. She let the heat radiate out of them in a thin net intended just for the skim layer of the water. As always, she found her powers easier to control when she was actually touching the object she wanted to heat, rather than from a distance—conduction versus convection.

  The steam began to waft off the ocean’s surface lightly at first, then thicker, until a fine vapor had fully enshrouded them. The cloud continued to thicken, and Wes slowly faded into the veil of mist. Too late Ash realized that her makeshift sauna might cause flashbacks to that awful night back in California with the—

  tsunami hitting her wall of fire, the

  acre of mist settling over the cove in the aftermath,

  then

  Colt chained to the rock, his

  shirt ripped open and his

  eyes blinking open as she

  approached, an angel in the mist come to—

  Ash shook her head to dislodge the shattered memories. Before any more could resurface, she paddled through the mist. Wes’s image reemerged through the haze. Just for this one night, enveloped in their own outdoor steam room, Ash would try to forget the world outside, the violence, the fear, the uncertainty of the future. Just for this one night, she’d pretend like it was just the two of them, swimming in their own little private universe.

  Ash closed the remaining space between them, sending a ripple out toward the edges of the mist. She stopped floating and let her feet touch the ocean bottom so that she was standing once more. “Ask me again,” she whispered to Wes. Underneath the water her legs pressed against his.

  Wes’s hands glided around to the small of her back, and he pulled her against him. He bent his knees so they were closer to the same level. His lips started to travel toward hers, but stopped just shy of their target. “Ask you what?” he whispered back.

  Her fingers slid up his chest and finally came to rest so they were on either side of his neck. Their lips came together, and they kissed softly at first, then harder. Ash sucked on his top lip for good measure before she pulled away. With an inch between them she gazed at him until he opened his eyes and looked back at her expectantly.

  “Ask me again,” she whispered, “where in the world I’d rather be right now.”

  Ash couldn’t be sure how long they were out in the ocean. Could have been ten minutes. Could have been two hours. But for some time they just listed idly in the water like driftwood, with Wes’s arms wrapped around her from behind. Together they floated, looking up at the stars, as the mist slowly dispelled into the sky.

  Eventually they extracted themselves and took the long walk back to the towels and sandals, bumping flirtatiously into each other along the way. While they’d been “lost at sea,” Wes’s beached cell phone had received a text from Aurora, inviting them out to a nightclub where they could use her “bouncer connections” to bypass the line. Wes left it in Ash’s hands whether or not to go. She juggled her options. The devilish part of her wanted to take things back to Wes’s condo. But she was afraid that she might get carried away in the heat of the moment if they were alone and near a bed. Who knew what other tools of seduction the Aztec night god had?

  “I don’t want this night to end,” she told him finally. “Especially since I know your moves on the dance floor are as sharp as your game in the water.”

  He leaned into her and kissed the wisps of her hair just below her ear. “Then let’s hope it’s a dark bar with even darker corners,” he whispered.

  She curled a finger under his chin. “You’re the god of night. I’m sure you could make a dark corner on the surface of the sun if you had to.” With that, they suited up in club-appropriate shirts they’d packed in Wes’s Cadillac and walked two blocks over to the nightclub.

  The line of people waiting to get into CHAOS ran nearly a quarter mile long, well past the stanchions, which were guarded by four burly men in tuxedoes. Half of the people in line barely looked old enough to be out clubbing (not that Ash was one to judge). Many were hopping up and down to look over the line and see if it was moving at all. As far as Ash could tell from their restlessness, the line hadn’t budged in a while.

  Much to the disdain of the others waiting on the street, Wes ignored the stanchions and walked right up to the tallest and widest of the bouncers, who was still shorter than Wes. The night god whispered something into his ear that Ash couldn’t hear, but she caught the name Aurora, which instantly brought a smile to the bouncer’s lips. He shook hands with Wes—in the middle of which Ash saw a few green bills exchanged—and he pulled aside the red ribbon to let them through. Ash heard the angry protests of a gaggle of girls at the front of the line before Wes ushered her inside.

  The volume of the music was so loud inside that the club could have been the interior of a jet turbine. Wes took her by the hand and led her past the coat check onto CHAOS’s massive dance floor.

  “Whoa,” Ash said, though she could barely hear her own voice over the thumping bass line.

  “Yep!” Wes shouted back at her.

  The huge room, which was the size of a small airplane hangar, had been constructed to look like it was upside down. The ceiling was decorated wall to wall with tables and chairs that had been bolted into place, complete with tablecloths, plates, silverware, and even electric candles. At the far end of the ceiling was a music stage complete with an upside-down drum set, a grand piano, and a series of mounted guitars.

  Beneath the stage—or above it, depending on how you chose to view the room—there was a long wraparound bar clustered with dancers going up for another round of drinks while an overworked staff of bartenders moved around behind the bar like windup dolls in black T-shirts.

  Ash and Wes maneuvered through the packed dance floor, where a large spinning disco ball completed the illusion that the dancers were on the ceiling. It was uncomfortably hot even for Ash, who could practically taste the cloud of perspiration in the air.

