Embers & Echoes (27 page)

“I guess the sand is always whiter on the other beach,” Wes mused. “Second question: What is your greatest fear right now?”

This one came more easily to Ash. It was something that she’d spent a good chunk of her time on the roof last night thinking about. “For the last few days I’ve been afraid that I’ll never find my younger sister, and that I’ll never bring Eve back. But then last night, when I thought I was
this
close to Rose, I realized what was most terrifying to me is the thought that I’ll get both of my sisters back . . . and it won’t make everything okay.”

“Well, at least the third question is on the lighter side,” he said. Ash could tell he was wondering whether his thought-provoking three-question game had taken a harpoon to the romantic gaiety of their date. “The last question is this: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?”

But even this question, which she knew was supposed to be fun and inspire her to describe a dream vacation,
took on a new sense of gravity. Did he expect her to say “here”? Was he wondering if her desire to give it all up for a normal life in Scarsdale included giving up meeting him as well? Was he wondering whether there was a place for a ninety-six-hour romance in Ash’s ideal life?

Rather than answering, Ash said, “I want you to answer those same three questions. Since you’ve just put me on the spot, it’s your turn to psychoanalyze yourself.”

Wes’s expression soured. “The easiest of the three questions, and you’re just going to skip it?”

Ash pouted right back at him. “God, give a girl a second to come up with a thoughtful answer.”

“Fine.” Wes stopped walking and set his heels in the wet sand as he formulated his answers. “My secret desire,” he said, “is that I hadn’t inherited everything that I own—the money, the car, the condo—but that I’d worked for it. At the moment my secret fear is that, even if what you and I have between us is something special, when all this ugly business with the Four Seasons and your sisters is over, you won’t be able to remember me without thinking of all the pain along the way.” He paused to take in the moonlight. “But despite all that, if I could be anywhere in the world right now, I’d be right here standing ankle-deep in water with you.”

Ash’s ears were growing hot, to the point where she thought they might ignite. She tried to blow the flames out by looking out over the ocean. In fact, the warm Atlantic waters were looking particularly inviting. . . . “If
I could be anywhere in the world right now . . .” she said playfully, “then I would be . . . right there!” She pointed to a patch of water twenty feet out, where a trail of moonlight reflected off the surface.

Wes cocked his head in confusion, but by then Ash was already stripping off her pants. Soon she had tossed her T-shirt into a pile in the sand with her rumpled jeans. Now in just her bikini, she took off running through the water and dove gracefully into the waves. The water was warm, yes, but even then she still had that moment of cold shock as her body slipped into the velvet touch of the ocean.

When Ash resurfaced, she flipped her head back to get the wet hair out of her face. After she’d cleared the salt water from her eyes, she saw that Wes was still dawdling on the beach, fully clothed.

“Seriously?” Ash said. “The girl you just poured your heart out to stripped and jumped into the ocean, and you’re just going to stand sheepishly on dry land? Are you Tezcatlipoca, Aztec god of night? Or are you a barnacle?”

Wes laughed darkly, almost as if to say
You asked for it
. Then he stripped off his shirt and tossed it onto Ash’s clothes pile. It wasn’t until she heard the gentle jingling of his belt as he unclasped it that she felt the familiar heat returning to her ears. Still, she couldn’t look away.

Wes loped into the shallows and dove, though not gracefully like Ash had done. His massive body sent a
plume of water right into Ash’s eyes and mouth. By the time she’d finished choking and had wiped her eyes clear, Wes had vanished.

A hand tugged on her ankle, and she screamed, even though she knew it was Wes. Sure enough he popped out of the water behind her and slipped a wet hand over her eyes. “Guess who?”

Ash elbowed him in the ribs and swam a few strokes away. On the beach a rowdy group of teenagers was stumbling along, possibly drunk. Some privacy would have been nice. “I want to try something,” Ash said.

Ash closed her eyes and extended her arms so that her fingers just grazed the water’s surface. She let the heat radiate out of them in a thin net intended just for the skim layer of the water. As always, she found her powers easier to control when she was actually touching the object she wanted to heat, rather than from a distance—conduction versus convection.

