Afterglow (Wildefire) (29 page)

A hand wrapped around the back of her shirt, and in the brief second before she was yanked back, her first crazed thought was that Colt had somehow grown an extra arm.

The phantom hand heaved her backward across the stone platform, and a gust of wind carried her the rest of the way to the stairs. When she finally recovered herself and looked up, she discovered that Eve had replaced her, kneeling on top of Colt. She sent an electric current through his struggling body to immobilize him, then turned back to Ash over her shoulder. “Go!” she cried out to Ash. “Go live your life, and live it better than I did.”

“No!” Ash croaked, but almost no sound came out. Above Eve and Colt, the magnificent, catastrophic ball of
stone hurtled toward the platform, growing larger by the moment.

“I promise you,” Eve yelled over the approaching roar of the comet. “I promise you I’ll be a better sister in the next lifetime.”

There was no time to say good-bye, because Eve hit her with one last gale that tossed Ash backward down the stairs. She didn’t stop rolling until she landed on her unconscious parents, whom Eve had tucked partway down the staircase. And because there was no time left, Ash swallowed her quaking tears, scooped up her parents with all the superhuman strength she had left, and sprinted down the steps.

She only made it halfway down when the fireball hit. The thunderous blast knocked Ash off her feet as the behemoth slammed into the top of the lighthouse. It sheared the platform on top clean off.

With her parents in a heap at her feet, Ash drew herself up protectively over them. She focused on keeping her front side cool, then let a curtain of fire erupt out of her back, which she’d armored once more with igneous stone. As the rock debris from the pulverized platform above showered down on them, the fiery armor acted as a protective shield.

And then it was over. Ash dropped, exhausted and faintly smoking, into a heap beside her parents, who were just starting to stir from the fading sedatives. Even as they blinked and mumbled in unconsciousness, Ash just
lay there staring up at the sky through the gaping open jaws of stone where the platform used to be.

Eve was gone. She waited to see some flash of lightning, or some shooting star through the constellations above, one of those mystical signs people always saw in movies to remind them that their dead loved ones were still out there somewhere.

But this wasn’t the movies. There was only an unbearable quiet, until Ash’s mouth was able to form the one thing she wished she’d had more time to say up top:

“I promise I’ll be a better sister next time too.”

O‘ahu, One Month Later

Ash had been leaning against
the trunk of the palm tree for over an hour, watching the one-story house across the street.

She still wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

She’d been out on the islands for nearly three weeks now, researching Hawaiian family trees, practically living in the libraries and town halls while she combed through public records. She’d started in Maui, where she’d nearly destroyed the entire island almost two hundred years earlier after she’d summoned Haleakalā to erupt. The culmination of her search had led her here, to a suburb of Honolulu, where a woman named Kalama lived.

If her research was correct—and there was no way to know for sure, since a lot of it was guesswork—Kalama might be a descendant of the baby girl Pele had abandoned two centuries ago, right before the Cloak dragged her
away . . . the very child that Pele might have incinerated if the Cloak hadn’t stopped her in time. In fact, after nine generations, there were actually more than forty people on the islands who might trace their lineage back to Pele’s abandoned love child.

Which meant that Ash had forty great-great-grandchildren—most of them older than her—living and working and raising families on the islands.

The thought of it was almost too weird to handle.

Still, she’d felt compelled to seek one of them out. Maybe it was just plain old curiosity, or maybe she felt some element of remorse for abandoning and almost murdering the child. Maybe she wanted proof that the visions of her previous lives hadn’t been strange dreams.

Maybe after all the death and destruction that had sullied Ash’s life in the last two months, she just wanted to see that something good had come out of her tumultuous, deadly relationship with Colt Halliday.

But more than anything, Ash was just looking for something to distract her from the palpable void Eve’s death had left in her life. Rose’s death too, even though she’d barely known the girl. In just a matter of months she’d found a sister she never knew she had and won back another sister who had for years been nothing more than a silhouette in her life.

