Ashes (Fire Within Series Book 3)

by Ella M. Lee

  “So you solve all your problems in bed?” Chandra asked, wiggling her eyebrows at me.

  “Something like that,” I said, looking away.

  Nicolas and I didn’t spend a lot of time in bed. If our lives were a romance novel, we’d be tearing each other’s clothes off and having sex for hours every day. In reality, he and I were both too busy to draw out our interactions like that, nor were either of us particularly sex-obsessed.

  Chandra laughed. “No need to be shy. We all know his reputation. I just never figured he’d find someone to actually want. He normally only sleeps with people he doesn’t give a fuck about. He’s been like that since he got here. Even when I was a kid, I heard about him.”

  It often slipped my mind that Chandra wasn’t like the rest of us; she had been born into Water Clan. Chandra’s parents were both Water magicians who had married and moved near the San Francisco clan house just before she was born. They lived on the fringes of Water, and Chandra had grown up entrenched in magic and in clan life.

  Nicolas had mentioned that her strange transmutation was likely the result of some mutation within her father’s stellar suppression skills—he had the ability to clobber others’ magic with his own, rendering them ineffective. Cameron had that ability, too, although his was not as strong as Chandra’s father’s.

  Because of Chandra’s upbringing, she often took for granted how hard it was to find magic, to learn to use it, and to deal with clan life.

  “Shush,” Athena said, sensing my discomfort. “He doesn’t do that anymore. He doesn’t even like it. Sleeping around used to just make him irritable. He’s been much easier to work with since he met you, Fiona.”

  “That is true,” Chandra conceded. “Although I used to like watching Nicolas take out all his anger on Sylvio. Those two can really go at one another.”

  “What?” I asked. I’d never seen Nicolas and Sylvio have anything but polite conversation.

  “She means physically,” Athena clarified. “When Nicolas is angry, he won’t fight me or Chandra, but he’ll go up against Sylvio no problem.”

  “Why won’t he fight you two?” I asked.

  Athena gave me a wide-eyed look. “Because when Nicolas wants to take out his issues on someone, he fights to kill. Sylvio is one of the only fighters who can handle Nicolas when he’s going all out. He doesn’t mind being vicious with Sylvio, and Sylvio is happy to oblige. Haven’t you seen them?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve seen Nicolas and Dan spar, but it’s always friendly.”

  “Dan’s great,” Athena said, “but Nicolas would never risk injuring him. They hold back with each other. Same when he goes up against me or Chandra. That’s all sparring, playing, teaching, nothing serious. But when Nicolas is determined to hurt someone? Scary. I think it’s the mind-reading. And the weapons training.”

  “I’ve never seen him fight with a weapon,” I said. “I thought he preferred magic.”

  “He was trained by Paul Parker in Smoke,” Athena said. “There’s no one better than Paul. He’s so good that Sky contracts him to train their enforcers. Nicolas with a knife is frightening.”

  A knife. With an awful start, I was reminded that I had seen Nicolas fight with a weapon before. Only once. When my Flame group attacked him in Vienna, he had drawn a knife and slit my friend’s throat. I still remembered Violet’s shocked expression as she groped at her neck for only a moment before he dropped her to the ground like she was nothing.

  I got up hastily, going to Chandra’s kitchen, which was slightly around the corner and out of sight, to get a bottle of water. I drank the whole thing and leaned against the wall, trying to suppress my nausea. It was shockingly easy for me to forget that Nicolas was deadly.

  These days, Nicolas was sweet and vulnerable with me. But to his enemies? He was devastating. He was supremely creative, he could kill in a moment, he could level buildings. I took a deep breath. I had made myself okay with that, but being reminded of what happened still speared me.

  Athena and Chandra didn’t know that, of course. This was just normal conversation for them. They were comfortable with their own roles and Nicolas’s role, and death to them was a job. In a way, it was heart-wrenchingly abstract. Even Chandra, who had been there in Vienna and had killed my operations partner, Damon, didn’t seem to have any lingering remorse over her actions.