  Aurora somehow spotted them almost immediately from the high top she’d secured by the bar. She waved them over. She wore a very professional-looking suit, but with the white dress shirt unbuttoned halfway down—the sexy businesswoman look?

  They were far enough from the speakers that Ash could at least make out what Aurora was saying. She pulled Ash over by her elbow and pointed her empty mojito glass at the bar. “See those three guys?” she asked.

  At first Ash wasn’t sure who she was referring to—the bar was an absolute zoo. But as her eyes roved the barflies, she managed to pick out one guy, another, and then a third, who were all casting amorous glances in her direction.

  “Which one should I let buy me a drink?” she asked Ash.

  “Must be nice to have that many options,” Ash shouted back over the music.

  Aurora corralled her in closer, and Ash could smell the
rum on her breath. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she yelled loudly enough for the tables around them to hear. “Men like a little mystery. They come into a bar, and they automatically know what to expect from the three hundred hoochies here who look like they’re wearing trash bags and lingerie.” A girl at the high top next to them, who was wearing a revealing black top, scrunched her face in Aurora’s direction, but the goddess ignored her and continued. “I, however, come in here dressed like a CEO—thanks in part to these deformities on my back—and men can’t resist. Conservative fashion means power, power means mystery, and mystery means challenge.”

  “Well.” Ash examined Aurora’s three suitors again. “Guy number one looks a little nervous and keeps checking his cell phone just to seem like he’s busy. Guy number two has an umbrella in his drink—a drink that I’d like to point out is bright blue.” She turned to the man on the end who was dressed in a suit as well and grinned a little when he noticed them checking him out. “But guy number three is looking over here without mercy or shame, which means either he’s very confident . . . or he’s a total creep.”

  Aurora slapped her on the back. “My thoughts exactly.” She pointed to Wes. “Now take this loser dancing for a couple of songs so Señor Confianza will see me alone and bring me a mojito.”

  Ash laughed and saluted Aurora before she followed her orders and seized Wes by the arm. Wes’s long sigh was audible even over the dance music.

  A spicy Latin song with a quick beat and frenetic guitar strumming rattled out of the nearby speaker once they hit the dance floor. Ash halfheartedly moved to the rhythm for a few measures before she leaned into Wes so he could hear her. “I’m really not in the dancing mood. Is there a corner we can go sulk in while Aurora woos her man?”

  Wes’s shoulders relaxed. “I thought you’d never ask.” He pointed to a pillar in the corner, between two hanging plants. “Let’s just go sway over there.”

  Within the privacy of the fronds, Ash felt a little more comfortable being a stick in the mud while the rest of the club undulated to the music. Up at the bar she could see Aurora’s well-dressed suitor make his way casually over to her high top with a drink in either hand. “Can I ask you an awkward question?” Ash asked Wes. “Aurora seems really into . . . male attention. But with the wings how does she . . . when they . . . ?” She let her sentence trail off.

  Wes covered his mouth as he laughed. “In the dark?” he joked, then added, “Aurora’s little flings never leave the bar. As to why she finds them endlessly entertaining . . . You can read into Aurora’s behavior all you want. She could just be young and having fun.”

  “Or?”

  Wes shrugged. “If you meet somebody new every night, you get a taste of romance without ever having to get close to someone. Whatever her reasons, after a relationship as crappy as she suffered through, she’s entitled to play a little cat and mouse at the bar.”

  “We all heal in different ways,” Ash said. Some people, fresh out of bad relationships, seduced strangers at the bar.

  And others, Ash thought, fly halfway across the country with no game plan to rescue a girl they’ve never met.

  Ash snapped back to reality, hoping that Wes hadn’t been studying her face or reading the dark thoughts that lurked behind it. Colt had already come between the two of them enough already.

  Wes’s attention, however, was fixed over her shoulder into the dance crowd. “I thought this girl was checking me out, but if I didn’t know any better . . .” He looked troubled. “I’d say she was staring at you.”

  Ash twirled around. It didn’t take much scanning to pick her out of the crowd—a teenage girl in a black tank top and jeans standing barely five yards from them. Statue-still and rigid, she had her gaze pinned on Ash.

  It was Eve Wilde.

  Ash got lost in the eyes of her sister, the eyes that she thought she’d seen for the last time as they’d vanished into the belly of the enormous Cloak creature almost two months ago.

  Now here she stood in the flesh, not only breathing and alive . . . but smiling.

  Amused.

  Gloating.

  WEEPING WILLOW

  Sunday, Part I

  Despite everything the Wilde sisters had been through, Ash had spent the last week doing everything in her power to get Rose back, so she could in turn rescue Eve from the Cloak. But this wasn’t the happy reunion Ash had imagined—Eve leering at her across the nightclub floor, with her teasing grin flickering under the strobe lights. Even a goddess like Eve, who could make a career out of her dramatic reentrances into Ash’s life, didn’t just break out of hell and come back with a smirk on her face.

