Wildefire Series: Wildefire Part 19

"Dangling, dancing, waiting. You can pretend like you pull your own strings, but in the end your only hope is that you've landed in the hands of someone who knows what the h.e.l.l they're doing."

"No one pulls my strings," Ashline whispered.

Eve ignored her. "I was in San Diego last week, trying to track down a Celtic G.o.ddess who was on the run.

She caught me by surprise with a golf club and knocked me out cold. A freaking river G.o.ddess and she decides to go Sopranos on me with a nine iron. Didn't wake up for hours. But while I was out, I had a vision. A vision of a girl on a boat, being transported to some tropical coast. A vision of a girl who looks just like you and me."

Ash frowned. "Was she about this high"-she spread her arms apart-"and as deadly as she is soft-spoken?"

"So you've seen the visions too, then!" Eve squeezed Ashline's hand.

"Who is she?"

"If I had to take a guess," Eve replied, "I'd say we're seeing echoes from the last time we were here. Some interested parties must have kidnapped us for their experiments. . . . Blink is under the impression that lodged somewhere in those echoes is the answer to how we can restore the cycle-to how we can live forever again."

"And you believe him," Ashline said.

"You're d.a.m.n right I do!" Eve shouted, loud enough that Ash actually glanced far across the quad toward the faculty residence. "It's a cosmic joke, that we live all of 231 these lives but get to retain none of it. None of it!" Her finger darted toward the blue glow bleeding softly through the windows of the athletic complex. "I'm sure they're somehow to blame for this. I want them dead!" She slammed her fist down on the roof, and Ashline jumped to her feet as a shock zapped her through the seat of her pajamas.

"Lower your voice!" Ash hissed.

Eve clambered to her feet. "Come with me, Ash. I know I blew it when I came to Westchester last year, but that's why I'm here-to ask you the right way. Come with me. Best-case scenario, we beat the system and we get to roam the earth the way we were supposed to. Worst-case, you get to spend some time with your older sister, and in style. Not drowning in boredom with your nose in a calculus book."

She actually means it this time, Ashline thought. And so she was hopeful when she replied, "I have a better idea.

Let me finish out the rest of this school year-there's barely a month left-and then we'll have the entire summer to hash this thing out."

Eve paused. "You mean in Westchester."

"They miss you." If only you could see Mom's face.

"This isn't like elective surgery, Ash. You don't just schedule it for when it's more convenient for you. Eternity doesn't wait until after finals."

"What about tennis season?" Ashline joked.

Eve didn't laugh, but instead toed up against the 232 edge of the roof. "There's a fiery tide coming, and there'll come a time when you're going to have to decide where you stand. Do you want to be just a flicker in history? Or will you stand up and be a torch in the tide? So you can wall yourself here in your snow globe a little longer and pretend like your dances and tennis matches and bonfires are the sun around which your world revolves." She tapped her head. "But this time you can trust that I'm not going to abandon you. I'll be seeing you, Ashline,"

she said.

And she stepped off the roof.

Ashline nearly fell off herself as she stumbled to the edge to look down. A sudden upward gust spiked up from the earth, so hard that it hit Ashline like an upper-cut beneath her chin. By the time she was able to regain her bearings, Eve had somehow survived the three-story fall unscathed and was already das.h.i.+ng across the quad toward the main gates.

At precisely the moment when Eve pa.s.sed between the stone pillars, the building's heating unit on the roof grumbled on.

By the time the lights in the faculty residence flashed back to life, Ash was halfway to the door. She flung it open with every intention of making a stealthy escape back to the girls' dormitory.

The siren exploded, wailing into the silent night.

Startled by the noise, Ash lost her footing and pitched down the stairs. The edges of each and every step 233 hammered into her unforgiving flesh-pajamas served as poor armor-and by the time she rolled beneath the red cord roping off the stairwell, she felt like a human bruise.

Remarkably, Ash landed in a half-crouch and immediately barreled down the hallway. Momentum nearly carried her past the stairwell, but she grabbed hold of the door frame and hurled herself down the stairs. When she hit the last flight, she grabbed hold of the railing and hurdled over, dropping the remaining eight feet to the landing below.

The victory of a clean escape was clenched in her hands as she shoved through the front doors of the academic building and into the night. . . .

. . . Right into the open arms of disappointment. For the second time in less than a week, she ran straight into Headmistress Riley, decked out in a bathrobe, slippers, and an expression that screamed ten shades of displeased.

The headmistress cinched her bathrobe tighter around her waist. Her arms wriggled across her chest.

Ash, who had frozen midstep, lowered her dangling foot to the ground. She clapped her hands together twice, as if she were ridding her palms of extra dirt. "Good news," she said. "I got the generator up and running, and the security system still works. Score!"

Ashline didn't have very long at all to wait in the headmistress's foyer. She had barely sat down when the 234 receptionist, a round-faced girl who looked barely out of high school herself, nodded toward the door. "She'll see you now."

On her way toward the office, Ashline leaned over the receptionist's desk. "Quick question-are there any prizes for having two visits to the headmistress's office in one week? Like you hang a monogrammed coffee mug on the wall for me?"

