Out Of The Ashes (The Ending Series, #3) (35 page)

I craned my neck
to see around the corner of the barn. “What’s—”

But I didn’t have
a chance to get any more of the question out.

“CONGRATULATIONS!”
shouted pretty much every living person I knew, which amounted to a small crowd
of a little over a dozen people. Behind them on the faded red wall of the barn,
the same sentiment was painted in enormous white letters, applied with enough
embellishments—swirls, dots, and offshooting vines—to tell me that Zoe had at
least had a hand in applying the finishing touches.

Again, I glanced
up at Jason, then searched the small crowd for my best friend. I found Zoe
standing between Jake and Sam, grinning like she was just a little too pleased
with herself; I was almost positive I’d never seen her look so happy.

“Zo! You knew!” I
said as we approached, pretending to be irritated though I knew she could feel
every single wave of elation that poured out of me. I placed my free hand on my
hip. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”

Zoe’s only
response to my mock tantrum was to roll her eyes. She raised her arms, holding
a bunch of flowers out in front of her. As we drew closer, I realized they
weren’t just a
bunch
of flowers, but a
crown
of flowers—bright
orange California poppies and white and fuchsia ice plant flowers, looking like
little sunbursts with a halo of long, slender petals. Beside Zoe, Sam held up
his own handful of flowers, which turned out to be an even bigger, if less
colorful, botanical crown.

I couldn’t hold
back the ginormous grin that spread across my face, but I also couldn’t seem to
find my tongue.

Zoe stepped
forward, lifting her delicate burden so she could settle the crown on my head.
She spent a few moments rearranging the curls that had escaped from my braid
just so before leaning in and wrapping her arms around me in a strong,
heartfelt hug. Zoe’d always been a good hugger.

Placing her hands
on my shoulders, she pulled back and met my gaze, her blue-green eyes
shimmering.
“I’m so incredibly
happy for you.” Her gaze shifted to her brother, then returned to me. “For both
of you.”

“Really?” I said,
the single word asking the thousands of questions I’d held in over the weeks
since we’d left Tahoe, all variations of the same:
Are you okay with me
being with your brother?

“Really.” She
pulled me in for another hug. When she released me and stepped back, she was
grinning from ear to ear. “Now show me the damn ring.” Her eyes flicked to her
brother. “Mr. Grumpy Pants refused to let me see it before you did…even if he
did
use
my
pinkie
to gauge the size…”

I held out my
left hand, showing her the immaculately carved oak Claddagh ring, and gave
Jason’s hand a squeeze with my right.

As Zoe lifted my
hand higher to get a better look at the ring, her lips parted and her eyes
widened. After several long seconds, she turned her gaze to Jason, finally
focusing on him for more than a brief moment. “Jason, that’s…wow. It’s
stunning.” She smiled faintly and shook her head. “Even Dad would’ve been
impressed.”

I looked up at
Jason, too, expecting to see the gleam of emotion—sadness and regret—that
usually shone in his eyes whenever his dad was mentioned, but I found only
pride.

“Zoe?” Sam said,
stepping up beside her. “Do you want this one now?” He held out the larger,
paler crown of flowers, clearly hoping she would relieve him of his duty as
floral-crown-bearer.

“Oh, right.” Zoe
took the circlet of flowers from him and turned an obstinate glare on her
brother. “Don’t you dare argue about wearing this. You put me in charge of
organizing this shindig with barely a day’s notice, and—”

“It’s fine, Zoe,”
Jason said. “I’ll wear the damn thing.” But despite his words, he didn’t
actually sound annoyed.

Zoe took much
less time placing Jason’s wedding crown on his head. When she finished, she
reclaimed my left hand and pulled me toward the barn door, and I, in turn,
pulled Jason. The door was shut, which made sense considering that the bottom
half of the “U” and part of the “L” from “CONGRATULATIONS” were painted on its
surface.

Zoe led Jason and
me down a path formed of two curving lines of rocks only to stop and face us
when she reached the door.
“Close
your eyes…both of you,” she said looking from me to Jason and back. I did so
immediately, grinning like a goofball, but based on her irritated “Jason…” her
brother hadn’t been quite so compliant. “Thank you,” she whispered right before
I heard the barn door creak open, and she tugged me forward.

After a few
steps, she stopped again. I could smell candle smoke and flowers and
food—possibly baked beans or something with barbecue sauce as well as something
fishy, but good-fishy, not stinky-fishy. Since I’d grown closer and closer to
the animals, I’d lost my taste for meat, but I still loved seafood. My mouth
watered at the thought of what kind of fish awaited me.