The steam began to waft off the ocean’s surface lightly at first, then thicker, until a fine vapor had fully enshrouded them. The cloud continued to thicken, and Wes slowly faded into the veil of mist. Too late Ash realized that her makeshift sauna might cause flashbacks to that awful night back in California with the—

tsunami hitting her wall of fire, the

acre of mist settling over the cove in the aftermath,

then

Colt chained to the rock, his

shirt ripped open and his

eyes blinking open as she

approached, an angel in the mist come to—

Ash shook her head to dislodge the shattered memories. Before any more could resurface, she paddled through the mist. Wes’s image reemerged through the haze. Just for this one night, enveloped in their own outdoor steam room, Ash would try to forget the world outside, the violence, the fear, the uncertainty of the future. Just for this one night, she’d pretend like it was just the two of them, swimming in their own little private universe.

Ash closed the remaining space between them, sending a ripple out toward the edges of the mist. She stopped floating and let her feet touch the ocean bottom so that she was standing once more. “Ask me again,” she whispered to Wes. Underneath the water her legs pressed against his.

Wes’s hands glided around to the small of her back, and he pulled her against him. He bent his knees so they were closer to the same level. His lips started to travel toward hers, but stopped just shy of their target. “Ask you what?” he whispered back.

Her fingers slid up his chest and finally came to rest so they were on either side of his neck. Their lips came together, and they kissed softly at first, then harder. Ash sucked on his top lip for good measure before she pulled away. With an inch between them she gazed at him until he opened his eyes and looked back at her expectantly.

“Ask me again,” she whispered, “where in the world I’d rather be right now.”

Ash couldn’t be sure how
long they were out in the ocean. Could have been ten minutes. Could have been two hours. But for some time they just listed idly in the water like driftwood, with Wes’s arms wrapped around her from behind. Together they floated, looking up at the stars, as the mist slowly dispelled into the sky.

Eventually they extracted themselves and took the long walk back to the towels and sandals, bumping flirtatiously into each other along the way. While they’d been “lost at sea,” Wes’s beached cell phone had received a text from Aurora, inviting them out to a nightclub where they could use her “bouncer connections” to bypass the line. Wes left it in Ash’s hands whether or not to go. She juggled her options. The devilish part of her wanted to take things back to Wes’s condo. But she was afraid that she might get carried away in the heat of the moment if they were alone and near a bed. Who knew what other tools of seduction the Aztec night god had?

“I don’t want this night to end,” she told him finally. “Especially since I know your moves on the dance floor are as sharp as your game in the water.”

He leaned into her and kissed the wisps of her hair just below her ear. “Then let’s hope it’s a dark bar with even darker corners,” he whispered.

She curled a finger under his chin. “You’re the god of night. I’m sure you could make a dark corner on the surface of the sun if you had to.” With that, they suited up in club-appropriate shirts they’d packed in Wes’s Cadillac and walked two blocks over to the nightclub.

The line of people waiting to get into CHAOS ran nearly a quarter mile long, well past the stanchions, which were guarded by four burly men in tuxedoes. Half of the people in line barely looked old enough to be out clubbing (not that Ash was one to judge). Many were hopping up and down to look over the line and see if it was moving at all. As far as Ash could tell from their restlessness, the line hadn’t budged in a while.

Much to the disdain of the others waiting on the street, Wes ignored the stanchions and walked right up to the tallest and widest of the bouncers, who was still shorter than Wes. The night god whispered something into his ear that Ash couldn’t hear, but she caught the name Aurora, which instantly brought a smile to the bouncer’s lips. He shook hands with Wes—in the middle of which Ash saw a few green bills exchanged—and he pulled aside the red ribbon to let them through. Ash heard the angry protests of a gaggle of girls at the front of the line before Wes ushered her inside.

The volume of the music was so loud inside that the club could have been the interior of a jet turbine. Wes took her by the hand and led her past the coat check onto CHAOS’s massive dance floor.

“Whoa,” Ash said, though she could barely hear her own voice over the thumping bass line.

“Yep!” Wes shouted back at her.

