Wildefire Series: Wildefire Part 26

Her ears clicked. Her stomach plummeted as if she were free-falling from an airplane, and as the pressure s.h.i.+fted dramatically, her skull felt like it was folding itself into an origami crane. The court tilted in front of her, and even as her vision distorted into a kaleidoscope of pain, she could still see Eve's s.a.d.i.s.tic smile beneath the brim of her hat, enjoying every second of the torture she was inflict-ing on her little sister.

Ash breathed through her nose. She bounced the ball once.

I'm going to send you away, she thought.

Bounce.

Away, never to return.

Bounce, catch. Bounce, catch.

And I never- Bounce.

Want to- Catch.

See you- Toss.

AGAIN.

The ball hung in midair, dangling frozen above her 316 like an apple waiting to be plucked. The fire surged from her heart into her shoulder and all the way up to the tips of her fingers. And as her arm came down, swinging the racket like the hammer of Thor, she took every last frustration from the past week, every broken promise her sister had ever made, every ounce of Ashline's wasted love for Eve, and she channeled it into that ball.

It flew as true as an arrow, and from the get-go it was clearly too high to land in bounds, but that wasn't its intended trajectory. The green ball glowed faintly orange with heat, whistling as it sizzled over the net. Eve had time only to raise her racket in front of her face as it continued its flight toward her head.

But not even the racket could stop it. The racket strings tw.a.n.ged and burst inward, seared completely through by the fireball, which continued on its course for another six inches before it struck Eve in the face.

The force of the ball knocked her backward out of bound and her head connected with the ground first. Even from across the court Ash could see a small cloud of dying embers, carried away by the wind.

The Blackwood stands exploded, and before the faculty could even meekly protest, the whole ma.s.s of spectators flooded the court. The mob closed in around Ashline, blocking her line of vision. Eve disappeared in the deluge of fans.

The soccer team fought their way to the front, their painted bodies squeezing in around her until Bobby and 317 Stephen Drake hoisted her up onto their shoulders. Now, from her higher perspective, she caught sight of Eve shov-ing through the crowd toward the visiting team locker room. Her hands covered her face, but she took them down just long enough to bowl over one unlucky student.

The locker room door closed behind her.

Ash slipped down off the shoulders of her band of merry men and burst through the line of painted soldiers.

As she cut a path for the locker room, the people filled the void behind her, and the celebration continued as if she were still there in the center of it all.

In the visiting team locker room, Ash heard a groan.

Patricia Orleans was just beginning to stir on the floor of the shower, naked and lying under a steady stream of cold water. Ash didn't have time to worry about her. The back exit was slowly hissing shut. She sprinted across the tile, catching her reflection briefly in the mirror; her contact with the body-painted boys had slathered her uniform, arms, and one of her cheeks in green.

Eve was nowhere in sight when Ash crashed through the back doors, but Ash headed in a beeline for the forest anyway. Her bad knee, which had stayed true for the entire tennis match, had now grown tender again, but she limped on as quickly as she could manage.

Any residual heat from the spring day instantly dissipated into the dusk sky. It began to drizzle, and as the temperature continued to plummet, the drizzle soon transformed into snow.

318.

She stopped ten yards into the wood, unsure where to go. There was no heavy breathing, no footsteps, no rustle of leaves on the forest floor to follow. With the weather changing this rapidly and the snow now coming down in thick clumps, Eve couldn't be far off.

Ahead, resting on a rock, was the red tennis cap Eve had taken from Patricia.

"Do you think it happens this way every time?"

Ash, who had bent down to pick up the cap, whirled around. Eve sat with her back against one of the redwoods. Her bangs, her shoulders, and her eyelashes were all collecting snow, which she refused to brush off. She hugged her knees to her chest, and for the first time in a long while she looked truly small to Ashline, swallowed by the vastness of the trunk.

She looked almost human.

"Do you think," Eve continued, staring off into the snowy oblivion, "that we have this same relations.h.i.+p each time we're reborn? This push and pull, this give and take . . . Does it always work out like this? Or, if this were a different century, would we have gotten along?" She touched the scorch mark on her cheek where the burning ball had collided with her face.

Ash dropped the hat back to the ground. "I don't know."

Eve smiled slightly even though her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. "Do you think, maybe in the other times, I wasn't the bad girl? That I was the do-right, the beacon 319 of light, and you were the screwup, the runaway, the bad daughter?"