  Being a magician taught you to accept things that a mortal would likely dwell on forever. I had never really lost that quality, but I shook off my panic and plastered a smile on my face, returning to my seat.

  “You know, Dan with a knife is scary too,” Chandra said, pointing at me as though I were somehow responsible for this. “I wish I had even half his speed. I don’t know how you spar with him, Fiona. My mother would call him a little devil.”

  “I get hit a lot,” I said, forcing myself to laugh. “I’m glad Water has healing magic. My partner in Flame once gave me a concussion accidentally, and I was out of commission for two weeks. When I got one here, Ryan healed me in about ten seconds.”

  Athena refilled our glasses from the wine bottle while Chandra popped a big bowl of popcorn. It was an American brand I hadn’t seen in years, and she put a bottle of butter topping on the table next to the bowl. Athena immediately started covering the popcorn with the fake butter.

  I watched, happy that we were back on safer ground.

  “I was so sick of popcorn for years,” I said, amused. “Snacks in Nebraska were just popcorn, popcorn, and other corn things that were suspiciously similar to popcorn.”

  “My parents never let me have junk food growing up,” Athena said. “I didn’t have ice cream until a school field trip when I was seven. Even the teacher made fun of me.”

  “My brother used to make these peanut butter popcorn balls to put on his ice cream,” I said, sighing. “Gross.”

  Athena must have seen my eyes darken as my mind went to Mark, because her next words were, “You going to Cedar Bluffs? What did Dan say?”

  “Dan wants to be cautious,” I said. “Nicolas wants to be brazen. That’s a reversal of normal, so I have no idea what to do.”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said, rolling my eyes. “My brother was a handful before he had Meteor magic. He’s probably worse now.”

  “Ugh, enough work talk,” Chandra said, flopping down next to me on the huge beanbag. She picked up the television remote control. “What episode were we on?”

  Athena stretched out behind us on the couch, her head near ours. “Episode twenty-two,” she told Chandra. She reached out and touched my shoulder. “It will be okay, Fiona. Worse shit has happened, and we’ve taken care of it.” She shrugged. “This, too, shall pass.”

  I touched her hand, wishing I could just touch the words and make them true.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning brought Daniel’s insistent knocking on Nicolas’s door. Nicolas had left hours ago—I had barely noticed his goodbye kiss on my cheek, still half asleep. It was nearly nine in the morning, and I was still stretched lazily across his bed, only just beginning to think about what I had to get done today.

  “Hey, Fi!” Dan said, his voice muffled. “Come on, get up, open the door.”

  I dragged myself out of bed heavily and flung the door open. “What do you want?” I asked, sighing.

  Daniel’s lips quirked into an amused smile. “Take a shower. We leave for Osaka in thirty minutes. I’ll buy you curry buns for breakfast.”

  I blinked at him. “What?” I asked, not sure I had heard him correctly. “I can’t go to Osaka. I have… work.”

  My response sounded feeble because it was feeble. Daniel was my commander, and I took instructions from him. If he wanted my entire day to be spent doing handstands back and forth across Hong Kong, I would have some very sore core muscles come dinnertime.

  It seemed as though Daniel could read my mind. He rolled his eyes. “Today, your work is coming with me to Osaka. Nico asked me
to take you out, so here I am, whisking you off to Japan. I’m the best, right?”

  “Why does Nicolas want you to take me out?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Daniel said, “but he knows how trapped you feel here, and I think he wanted you to get some time away. This should be a safe outing for us.” He touched my shoulder affectionately. “I think you’ll like what we’re doing today.”

  “And what is that, anyhow?” I said.

  Dan propped himself in the doorway while I retrieved my phone, sweatshirt, and shoes.

  “We’re about to place an offer on that property I’ve been looking at, but first I want you to see it and tell me what you think.”

  I turned back to him, wide-eyed. “No way. Then it’s, like, real.”

