Ember (The Ember Series)

by Carol Oates

“Nice,” Candra mumbled, sneaking a peek at Sebastian who was twisting the lid off his third beer. Could angels get drunk?

  “He’s so much hotter than your guy,” Ivy teased excitedly, totally oblivious to the mood around her and Lofi’s wide-eyed glare at her remark. She didn’t even notice that neither Lofi nor Sebastian had acknowledged her with a greeting.

  “I need to go,” Sebastian announced, keeping his eyes on the bottles he was lining up on the counter beside him.

  “Good idea,” Lofi agreed. “We’ll all go.”

  Candra caught Ivy’s curious expression when Sebastian turned a little, placing his forth bottle, amazingly only half empty, on the counter. Ivy’s smile remained fixed, but her eyes narrowed and darted to Candra and then back to him.

  “No,” Sebastian answered directly to Lofi. “I just need…I’ll see you at home later.”

  Candra didn’t know what she had done wrong, or how she had misjudged his reaction to her yet again. He was so angry. Not outwardly. It was more of a simmering anger, as if he was smoldering just under the surface and could explode from the tiniest ignition. After Lofi nodded curtly, he left without saying goodbye or the vaguest glance in Candra’s direction.

  She immediately flushed. He held me back, she thought. It wasn’t just me. Why was he being an ass? She tried to tell herself he was embarrassed. She was tempted to wish she had walked away and left him stranding there alone, evidently pitching a tent and about to drop to his knees. Of course then she mentally slapped herself for considering it. Since, after all, he was only there trying to help her.

  “What’s his problem?” Ivy asked, helping herself to the beer in Candra’s hand.

  “Believe me, you don’t want to know,” Lofi responded, followed by a short sigh.

  Candra didn’t miss the way Lofi’s eyes flickered to her with a flash of golden shimmer. It felt like an accusation, and Candra resented it thoroughly. Sebastian and Lofi had followed her, not the other way around.

  “He’s so…different,” Ivy observed, and Candra couldn’t help smiling.

  “You have no idea,” she deadpanned and took the beer back out of Ivy’s hand, turning to Lofi. “You and me have to talk. Now.”

  Lofi looked around her hesitantly, as if someone would appear out of midair and give her an excuse to not talk to Candra.

  “I guess that’s my cue to leave?” Ivy groaned uncomfortably.

  “I’m sorry, Ivy. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Ivy’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You remember what I said to you earlier, right?”

  “I remember.” Candra nodded.

  Ivy smiled and cast a disgruntled look in Lofi’s direction as she left.

  Candra faced up to Lofi and kept her voice low and controlled. “One way or another, I’m getting answers tonight, and I really don’t think you’ll like the other way.”

  She could see Lofi weighing the pros and cons, so she gave her a few moments to think about it.

  “Fine,” she conceded, shaking her head as if she was disagreeing with her own decision. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “I don’t know if we were truly happy, or if we simply didn’t know any better. It was a thousand lifetimes ago.”

  They were walking through the city, Lofi had said toward home. Candra presumed she meant toward Lofi’s home since they were walking in the opposite direction of hers.

  The city was alive as traffic fought for dominance on the streets, and people buzzed past them on the pavement, going about their business. In the distance, sirens wailed and jazz music pumped from a nearby club somewhere. It teemed with life, but Candra felt totally disconnected from it. She wasn’t part of it anymore; she wasn’t sure where she belonged now.

  “What we remember from before is extremely vague. There was only us for the longest time, and then we simply weren’t alone any longer. We became Grigori—the Watchers. We looked down on the earth as humans lived their lives. Being born, growing, falling in love, having children—their souls were so beautiful to us. It’s more a feeling than a memory, but if I can describe it, life was like listening to the most beautiful music. It moved us, and we wanted to be a part of it.

  “Anyway, some grew jealous. We coveted human life. Beyond anything, we wanted to have what they had. We wanted to experience life and death as one of them, but it was forbidden. This life wasn’t created for us. However not all of us could accept that. Some took human form and lived among humans…they took human mates.” She stopped talking and continued to walk in silence.

