Crown of Ashes Read online

  “A war,” Marshall echoes back, and his voice reverberates right down to my marrow.

  “Who is the enemy,” I whisper as if it were a real question.

  “You already know.”

  Chloe comes up with a man in tow. “Look who I found lurking in these parts?” She guffaws so obnoxiously loud, for a moment I wonder if Darla Johnson has possessed her. There’s just something about Brielle’s mother that lends itself easily to a cackling girl in a bar—especially with a man in tow.

  I glance up, fully expecting to find the Logan lookalike, but am met with her brother, Brody Bishop, instead.

  “Brody?” Personally, I welcome the sight—I welcome the sight of the both of them. I’d rather have a thousand Bishops flung in my face than continue with that demonic conversation regarding a war of all ludicrous things. For the life of me I can’t believe I’m going down that thorny path again. Although this war will be different. I’m not letting the heavenlies, or my mother’s destination station, decide when and where to thrust me into mortal combat. I’m not about to lose my mind to make it to some nebulous finish line only to have Logan Oliver’s head hacked off. No thank you. My war. My rules.

  I openly growl at Chloe since she was the one who hacked off Logan’s head to begin with. Chloe is my personal hell. A tiny laugh huffs through me because I have plans for my own little personal demon that make me tingle all the way down my angelic little spine.

  “Mack Bishop,” Chloe corrects.

  Brody’s twin gives a jovial laugh before gesturing to Marshall. “Who are these sluts you’ve furnished us with this fine evening, Dudley?”

  Sluts? I sneer at Chloe. Leave it to her to drag over the gutter trash—her long, long relation no doubt.

  He lifts a brow toward Marshall. “The wench who resembles Marlena tells me she’s from the New World—from a distant time. What malarkey is this? Women wearing pantaloons, no less?” He tips his head back and guffaws at the idea, and we get a toxic whiff of his eighty-proof breath. “God forbid this news travels to the throne. King Charles will have the entire lot of them dragged back by their ears.” His hand circles around my waist and he gives my bottom a healthy pinch.

  “Ouch!” I shout while slapping him reflexively.

  He licks his greasy smile in approval to my less than enthused response. “I’ll take the spirited one. I always appreciate a good rumble under the covers.”

  “The only thing covering you will be the lid of your casket if you try that again.” I take a step forward and get in his face. “Try it again and see how fast you end up on the wrong side of British soil.”

  “I’m the spirited one.” Chloe shoves me into Marshall’s arms. “And neither of us is sleeping with you, Mack Daddy. Where did Marlena go, anyway?” She squints into the crowd.

  “My sister?” He cocks his head. “Who the hell knows.” He sucks from the wooden mug in his hand. “The little whore is rolling around on her back, I reckon.”

  Wow, he said whore like it was a term of endearment. It’s nice to know we see eye to eye on some things because I happen to agree with his nutshell analysis of Marlena. And what the heck does Chloe want with the little whore, anyway?

  “You hear that, Chloe?” I take a moment to rib her. “Your long-lost granny is off getting VD somewhere while lying on her back. The two of you have so much in common, and yet it’s sort of a miracle you have relatives at all.” Actually, if memory serves correct, Marlena tosses herself off a cliff soon after she discovers her lover was sent to the tower—wait, that’s only partially correct. Marlena contracted the Black Death. The Black Death! THE PLAGUE! “Holy crap, I just remembered this entire time period is crawling with all things bubonic.” I snatch Chloe by the arm. “We need to get the hell out of here before we’re bubbling with boils. The afterlife sounds nice in theory, but I’m in no hurry to taste and see for myself.”

  Marshall keeps pace beside me as we navigate our way through the chortling can-can girls with their skirts to here and their tits to there, hanging out for the world to see. Dear Lord, this is a den of heathens if I ever saw one. The main saloon is filled with bodies so dense it’s like swimming through a human wall just trying to hit the exit.

  “There she is,” Chloe growls and leads us to the left a bit until we’re face-to-face with Marlena and a skanky looking girl with a tiny turned-up nose, red knotted hair that holds the promise of a rat’s nest, pasty skin, and large round eyes that seem hungry to steal our souls. So odd. So unnatural, and honestly, so unnecessary.

