Embers & Echoes (11 page)

Still, with her gown bunched up to her thighs and partially flashing the commuters of Miami as she rolled over the bridge, she managed to follow the instructions of the GPS’s butlerlike voice.

In fact, the shiny new GPS reminded her of several questions that had been stewing since the night before, particularly about her two new friends. What sort of day jobs did Wes and Aurora have that they could afford to drive a Cadillac, purchase expensive gadgets for relative strangers,
and
reside in a city with such a high cost of living? How could they work and still find the freedom to participate in deity espionage at night? And, the guilty
pleasure question of the hour, what exactly was the relationship between the two of them?

The two security guards checking invitations at the Villa Vizcaya’s main gates both looked amused by her gown and scooter helmet combo. One of them attempted to flirt with her while the other scrutinized her invite with extreme care, as if she’d forged it, before they let her pass.

She parked between two news vans and paused to do damage control on her helmet hair, using the polished windows of a silver Mercedes as a mirror. She held up one strand and twirled it around her finger. How was she just now noticing how long her hair was getting? She hadn’t cut it since well before the events at Blackwood in May.

She sighed. There hadn’t been much time to look at her own reflection since the new life she’d tried to build for herself had started caving in around her, one ceiling tile and support beam at a time.

Ash followed the trail of newly arrived guests through the tree-lined pathway leading up to the west façade of the villa, which was much more regal and imposing in person than Ash could have guessed from the little image on her invitation. To either side of the villa’s entrance, the building rose up three magnificent stories to top-floor balconies. Every window glowed with a soft daffodil light against the gradually darkening sky.

Ash paused beside the fountain and opened her cell phone. Wes
had
told her to call him first and wait out front until he could escort her in. But she wasn’t about to
wait in the gardens for Wes to show up fashionably late.
He
was the one who had gotten caught by Lesley’s Cuban mercenaries.
He
was the one they would probably be on red alert for. So she texted him “See you inside, vampire” and made her way into the villa.

The entrance consisted of three archways that opened up into a long open-air foyer—the loggia, according to the map of the grounds she’d studied earlier. The walls were draped in blue curtains, with flowered vases on pedestals and a curved roof to shelter the stone floors. Two hostesses were distributing bright red masks to guests as they entered.

Just great,
Ash thought. The last time she’d gone to a masquerade ball, Eve had kidnapped her date—Colt—and Lily Mayatoaka had speared Rolfe through the heart. At least these masks were different. Where the masks at the Blackwood ball had looked like souvenirs from Mardi Gras, these were bright red, and almost serpentine, with feathers gathered around the face. And on the bright side, even though applying the adhesive mask to her face conjured horrible memories, at least it would partially disguise her if she bumped into Lesley Vanderbilt.

She continued to follow the general traffic into the stately entrance room, which was adorned with oil portraits painted in muted greens, then through a pair of open doors out to the arcade, before she finally exited into the open-air courtyard.

Twilight was just starting to descend on the terrace,
which was packed with a sea of men and women, all in white and ivory, with the exception of their red masks. Much like the city itself, the guests hailed from a range of ethnicities, but she had a feeling that Polynesians constituted only a statistically small portion of the guest list.

Ash snatched a glass of champagne off a passing tray. Her nerves were already starting to flare up, and a survey of the courtyard on the tips of her toes failed to locate either Wes or Aurora. She wondered how Aurora could wear a dress and still manage to hide her wings.

Ash was just about to give up and join the walking tour of the grounds that one of the curators was announcing from the south arcade, when she spotted Lesley Vanderbilt.

Even with the mask covering the top of her face, the woman was unmistakable. Lesley looked as though she’d aged five years since their last encounter on the opposite side of the country. Her hair had very evidently been dyed a dark brown, and the lines around her mouth creased deeply when she smiled at the man standing next to her.

Whether it was worry or obsession that had aged Lesley Vanderbilt, one thing was clear when her eyes flashed between the guests in the circle growing around her—she hadn’t lost the dangerous edge that had given Ash the shivers last month.

