Karsten Knight - Afterglow

The phantom hand heaved her backward across the stone platform, and a gust of wind carried her the rest of the way to the stairs. When she finally recovered herself and looked up, she discovered that Eve had replaced her, kneeling on top of Colt. She sent an electric current through his struggling body to immobilize him, then turned back to Ash over her shoulder. “Go!” she cried out to Ash. “Go live your life, and live it better than I did.”

“No!” Ash croaked, but almost no sound came out. Above Eve and Colt, the magnificent, catastrophic ball of stone hurtled toward the platform, growing larger by the moment.

“I promise you,” Eve yelled over the approaching roar of the comet. “I promise you I’ll be a better sister in the next lifetime.”

There was no time to say good-bye, because Eve hit her with one last gale that tossed Ash backward down the stairs. She didn’t stop rolling until she landed on her unconscious parents, whom Eve had tucked partway down the staircase. And because there was no time left, Ash swallowed her quaking tears, scooped up her parents with all the superhuman strength she had left, and sprinted down the steps.

She only made it halfway down when the fireball hit. The thunderous blast knocked Ash off her feet as the behemoth slammed into the top of the lighthouse. It sheared the platform on top clean off.

With her parents in a heap at her feet, Ash drew herself up protectively over them. She focused on keeping her front side cool, then let a curtain of fire erupt out of her back, which she’d armored once more with igneous stone. As the rock debris from the pulverized platform above showered down on them, the fiery armor acted as a protective shield.

And then it was over. Ash dropped, exhausted and faintly smoking, into a heap beside her parents, who were just starting to stir from the fading sedatives. Even as they blinked and mumbled in unconsciousness, Ash just lay there staring up at the sky through the gaping open jaws of stone where the platform used to be.

Eve was gone. She waited to see some flash of lightning, or some shooting star through the constellations above, one of those mystical signs people always saw in movies to remind them that their dead loved ones were still out there somewhere.

But this wasn’t the movies. There was only an unbearable quiet, until Ash’s mouth was able to form the one thing she wished she’d had more time to say up top:

“I promise I’ll be a better sister next time too.”

Ash had been leaning againstthe trunk of the palm tree for over an hour, watching the one-story house across the street.

She still wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

She’d been out on the islands for nearly three weeks now, researching Hawaiian family trees, practically living in the libraries and town halls while she combed through public records. She’d started in Maui, where she’d nearly destroyed the entire island almost two hundred years earlier after she’d summoned Haleakalā to erupt. The culmination of her search had led her here, to a suburb of Honolulu, where a woman named Kalama lived.

If her research was correct—and there was no way to know for sure, since a lot of it was guesswork—Kalama might be a descendant of the baby girl Pele had abandoned two centuries ago, right before the Cloak dragged her away . . . the very child that Pele might have incinerated if the Cloak hadn’t stopped her in time. In fact, after nine generations, there were actually more than forty people on the islands who might trace their lineage back to Pele’s abandoned love child.

Which meant that Ash had forty great-great-grandchildren—most of them older than her—living and working and raising families on the islands.

The thought of it was almost too weird to handle.

Still, she’d felt compelled to seek one of them out. Maybe it was just plain old curiosity, or maybe she felt some element of remorse for abandoning and almost murdering the child. Maybe she wanted proof that the visions of her previous lives hadn’t been strange dreams.

Maybe after all the death and destruction that had sullied Ash’s life in the last two months, she just wanted to see that something good had come out of her tumultuous, deadly relationship with Colt Halliday.

But more than anything, Ash was just looking for something to distract her from the palpable void Eve’s death had left in her life. Rose’s death too, even though she’d barely known the girl. In just a matter of months she’d found a sister she never knew she had and won back another sister who had for years been nothing more than a silhouette in her life.

Then she’d lost both sisters in a single night. Now she was left struggling with the memory of Eve, trying to reconcile all the different facets of her inconsistent personality. Who was the true Eve? The girl who’d started petty, brutal fights at school? The girl who’d run away from home and broken her parents’ hearts—broken Ash’s heart? Or was she the penitent, selfless girl who’d given her life to save her family that night on the lighthouse?

Now Ash found herself staring at a stranger’s house in Honolulu, wondering what comfort could be provided by a distant relative who, other than shared blood, she probably had nothing in common with.

Still, she had to try.

When Ash finally worked up the courage, she crossed the street, marched up the front walkway, and pounded on the door before she could chicken out. While she heard footsteps approaching inside, she held on to the rusted, flaking metal railing for support. It was too late to run now.

When the inner door opened, a girl only a few years older than Ash stood inside, peering out at her through the screen. Even though Ash knew it was a stupid thing to think, she’d pictured Kalama as an uncanny cross between herself and Colt—maybe with the gentle curve of Ash’s jawline and the jewel-facet cheekbones that made Colt so handsome.

In reality, as far as Ash could see, Kalama bore absolutely no obvious resemblance to either of her deity ancestors . . . which made sense, since after nine generations Colt and Pele made up only a small percentage of the girl’s ancestral blood.

“Can I help you?” the girl asked, squinting at Ash.

Ash looked away in embarrassment, suddenly realizing she’d been intensely gawking at the girl’s face. “Are you . . . Kalama?” Ash managed to stammer out. The girl nodded, so Ash went on. “I’m Ashline Wilde, from New York. I was doing research on my family ancestry for a summer project, and part of my assignment was to track down a member of my extended family that I’d never met. According to my research, you and I are . . . distant cousins.” Mostly lies, but enough of the truth that Ash wouldn’t feel bad.

At first the girl continued to squint, so Ash wondered if the story she’d concocted was too transparent or ridiculous . . . but then the girl broke out into a wide grin, the kind of real, deep smile that Ash wasn’t sure she’d learn to do again.

“Well, aloha then, cousin,” Kalama said. She popped open the screen door and held it open, a gesture to invite Ash inside. It was only when Kalama turned in profile that Ash caught a detail she’d missed, studying her through the screen door.

Kalama was pregnant.

Very pregnant in fact—from the size of her baby bump, she looked like she might go into labor if she sneezed too hard.

Ash smiled and pointed to Kalama’s belly. “My research was pretty extensive, but it didn’t pull that up. Congratulations.”

Kalama chuckled and clasped her hands over the bump. “You came here expecting just to meet a distant cousin, and within a minute you find out you’re going to be a distant aunt to a baby girl as well. It’s a two-for-one deal.”