  “Come on, Chloe,” I hiss. “I’m sure Marshall can summon that demon into his living room anytime you want. We have kids to think about. I’m pretty sure there’s no routine vaccination for the diseases they’re hosting. Hell, there probably aren’t even proper names for them. This isn’t head lice we’re dealing with. This is life or black death!”

  “Marlena.” Chloe sizes her up as if claiming her prey before she pounces. “I believe we have unfinished business.”

  “Business?” I chirp. “Chloe, if you need to stay behind, I absolutely have no problem with that whatsoever.” Forget the deal I worked out with her. Leaving her in these tampon, yeast infection cream deprived times might just be a special brand of torture. A dull smile comes to my lips, and the edgy redhead next to Marlena snaps her jaw at me as if she were rabid. Dear God, she probably is. Great. I can add rabies to the short list of things to be wary of.

  Chloe scoffs as if a vacay in jolly old England wasn’t even on the short list of hellscapes she’s willing to burn time in. “I’m in the Transfer with Wesley.” She keeps her eyes trained on Marlena. “He is my master, and I do as he says,” she grits the words through her teeth as if a vision of Wes and his X-rated commands just whistled through her brain.

  “What?” I try to shake Chloe from her bizarre need to confess her sins. “Nobody cares who you bow down to on the mattress, Chloe. And what’s this master shit?”

  Chloe’s trance-like state remains unshakable as she continues to glare at her older, not all that wiser twin. “Traitors don’t sit well with me. I suspect I’ll be seeing you soon.”

  Marlena scoffs openly at Chloe’s threat as if it were no more than a toddler throwing a tantrum. Little does she know that Chloe is far more lethal than any toddling babe. She’s amassed quite the impressive body count—an attribute that had me leaning toward teaming up with her myself.

  “I suspect you’ll be seeing me when I’m good and ready.” Marlena gives the flick of her wrist, exposing an exquisite black fan made of fine lace. If I didn’t think it was laden with bionic super germs, I might have asked her to lend it to me before jettisoning off to a far more comfortable time and place. It’s stifling in here, causing the thick, ripe body odor to roll to a boil. Can you say air conditioning and fire code? Two things I never thought I’d miss.

  “Great.” I slap my hands over Chloe’s back in an effort to move her toward the exit. “Now that we’ve got all the fun details worked out, I’m sure you two will enjoy a rather hostile tête-à-tête sooner than later. But as for you and me, it’s time to make Brexit.”

  “Not so fast.” Chloe’s feet seal to the floor like concrete, taking a step toward the snarling redhead. “Who’s this little impish bitch?” She scowls at the—for lack of a better term, impish bitch that seems to be gloating next to Chloe’s whore of a grandmother.

  The redhead exposes a mouthful of unfortunate orthodontic events. “Cassandra Graham.” She offers a hand to Chloe, and she wisely ignores it. Swear to God, the girl has gangrene setting in on three different nails. The sapphire ring on her finger snags my attention, but it’s not the precious watery blue stone that has me ogling it—it’s the thin slice of light running through it—a cat’s eye. I’ve seen that before. I used to want one in the worst way back when my father was still alive. We had seen one on the finger of one of his coworkers, and I inquired about it. As soon as he said the words cat’s eye, my young self was smitten with the idea of having a fel
ine ocular vessel gracing my very own finger in the form of a blue stone. Blue as Gage Oliver’s eyes, and I smirk at the thought.

  Her smile expands, revealing the fact she’s missing nearly every other tooth, the few she has seem a bit rusted looking, and I’ve gone from annoyed to feeling immensely sorry for her. Modern dentistry can be added to the list of things to be thankful for in the millennial age. “I know who you are.” Her gaze drills straight into mine and a shiver rides up my back. There’s something unnerving about her. Something very familiar yet haunting.

  “Do I know you?” I back into Marshall, and that smooth vibration tingles along my spine. Everything about Marshall has the power to give me all the assurance I need.

  “No.” Her voice holds the slightest echo, and for a moment I wonder if my ears are responding to the raucous band pounding out a storm. “But you will, Skyla Oliver—nee Messenger. I’m not through with you.” Her lips turn down on the sides and her face melts as if it were made of candle wax. “Not through with any of you.”

