Embers & Echoes (41 page)
As Wes held her, he stroked her hair and lowered his lips to kiss her forehead. “Rest now,” he whispered. She was mildly aware that his touch was affecting her with some type of magic, but before she could fight it, a calmness swept over her. The troubled seas within her grew still as the winds died from a howl to a whisper. She yawned. Part of her wanted to open her eyes, to stretch her limbs, to fight it, but part of her saw a window to a few minutes without pain if she would just let go, if she would just let go. . . .
It sounded like Wes was speaking to her through a lengthening tunnel, and when she woke later, she would never be totally sure that she hadn’t dreamed it. “In a world that’s forever uncertain, there is one thing I know in my heart: We will meet again, Ashline Wilde.”
When Ash opened her eyes next, it was well after dark. She was curled up in a ball in the cold grass beneath the weeping willow. And she was very much alone.
In the end Wes had left her with two things: the key to his condo, tucked into the pocket of her jeans, and a spreading, numbing cold that even lava couldn’t thaw.
After watching fifteen minutes of the seven
o’clock news, Ash determined that she was somehow involved in just about every story.
The untimely death of noted tycoon Lesley Vanderbilt, discovered mysteriously frostbitten and afloat in the Venetian Pool, along with the body of a second female victim.
The explosions on the Lincoln Road Mall—that had left many businesses damaged, yet no one injured—and how the FBI was “exploring the possibility of terrorism.”
The unidentified corpse encased in glass on the beach, who authorities believed to be the victim of a freak geothermal anomaly. (A portion of the beach had been closed to the public while volcanologists investigated).
The trail of blood and death throughout the overgrown gardens on the Villa Vizcaya grounds, and the strange structure that had been constructed over the
Mound, like some nightmare that had spawned out of radioactive fertilizer.
And then the final, puzzling conclusion that tied all the stories together: The bodies recovered at each crime scene belonged to the strange “fantasy broadcasts” that had aired this past week. The newscasters could offer nothing more than a wild, nonsensical guess that a publicity stunt for an unaired television series had somehow gone awry, leaving six people dead, and the gory remains of a seventh unidentified.
The single weeping willow tree that appeared overnight in the courtyard of the city’s Spanish monastery didn’t even make the news.
Ash watched just long enough to be certain that her face or name didn’t pop up in any of the newscasts. Apparently no one had captured any footage of her firefight with Rey on the Lincoln Road Mall. She finally muted the television and pulled her feet up onto the long chaise longue in Wes’s apartment. In her hands she cradled a camera. She had taken it—along with all of the others that she could find—from Lily’s botanical arena at Villa Vizcaya.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t a camcorder where she could just eject the tape and fling it into the fireplace to destroy the evidence. She flicked the antenna on the bottom. Somewhere in the world there could be a recording showing Ash using her abilities, from multiple angles, probably in high definition—enough to identify her face.
Maybe this recording was sitting in an empty room, on a dusty computer, waiting for Lily or Thorne to come back to it. Maybe her secret was safe.
Or maybe . . .
The buzzer startled her. She dropped the camera onto the floor, and the lens cracked.
When the buzzing at the front door happened again, Ash deduced that it must be the condominium’s equivalent of a doorbell. She staggered over to the intercom beside the front door, where she pushed the blinking blue button.
“You have a guest at the front desk, Mr. Towers,” the female concierge said immediately over the intercom.
“Very well,” Ash said in the deepest voice she could muster.
Ash pressed her ear to the door to Wes’s room, where Eve was staying, and then checked on Rose, who was sleeping in the guest room with her arms and legs sprawled out in an
X
. Ash had discovered the night before that Rose slept with her eyes open. Even in slumber, the little girl was a little creepy.
On the elevator ride down to the lobby, Ash wondered whether she was violating house guest etiquette by greeting a guest who’d come expecting to see Wes. She was potentially placing herself in a position where she’d have to explain to a stranger that Wes was on an indefinite leave from Miami to deal with his grief. But between Aurora and Ixtab, Ash had only ever met two of Wes’s
friends—one now dead, the other missing. The curiosity of meeting someone else who was a part of his life triumphed over her better judgment.