  Candra turned her head slightly to see Lofi’s brow crinkle.

  “It doesn’t sound like such a bad story,” she encouraged, keeping Lofi talking.

  Lofi took a deep breath before she continued. “There was a covenant among Grigori to protect human life. The half-breed offspring were born abominations. They were born without souls, and in their wake, they brought plague, starvation when crops failed, pain and suffering for humanity…but they were loved and desperately wanted by their Watcher parents. For over a century, more were born and grew to adulthood. Their parents held out hope that they would change, but without souls, they never would.

  “After a time, more Watchers came, except these brought wrath down on the Nephilim…the young ones. Their intent was the destruction of every last one of the creatures, some of whom were massacred while still swaddled infants.” She paused again, apparently recalling a painful memory. “A blood war ensued. Both sides lost so many…the parents of the Nephilim fought to save them as any parent would, but in the end, they failed. Many chose to die with their offspring. Many have died since or simply have given up living.”

  They rounded a corner to a wealthy residential street similar to the one Phillip lived on. Candra looked around, but recognized nothing. She had been listening so raptly that she paid no attention to where they were walking.

  “So they all died, the Nephilim?” Candra asked, feeling the words hurt. To know that so many like her had died, a whole generation…to think about it in anything more than abstract was just too much to take in.

  Lofi halted and turned to face Candra directly. “Yes, every single last one of them perished.”

  “Why didn’t the Watchers return to where they came from?”

  “Because even Heaven has rules.” Lofi laughed, but her underlying grief was unmistakable. “The first Watchers who came here coveted; they sought to possess something they could never truly have. The ones who came after did so voluntarily to protect humanity, but in the process, they spilled so much blood—thou shalt not kill. So, in the end none of us were saved. We were all forsaken.”

  “That’s…” Candra started, but then couldn’t find the words to express how it made her feel to know what they had been keeping from her. Part of her wished she could take it back, and part of her wanted to cry. Everyone like her was dead. Everyone like her was a soulless monster. “But you found a way. I mean, I am here, right? So you had to have found a way.”

  Candra lifted her eyes to the sky and shook her head. A sharp intake of breath stabbed at the back of her throat, and she stopped dead. There were figures scattered along the rooftops, perched and watching them. At first, in the darkness, she thought they were part of the buildings, some sort of elaborate gargoyles above the entablature. But then they moved. She couldn’t make them out clearly, but she could see wings and their heads moving to follow them as they began to walk again.

  Candra swallowed the bile that was rising from her stomach and couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from the figures balanced serenely like giant eagles watching over their territory.

  “Guards,” Lofi explained as their eyes glinted with a golden light. “They are positioned all over the city to look after humans.”

  Candra gulped. “Guards? How come I’ve never seen them before?”

  She felt Lofi’s hand at the base of her spine, urging her forward. “Well, they don’t always look like that, silly.”

  Candra, brows pulled down, wa
s still baffled. How could she have missed something like them?

  Lofi rolled her eyes as if the answer was already obvious. Maybe it was to her, Candra thought, but she was still getting her head around all of this.

  “There was protection in place over you, a blessing we call it. You might think of it as a sort of supernatural cloaking. You were hidden from us for eighteen years, and so we were also hidden from you for the most part. The protection began to fade in the last several months as you approached adulthood.”

  “Because I just had my birthday?”

  Lofi nodded with a faint smile and then continued. “We agreed to a new covenant to protect humans, and we are bound by it. Now, we watch over the city and help where we can. It’s what we were made to do. Police, teachers, doctors…”

  Candra thought back to her doctor at the hospital, the way his eyes had gleamed and he’d bowed in acknowledgement to Brie.

  “I think you’ve been sleeping on the job; the city isn’t exactly paradise,” she said caustically. “Every time you clap your hands, another person becomes a statistic.”

  “Human nature,” Lofi sighed, pressing Candra’s back more firmly.

  “I’m sorry?” Candra asked, wondering why it was she had to practically drag every single answer out.