Ash was so bewitched by seeing Lesley again in the flesh that she bumped into a waitress. She apologized, downed
the rest of her champagne flute, and grabbed another from the tray before the waitress could wander off.

Perhaps it was the warmth and liquid courage from the champagne, perhaps it was some jungle instinct in her summoned by the tropical night air, or perhaps it was the first bubbles of her own family revenge starting to burst within her, but suddenly Ash was consumed with a seething disgust—no, flat-out rage—for the woman standing in the corner of the garden. Lesley had taken a quarrel from another century, which could have died with the people involved, and had stirred up a shit-storm on this side of the new millennium. And although Lesley certainly couldn’t be blamed for all of the events that took place at Blackwood leading up to Rolfe’s death, she played a big role in the cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Worse, now that she’d brainwashed Rose, she’d gone from being a minor player in Ash’s life to being a full-fledged villain.

That’s when Ash made the decision to walk right up to her. After all, what was Lesley going to do in front of a crowd of wealthy Floridians and journalists? Shoot her? And if Ash missed her opportunity to approach Lesley now, who knew when Ash would find her next.

She made it only three steps before a tall waiter wearing a white button-down stepped in front of her with a tray. “Shrimp cocktail, ma’am?” he asked in his rich voice.

“In a minute,” Ash said, and started to slide around him.

His hand caught her elbow to hold her back, and only then did she realize that the waiter was actually Wes. He had swept his long dark bangs down in front of his face, but his eyes were simmering beneath them through the holes in his mask. “This is
not
the time or place.”

“This is
exactly
the time and place.” Ash gently pulled her arm free. “We’re in public. What could she possibly do?”

Wes stepped in front of her, just in case she decided to beeline it for Lesley. “
What could she do?
She can go back to her villa, ship your sister off to a place where you’ll never find her, and then send all of her manpower after you. And in case you didn’t notice last night, when it comes to handling gods and goddesses, her people come prepared.”

Ash took another sip from her champagne flute. “Then, what do you propose that I do?”

“For starters?” Wes used his free hand to snap his fingers in front of her face. “Look at me and stop staring ninja stars at Lesley Vanderbilt. You’re only in control as long as she doesn’t know you’ve come to Miami.”

Ash huffed. Then, as her way of waving the white flag, she grabbed a handful of shrimp off his tray. “Okay,
garçon
. You win. So tell me why you got a girl all gussied up to go to the prom, only to forbid her from exacting her revenge.”

She went to dip her shrimp into the cocktail sauce on the tray, but he was already setting the tray down on
the nearest table. He gave a quick look around to make sure the partygoers nearby were ensconced in conversation before he pulled on the jacket he had draped over his arm, instantly transforming from a waiter to an honored guest. “I have something to show you.” She didn’t follow at first, so he said, “You can bring the shrimp with you if you like.”

She bit the heads off the last two shrimp and tossed the tails onto the table. “This better be good.”

As they walked toward the south arcade, he allowed them to approach just a little bit closer to where Lesley’s entourage was chatting. “Watch the guy under the tree,” he instructed her. “But don’t stare.”

It was the large boy with the dreadlocks from Ash’s vision of the boat. Even with his white khakis and button-down, rolled halfway up his forearms, he looked rough and unsavory for a soiree like this. His tie was loose, probably to accommodate his massive pro-wrestler neck.

“Bodyguard?” she asked.

“You got it.” Wes directed her away as she edged in for a closer look. “The Incan sun god, Inti, but he goes by Rey—Spanish for ‘king.’”

“He seems like a real ‘Rey’ of sunshine.” Ash faked an obnoxious laugh.

“Oh, you’ll be a hit at the after-party,” Wes said.

They cut through the tea room first, which Ash thought was closer to a small ballroom with chandeliers than a nook for tea drinking. The temperature of the air instantly
plummeted the moment they entered, and at first Ash figured it was just a very efficient cooling system.

Beyond a gaggle of women, who were all shivering, a familiar girl stood in profile with her back to the wall, gazing out the open portico onto the terrace outside and the gardens beyond. She wore the same hooded white robe she’d sported on the boat, and she was fanning herself despite the chill temperature. The cocktail glass in her other hand was lined with frost when she brought it up to her lips.