As it turned out, however, the visitor was there for Ash.
The elevator chimed in tranquil monotone, and Ash stepped cautiously out into the lobby. Getting ambushed every day for the past week had made her jumpy. Even greeting guests in the busy lobby felt like she was walking into some sort of death trap. So it was a pleasant surprise when she heard the familiar voice call her name from the row of floral-cushioned armchairs by the faux fireplace.
“Ashline?” Raja said. The Egyptian girl stood up slowly, as though her knees were arthritic.
It took all of Ash’s restraint not to tackle Raja in happiness when she crossed the lobby to hug her. Ash kept her back hunched when she wrapped her arms around her, just in case there was any chance of crushing the baby she knew was growing inside Raja. The two of them had never been best friends at Blackwood—or friends at all until that fateful first week of May. But after all they’d been through . . .
They both had tears in their eyes when they finally pulled away to look at each other. Raja had cut her hair so that her bangs came almost down to her eyebrows, but that couldn’t hide the thick, dark bags beneath her eyes. Her olive skin was mottled with red. Her face looked rounder, and her curves more accentuated than
Ash remembered. It was hard to believe this transformation had happened in only the short span since Ash had last seen her.
Ash laughed between sobs and wiped the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know what to say,” she said. “It’s just . . . really nice to see a friendly face.”
Raja squeezed Ash’s arm. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Ash shook her head. “But how did you know which condo I was staying in, or who to ask for, or . . . ?” Ash had to reflect back on the last week just to double-check that she’d never contacted Raja. “Wait, or what city I was even in?”
“What do you mean?” Raja pulled out her smart phone and held up the screen—a virtual notepad was open with an address and Wes’s name written on it. “I know I wasn’t the most fastidious student at Blackwood, but I’m smart enough to take notes when I hear something important.”
Ash felt that fog of joy, the one she’d been swimming in since she’d first seen Raja, fade into a dark mist. “I meant, who told you where to find me?”
“Is . . . this a trick question?” Raja cocked her head to the side. “Ash,
you did
.”
Ash swallowed. The Four Seasons had located Ade with Colt’s help—so who was to say they hadn’t tried to reel in Raja by using some sick trick as well? “I don’t know what to tell you, Raja. Whoever it was on the
phone wasn’t me. But I promise you’re in no danger if it was who I think it was—”
“No,” Raja interrupted her. “It wasn’t a phone call. It was a video chat on the computer.
I saw you
.”
The night before, once Ash had finished crying and had accepted that Wes wasn’t coming back, she had watched television with her two sisters. An awkward silence had clung to the room until, finally, Eve had started laughing under her breath and pointed out the irony that they were watching a sitcom about three misfit brothers living in the same house. Then the three of them had collapsed in laughter, a contagious mix of relief and exhaustion, even though little Rose didn’t seem to have any idea exactly
why
she was laughing. That moment was the first time that Ash thought maybe, just maybe, her life was taking baby steps toward someplace more comfortable, predictable, and safe.
In three words Raja had catapulted Ash right back into the land of the inexplicable, disconcerting, and weird.
She could see that Raja, too, had gone quite pale, which made the blush spots on her cheeks far more pronounced. No use causing the girl a panic-induced miscarriage. “Listen,” Ash said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but the important thing is that you’re here, and you’re safe, and you’re healthy.” She took Raja by the arm and started to lead her toward the elevator, even though Raja resisted. “Come on. Let’s get you up into the air-conditioned apartment before the heat sends you into labor seven months early.”
Raja opened her mouth.
Then the baby cried.
Ash stopped tugging. She peered around Raja and noticed for the first time the baby carriage that had been tucked in the shadow of the coffee table.
And the baby who had just woken up inside of it.
“Tell me you didn’t, Raja,” Ash pleaded with her. “
Please
tell me you didn’t.”
Raja avoided eye contact by ducking down next to the carrier. She made several soft “shushing” noises and tucked the yellow blanket snugly beneath the baby. It didn’t stop crying until she pressed her lips to its forehead and held them there for several seconds. Gradually it’s sobbing faded to a gurgle, then silence. Ash could see the infant’s eyes flicker closed as it drifted back into pacified slumber.
