Part 18 (2/2)

225.

”In a terrifying sort of way,” Ash said. ”Then, sure.

What . . . what the h.e.l.l are they?”

”We call them the Cloak.” Eve didn't bother to elabo-rate on who she meant by ”we.” ”They're a hive mind- linked together so that when they interact, they can feed their thoughts into one shared collective consciousness. .

. . So I guess in that case the Cloak are really more of an 'it' than a 'they.' Think of them as many branches of the same tree.”

Given that Eve had remained civil for a full two minutes, and no one had been electrocuted yet, Ash shelved her misgivings and slipped down beside her. ”If those are the branches, I'd hate to see the trunk.”

”Or the roots,” Eve added. Her face had drawn sober.

”They say that when the plants and the animals and the humans and the G.o.ds were created, the Cloak were made from the excess fabric that was left over. As if the Creator had an extra yard of velour when he was done making all of us and said, 'Screw it. Let's make Earth a little more interesting.'”

”And you believe that?” Ashline asked. She desperately wanted to know where Eve had learned all this, but there was a sixteen-car pileup of questions in her brain, preventing any of them from funneling their way out of her mouth.

Eve sniffed noncommittally. ”Stories like that are merely intended to simplify what our tiny little minds can't process. But if you ask me, if the Cloak are tele-pathic, unified, and apparently invincible, and we are the 226 imperfect little skin bags that fight and kill each other, then we must be the dregs left over after they were created.”

Ashline shuddered. ”Are they dangerous?”

”When they want to be,” Eve replied. ”As far as I've seen, the Cloak have no sense of right and wrong, no moral compa.s.s. But they do have an agenda . . . and that agenda, as far as I can tell, is to mess with us. Humans can't see them, can't notice the way they tinker with their lives every day.”

”But we can,” Ashline said, and felt a bit odd using the term ”we,” as if she belonged to some sort of club.

”Does it make it any better when you see who's holding the stick that's poking you through the bars of the cage?” Eve shook her head. ”Take right now, for instance.

Are they wandering around your school because they're just curious about human life? Or are they just mulling around because they smell deity nearby and they want to get into your head?”

The word ”deity” echoed within Ashline's brain as if she'd inserted her head into the clock tower bell right as it was being rung. ”So we are G.o.ds, then.”

Eve raised her eyebrows twice. ”Cool, ain't it?”

”Then why are we-”

”Then why are we stuck in teenage bodies, forced to go through p.u.b.erty and endure the embarra.s.sment of high school just like everyone else?” Eve finished for her.

”The first of many questions.”

”Because the G.o.ds aren't like we've been told they 227 are,” Eve said, and Ashline could all but hear her sister's soul buzzing. ”Not some malevolent immortal beings sitting on the top of a mountain, or ruling the earth from the clouds. We're flesh and blood and bone and breath and laughter and pain, just like everyone else. . . . Only, unlike everyone else, we're reborn every century or so with no memory of the last time and forced to live it all over again from scratch. We're not immortal in the sense that we can't die; just immortal in the sense that we end up back here.”

”We're reincarnated . . . as ourselves,” Ash said, trying to piece it all together.

”Ash, we've been here before!” Eve grabbed her sister's arm excitedly. ”Many times-thrown onto the grid-dle and then tossed back into the pancake mix, over and over again. Who knows the things we've seen in all our years, all our centuries. The cities rising, the cities falling.

Distant lands, our lovers, our wars . . .”

Ash closed her eyes, probing the recesses of her mind for memories waiting to be unlocked, of faraway sh.o.r.es and old friends.

”But something is wrong,” Ash said.

Eve gave a her a sideways glance, up and down. ”You mean besides the mismatched pajama set you're wearing now?”

”Good to see that you're still a brand sn.o.b even on this side of mortality.”

”If I'm going to be a G.o.ddess,” Eve said, ”there's no 228 reason I shouldn't look like one too.” She winked.

Despite the toxic wasteland of history between them, Ash couldn't help but laugh. ”So nothing's up? You're just here on a social visit, or scoping out new schools?”

Ash frowned. ”You're not . . . you're not planning to enroll here, are you?”

”Trade in world travels for a calculus textbook?” Eve rolled her eyes. ”I'm just here to see my baby sister. Just like last time.” Eve bit her lip as if the last four words would take her someplace she didn't want to go.

Just like last time.

”Okay, spill.” Ash crossed her arms. ”We share the same DNA, Eve. I know exactly when you're spraying on bulls.h.i.+t and pretending it's perfume.”

Eve looked back out over the quad; four of the Cloak had disappeared, off into the woods maybe. Two of them still lurked outside the athletic complex. ”I know I've made mistakes along the way, Ash, but you don't always have to believe the worst.”

But Ashline refused to be suckered. ”Stuff that hurt puppy look into your Coach bag, and just tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on.”

Eve huffed. ”You want the truth, Ash? We're all going to die.”

”Yeah, you just said that. From the sound of it, we've died a whole lot.”

”Well, this time we aren't coming back,” Eve blurted out, as if a water main inside her had burst.

229.

A boreal cold filled Ash, like a permafrost had formed beneath her skin. ”What?”

Eve slipped both hands through her tussled hair. ”For the last few generations, fewer and fewer of us have been making the return each time. At first it was only a few . .

. and then entire pantheons disappeared, lost somewhere in the limbo of time. And now we're all convinced that the Cloak have somehow found a way to interfere with our regeneration.”

”You keep saying 'we,'” Ash said. ”And you certainly aren't referring to you and me.”

”When I was traveling, searching for other people like us,” Eve explained, ”I met a group of G.o.ds living up in Vancouver. They were led by some sort of divine being called Blink. Wears a mask. Creepy as h.e.l.l. No one could explain to me what he was, or how they'd found him, only that he wasn't like us, or humans, or even the Cloak.

He was . . . something else. He scared the s.h.i.+t out of me at first, but in a time when I didn't know who to trust, Blink was the first to give me answers.”

”So you've been taking orders from this Blink, and you don't even know what he is?” Ashline asked. But even then she was thinking back thirty-six hours to when she'd been standing on the beach, taking orders from a scroll that had been given to her by a blind girl, who had in turn dictated the message from a strange man that had shown up on her porch.

”We're all just marionettes, Ashline,” Eve said softly.

230.

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