Wes cruised through once Ash had gotten a good look, but waited until they entered the dining room beyond to speak. “Skadi, Norse goddess of winter,” he said. “They call her Bleak. I think she’s a koi out of the koi pond, here in Miami, with the heat and everything.”

The next set of doors opened up into a smaller music room. Ash instantly recognized the boy standing next to the antique harp, in conversation with a large group gathered around him. He had ditched his mask and was gesturing wildly with his hands, to the boisterous laughter of his entourage. Ash must have been staring too conspicuously, because Wes elbowed her in the ribs. She thought she caught the boy’s eye before she turned away.

“And that,” Wes said as they exited out onto the eastern loggia, where the air simmered back up to a sweltering ninety degrees, “is Lesley’s right hand, Thorne, and the leader of the pack as far as I can tell. His true name is Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of wind.” He paused.
“According to folklore, he’s my nemesis and we have the same father. Brothers from different mothers, as they say.”

“Your mom must have been taller, then,” Ash said. “Probably prettier as well. So are they just hanging around Lesley for the free booze and dinner parties?”

Wes and Ash walked out onto the eastern terrace, where a multitude of couples had gathered at the railing, overlooking the Atlantic beyond. “I haven’t quite figured out what their payoff is,” Wes said as they started down a staircase toward the water. “As a rule, those of our kind don’t work for humans unless they absolutely have to. It’s against the natural order—gods working for mortals. And for people like Rey, Bleak, and Thorne, who could just burn or freeze or blow their way into a bank vault, money’s not always a good enough incentive. Lesley must have some resource that they need, and in return they offer her protection.”

“For such a well-known businesswoman to keep three gods in her entourage, in plain sight—it’s got to be more than just ordinary protection,” Ash said as she felt the dots slowly connecting in her mind. She thought back to Blackwood, and how the mercenaries that Lesley had sent after Ash and her friends had ended up fertilizer for the redwood forest. Lesley must have smartened up and realized that in order to shield herself from the supernatural, she needed to fight fire with fire. But it wasn’t Ashline specifically that the businesswoman needed protection from. “They must
be to protect Lesley from my older sister. Eve and Lesley have a blood feud that goes back nearly a century, to when my sister murdered Lesley’s grandfather during her previous lifetime. Eve would easily electrocute her way through a wannabe Mafia guy like the one who caught you on Lesley’s boat—no offense,” she added when he looked a little offended. “But if Eve comes looking for Rose, expecting to find Lesley helpless, and she finds three violent gods waiting for her instead . . .”

After they reached the bottom of the stairs, they walked over to the edge of the terrace, where the stonework stopped and the water abruptly began. Out in the harbor a stone barge with elegant carvings sheltered the cove from incoming waves. The statues facing the darkening horizon looked as though they’d weathered their fair share of hurricanes.

“Aurora and I have been watching them for months,” Wes said. “See, I’ve only lived in Miami for part of my life, but I’ve come to think of this city as my home . . . the only one I have.” The word “home” made his eyes flicker black, but then he was back in the moment. “Given my special, uh, talents, I took it upon myself to protect the people of Miami. It started with mostly amateur superhero shenanigans—you know, stopping a mugger who was preying on tourists, monitoring the local Mafias. But then Lesley’s new supernatural associates rolled into town and began consorting with a not-so-well-intentioned crime syndicate, so Aurora and I started
devoting our nightly surveillance to the three gods, and eventually to Lesley Vanderbilt. I thought we’d gone unnoticed . . . at least until they captured me on the boat. We don’t know much about these gods or their intentions, but lately they’ve been referring to themselves as the Four Seasons.”

Ash snorted. “I thought you said there were only three of them. Can they not count properly, or are they a fan club for Vivaldi?”

“By my count, the three you saw in the villa—sun, wind, and cold—account for summer, fall, and winter.” He shrugged. “Maybe they’ve recruited your little sister as their new spring.”