  “Free will, Candra. It can’t be overridden, even if it’s for your own good. We are tied by what we can do for mankind because of their refusal to accept help and by their refusal to listen. They make their own choices and their own mistakes, just as we did. We’re here.”

  “Here, where?” Candra asked, looking up to the elegant brownstone. There were no gargoyles on the building as with all the other houses around. Instead there were two pillars at the top of the steps leading to a porch, and sitting atop each one was a large carved stone eagle. Neither bird’s wings were expanded; they sat calmly and coldly, perching, observing…guarding.

  “Home,” Lofi responded, taking the stone steps two at a time—quite an achievement in three-inch heels.

  Candra followed her up the steps hastily. “This is where you live?” The eyes of the eagles seemed to follow her as she approached, like they were warning her they were watching.

  Lofi looked back to Candra with a playful smirk. “What were you expecting?” She was turning a key in the stained glass paneled door. It seemed like such a normal thing to do.

  Candra scowled at herself for expecting passwords and magical doorways protected by cherubs. No cherubs, just the birds.

  “So who lives here?”

  “At the moment, just Sebastian, Gabe, and me. There are others that come and go sometimes. Very few keep a permanent residence this large, and those who do open their home for travelers or those wishing to remain in a place for any length of time until they can settle. Gabe and I have just returned to Acheron; we haven’t been here for many years. Sebastian returned several months ago.”

  “Returned from where?”

  “We were traveling,” she answered with a noncommittal shrug.

  “How many of you are there?”

  She smiled at Candra teasingly. “More than you may think.”

  Candra studied her closely as they passed through the doorway that was in no way magical. “But not as many as there were?”

  Lofi’s smile quickly faded, and she brushed a lock of her blond hair behind her ear as she tossed her key into an ancient looking bowl on a semicircle table against the wall. “No, not nearly as many of us as there once were.”

  “What happens when one of you dies?” Candra asked inquisitively, thinking about her father.

  Lofi looked down to the ground and forced out a heavy breath, darting her large doe eyes to Candra as if confirming she really wanted her to answer. Candra nodded intently, confirming she did.

  “We are created, Candra, not born like you. You are a soul within a body; it’s different for you.”

  “How?”

  “When you die, your body releases your soul and you go on. We are a soul manifest. When we die, there is nothing to release. There is nowhere for us to go.”

  An icy chill ran down Candra’s spine. It was all so finite, so absolute. “Are you sure about that? I mean, could you be wrong…you were wrong about ones like me, weren’t you?”

  With that, Lofi smiled, her face lighting up, and a small blush rose across her cheeks. “There is always hope, Candra.”

  They had entered a foyer that opened into a large living space. The area was lit dimly by frosted glass light fixtures that cast a delicate rose glow over the mostly antique furniture and dark paneled walls. Deep burgundy couches faced each other in front of a large, tiled hearth. A sideboard with curling clawed legs sat against the side wall and caught Candra’s eye because of the silver tray resting upon it, holding decanters of gold and amber liquid. Her tongue involuntarily peeked out to brush across her top lip as the liquid called to her. Purely for medicinal purposes, she told herself. She had been taking a lot of information in lately.

  Lofi began to ascend the stairs leading up from the foyer and stopped a few steps up. Wrought iron and carved wood balustrades snaked upward to the second floor of the sweeping staircase, forming elaborate patterns of vines, which twisted and choked wilting flowers. Candra squinted, unsure she could believe her own eyes. Was she really seeing what she thought she was seeing? The design seemed almost macabre.

  “It reminds us,” Lofi explained, watching Candra run her fingers over the flowers.

  “Of what?”

  “That we are different, that we shouldn’t get too close. The flowers are beautiful, but if we aren’t careful, we could destroy them,” she replied, touching the vine wrapped around the flower Candra was examining.

  “What a sad visual.”

  “I’m just going upstairs to my room so I can grab a pair of more comfortable shoes and check on Sebastian.”

