Embers & Echoes (44 page)

“Enough!” Ash growled, the volcano goddess in her instinctually taking over. The couple instantly shut up and froze in place, with the woman reaching for the bedside phone. “No need to call the fire department,” Ash said as she pulled herself to her feet, leaving a trail of charred handprints on the cherry dresser. “I’ll just put myself out.” The corona of fire around her flickered off, and her igneous skin cooled back into soft flesh. She nodded
to the lovebirds, well aware that most of her clothes had been burned off, and she marched out of their bedroom. Thankfully, the fire alarm in their apartment waited to go off until Ash was halfway down the hall to the elevator.

She rode up twelve stories—the distance she’d fallen—back to the top floor. There she cut through Wesley’s penthouse and took the stairwell up to the roof.

The item Ash was looking for lay half-crumpled near the roof’s edge, near where Rose’s portal had ripped apart a large section of the railing.

It was the postcard that Colt had shown to Rose before she’d opened the gateway.

It was the only clue Ash had to discovering where Colt had taken her two sisters, along with Proteus, the villainous shape-shifter, and Saga, the now-orphaned infant of Rolfe and Raja.

Holding the postcard up to the moonlight, Ash recognized the iconic white steeple of the historic church in the postcard. The caption beneath the photo confirmed its location for her:

“The Old North Church.”

“Boston, Massachusetts.”

It was just a city.

It was just a church.

But it was a start. When Ash had been eavesdropping on Colt, she’d heard him say that there was someone at the church he needed to “pay a special visit to” before he
could kill the Cloak, before he could glue the Wilde girls back together.

Well, if there was someone in Boston that Colt needed for his evil agenda, Ash would just have to get to them first. If this person was an ally of Colt’s, Ash would stop him. If this person was someone Colt needed dead, Ash would protect him. And if Colt needed to die in order for his symphony of deceit and bloodshed to finally end . . .

The trickster’s body might be able to regenerate, but thanks to the visions from Ash’s previous life, she knew Colt had one weakness that prevented him from being completely invincible.

His heart was human.

The irony wasn’t lost on Ash.

Ash stepped up to the roof’s edge, through the gap in the mangled railing. Below, she could see the flickering lights of an ambulance and police cars arriving on the scene, where Raja had just fallen to her death. Now that Ash was no longer plummeting to a similar demise, the grief caught up with her and she dropped to her knees.

She sobbed so hard that only a wet sound escaped from the back of her throat. Raja had been one of her only remaining friends from Blackwood Academy. Now, thanks to Colt’s plotting, Eve’s treachery, and Rose’s instability, Raja had met a horrible end before she could see her newborn daughter grow up.

Who knew what wicked plans Colt had in store for baby Saga.

A familiar rage rose in Ash, and her internal temperature climbed again. The tears evaporated off her cheeks. She still had the postcard clutched in her hand, but now it ignited.

So Colt wanted the old Pele back—the dangerous, murderous, destructive volcano goddess he’d fallen in love with for the last five hundred years.

Well, Ash would show him a piece of the old Pele. And then he would learn to be careful what he wished for. Because it no longer mattered to her that she and Colt had spent the last five lifetimes in love.

If the time came and she really needed to, she would do what the Cloak had asked of her . . .

. . . and pluck the heart from the trickster’s chest with her own burning hands.

Ashline spread the petals of her fingers, and watched the postcard smolder in her palm. Then she crushed it with an animalistic growl, sending a plume of hot ashes and embers up around her, before she tilted her head back and screamed:

“I’m coming for you, Colt Halliday!”

First and foremost, to my mythological advisor, Daniele Cudmore, whom I stupidly forgot to thank in the first book for introducing me to Pele. May the Midgard Serpent devour me for such insolence.

To my grandparents Lloyd and Ellen Knight, for letting me borrow our two-hundred-fifty-year-old family farm in Maine for a scene that is far from historical.

To my grandfather James Murphy, because I seem to have inherited your dry wit, and in turn, so have a lot of my characters.

To the city of Miami, for allowing me to wreak fictional carnage on places true and imaginary within your city limits. Consider it payback for the sunburn you scarred me with during my last “research” visit . . . to your beach.

To Anna Staniszewski, for agreeing to mentor Ashline and me for a fourth semester in a row. You must be the goddess of patience.

To my superagent, Mary Kole, for being a constant source of encouragement no matter where you are in your world travels (which, on any given weekend, could literally be anywhere).

To my editor, Courtney Bongiolatti, whose literary wisdom I still revere despite your unwavering allegiance to the Giants.

To Justin Chanda and the whole team at Simon & Schuster, for your continued support of my mythological musings, and especially to Lydia Finn and Colin Riley, for reminding me that you don’t have to look hard to find Patriots fans in New York City.

And to Mom, Dad, Kelsey, Erin, Ray, and baby Victoria, all of whom have taught me about the importance of family, and one of whom has taught me the indispensable value of a singing stuffed octopus.

Karsten Knight has been writing since the age of six, when he completed his first masterpiece: a picture book series about an adventurous worm. In the two decades that have followed, Karsten worked as a proofreader, a bookseller, and a college admissions counselor before finally deciding that his true calling is to be a volcano goddess biographer. He resides in Boston, where he lives for fall weather and football, and is on a far-too-successful quest to visit every restaurant in the city.
Wildefire
was his first novel. For more information on Karsten or to watch his video blog, visit
karstenknight.com
.

Also by
Karsten Knight

WILDEFIRE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2012 by Karsten Knight Photograph copyright © 2012 by Ashton Worthington All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Book design by Laurent Linn
Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by Ashton Worthington
The text for this book is set in Arrus BT.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Knight, Karsten.

Embers & echoes / Karsten Knight. — 1st ed.
p. cm.

Summary: In Miami, Florida, seeking her younger sister, sixteen-year-old Ashline Wilde, a Polynesian volcano goddess, joins forces with other reincarnated deities, but trickster Colt’s diabolical plans threaten them all.

ISBN 978-1-4424-5030-1 (hardcover)
[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Goddesses—Fiction.

4. Gods—Fiction. 5. Tricksters—Fiction. 6. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

II. Title: Embers and echoes.

PZ7.K7382Emb 2012

[Fic]—dc23

2011046357

ISBN 978-1-4424-5036-3 (eBook)