“You don’t understand,” Raja said in a hushed voice. “You
can’t
understand what it’s like . . . what it’s like to have the father of your child killed the day after she was conceived. What it’s like to stare at your stomach in the mirror and know that you have to wait nine months to make sure the baby’s okay too, all the while wondering if she’s going to share the same fate as her father. What it’s like to feel more alone when you’re eating and breathing and living for two people than you ever did when you just lived for yourself.” She rocked the carrier gently back and forth. “I just needed to know that she was okay for me to be okay myself.”
Ash felt compelled to scold Raja for her recklessness. Harnessing her powers over life and death to speed up a pregnancy could have easily killed the child, or caused it to come out of the womb already old and deformed. But the damage, if any, was already done. And to be fair, Ash had been in possession of her little sister for only twenty-four hours, so she wasn’t exactly in the position to dispense parenting advice.
Ash knelt down beside the carrier. “What’s her name?”
Raja offered a sleepy smile. “I wanted to name her something strong and Norse like her father . . . so I call her Saga.” The baby’s eyes blinked open just for a moment when she heard her name.
“It’s a beautiful name,” Ash said. “
She’s
beautiful.” And she was. Ash could already see features from both of the baby’s parents. The long, shapely nose from Raja, along with her Egyptian skin tone. The expressive robin’segg-blue eyes from Rolfe, and the early beginnings of what might turn out to be blond hair.
“She laughs a lot, and she almost never cries.” Raja’s eyes glimmered wistfully. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be so strong.”
Ash took Raja’s suitcase, and the three of them rode the elevator back up to the top floor. The adorable infant served as a welcome distraction to the questions that threatened to run wild in Ash’s brain—mainly, who had impersonated Ash? And what had her doppelganger said
to Raja to make the girl travel a thousand miles to Miami with an infant.
Raja continued to chatter excitedly (though in soft tones so as not to wake the baby), but she trailed off midsentence as they came through the entrance to Wes’s condominium. Eve was sitting at the kitchenette, and had stopped in the middle of a big bite from a McIntosh apple.
The looks the two girls were exchanging said it all. Raja looked ready to drop her own child just for a chance to dive murderously at Eve’s throat, and Eve looked like a fox caught with its teeth clamped around a hen’s neck. Ash had been so preoccupied with all the other pressing questions that it hadn’t crossed her mind until now that Eve was partially responsible for Rolfe’s death.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Raja growled. “I thought the bitch was dead.”
“Hey,” Ash said. She placed her hands on Raja’s shoulders and forced her to make eye contact. “I know what you’re thinking. I know that you’re feeling the lust for revenge, and that Eve might seem like a sensible target for all that rage. But this moving-on thing works only if
all
of us agree to second chances, second chances for everyone.”
Raja’s body was trembling so much that baby Saga stirred and gurgled. “You’ll forgive me,” Raja said, “if I don’t feel very forgiving.”
“It’s okay,” Eve said. She wiped the juice from the
apple onto her pants and stood up. “I would never ask you to forgive me for the unforgivable. I can tell you that I never meant for anyone at Blackwood to get hurt. I can tell you that I didn’t know that Lily would sour and curdle into a monster the way she did. But that won’t bring your boyfriend back.” Eve walked over to the guest bedroom. “For that,” she said over her shoulder, “I don’t deserve a second chance.” Then she closed the door softly behind her.
Raja and Ash both stared at the closed door. Raja finally broke the silence first. “There’s one other thing you should know.”
Ash withheld the urge to say, “Oh, God. What now?”
Raja unzipped her suitcase and rummaged through the clothes until she found what she was looking for. From beneath the mound of underwear and jeans, she produced a familiar-looking scroll with a braille label on the edge.
After her trip to the Cloak Netherworld, Ash had already had just about enough of the oily black creatures and their prophecies. “Don’t these things ever go away?” she moaned.
“When Serena originally handed it to me, I couldn’t make sense of the instructions, but I felt this strange tickling in the back of my mind telling me that when I finally understood what it was that I had to do, I wasn’t going to like it.” Raja cautiously handed the scroll to Ash. “And I was right.”