  Something was very wrong.

  Wes stepped into her view so that Eve, still unmoving, drifted out of focus behind him. “Tell me I don’t need to be jealous.”

  “That’s my sister,” Ash whispered, then repeated herself louder so he could hear her over the music. “My sister!”

  Wes took a second look at Eve. “I see the resemblance, but she’s a little on the, um, mature side for a six-year-old.”

  “Wrong sister!” Ash snapped. Wes leaned over just enough to block her view of Eve. Ash leaned around his shoulder . . . and discovered the back of Eve’s head receding through the crowd. She had a red backpack slung over her shoulder and was cutting a path for the front entrance.

  Ash brushed past Wes, and he was too startled to even make a grab for her until she had plunged into the fray, out of reach. With one shoulder forward as a battering ram, Ash muscled her way through the trance-music pandemonium. Most people were dancing so frantically that they didn’t even stop to see who had shouldered past them. Even over the music Ash could just barely hear Wes shouting her name.

  There wasn’t time to apologize that, for the second time, a face from her past had shown up unexpectedly while they were dancing.

  Ash sprinted past the coat check and out onto the street, past the bouncers. “The music’s that bad?” a girl at the front of the line asked her.

  Down the street Ash spotted Eve making a break for a couple who were parking their Vespas at the curb. Eve roughly shoved the man off his scooter before he had a chance to withdraw the keys. He flopped onto the curb while his girlfriend shrieked and tried to take a swing at Eve. But Eve drilled a hard kick into her attacker’s stomach, and the girl tripped back-first over her own scooter. Eve revved the engine and rocketed onto Collins Avenue.

  Ash took off toward the curb, where the Vespa-robbed couple were just climbing to their feet and brushing themselves off. The boyfriend looked like he was in shock as the taillight of his Vespa disappeared down the avenue, while his girlfriend collapsed into hysterics, trying to fish her cell phone out of her purse.

  Much to their added confusion, Ash hopped onto the second Vespa. “Are you kidding me?” the girl shrieked. She sauntered toward Ash with her bag raised, ready to strike.

  “I’m going to get your boyfriend’s scooter back,” Ash promised as she flipped up the kickstand. “But I need to borrow yours first.” Ash took off, and the girl chased her only a few steps before she stopped, helpless, and watched the second Vespa sail away.

  Ash isolated the other Vespa’s taillight, a small red dot a block up the avenue, and set a course for it. Well aware that she had only a few days’ experience on a scooter, she pushed her chariot up through thirty miles an hour, then past forty. She veered around a Porsche that looked fresh off the lot, and caught a yellow light in time. Up to fifty miles an hour. She shot through another light and dodged a slow-moving joyrider in a convertible, who laid on the horn.

  Sixty miles an hour and she was flying perilously toward two SUVs that were shoulder to shoulder, blocking both lanes and obstructing her view of Eve’s taillight. Her vision was growing blurry as the hot and humid Miami air drilled into her face. Overhead the stoplight shifted from green, to yellow, then to red.

  Ash was sick of watching her leads drift away.

  She was sick of having two sis
ters who existed only as visions and memories.

  She sure as hell wasn’t going to let Eve come back from the dead only to run away again.

  Ash punched the engine up to seventy. She sucked in her breath. And she held the handlebars as steady as she could.

  Somehow she kept the scooter on a straight enough line to navigate the tight gap between the two SUVs. Only by ducking at the last second did she prevent the side mirrors from taking off her head.

  As soon as she popped out into the dim intersection, a pair of headlights sliced across her. The harsh blare of a horn startled her so badly that she nearly toppled off the scooter. She twisted the handlebars to the right just as the swerving BMW squealed past her back tire, missing her by only inches.

  Ash surveyed Collins Avenue ahead, expecting to have lost her sister in the chaos of running the red light. Instead Eve was directly in front of her, still cruising forward but at a relaxed speed, allowing Ash to steadily catch up. Eve glanced over her shoulder and smiled again before she finally accelerated.

  She’s not trying to get away, Ash realized. She’s waiting for me to follow her.

  But where was Eve leading her to? The Cloak underworld? Off the edge of a cliff?

  After Ash had followed her at a cautious distance for several blocks, Eve took a sharp right into a driveway leading up to a large, expensive-looking hotel with a long, white curved façade. Eve plowed up the drive and only slowed when she rolled under the roof of the porte cochere. There she abandoned her scooter on the curb and dashed through the revolving door to the lobby.

  Ash pulled in just a few seconds later. She tossed her keys to the very perplexed-looking valet as she dismounted the bike. “Park it next to my Ferrari,” she said, and stormed past him before he could protest.

  Ash burst through the revolving door and followed the collective gazes of the confused hotel guests. Eve was sprinting through the crowded lobby, which was lit blue like the inside of an ice cave. The guests must have been even more startled to see a second Polynesian girl—who looked so much like the first—in hot pursuit.