Zoe arranged
Jason and me carefully, making sure we were standing side by side and facing
the same direction. “Alright, guys…open ’em.”

Opening my eyes,
I stared around the barn’s interior, absolutely awestruck. Bursts of white hung
from the crossbeams, and it took me a moment to recognize them as windsocks and
spinners of every conceivable shape and size, their only common trait their
color. A long table had been set up in the center of the cavernous space and
draped with several overlapping ecru tablecloths. Bouquets of colorful spring
wildflowers like those in our crowns filled mason jars spaced in a line down
the center of the table. Mini-bouquets and individual blooms were arranged
around and between the makeshift vases, splashing color along the table in an
artful, elegant pattern.

Another long
table had been set up against the right-hand wall, and several sizes of colored
glass cups and wine glasses had been laid out on one half, while an impressive
assortment of liquor, wine, and beer was displayed on the other. There were
large crystal bowls scattered here and there on the table, and it took me a
moment to realize that they weren’t filled with colored pebbles, but with
hundreds and hundreds of pieces of saltwater taffy.

My mouth started
watering; saltwater taffy was a treat I adored, and one I hadn’t had since
before
…
“Where’d you get all of this, Zo?” I turned to her, eyes wide with wonder.

She snickered.
“Let’s just say that I had to get creative with my shopping…and that antique
stores aren’t people’s first—or second or third—stop when it comes to
scavenging.” She gestured behind us, and both Jason and I turned to see that
another long table had been set up beside the barn door, this one holding up a
couple bowls and a platter of food. “We’ve got some more stuff coming, but this
should get the party started.” She leaned in closer to me, feigning a whisper.
“And yes, D, that’s trout, breaded and fried and too damn spicy, just the way
you like it.”

“Where—who—”

Zoe smiled. “Jake
and Carlos took Annie to the trout farm while you were gone.” She shrugged.
“They said there were so many fish they could practically scoop ’em out with
their bare hands.” She waved her hands dismissively. “Enough of this, though.
It’s time to pop open the Champagne.” She started toward the booze table,
calling over her shoulder, “Come on in, guys!”

I looked back at
the doorway to watch my friends pour into the barn, feeling happier and luckier
and more alive than I’d ever felt before. Grinning, I shot Jason a sideways
glance, earning another of his secret smiles, and before our friends could
swarm around us, I mouthed, “I love you.”

Jason lowered his
head and pressed his lips to mine, and the barn erupted in hoots and cheers,
making it sound like there were three times as many people as there actually
were. When he broke the kiss, he rested his forehead against mine, and
whispered, “I love you, too.”

25

ZOE

MAY 24, 1AE

Bodega Bay, California

“Come, Zoe.” The faceless woman
was pulling me, her long fingers wrapped tightly around my wrist.

“No!” I shouted at her, trying
to tug my arm away. My heart was beating so wildly I struggled to breathe. “Let
go, please!” My little-girl legs were too weak against the strong hold she had
on me, and they skittered on the ground as she dragged me along.

I held my breath and, with all
the willpower I had in me, tugged my arm free.

The woman froze, turned, and
stared down at me, her featureless face somehow menacing. “I said come, now!”
She was furious, and I knew, deep in my soul, that she was going to kill me.

“What are you going to do to
me?”

She only laughed, an icy,
detached sound that sent a wave of dread over me, making my blood turn cold. “I
need you…”

I whimpered. “For what?”

“You ask too many questions,”
she growled. “Shut up!”

Choking sobs burst from my
chest, my throat. “Please don’t hurt me,” I begged. “I’ll be good. I promise. I
won’t ask any more questions.”

“It’s too late for that.” With
a final tug, the faceless woman flung me into a dark room and slammed the door.
The air seemed to thicken, and I grabbed at my throat, gasping. The inky
darkness swallowed me. As I flailed, I watched my outline come in and out of
view, like I was only partially in existence.

As the dream changed, my little
sundress began to glow. My hands tingled, and I held them up in front of my
face. They grew before my eyes, my palms getting bigger, my fingers longer.

Suddenly, light was shining all
around me, and I was in a white, empty room. I stared down at my adult body, my
little sundress exchanged for cargo pants and combat boots. I sighed with
relief.

Hearing the clearing of a
throat, I glanced up. I was standing in a room with my mom. A decrepit boy
stood beside her, a hungry, maniacal gleam in his black eyes. He smiled, his
teeth yellowed like his skin.

“Peter,” my mom said. “This is
your sister, Zoe. Her blood is going to save you.”

His smile broadened.

“Be a darling and tie her up…”

I felt the color drain from my
face. “My blood?”