The girl glanced at the headmistress's door, before she allowed a slight smile to break across her face. "Like a frequent flyer program?"

"Ms. Wilde," Headmistress Riley's voice boomed from the office.

Apparently patience was not a virtue today.

Ashline grimaced. "On second thought cancel the mug." She tapped twice on the receptionist's desk. "And let the DMV know that I've changed my mind. I would like to be an organ donor."

"Good luck," the receptionist mouthed.

The headmistress was hunched over the pristine chestnut credenza in the back of her office. When she turned around, she held an electric teakettle, steaming faintly like a smoking gun, and gestured to the black leather chair, which Ashline's b.u.t.t was becoming all too familiar with. "Do you drink tea?"

"Black tea usually," she said, and complacently dropped down into the seat of doom.

"You're in luck." Headmistress Riley placed a teacup 235 in front of Ashline and filled it nearly to the brim. Then she removed a tea bag from a wooden box and dipped it ceremoniously into the half-boiled water.

For a few minutes they steeped their tea without a word. Ash opened her mouth to say something at one point, but the headmistress, sensing an apology perched on Ashline's lips, merely held up her hand to prolong the silence. At last, when Ash herself felt ready to boil over, the headmistress took a cautious sip of her tea, and her eyes fluttered closed peacefully. When they opened again, the pupils staring across at Ashline were alert and shrewd, but not unforgiving.

"The biggest mistake you can make," the headmistress said slowly, "when it comes to tea, is not steeping long enough. It's a matter of poaching the most flavor, of realizing potential. Pull the bag too soon, and you've merely burned your tongue with a cup of bitter water."

Ash took a tentative sip of her own tea, which was still hot enough to burn her mouth, and the soapy taste reminded her why she rarely went out of her way to drink tea. "Do I sense a metaphor for students somewhere in there? Or maybe life in general?"

The headmistress sniffed, and with a half-smile replied, "Sometimes a cup of tea is just a cup of tea." She set down her cup. "In any case I need the caffeine after last night."

Ashline bowed her head. So this was going to be exe-cution by guilt-trip. "I'm sorry, Headmistress."

236.

Headmistress Riley waved her hand and leaned her weight back into the chair. "It wasn't you who woke me up-although don't think for one second that students sidestepping curfew and breaking into prohibited, dangerous areas of campus is something I enjoy dealing with at three a.m. But no, I was lying in bed sleepless when the power went out, and if I hadn't gone for a late-night round with my flashlight, you probably would have made it back to your bed unnoticed."

"Why the insomnia? Something troubling you?" Ash blurted out, letting her inner psychologist take control before she remembered that she was talking to a school administrator. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"This isn't a firing squad," the Headmistress interrupted her. "And you don't need to apologize for taking an interest. To answer your question, it's nothing specific. I've been experiencing a general feeling of unease lately. The wind feels different, the rhythm of the school feels different. This tea tastes different. It's sort of like when you're standing in the water with your back to the ocean and you feel the tide retract around your feet as a wave swells behind you."

Ashline blinked. "I think that's the most real answer I've ever gotten from an adult who wasn't my mom."

"I don't know how we can expect our students to evolve into adults if we speak to you like you're children,"

the headmistress replied, with the weight of thirty years on her tongue. "In fact, that's why I invited you here 237 this morning. Not to punish you. Not to take you out of third-period French, though I'm sure that came as some relief to you. Just to talk."

"Well, that's merciful." Ash took another sip of her tea. "I thought you were going to make me step into the orange jumper again and do some forest cleanup."

Although that did have its perks the last time.

"Ashline, I had trouble getting to sleep last night after I escorted you back to the girls' residence. Not just because of my insomnia, but because at first I couldn't get your motives to line up. We catch Jimmy Brennan trying to break onto the roof with a bong, that makes sense to me. Then we find Antoine Devers with a crowbar and a couple of bottle rockets-fire hazard, but I get it.

You, on the other hand . . ."

"Make absolutely no sense?" Ashline finished for her.

"Not at first." The headmistress clasped her hands on the desk between them. "Not until I remembered Lizzie Jacobs."

Ashline's teacup tilted; hot tea spilled onto her lap.

She yelped as it soaked through her jeans and burned her leg, but she managed a shrill, "Excuse me?"

"Come on, Ashline. I was willing to avoid the touchy subjects on Friday, but it's time to get real. A girl died on the roof where the two of you were having an argument, and eight months later our generator goes down during an electrical storm and you head up to the roof of the academic building."

238.

She felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. "Are you trying to say that I went up to that roof because I have a death wish?"

"No," the headmistress said emphatically, but handed her a handkerchief to clean up the spilled tea. "This isn't a discussion about suicide. But I have to wonder if there's some residual guilt you thought you'd shoveled dirt over by going to a prep school on the other side of the country, and it won't stay dead. So on a whim, on a sleepless night, you rashly decided to tempt fate."

Ashline dabbed frantically at the tea on her lap, which was causing her even more discomfort now that it was cooling. "With all due respect, Headmistress, isn't wandering around a roof hoping to get struck by lightning the same as having a death wish?"