  Marshall places his hands over my shoulders and a powerful vibration wails through me—far more powerful than any of the vibratronics he’s previously unleashed. If I didn’t feel the need to ditch this tawdry tavern, I might opt for a nightcap and a nice long cuddle session with my favorite purring pervert. Instead, I do the only thing sanity will allow—I yank Chloe toward the exit.

  “Swear to God, Messenger”—she pants as we struggle to thread our way through the boil of bodies—“if this morphs into a nightmare, I’m going to—”

  “You’re going to what, Chloe? Knife my head off? How very old school of you.”

  Focus, Skyla. Our paths must part. We shall reunite soon enough. Marshall strums the words right into my mind, and I can’t help but give a private smile. It doesn’t get more old school than Marshall drilling his thoughts straight into my skull. It sort of reminds me of my time at West Paragon High where Marshall enjoyed tormenting me, exchanging kisses for visions. It reminds me of sweeter days gone by when Gage was ever so faithful and Logan—

  A clearing opens in the crowd, and just as I’m about to make a break for it, a man steps in front of me and I bump right into his rock-hard chest.

  Speak of the devil—or angel as it were. It’s him again. That beautiful face, those citrine eyes. Can it be?

  “Logan?” He sheds that wild smile of his that still makes my heart go pitter-patter. “I knew it was you.” Which version I’m not so certain. There’s the Treble-based version back on Paragon—and, of course, the holistic version in heaven. But this one wears a drab brown suit, and his bow tie is quite literally a string tied into a bow. He looks every bit as fashionably ritzy as the Transfer dwellers, and it occurs to me this is the century that those nefarious ghosts are most likely from.

  His brows rise with amusement as he pulls a cigar to his lips and takes in a slow, smooth drag, but my heart is still melting over those gorgeous eyes, those lips I’ve kissed a thousand times.

  “What are you doing, smoking a cigar?” I offer up an open-mouthed smile at this dapper, sexy, old-world reboot of the first boy who stole my heart.

  His lips twitch a smile, but he’s holding back, laughing ever so slightly.

  “When in Rome.” He blows a steady stream of smoke into my face, powder white, holding the scent of holiday spices, causing me to give a few hard, quick blinks. Along with the smoke, along with the power of seduction Logan holds in his voice, those heated nights of our short-lived honeymoon tread through my mind, achingly slow and heartbreakingly beautiful to witness even from afar—Logan and me openly lusting after one another, without a stitch of clothing between us. His face buried in my chest, between my legs, his lips pressed to mine for hours on end. Our time in the bath, warm as tears—Sector tears, he corrects—his teeth grazing over my flesh, his hot, lusty whispers, the steady lashing of his searing tongue. Logan is in me, fueling me with his love, thrusting himself high up into the deepest part of my being. Logan glides over me, stealing wet kisses, doing his best to pound his body into mine, and an aching moan escapes my throat. My body quivers at his command, and I’m right there. Logan dives down and offers one last frenetic kiss to the most tender part of me, and I let out a cry as my body shakes and quakes. My entire being cries out in pleasure, in pain, as I let out a vicious primal roar that lets the entire universe know I exist. That Logan and I once existed.

  My lids flutter as if struggling to open, but in truth I wish they would remain sealed for far longer than this sliver of time. Reliving my honeymoon with Logan is the last thing I expected. It’s the last thing I would have asked for, but in hindsight it’s probably what I needed. Every part of me is aching over what Gage has done to me, to us, to our sweet little boys. Logan’s distraction, though odd, was strangely welcome—reminding me of simpler times, happier times and gave my subconscious a bit of respite from the dark-haired prince who hacked my heart to pieces. It’s as if the lights went out in my world and then the floor was taken from underneath me. Here I am falling, endlessly, painfully, into the deep abyss of grief.

  But these aren’t simpler times. Before my lids even crack to welcome the dawn, I can feel the throb of pain filling me. Gage has crashed a sledgehammer over my life, over my physical body, and now I will never be the same. My heart has shattered. It has twisted itself into something unrecognizable. Thoughts of Chloe and those dark promises I whispered into her ear last night echo through my mind, and I break all over again. It is a horrible hell you’ve delved into when you need Chloe Bishop’s help with anything.

