Iridescent (Ember 2) (2 page)

Chapter Two

A
LL
F
IGHT
L
EFT
C
ANDRA
as remorselessly as an arrow from a well-worn bow. She froze, her hand aloft and ready to strike out with the lamp. “Ivy?” Her voice sounded weak, brittle. To say the name without feeling the accompanying stab of pain proved difficult.

The young woman nodded slowly once. Her shoulders relaxed significantly along with a relieved sigh.

“Ivy?” Candra repeated, only vaguely aware the woman had already answered. She looked nothing like Ivy, and at the same time, Candra could see Ivy in everything about her. Ivy’s eyes looked out at her from a stranger’s body. Blood drained from Candra’s face, and her knees buckled, ready to give way.
It can’t be…

Fury bubbled up again, zinging through her blood. Her muscles acted without conscious decision. “It’s a trick. You can’t be her,” she yelled, bringing her hand down hard toward the stranger’s head.

The lamp didn’t make contact. Fingers caught around Candra’s wrist, holding her back with little effort. Candra grunted, pushing harder. It was as if the woman was made of stone, as if Candra was attempting to move a living statue. Blood pounded in her head, and her eyes stung with the beginning of a headache. She curled her other fist into a ball on reflex, but the woman was quicker and gripped that hand too.

“I have no intention of letting you mess up the pretty.” The green-eyed stranger scowled, making barely-there lines form between her brows. She flicked her head, swishing her long hair over her shoulder and pressed her lips into a straight line.

Confusion riddled Candra. She wanted to believe in her heart that it was entirely possible for Ivy to be here because, well, because if angels were possible, anything was possible. However, the other part of her had seen and experienced so much recently. It warned her not to trust herself. Watchers could get inside a person’s head and make them believe anything the Watcher wanted them to believe. She scrunched her eyes up tight, wishing hard it could be true and her best friend had returned to her.

“Sebastian.” Candra whispered the word without realizing it. She longed for his presence to help her through this. Perhaps if he was here with her, it wouldn’t be happening at all, she thought to herself. Maybe the grief and pressure had finally gotten to her and she had snapped. Perhaps the vision before her merely consisted of vapor and shadow, like the monsters children witnessed slinking out of their closet at night.

“I bet beautiful, creepy, stalker guy can talk some sense into you.”

Candra’s eyes flashed open, wide and astonished. A numb prickling sensation trickled downward toward her elbow, and her hand began losing feeling from lack of blood. “What did you just say?”

The woman blinked, and Candra noticed for the first time that there was no glimmer of gold in her eyes. All Watchers had flecks of gold in their eyes. Not simply golden color, their eyes reflected light as if they contained hints of the precious metal. Every single one of them except for Brie, who was technically not a Watcher any longer since she’d fallen to raise Candra as her own child. This stranger had pure green eyes, as if someone had poured smooth paint into her irises. Candra caught her breath.

Seeming to deduce that she was finally getting through, the woman loosened her hold a little and drew Candra’s hand down.

Blood rushed back into her fingers with an acute pain, leaving her unable to keep her hold on the lamp. The makeshift weapon dropped from her hand to the wooden floor with a sharp clang. Candra knew in her heart and soul that this was real and not some delusion created by her tormented mind. Some part of this person standing in front of her with an amused expression was Ivy. The woman’s dark pink lips turned upward on one side in a knowing smirk.

Like a domino display toppling relentlessly onward, relief spread quickly through Candra, and her entire body relaxed for the first time in months. Nothing else mattered for now—not the war, free will, or destiny. She was getting a second chance; they both were. All the things Candra hadn’t shared with Ivy before rushed forward in her mind and became a topsy-turvy mess of words. She had Sebastian, Brie, and now Ivy back again. Her eyes began to flood and overflow, and a smile so wide it hurt stretched across her face.

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” She beamed.

“In the flesh, so to speak.” The green-eyed stranger stepped back, holding her hands at shoulder level, and twirled. “And what a lovely flesh it is.”

Candra’s eyebrow drew down at her attempt to be lighthearted. On impulse, she reached out and pinched the woman’s arm hard.

“Ouch!” She swatted Candra’s hand away lightly and covered her arm where a red mark bloomed, looking down and then back to Candra’s sheepish grin.

“Just checking.”

“Well, next time, pinch yourself to check if you are delusional.” The woman, who Candra now accepted was Ivy in some form, glanced up at her and then back to her arm. When she took her hand away, the mark was gone and her skin had returned to smooth and flawless.

“What are you?” Candra asked, leaning forward to take a closer look at Ivy’s arm.

“Now, that is the million dollar question.” She laughed without humor and moved to sit on Candra’s bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the large room.

The space was predominantly plain and decorated in neutral colors. Abstract paintings hung over Candra’s bed and seemed to depict wings, depending on the perception of the viewer.

The woman winced and sat down easier the second time. “It seems not every injury heals so fast. Remind me to ask his hotness why I had to land smack on my ass on a hard wooden floor with a nice comfy mattress six inches to the left.”

“Sebastian,” Candra thought aloud, rushing back to her desk.

Ivy was beside her before she got a chance to dial and pulled the phone from her hand.

Candra turned to her and tilted her head in confusion. Her face hurt when she frowned, the result of persistent gloom for several days.

The woman held up the phone, fixing her gaze on Candra in a way that made her want to shrink back. Green-eyes cleared the number and placed it back on the desk.

“We need to talk first.”

“Wouldn’t this be easier if everyone was here so you don’t have to tell it over—”

“I can’t tell them everything,” she cut Candra off mid-flow.