"I can only tell you who I am now," Ash replied, "and who I want to one day be. Maybe you should start focusing on this lifetime."

Eve used the trunk to pull herself to her feet. "Why bother? If I've already screwed up this one so bad, all I have to look forward to is the next, right?"

"Eve, I really do hope you find what you're looking for, that you restore the cycle, that you can find a way for us to all be reincarnated again for another hundred lifetimes." Ash choked back tears as she summoned the courage to say what she wanted to next. "But as far as this lifetime goes, we're through." When she heard the cold words hanging in the s.p.a.ce between them, she knew they were true.

There was a pause while Eve stood, unmoving. She opened her mouth, as if she were preparing to break down and sob.

Instead she hunched over and bent her neck back like some sort of vicious wounded creature. Her mouth gaped open wider than seemed humanly possible. And a death-rattling howl pierced the air.

The fierce gust caught Ash in the chest so hard that she rose up off her feet. Her head snapped back and hit the rock behind her, and the forest went fuzzy with pain.

When Ash, groaning, finally regained her wits and sat upright, Eve was gone.

320.

The only thing left of her sister was the distorted impression in the snow where she'd been leaning against the tree like a wounded soldier, a twisted snow angel of pain and violence quickly being erased by the white.

Ash had a present waiting on her bed when she returned to her room. Colt had apparently tried to find her after the tennis match, and when she'd gotten lost in the fray, he'd given up and handed the envelope off to Raja. Ash noticed that the silk dress and gladiator sandals had disappeared from her bedroom chair, so Raja must have made the swap.

She carefully ripped open the top of the envelope and pulled out the letter. As soon as she did, two earrings dropped out onto her comforter. They were made of gold with ruby gemstones, and they danced like firelight when she held them up to the lamp.

The letter read: Dearest Ash, I think you'll look charming in these when you wear them to masquerade ball on Friday. And the best part-they'll match my cuff links.

Your smitten burn victim, Colt Halliday 321.

Ash couldn't help but smile, and she wiped a few rogue tears from her eyes. She dropped the letter facedown onto the bed and immediately tried on the earrings.

Just as she was headed for the mirror to see how they looked, she discovered that there was more written on the letter's reverse side. She picked it up and continued reading.

P.S. I've enclosed the pictures from the other night; I developed them in my darkroom and did not look at them, so you could be the first and only person to lay eyes on this special spot of ours in the woods, our land before time began.

Treasure them.

She reached for the envelope that had dropped to the ground and pulled out the two photographs she had missed before. There, in the first picture, were Ash and Colt, smiling stupidly in their blindfolds. Ash had never seen a photograph where she'd looked any happier.

But something was wrong with the background of the image. Ash staggered over to the lamp and squinted closer. Faint in the area behind them, where there should have just been forest, was a distortion, what looked like a blue thumbprint hanging in the air.

Ash frowned. A trick of the setting sun? Maybe it was 322 just a lens flare, or Colt had botched this batch of photographs when he'd developed them.

She flipped to the next picture.

This was the photograph of the two of them kissing for the first time. Her hands held his head tenderly, and their lips looked like they were two puzzle pieces made to fit together.

Directly behind them and looming over their heads was a gigantic black creature with a blue flame for an eye.

The Cloak stood facing the camera dead-on, with the two of them in profile.

A picture may have been worth a thousand words, but this one said three words loud and clear: We are watching.

323.

MIDNIGHT MOVIE.

Thur sda y "We there yet?" Jackie asked. She tugged at the sleeve of Darren's sweater, causing him to jerk the steering wheel to the side.

"Jesus!" Darren shouted as the truck careened onto the shoulder of the road. Ash, Jackie, and Raja, who were squished into the cab of the pickup without seat belts, all pancaked together to the left. With a spin of the wheel the truck fishtailed back onto the 101, this time sending the three girls toppling to the right.

Finally he straightened the truck out and skewered Jackie with a scathing look. "Are you completely bonkers, Cutter?"

She blinked at him. "You didn't answer my question."

He sighed and reached for the radio. "Ten more minutes," he said, as Garth Brooks's "Friends in Low Places"

bellowed out of the speakers. Jackie opened her mouth to 324 say something else, but he cranked the radio up to drown her out.

Ash laughed, grateful that she'd called the seat next to the window. She was enjoying the light spring breeze on her face. Overnight Berry Glenn's mysterious light coating of snow had melted with the evening rain, and with each degree that the temperature of the afternoon air climbed, it felt as though Eve must be that much farther away.