  Daniel beamed at me. “I know. I’m excited. I don’t want to leave Hong Kong, but this place is pretty cool. I picked it, after all. I think it will be perfect for the start of a new clan.”

  I messed up his hair with my hand, and he swatted me away as I squeezed past him into the hallway. He shut the door behind me and snapped his own shield in place in front of it, following me to my apartment.

  Daniel always acted like my place was his place. Today, he flopped himself onto my couch and started eating smoked almonds out of the glass jar I kept on my living room table, ignoring me as I sequestered myself in the bathroom.

  Daniel’s plan to distract me was working—my mind was wandering to Japan, to the planning we’d been doing there for Shatterfall. I was barely six months into living in Hong Kong, and now we were considering a move to Japan. I knew it had to happen, but that didn’t make it easier on me.

  I often disliked how large and sterile and city-like this clan house was, but I was growing used to it—growing used to the views of Hong Kong from all the windows, the towering library, the food, the sharp disparity between the air-conditioned building and the sweltering heat of the city just outside. I felt at home in the elaborate setup my group had made for itself here.

  But Daniel had been planning this move to Japan for months, and I was trying to be supportive. I wanted to fall in love with what he fell in love with. I had enjoyed our brief stint in Osaka in the fall. I looked forward to understanding the area more and more, and I wanted to be there for my commander and his vision for our future.

  I spun in a circle. “Dan, this place is lovely. It’s even nicer than in the pictures.”

  Daniel smiled weakly, huddled in his coat, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Dan didn’t like winter in places that got cooler than a balmy sixty degrees, but I had grown up in cold weather. It was mild by my standards, and Osaka was sunny today. I had opened my jacket to the light breeze.

  “So this would all be ours?” I asked.

  “Practically everything you can see right now,” he said, pointing as he described. “The main buildings here, those outbuildings over there, that wide strip of forest and fields right beyond the back gate, and the land on either side of the driveway.”

  “How far is it to town?” I asked.

  “About a seven-minute walk,” he said. “We can go down later. The town is small, but it’s got a train station with two different train lines. Downtown Osaka is only twenty minutes away. There are shops and restaurants. There’s a really huge temple—one of the head temples of Zen Buddhism—and a bunch of Shinto shrines right nearby. Perfect for hiding our tracks.”

  I wandered away from him, looking around in a daze. The property really was amazing. It was a former working temple, hundreds of years old, so it had traditional Buddhist architecture and a serene atmosphere.

  The long driveway was flanked by plum trees, already blooming white and pink blossoms in the cool weather, and it had at least ten half-covered garage bays. It led from the main road down to where we stood, right inside of what Dan called the nioumon, the huge two-storied gate that marked the entrance of the temple complex. The guardian statues at each side of the gate’s opening were old and crumbling, but I could imagine them restored and towering protectively.

  Stretching beyond the gate was a huge courtyard and garden, then a small field. At the end of the field stood the Butsuden, the main worship hall that enshrined the giant statue of the Buddha. It was two stories tall and quite wide, made of beautifully weathered wood and a carved roof, exactly like all the pictures I’d ever seen of Japanese temples.

  Dotted around the Butsuden were several small outbuildings that now stood dark and empty, including the honbou, the head priest’s residence.

  Off to the right was a massive wooden building that Dan called the soubou, the monks’ quarters. It was two stories in some places and three stories in others, with wooden passageways connecting various parts together into what looked like a complex maze.

  Abutting the property on two sides were large strips of wooded forest. In the other directions were large stretches of unused farmland. The nearest adjacent houses were well into the distance, nestled at the foot of some nearby mountains.

  Right now, the terrain was brown and mottled, but in the spring it would be bright and thriving. There would be blossoming trees and flowers, new growth, green mountains, and wildlife.

  Daniel held his hand out to me. “Let me show you the soubou,” he said, pulling me along with him. “It’s where we would all live.”

  He had been given the keys by the realtor, whom we were meeting with later to finalize the offer and other details.