The huge room, which was the size of a small airplane hangar, had been constructed to look like it was upside down. The ceiling was decorated wall to wall with tables and chairs that had been bolted into place, complete with tablecloths, plates, silverware, and even electric candles. At the far end of the ceiling was a music stage complete with an upside-down drum set, a grand piano, and a series of mounted guitars.

Beneath the stage—or above it, depending on how you chose to view the room—there was a long wraparound bar clustered with dancers going up for another round of drinks while an overworked staff of bartenders moved around behind the bar like windup dolls in black T-shirts.

Ash and Wes maneuvered through the packed dance floor, where a large spinning disco ball completed the illusion that the dancers were on the ceiling. It was uncomfortably hot even for Ash, who could practically taste the cloud of perspiration in the air.

Aurora somehow spotted them almost immediately from the high top she’d secured by the bar. She waved them over. She wore a very professional-looking suit, but with the white dress shirt unbuttoned halfway down—the sexy businesswoman look?

They were far enough from the speakers that Ash
could at least make out what Aurora was saying. She pulled Ash over by her elbow and pointed her empty mojito glass at the bar. “See those three guys?” she asked.

At first Ash wasn’t sure who she was referring to—the bar was an absolute zoo. But as her eyes roved the barflies, she managed to pick out one guy, another, and then a third, who were all casting amorous glances in her direction.

“Which one should I let buy me a drink?” she asked Ash.

“Must be nice to have that many options,” Ash shouted back over the music.

Aurora corralled her in closer, and Ash could smell the rum on her breath. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she yelled loudly enough for the tables around them to hear. “Men like a little mystery. They come into a bar, and they automatically know what to expect from the three hundred hoochies here who look like they’re wearing trash bags and lingerie.” A girl at the high top next to them, who was wearing a revealing black top, scrunched her face in Aurora’s direction, but the goddess ignored her and continued. “I, however, come in here dressed like a CEO—thanks in part to these deformities on my back—and men can’t resist. Conservative fashion means power, power means mystery, and mystery means challenge.”

“Well.” Ash examined Aurora’s three suitors again. “Guy number one looks a little nervous and keeps checking his cell phone just to seem like he’s busy. Guy number
two has an umbrella in his drink—a drink that I’d like to point out is bright blue.” She turned to the man on the end who was dressed in a suit as well and grinned a little when he noticed them checking him out. “But guy number three is looking over here without mercy or shame, which means either he’s very confident . . . or he’s a total creep.”

Aurora slapped her on the back. “My thoughts exactly.” She pointed to Wes. “Now take this loser dancing for a couple of songs so Señor Confianza will see me alone and bring me a mojito.”

Ash laughed and saluted Aurora before she followed her orders and seized Wes by the arm. Wes’s long sigh was audible even over the dance music.

A spicy Latin song with a quick beat and frenetic guitar strumming rattled out of the nearby speaker once they hit the dance floor. Ash halfheartedly moved to the rhythm for a few measures before she leaned into Wes so he could hear her. “I’m really not in the dancing mood. Is there a corner we can go sulk in while Aurora woos her man?”

Wes’s shoulders relaxed. “I thought you’d never ask.” He pointed to a pillar in the corner, between two hanging plants. “Let’s just go sway over there.”

Within the privacy of the fronds, Ash felt a little more comfortable being a stick in the mud while the rest of the club undulated to the music. Up at the bar she could see Aurora’s well-dressed suitor make his way casually
over to her high top with a drink in either hand. “Can I ask you an awkward question?” Ash asked Wes. “Aurora seems really into . . . male attention. But with the wings how does she . . . when they . . . ?” She let her sentence trail off.

Wes covered his mouth as he laughed. “In the dark?” he joked, then added, “Aurora’s little flings never leave the bar. As to why she finds them endlessly entertaining . . . You can read into Aurora’s behavior all you want. She could just be young and having fun.”

“Or?”

Wes shrugged. “If you meet somebody new every night, you get a taste of romance without ever having to get close to someone. Whatever her reasons, after a relationship as crappy as she suffered through, she’s entitled to play a little cat and mouse at the bar.”