Eventually the forest thinned as the Redwood Highway approached the coast, until the trees gave way completely and they were running parallel to the ocean.

A string of cars cluttered the sandy shoulder of the highway, where local residents and sea-starved travelers alike wheeled coolers onto the beach. A few brave souls had waded into the water wearing wet suits, but the rest of the beachgoers sat safely away from the hypothermic ocean in favor of beach chairs and brightly colored umbrellas.

They pa.s.sed a string of inns and motels before rolling by the marina and into Crescent City. After a couple of ninety-degree turns in the labyrinth of one-level buildings, the GPS announced their arrival at the women's clothing boutique.

Darren threw the car into park. "Out," he ordered roughly, and pointed to the curb.

The three girls tumbled out of the cab. Ashline leaned through the open truck window. "You mean you're not coming dress shopping with us?" she whined 325 with mock disappointment. "I could really use a male opinion."

"While debating chiffon and silk and up dos sounds like a hot heap of fun," Darren replied as he typed a new destination into his GPS, "I'm going to politely decline.

First of all, we both know you're not my 'type.'" He winked at her. "And since Patrick is coming all the way up from Santa Monica for this s.h.i.+t-show of a dance, I need a haircut so I don't look like a total surfer bro. No offense to your date," he added to Raja, who was lingering outside the car.

"None taken," Raja said.

With the promise to pick them up in two hours, Darren lurched the truck forward with the screech of rubber on asphalt, and he was off to the salon.

It took trips to three different stores before the girls at last found dresses to their liking. Jackie decided she wanted to be "sultry" and picked out a strapless black number.

In honor of the newfound nice weather, Raja chose something lacy and knee-length from the spring collection. The dress clung to the curves of her body like a second skin. When she emerged from the dressing room and twirled in front of the mirror, even Ashline couldn't keep her jaw from spilling open. "d.a.m.n, girl," Ash said. "You better get a defibrillator to go with the dress, because Rolfe is going to have a heart attack when he sees you in that."

326.

The mirror wasn't big enough to contain the smile on Raja's face.

Ash was still having trouble settling on a dress after fifteen minutes of browsing at the third boutique. She could tell Raja and Jackie were starting to squirm, so she offered to let them go do their own thing in the city.

Raja grinned lasciviously. "I do need to find some matching lingerie to go with my new dress."

Ash raised her eyebrow.

"What? It's just in case."

"I didn't say anything," Ash said.

"Maybe not with your mouth, but your eyes just called me a s.l.u.t." She held up her phone as she backed toward the door. "Call me when you're ready to move on to shoes."

Jackie lingered, but Ash made a shooing motion toward the door. "You're relieved of your best friend dress-finding duties as well."

"You sure? I was thinking of making a visit to the optometrist. My gla.s.ses don't exactly match the dress.

Maybe it's time to make the transition to contact lenses."

"So Ade can stare longingly into your eyes?"

Jackie stepped on Ashline's toe hard enough to make her squeak, but added "Love you, boo!" as she disappeared out of the boutique.

After a good deal of searching the racks, Ash spied a red chiffon dress hidden on the clearance rack. She couldn't find any stains or rips, and, most important, it 327 matched her new earrings. She headed for the dressing room.

She was admiring the dress in the hallway mirror-it was perfect-when she felt the umbra of someone lurking in one of the dressing room doors. At first she panicked and thought that it was Eve, back to torture her, and maybe tear her new dress to shreds.

But the woman watching her from the doorway was not Eve. This woman was blond and beautiful, though her makeup couldn't hide the age lines around the corners of her eyes. She had a distinguished, educated air to her, though she was cut from a different stock than Headmistress Riley.

"I think red is your color," the woman complimented her. "Va-voom."

"Thanks." Ash smiled into the mirror. She turned from her left side to her right to make sure the dress looked slimming on her stomach and hips, before twirl-ing to see how it looked from behind. "This is a nice little boutique you own here."

"Oh, I don't work here," the woman replied. "But I do want to find the store clerk to ask if that dress comes in fireproof."

Ashline's fingers tightened around the strap that she had been adjusting. "Excuse me?"

"Chiffon." The woman pointed to the dress. "Catches fire easily. You might want something heat-resistant.

Maybe with asbestos insulation."

328.