Part 24 (1/2)
The tin cup hits the floorboards.
The puddle of broth soaks into the dust.
The men and the little girl have switched positions.
The son is slumped, unmoving, over a workbench. The father lies in a lagoon of blood on the pile of newspapers, mouthing the same three words over and over again: ”Diosa de la guerra . . . Diosa de la guerra . . .”
The girl, now on her feet, holds up her trembling blood-soaked hands. Gravity pulls her tears to the earth.
The mother falls to her knees, whimpering.
”Lo siento,” the girl sobs in the mother's language.
Then in English: ”I'm so sorry.”
The house explodes.
Back in Berry Glenn, California, Ash woke with a scream.
The image of the woman's face just before the explosion, the unwillingness to live written in her dead eyes, careened right out of the vision and into Ashline's bedroom. She dove out of her bed, grabbed hold of the metal wastebasket, and immediately threw up.
After her stomach convulsions had subsided, Ashline crawled slowly over to her laptop and flipped it open. She winced as her eyes adjusted to the glow of the screen, but she managed to open her Internet browser and navigate 290 to a Spanish-English translator. With trembling fingers she typed in the three words the dying man had repeated right before his b.l.o.o.d.y, fiery end: ”Diosa de la guerra.”
She clicked enter.
The three words that returned sent Ashline scrambling for the wastebasket again. Only this time nothing came out as she dry-heaved.
G.o.ddess of war.
As those three words faded from her mind, a different image floated to the surface-the date on the newspaper in the vision.
This year.
May 3.
Two days ago.
If the events in the vision had just occurred two days prior . . .
And if what Ashline and Eve were seeing in these nightmares weren't echoes from their previous lives, or lost relics from childhood . . .
Then the girl in the vision was not Ashline.
And the girl in the vision was not Eve.
Ashline curled up around the wastebasket and hugged it to her chest.
”I have a little sister.”
291.
PART III: SPRING WEEK.
MATCH POINT.
Wednesda y Ashline had never been so grateful for game-day jitters.
Her match against Patricia Orleans was technically scheduled for five p.m., but the whole school had started referring to it as ”sundown,” as though she were headed to a gunfight at the OK Corral. Just strap two six-shooters to my hips and call me Wyatt, she thought as she high-fived what felt like the hundredth hallway pa.s.serby.
Bobby Jones, bless his warped and immature heart, decided the best way to win points with Ashline was to start a chant for her in the lunchroom when she emerged from the stir-fry line. He mounted a lunch table and wielded a megaphone, which whinnied mechanically as he powered it on. ”Come on, everybody,” he ordered the cafeteria in his best impression of a professional cheerleader. ”Let's show Ashline some Owl spirit!”
295.
The audience hooted in unison.
With the help of his fellow soccer hooligans, he started a rousing chant of ”Go, Wilde! Go, Wilde! Go, Wilde!” which, fueled by Bobby's charisma and ma.s.s hysteria, caught fire across the dining hall. By the time she reached the table with the rest of the women's tennis team-where Bobby and his teammates had ceremoniously decorated her plastic seat with streamers-she was grinning, an impressive feat, considering that she was still standing in the shadow of what had quickly become the worst Tuesday of her life.
She had somehow burned her handprint into the chest of her would-be boyfriend, and they'd parted on such awkward terms-a few uncertain words, a friendly kiss on the cheek-that Ashline wasn't sure she'd ever see him again. She had a little sister that until this week she had known nothing about, the lab rat of some experiment gone awry, who was now terrorizing villages in Central America. And her psychotic older sister was off lurking in the shadows.
For a few hours at least, she could just be Ashline Wilde, the number one tennis player at Blackwood and the only hope her school had to reach the top of Coastal Conference Athletics. Forget championing the school, she decided; she was going to win this one for herself. G.o.d only knew she needed a victory now more than ever.
When the final school bell chimed in F-block British Literature, she knew she should head to the locker room and suit up, take some warm-up shots, maybe convince 296 the trainer to put some heat on her knee, which had felt stiff and swollen since Monday's practice. But she had one detour to make first.
After she forged through the sea of last-minute well-wishers and shouts of ”good luck,” she navigated a course up the stairwell to the third-floor room where she had fifth-period history every day. Fortunately, Mr.
Carpenter was still there, erasing some final notes off the chalkboard. His freshman cla.s.s must have been covering the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, because he was just polis.h.i.+ng away the words ”Hanging Gardens of Babylon” when Ash sidestepped a few stragglers who were heading out the door.
”Ms. Wilde.” Mr. Carpenter set down the eraser and clapped his hands together to rid them of chalk dust.
When he ran his hand through his receding hairline, he left a smudge of white chalk on his forehead. ”Did you forget something?”
”No, I . . .” Ash took a hesitant step into the room. ”I actually came to ask you a few questions.”
Mr. Carpenter gestured to one of the desks in the front row as he slid down into his overstuffed chair, which, with its bandages of masking tape, had seen better days. ”I hope you didn't come to ask advice on tennis techniques for your big match today.” He prodded at his wiry arms apologetically. ”Never exactly been the athleti-cally inclined type, though I'll have you know I was on the golf team in my day.”
Ash laughed and settled down into one of the desks.
297.
”Don't worry. My serves and my backhand are just fine.
But I know you've mentioned in cla.s.s several times that you were a cla.s.sicist before you were a historian, and that you have a particular soft spot for mythology.”
”Indeed.” He folded his hands on the desk. ”I've never heard you express any interest in mythology before.”
”I was wondering,” she said, searching for neutral ground, ”if you knew anything about Polynesian mythology.”
He leaned toward her suspiciously. ”Are you just trying to humor an old man? Maybe hoping for some boring lecture to distract you from the match you have in two hours?”
”Listen,” Ash said. ”I grew up a Polynesian chick raised by white Jewish upper-cla.s.s parents in a white Jewish upper-cla.s.s neighborhood, and they weren't exactly overflowing with information about my heritage.