Then she’d lost both sisters in a single night. Now she was left struggling with the memory of Eve, trying to reconcile all the different facets of her inconsistent
personality. Who was the true Eve? The girl who’d started petty, brutal fights at school? The girl who’d run away from home and broken her parents’ hearts—broken Ash’s heart? Or was she the penitent, selfless girl who’d given her life to save her family that night on the lighthouse?

Now Ash found herself staring at a stranger’s house in Honolulu, wondering what comfort could be provided by a distant relative who, other than shared blood, she probably had nothing in common with.

Still, she had to try.

When Ash finally worked up the courage, she crossed the street, marched up the front walkway, and pounded on the door before she could chicken out. While she heard footsteps approaching inside, she held on to the rusted, flaking metal railing for support. It was too late to run now.

When the inner door opened, a girl only a few years older than Ash stood inside, peering out at her through the screen. Even though Ash knew it was a stupid thing to think, she’d pictured Kalama as an uncanny cross between herself and Colt—maybe with the gentle curve of Ash’s jawline and the jewel-facet cheekbones that made Colt so handsome.

In reality, as far as Ash could see, Kalama bore absolutely no obvious resemblance to either of her deity ancestors . . . which made sense, since after nine generations Colt and Pele made up only a small percentage of the girl’s ancestral blood.

“Can I help you?” the girl asked, squinting at Ash.

Ash looked away in embarrassment, suddenly realizing she’d been intensely gawking at the girl’s face. “Are you . . . Kalama?” Ash managed to stammer out. The girl nodded, so Ash went on. “I’m Ashline Wilde, from New York. I was doing research on my family ancestry for a summer project, and part of my assignment was to track down a member of my extended family that I’d never met. According to my research, you and I are . . . distant cousins.” Mostly lies, but enough of the truth that Ash wouldn’t feel bad.

At first the girl continued to squint, so Ash wondered if the story she’d concocted was too transparent or ridiculous . . . but then the girl broke out into a wide grin, the kind of real, deep smile that Ash wasn’t sure she’d learn to do again.

“Well, aloha then, cousin,” Kalama said. She popped open the screen door and held it open, a gesture to invite Ash inside. It was only when Kalama turned in profile that Ash caught a detail she’d missed, studying her through the screen door.

Kalama was pregnant.

Very pregnant in fact—from the size of her baby bump, she looked like she might go into labor if she sneezed too hard.

Ash smiled and pointed to Kalama’s belly. “My research was pretty extensive, but it didn’t pull that up. Congratulations.”

Kalama chuckled and clasped her hands over the bump. “You came here expecting just to meet a distant cousin, and within a minute you find out you’re going to be a distant aunt to a baby girl as well. It’s a two-for-one deal.”

A few minutes later Ash was sitting out on the small patio overlooking Kalama’s backyard, which was overgrown and turning a crispy yellow. Hawai‘i was going through something of a dry summer—it had only rained twice in the entirety of Ash’s visit.

These days Ash prayed for rain. Prayed for storms, and lightning, and the roll of thunder. Prayed for echoes from the thunderclouds to remind her that Eve was somewhere out there in the cosmic expanse, watching over her little sister.

Kalama emerged from the house holding a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses. “Is this your first time to Hawai‘i?” she asked Ash as she poured the iced tea.

Ash nodded. “I feel a bit embarrassed that I’m only revisiting my heritage now. My parents adopted me from Tahiti, but from what little I know about my past, my roots also lie here.”

“And does being here stir those roots in you?” Kalama handed her a glass, on which condensation was already starting to form. “Does being here feel like home?”

Ash thought carefully about this, because it was something she’d wondered herself. Walking the beach at night when the libraries and town halls had closed. Climbing
Kīlauea, then Haleakalā, up the volcanoes that Pele had given rise to. Standing ankle-deep in the crystalline pool beneath Waimoku Falls, where she’d consummated her love with Colt Halliday two centuries ago. All that, and she’d expected it to stir in her some sense of belonging, something buried in her heart or her memories. “No,” Ash finally answered. “I wanted to, but . . . Honestly, no place feels like home right now. I guess I’m just adrift.”

Kalama gave her an exaggerated mock frown. “I believe that’s a very serious medical condition called being a teenager.”