Candra narrowed her eyes. She believed this person was Ivy, and so she should trust her, but the very last thing she needed right now was more secrets. For some reason, her instinct wouldn’t allow her to accept what her head and heart already believed.

The woman sat again, this time placing her hands down first and then lightly sitting until she fully positioned herself on the thick plush down of Candra’s comforter.

“It’s better if Sebastian doesn’t see me yet.”

“Why?”

She shrugged dramatically. “What can I say? I know what I know.”

It was all too bizarre for Candra. The last week had been confusing in the worst possible ways. Sebastian loved her, and she loved him; it felt so natural to her. The beginning of their relationship had turned out to be bittersweet when she discovered her courtship with Draven had been a ruse. He had set them up to finally make peace among the Watchers. To make matters worse, apparently an even more deadly menace loomed. Candra had also spent the past week in mourning. She’d attended her lectures in a daze and had accepted the condolences of her classmates with little acknowledgement of them. Now this.

“I’m really not sure I can take any more,” she said wearily. She released her long hair from the tight clip holding it in place and fell back on to her bed beside the young woman…Ivy. Candra shut her eyes and tried to force her brain to accept the name and attach it to this stranger’s face in her subconscious. Her subconscious didn’t want to cooperate, and the name slipped away, leaving the woman’s face inside her head battling with Ivy’s for recognition. Like a new penny spinning on its edge, she saw Ivy, then the woman…then Ivy…faster and faster until they appeared to become one. Except they weren’t one. As soon as the penny stopped, it would fall flat, leaving only one of them on top.

Candra sat up again and stared at her, pressing her fingers into
Ivy’s
cheeks. She squeezed them in the way she’d molded Play-Doh as a child, as if she could fix
Ivy
back the way she used to be.

“Watcha doing?”
Ivy
asked, drawing out the words, her voice muffled by her distorted mouth and her eyebrows arching.

“This is going to take a lot of getting accustomed to.” Candra studied her face, pulling the flesh this way and that, familiarizing herself.

“Are we done now?”

Candra brought her hand up to her own temples, rubbing circles to relieve the building tension headache. It was hardly past eight, and she was already exhausted. “How can you be so blasé about this?”

The woman lifted her hand behind her shoulder and scooped her long, silken hair over to the front, where she began working it into a braid. “Believe me when I say that landing on your floor in this body was not the weirdest thing that happened to me this week.” She shrugged, looking up at Candra from under long black lashes. “Besides, you know me. I was constantly changing my appearance.”

“Your hair, make-up, clothes…” Candra argued incredulously. “You never became someone else.”

Ivy
stopped and looked up from where she’d been gazing at the radiance her dark hair picked up from the muted light. “But I’m not someone else. I’m the same as always…with a few minor adjustments.”

Candra shook her head, still struggling to reconcile this woman and Ivy into one being.

Ivy
smiled and rolled her eyes before she continued. “I know who I am. My identity isn’t tied up in my appearance. The outside—” she waved one hand around in front of her, holding on to the braid with the other “—is just decoration.”

“You’re making me feel very shallow,” Candra joked lightly. “I would be seriously freaking out.”

“You did seriously freak out,”
Ivy
corrected her.

A wave of mixed emotions overcame Candra. Her life had become a cyclone of changes, a tempest of sensations she could barely register before one moved on to the next. They slowly managed to grind her down, piece by piece.

“What was it like?” she whispered in a hushed voice, unconvinced she really wanted the answer.

“Dying?”

Candra nodded.

“Baffling.” She snorted a laugh. Candra frowned. The woman sucked in a deep breath and went on. “Look, this is big. I’m not going to pretend like it isn’t, but I can’t be all morose about getting another go on the merry-go-round. The shooting was an accident. I know that much. The guy didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Candra pursed her lips dubiously; she couldn’t help blaming the guy who’d shot Ivy, regardless of his reasons for robbing the drugstore. He’d claimed he was hungry and the gun simply went off. In Candra’s mind, he should never have been carrying a gun.

Ivy
laid her hand across Candra’s, and her first thought was how smooth and warm the woman’s skin was…and soft—softer than even Lofi’s. Once again, the penny in her mind’s eye began spinning, and the whirling sound rang in her ears. Ivy’s face flashed in and out.

“There are reasons for everything, even when we can’t see them. Me being here is not something that happened on its own.”

Candra pulled her hand away roughly and scooted backward so she pressed her spine against the metal frame of her bed. She pulled her legs up to her chest and folded her arms tightly around them, pushing her fingers into her own arms until they stung. “Please don’t give me that,” she pleaded earnestly. “You, of all people! Don’t talk to me about destiny and plans and what’s meant to be. You were the one who told me we have free will and our choices are our own.”

“They are.”
Ivy
pulled her legs up too, and in the process released the braid, which immediately began to fall loose. “Of course we all have free will, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t affected by what others decide. Sometimes, things are put in our path that aren’t as random as they appear, that’s all. Sometimes, things happen as reactions to what others choose. It doesn’t mean free will isn’t real.”

Candra closed her eyes and turned her head to rest her cheek on her knee. “You’re talking in circles. I don’t understand.”

“Where is Prince Charming?”

“Still paying his respects at your funeral reception, I expect,” Candra mumbled against her knee. “He’ll be home soon.”

“Home.” The woman repeated the word in a tone strongly laced with questioning. She paused for a moment. “Let’s get back to that one later, shall we?”

Candra peeked up briefly. Curious green eyes gazed back at her. When she looked away again and ignored the slightly lower pitch of the voice speaking to her, she could almost pretend she was Ivy.
She is Ivy,
Candra scolded herself and forced her eyes up.