"There are two types of people in this world, Ashline,"

the headmistress said. "Those of us who fear what we cannot control, who sit in the driver's seat of life and take charge of our own fates. And then there are those who fear choice, those so burdened by the mistakes that they've made that they seek solace in what they cannot control, knowing that no matter the outcome, at least it wasn't their fault. I challenge you to figure out which one you are."

Her mind replayed what Eve had said the night before. Was she pulling her own strings? Or was she just a marionette in the hands of somebody else? "I'd be lying if I said I haven't screwed up a lot in my life. I'd be lying 239 if I said I don't see Lizzie Jacobs in my dreams." She took a deep breath, because between exhaustion and the bad memories the headmistress was dredging up, she was swaying dangerously over the precipice of tears. "But some things you have to face alone, so I'll explain last night to you in the most honest way I can right now. I woke up. I followed my past onto that roof. I confronted Lizzie Jacobs's killer. And then I came down with the prayer that my sleep would be dreamless. End of story."

The headmistress folded her hands into her lap and regarded her student for a cool minute. Had Ash said what the headmistress wanted to hear? Wasn't that what this impromptu tea party was all about-opening up?

Finally Headmistress Riley said, "I'm going to require-" She stopped, then corrected herself. "I'm going to strongly recommend that you meet with Ms. Lombard next week when she returns from her honeymoon. I think a counseling session would work wonders for you, or at least give you some release. What do you think?"

Ashline imagined herself lying on a chaise longue while Ms. Lombard scribbled frantically in a little flip-top notebook. Well, Ms. Lombard, the problems I'm facing are pretty much universal to the American teenager. My sister, who controls the weather, murdered one of my high school cla.s.smates, so I excommunicated myself to California, only to find out that I was summoned here by a blind oracle. Yesterday I served a fairly typical detention, during which a group of commandos attempted to kidnap me for somebody's science project. I watched a man age 240 forty years in sixty seconds, before the earth repossessed his body while he was still alive. Eve has decided for the first time in six years that she wants to spend quality family time with her little sister. And while the world around me, immortal or otherwise, seems to have lost its mind, I'm just waiting to see if I'm really a G.o.ddess or if I'm just like everyone else, and I'm hoping I don't explode if and when the transformation happens.

Oh, and I don't have a date for the masquerade ball on Friday.

"Well?" the headmistress prodded her.

"Fine," Ashline agreed.

"Good." The headmistress took Ashline's file and tucked it into the top drawer of her desk. Just great. Her file was conveniently on call for the next time she was caught lurking around after curfew. "Before you go, as the headmistress of these here parts, I'm obligated, for both your sake and for my own, to admonish you as a school administrator. You've made two visits to my office within the past week. If for some reason in the near future I'm forced to call you in again, I will have no choice but to put the squeeze on your Spring Week activities. No midnight movie. No masquerade ball."

"That's more than fair." Ashline downed the last of her tea.

The headmistress stood up, announcing the end of their visit. "Stay out of trouble, kiddo."

"You bet," Ash said, and made for the door.

"Oh, Ashline," the headmistress said before Ashline 241 could leave. "Coach Devlin told me that you are quite the firecracker on the court, and that Wednesday you've got a big match against Southbound. Something about a grudge match between you and your rival?"

Just thinking about it Ashline felt the b.u.t.terflies explode in her stomach, wings and monarch dust spraying everywhere. "Patricia Orleans," Ash replied. "Ranked number one in Coastal Conference Athletics."

"Well, good luck, and go, Owls," the headmistress said, then added a lame, "Hoot, hoot!"

Ashline laughed. "Not just any owls-the Spotted Owls. I'm sure it would be a terrifying mascot if our opponents were small woodland animals."

"Yes, I don't suppose the spots make them any more intimidating," the headmistress said. "You know they're an endangered species here in the redwoods."

"Actually, they're a threatened species," Ash corrected her as she opened the door.

It's the rest of us that are endangered.

Ashline was a sponge soaked in sweat. And she was playing the worst tennis game of her life.

On the opposite end of the court, Alyssa tossed the ball skyward and hammered her racket down onto the ball.

Ash started left before realizing all too late that the ball was thundering toward the outside line. She dove in a last-ditch attempt to catch the ball backhand, and she did- sending the fuzzy green orb careening up into the stands.

242.

"Ace!" Alyssa shouted, and hopped ecstatically up and down.

"Thanks, Alyssa-because I didn't know what that was called."

Alyssa plucked another ball from her pocket as she stepped into the opposite box. "I call it a beat-down."

"Oh, yeah?" Ash pointed her racket angrily across the net. "Why don't you try it again, and we'll see how far I can serve that ball up your-"

"Wilde!" the coach shouted, leaning out the door of her office. "Get in here."

"Ooh," Alyssa crowed as Ash walked past her toward the open doorway.

"Keep it up," Ash snapped, "and we'll see if my racket fits up there too."

Inside her office the coach tossed Ash a bottle of water, which she s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the air.

"Good to see at least some of your reflexes are working today," Coach Devlin said.

"Just the useless ones."