Ash had come there to pick Kalama’s brain, to find out all about her and what sort of ancestors she and Colt could have given birth to, for better or worse . . . yet, in her easygoing and gently prodding manner, Kalama somehow turned the entire conversation to Ash and her past. Thirty minutes later Ash had spilled a detailed account of life growing up as a Polynesian girl in New York, her volatile relationship with Eve, and her transfer to Blackwood Academy. Even though she was omitting the supernatural elements, and just about everything from the last two months, it felt good to just tell a real story for once.

In fact as Ash waxed on about life in Scarsdale and her parents, she felt this profound sense of relief. While she was happy to be done with cults of evil gods, and bloodthirsty god-hunting millionaires, and especially Colt Halliday, she’d been harboring this secret fear that
when all that bad stuff was over, it would be impossible to return to a normal life. More than anything, she feared that living among mortals again would feel boring and trivial by contrast. Sure, she wouldn’t have to endure the harsh agonies of watching her loved ones die violently anymore, but there was an excitement to her life when she was fighting for something, when the fate of the world hung on her shoulders.

It turned out to be just the opposite, however. She had more longing than ever to return to Scarsdale and accept the challenge of resuming her old life. Ash hadn’t had the smoothest childhood. But she’d been so busy running from the ways her upbringing hadn’t fulfilled her that she’d never appreciated the ways that it had.

Ash finally managed to steer the conversation back to Kalama. “Now that I’ve practically vomited up my personal history to you,” Ash said, “do I know you well enough to ask about the baby’s father?”

Kalama gestured to the patio seat next to Ash, and for the first time she noticed the five-by-seven framed picture sitting in the seat. In the picture, a handsome Hawaiian boy in a naval uniform stared out. Even though the photograph was static, Ash got the impression that the boy had the same chipper personality as Kalama and probably had struggled not to smile for the picture.

“Don’t worry, he’s still with us,” Kalama assured Ash when her expression clouded with panic. “He’s just
overseas for another eight months. And then alternating years after that,” she admitted grudgingly.

“It must be hard,” Ash said, “living half your life without someone.” Strangely, even though she didn’t want to feel sympathy for him, her mind gravitated to Colt, inheriting all his old memories, then spending two decades away from his beloved.

“Everyone says that.” Kalama stared thoughtfully at the lemon that was floating in her iced tea. “But picture the man you love. Now ask yourself: Would you rather live half your life with him? Or all of it without him, with someone else instead? When you look at it that way, the choice is much easier than you think.”

This time it was Wes’s face that blossomed into Ash’s mind, the image surfacing and then dissolving like a drop of ink in water.

Eventually the conversation wound down, and Ash didn’t want to drag it out—she’d barged her way into the girl’s life as it was. And for better or worse she’d gotten what she’d come for: Something good had come out of her multi-lifetime affair with Colt. Not just Kalama, but the husband who could think lovingly about his wife and child while he was overseas. And the child who would hopefully grow up to find that love too, and the same for all the generations that would follow.

After Kalama had walked Ash out of the house, the two of them shared a hug so tight that Ash almost forgot they were still basically total strangers, despite their
shared blood. Where the swell of Kalama’s belly pressed into Ash’s stomach, she felt a crackling electricity—the power of possibility.

“I forgot to ask if you’d picked out any names,” Ash said.

Kalama laughed tersely. “Oh, we’ve got a laundry list of them. But it’s hard to pick something out for a person you’ve never met, you know? We can’t even decide whether we want to choose an English name or something more traditional. My husband’s even pickier than I am.” She shook her head at the space next to her, as though he were standing right by her side, preparing to argue.

Ash cleared her throat. “Well, I’m sort of the outsider in these parts, but I have spent a lot of the last few weeks looking through names and looking up their translations to see what they meant. I came across one girl’s name that made me smile: Ualani.” Ash paused, then added: “It means ‘rain from heaven.’ ”

Kalama’s eyes lit up. She seemed like she was actually considering it. “Ualani . . .,” she repeated. “It’s beautiful. Kind of a funny image though. You always think of heaven as this sunny place with immaculate, island weather.” She shrugged. “But then again, heaven is a very personal thing. I’m sure it rains in someone’s heaven.”