My mom waved my question away
as she glanced down at the clipboard in her hands. “You’re my greatest
experiment,” she said, her casualness unnerving. “Peter, please…” my mom
gestured to me, and the boy strode toward me.

I tried to step back, but my
feet were glued to the ground. My heartbeat quickened. When I looked up, Peter
was only inches from me, so I raised my hand to stop him. “Get away from me!”

But he kept coming, emitting a
sinister laugh.

“Peter, don’t do this,” I
pleaded, but there was nothing I could do, nowhere I could go. Before I knew
what was happening, his fingers skewered my chest, and the burning sensation of
five sharp blades cutting into my flesh and bone made me scream out in pain.

~~~~~

In the late, foggy morning, with
my hair up in a ponytail and the crisp sea breeze nipping at the back of my
neck, Jason, Dani, Jake, and I sat atop our horses as they clomped lazily down
the highway toward my childhood home. My stomach was in knots; the longing and
familiarity I often felt when thinking of home tangled with the increasing ache
of grief the closer we drew to my street. Haunting dreams and restless nights
hadn’t helped my nerves at all, either.

But I was being good; I clung to
what I missed about being home. I focused on the calming, muffled sound of the
waves crashing against the cove beyond the cypresses lining the highway and the
occasional call of the seabirds perched on the rocky cliffs.

“Are you okay, Zo?” Dani asked as
Wings fell into step beside Shadow. The two horses craned their necks slightly
to meet the other’s stare, and I wondered what silent conversation transpired
between them.

“Yeah, just mixed feelings, you
know?”

Dani gave me a quick nod and
reached out to squeeze my arm. Her fingernails were just a little bit dirty,
and her hands were coarse against my skin, two things the old Dani
never
would’ve
let happen. I couldn’t help but smile.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, her
hand dropping back to her leg.

Shaking my head, I smiled. “I’m
glad you’re here with me, D.” We’d been through so much over the past few months,
and we were
finally
together. I couldn’t help but think about how lucky
I’d been. I’d crossed thousands of miles to be with her and Jason, and now here
we were, starting a new chapter in our lives together.

I turned in my saddle and looked
back at Jake. He and Jason were strategizing about something; I could tell by
the way Jake was nodding and offering a word here and there, while Jason drew
shapes in the air.
I wouldn’t have made it without Jake.

Facing front again, I couldn’t
help the cheeky grin that engulfed my face as I spotted an old pump house
through the fog, peeking out from a bramble of overgrown bushes and scraggly
trees.

“What?” Dani asked, unable to
resist smiling even though she was clueless as to why.

A parade of childhood memories
danced through my head. “Remember that place?” I asked, nodding behind her.
We’d decorated it as our summertime hangout after fifth grade, our no-bullies, no-boys-allowed
fort.

Dani turned in her saddle. After
an amused sigh, she said, “Yep. No boys allowed.”

I grinned in a nostalgic haze.
“It’s so overgrown now, I can barely even see where it was…oh, what about the
hideout we made under Mr. Boogieman’s deck?”

Dani burst into laughter. Our
horses spooked at the sound, but only momentarily before they continued around
the bend in the road toward my house. “That was short-lived…and not the
smartest
place to hang out,” she said.

“Yeah, poor Mr. Bergman. I feel
sort of bad now. But he was
so
creepy…” I turned to my brother. “Jason,
do you remember Mr. Bergman?”

He scoffed. “That old guy you
stalked one summer?”

“Um, he was the
boogieman
,”
Dani said, trying to sound affronted.

“Weren’t you guys like eleven? Who
believes in the boogieman when they’re eleven years old?”

“Uh, he was
definitely
the
boogieman, Jason,” I said, mimicking my eleven-year-old self. I remembered that
summer so clearly, I nearly laughed again. “Remember the nights he would walk
around town all creepy and in the shadows…in a
trench coat
?” I leaned
forward and patted Shadow’s shoulder.

“He was on the town watch,” Jason
said from behind me. “You guys knew that, right?”

“Wait…what?” Dani said. “We had a
town watch?” We both turned around to see Jason.

He shrugged and averted his eyes.
“Yeah, it was pretty much just Bergman.”

“Oh, well…it’s Bodega Bay. We had
to do
something
to keep ourselves busy,” I said, smiling as a wave of memories,
of other Zoe-Dani adventures, bloomed to life.

We’d just gotten off at the bus
stop and were walking home one afternoon when Kenny Monroe, the boy I had the
biggest
crush on, ran up and stopped in front of us.

Dani and I turned to one
another and exchanged confused expressions for a moment, and when I turned back
to Kenny, he kissed my cheek before running ahead, disappearing around a bend
in the road. I barely had time to even comprehend what had happened.

Then there was the time in