  “The soubou has a huge kitchen, and the front offices are beautiful,” he said. “They will make a good common area. There are forty-six additional rooms of varying sizes that can be used for bedrooms and offices. And there’s a huge onsen, a hot spring bath, on the top floor with a great view of the mountains.”

  The smooth wooden walkways creaked slightly as we made our way from room to room. They had sliding doors and many of them had tatami floors made of delicate woven straw, although much of it needed replacement, aged and crumbling. There were two large inner courtyards within the soubou, one of which had a stone pond that was currently dry.

  The kitchen was huge and would be sleek and functional with modern appliances. I could see Daniel baking pineapple buns in it, and the thought made me smile. The onsen baths were expansive. There was a large shower area, a sauna, and several different pools. It was on the third floor, and it had large windows that looked over the forest and mountains. I thought of all the sparring I did and wistfully imagined soaking in hot water each night.

  I had to admit, I liked the style of this place.

  It felt homier than our current setup, where everyone had their own apartments and barely spent any time together. On this property, we’d be forced to share space, to be around one another like a real family. I could picture us spread around the various rooms: Ryan and Irina reading in the common area, Daniel experimenting in the kitchen, Keisha curled under the narrow skylights of the top-floor rooms. All of us sharing meals and relaxing in the onsen and being close.

  “The soubou needs a little work,” Dan said. “Better insulation, better sound-proofing, some replacing of the appliances and fixtures and floors. But won’t it be nice?”

  “Do you think everyone will be okay with living like this?” I asked. “There’s less space, and we all need to be closer to one another.”

  “I’ve talked about it with everyone. I think it will work.”

  We walked back out to the garden, heading toward the temple.

  “We can restore the outbuildings,” Dan said. “They’ll be good for storage, or offices, or guestrooms. Nicolas will probably move into one of them; he likes being on his own. The main temple building is in amazing shape, given its age. It’s over six hundred years old. Can’t you feel the power?”

  I could. The temple sang soft hymns of some deep, old magic—the magic of hundreds of years of worship and devotion. I kneeled on the stairs at the entrance, touching the aged wood. Daniel walked past me, throwing open the huge doors reverently and stepping over the threshold into the darkness.
With a slight gesture, he called up a little glowing ball of electricity for light.

  There was a large wooden Buddha statue here, large and austere. The ceiling had been painted with flowers and trees. The interior was dark and haunting but also comforting, smelling of wood and paper and something sweet like cherries.

  Daniel bowed before the Buddha and then kneeled on the floor. I followed suit, sitting close to him.

  “What do you think, Fi?” he asked, his eyes lit hopefully.

  “I seriously love it. When do we move in?”

  He laughed and took my hands in his gently. “I like seeing you smile. I’ve been worried about you lately. First, the stuff between you and me, then Nicolas, then seeing your brother. I know you haven’t had any time to think. What can I do?”

  “Can you rewind time with that vast power of yours?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “That would be cool. I might be tempted to give up all of this other power if I could manipulate time instead. There are a lot of things I’d like to change. Unfortunately, I can only move forward and make the best of my life.”

  Those words were an exact parrot of what Nicolas and Ryan always said about life, and I was impressed with how much Daniel had managed to absorb the characteristics of those around him.

  “With how cold he acts, it’s surprising that Nicolas has managed to surround himself with such compassionate people,” I said. “Except maybe Teng. I’m not entirely sure he’s human.”

  “I think he wonders that sometimes too,” Daniel said. “You do a good job with him. He doesn’t act like it, but he appreciates you treating him well.”

  “That’s good to know. I wonder a lot about how much everyone here likes me,” I confessed. “I’m not great at making friends.”

  He gave me an incredulous look. I understood why. Daniel and I had managed to click in a way that I had never done with anyone else before. He hadn’t seen me growing up, awkwardly trying to get other girls in high school to like me, trying to connect with my peers in college, or trying to fit in when I was new to Flame. He didn’t see the mistakes I made when talking to my new group members in Water, my embarrassing slip-ups, my nervousness whenever I had to spend time alone with any of them.