  My room forms around me, the sturdy furniture—purchased by Demetri, the carpeted walls—compliments of Tad. A strange glow emanates from the foot of my bed as my mother gives a slight wave from the chair. Not Lizbeth, not the mother one might suspect would be in my room holding one of the twins to her bosom, but Candace, the mother nobody would believe could be conned into a little babysitting while I jettisoned around metaphysical planes and, apparently, time continuums. As soon as she showed up in my room last night to offer up a bit of celestial comfort, I sat her iridescent bottom down and handed her a pacifier—two of them to be exact. It was late, and I had just fed the twins, but sleep was the last thing on my mind, which is ironic considering the fact I haven’t slept in months.

  “My dear, you truly need a rocking chair,” she admonishes while struggling to adjust into a position of comfort in that old wooden seat I’ve only used a handful of times. She’s holding Nathan, or perhaps it’s Barron. As horrible as it sounds, I can’t really tell. If my vision wasn’t blurred with sleep, if they were in my arms, I might know the difference. Might being the operative word. But the only way I can be sure is by the fact I’ve painted Nathan’s right toenail blue and Barron’s red. As much as Gage cringes each time he’s met with the cute little corn niblets that adorn their feet, I know he’s appreciative of my determination to keep them straight. Even though the boys are fraternal, they look nearly identical. I’d feel terrible if there were a mix-up at this early stage in the game. I’m sure in a year we won’t have a problem telling them apart. I hope.

  “The horses last night—the ones from the Transfer—” I scoot to the edge of the bed. “Thank you.” There—no pussyfooting around. The old me would have asked if she had anything to do with them, but the new me knows better. If you want to stay ahead of the game—correction, if you want to be in the game at all—you must come from a place of knowing with this unearthen being who bore me. Shoot straight from the hip and avoid circular conversation and logic like the plague—speaking of which…

  “They’re the finest stallions in my stalls.” She brings a tiny dark-haired angel my way and drops a tender kiss to his forehead before completing the handoff. That one simple kiss brings a swell of relief. I didn’t know how she would feel about the boys, considering who they sprang from. Gage isn’t her first choice for me.

  “Dear child.” She scoffs and I can’t help but feel as if I’m looking in a mirror—more so
that I’ve somehow managed to multiply and now am able to move around the room in duplicate. “There are only three beings in the entire universe who can call me Your Grace. I dare not hold their father’s sins against them. The Good Word overturned that ruling centuries and centuries ago. Heavens no. I’m not interested at all who spawned them, so long as they have your lifeblood in them. They are as good as mine. Now”—she flattens her airy white dress with her hands, and sparks fly around her in a fit of cosmic dust—“I’ve left Sage under the careful supervision of your father. We’re taking her to the herd races. There’s nothing quite as jolly as watching a plethora of species compete with such zeal. She’ll be seated on one of the royal yaks.” Her fingers land over her mouth as if holding back a prideful laugh. Sage is the daughter I lost. My twins were actually triplets until one was no more. “A beautiful beast of burden, if I don’t say so myself.” She lands a cool kiss to the top of my head. “Goodbye, my darling.”

  “Wait.” I slip my hand over her wrist and those strumming vibrations filter from her. “I had a bit of a strange trip after Chloe and I left the Transfer. It was beyond weird. There were Marlena and her perverted brother, Mack, and a snarky looking skank named Cassandra. She said she knew me. Who is she?”

  Her lips twist with a clear look of disdain. I know for a fact my mother is more than familiar with all of the aforementioned parties.

  She retrieves Barron, offers him a kiss, and lands him in my arms as well. “How did you get back?”

  “Logan—he blew cigar smoke in my face.”

  Her brows peak. “Logan! How lovely. Did he say anything to you?” She suddenly looks less than amused, and now I wonder if they’re harboring some deep, dark secret.

  “I asked him why he was smoking.” I make a face because I suspect my mother knows exactly why and then some. “He said when in Rome, and then I woke up.”

  “When in Rome!” She laughs and claps her hands as if she not only understood the implications but was able to relive those heated nights right along with me. “Ah, yes”—she clutches her hand to her chest, her eyes closing for a moment—“Roma, my sweet, sweet, Roma. Forever you shall live in the recesses of my heart.”