eighth grade, when Grams had to drive all the way to Tomales to pick us up
after school. I’d gotten into
another
fight,
and Dani and I had missed the bus home. Grams had been angry, but once she
learned that I’d only been protecting Dani from the Nasty Neilson triplets, the
gleam in Grams’s eyes contradicted her chiding words, and she offered me a
silent nod in gratitude.

“Good ol’ Mr. Bergman.” Dani
sighed and shook her head.

“Yeah, he was a trooper,” I said.
“I’m sure he knew we were following him around, but he didn’t say anything.”

“Grams put a stop to that
adventure real quick,” Dani said, an unmistakable longing in her voice. Out of
nowhere, she laughed. “Do you remember how pissed she was? I guess it wasn’t
very nice to tell everyone he was an evil monster who ate little kids.”

Laughing, I said, “No, no I guess
it wasn’t. Especially because I think Judy and her little sister actually
believed it.”

“So,” Jake said, startling me. I
hadn’t realized he’d ridden up beside me. “You’ve always been this much
trouble?” he said ruefully, his eyebrow arched.

Between Jason’s smirk and Dani’s
dying laughter, I couldn’t suppress my own amused chuckle. “Yeah, I guess I
have been. That was a fun summer,” I said, trying to catch my breath. My
stomach muscles hurt from laughing so much, but my heart felt lighter. It was a
great feeling.

Aside from the difficult times I’d
had growing up, there were a lot of good times, too. But time was a funny thing;
it went by so fast that things changed in the blink of an eye. It seemed I’d
already lived three lifetimes—my childhood, my time in Massachusetts, and now.

Dani must’ve lost herself in
thought, too, because she and I both grew quiet as we watched the memories from
our past disappear in the fog behind us. Jake and Jason’s low chuckles and
conversation were all that filled our silence.

My heartbeat quickened as my house
came into view through the mist, and even the talk among the men quieted. The
house—faded blue and weather-worn—was exactly how I remembered it, if a little
more lonely and bleak.

With Dani and me in the lead, we
clomped up the driveway, bringing Wings and Shadow to a stop outside the
backyard fence. “Well,” I breathed. “Shall we?”

Dismounting, I wiped my clammy
palms on my jeans and walked toward the gate, slowly opening it and paying
little attention to the others as I walked through. I led Shadow into the yard,
and wrapped his reins around his saddle horn so he was free to roam among what
little amount of grass and weeds were growing, before looking up at the house.

The others came into the backyard
after me, but I was too busy losing myself in a rush of memories. I could
almost picture Jason mowing the side lawn, cursing the tire swing for being in his
way. I easily imagined Dani and me lying out on the deck, sunbathing in the
only corner that wasn’t completely covered in tree shadows, begging the sun god
for just a few more minutes, and us eating our lunches at the outside table,
music blasting from my stereo.

Stepping up onto the first stair
of the deck, I thought of my dream two nights ago, the night I met my mom. The
memory stung, but it also reminded me of something. I bent forward, searching
beneath the railing for the carving Dani and I had etched into the wood over a
decade ago. In a brief moment of panic, I’d worried it wouldn’t be there. “It’s
still here,” I said.

When I straightened, a smile
pulling at my lips, I found Dani standing beside me, her smile equally as big.
“You expected someone to search the entire deck, underside and all, for things
to deface?” She scoffed, but merriment brightened her green eyes.

I’d told Dani about my dream meeting
with my mom, but I hadn’t thought about the carving until now. “No,” I said a
little self-consciously. “I guess not.”

Glancing behind me, I noticed that
Jake and Jason were a ways back, giving us our space.

“We’ll be in the shop,” Jason
said, leading Jake toward the large shed our dad had built beside the house.

“So…” Dani eyed the sliding glass
door. “You ready for this?”

“Yep,” I said on an exhale. Taking
Dani’s hand in mine, I opened the door and stepped into my home, a place I
never thought I would set foot in again.

The living room was minimally
decorated, just as it had been when I’d left for Salem a few years back. A
large, black sectional butted up against the left wall, and two matching
recliners flanked the rectangular, cedar coffee table my dad had built. Our
dusty, big-screen TV sat on the entertainment center against the opposite wall,
remnants of my extensive movie collection stacked on either side.

With the exception of a few of my
landscape drawings, there was no artwork on the walls, there were no family
pictures. Although it had bothered me growing up, I understood now that it was
probably a safety precaution taken by Dad, since he’d known why my mom had to
leave…since he’d known about General Herodson’s threats. It had been better—
safer
—
if we weren’t able to
recognize her.