  Lofi turned away, but Candra thought her heart must have given a loud thud because Lofi turned back to look at her again. It suddenly hit her—Sebastian and Lofi were a couple, and Lofi had stood there and watched Candra with him. No wonder he acted so strangely afterward.

  “Are you all right, Candra?” Lofi asked kindly.

  “Huh?” Candra hated that she could never form the words she needed in her addled brain lately. “So you and Sebastian?”

  Lofi watched Candra for a moment as if she was waiting for her to finish the sentence. Candra was beginning to blush before Lofi exclaimed.

  “No. Oh, no way! Sebastian is like a brother to me, an annoying brother at that.” She laughed, rolling her eyes and turning back to trot up the stairs. She left Candra standing in the doorway between the living area and foyer, feeling relieved and back to wondering why he’d behaved the way he did at the party.

  After a minute or so, Candra turned into the room with the intention of taking a seat and waiting for Lofi to come back down but was distracted by one of the many tall bookshelves that lined the walls. The thing that distracted her was that they were mainly filled with leather-bound photo albums, and she’d seen one just like them years ago in Brie’s bedroom.

  Candra had gone through a phase where she’d liked to play dress up and would sneak into Brie’s room to rifle through the classically stylish pieces Brie preferred. Candra had dug through the old trunk at the end of her bed and had discarded the leather bound photo album onto Brie’s quilt. It had been the one and only time in Candra’s entire childhood that she remembered Brie raising her voice to her, and she hadn’t even opened it. She wasn’t allowed in Brie’s room to play again after that.

  Candra listened to hear Lofi coming back, but the house was completely silent. Gingerly, she ran her finger across the leather spines and the gold writing that embossed each with a year. Someone liked to take photos, and she couldn’t help wondering which one of them it was.

  It was some gross invasion of privacy to be coming into someone’s home and going through their private things. But, like Lofi said, this place was a kind of sanctuary for an
yone who needed it and she was one of them, wasn’t she? Plus they hadn’t actually been holding back on invading her privacy. Before Candra had a chance to change her mind, she plucked a photo album from the shelf, choosing one labeled as just a few years before she was born, and went over to one of the couches to sit down. She listened again for any sound from upstairs before she carefully opened the cover.

  It could have been anyone’s family album with two small differences: no embarrassing bare butt in the bath shots and all the subjects in the photos were almost inconceivably striking. They were all there: Brie, Sebastian, Gabe, Lofi, Candra’s father, and many others. Some were happy shots, some playful, some were posed. Every single one of them was a moment in time, a moment of the time they shared. Time, when it came to her father, that Candra missed out on. It was her father she missed now because she never knew her mother, although maybe if either of them had lived she would have known about this secret world going on around her much sooner. These images all occurred before her father had met her mother, before any of them knew about Candra. None of the perfect, happy faces staring out at her knew that in a few short years her father and Brie would be gone from them under different circumstances.

  Candra looked down at her father’s handsome face. He was sitting on the front porch steps of a summerhouse she didn’t recognize and could have been anywhere. The grass at the base of the steps looked parched, and the wood that made up the porch steps had been bleached white over time by the sun. His jeans were rolled up over his ankles, and one arm was thrown around Brie’s shoulder. Brie’s hair was still long and loosely fixed in a braid with wispy strands blowing around her face and draping over her shoulder. Her face was scrunched up with distaste, and she pushed against his chest. His puckered up lips kissed Brie’s cheek, and his eyes fixed on the camera as if urging the photographer to act before the happy moment was lost.

  She had cloudy recollections of being with her father in the park and tumbling, laughing, down hills. She remembered being carried to bed when she’d been sleepy and hadn’t wanted to walk and how he’d rocked her in his arms when she’d cried after she’d fallen and cut her elbow. While Candra traced her finger over the image of him smiling at the camera and his brown eyes that were so like her own, she remembered something else. His favorite food in the whole entire world had been green apples. She had the strongest memory suddenly of the tangy fresh scent. She wondered if the latent memory was the reason why her preferred scent for shampoo was apple and if she was subconsciously trying to keep him with her.