“I don’t speak that much, but Mrs. Ramirez taught me the basics, back in Boston. Now tell me about the Fire Ghost.”
“Okay, okay,” Dom relented. “From what I heard from my uncle, when the west wing of the museum burned, a bunch of priceless artwork burned up with it, including a painting of Eva Glass. Now, people are saying that there’s a ghost up on the second floor in the great hall. You see shadow figures, out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn around, they’re gone.”
“Has anyone ever gotten any proof?” Ashley asked.
“No. My uncle and his crew have just seen the shadows, and heard the knocks and strange sounds, like a low growl,” Dom hesitated. “It’s always in the same place, the place where her painting was hanging in the hall. There must be a connection.”
“There has to be,” Ashley said, shaking her head.
“I know,” Dom agreed. “It’s like the ghost was charged or ignited by the fire, or something. My mom’s friend was cleaning and quit on the spot when something grabbed her shoulder. She turned around and no one was there, but she felt someone grab her with hot hands. Usually a ghost is cold, but this one was hot.”
“The Fire Ghost,” Ashley mused.
“The man I saw in the fire, he was standing in that hallway. I’m not crazy,” Dom insisted.
“I know you’re not,” Ashley assured him.
“Thanks,” Dom said, quietly. “That means a lot.”
They sat in silence for a while, not saying anything. Dom didn’t push to fill the silence and neither did Ashley. After about thirty minutes, Ashley unwrapped Dom’s leg. The burn had healed completely.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he said.
“I don’t know, myself,” Ashley admitted, “but I think I know who to ask.”
After Dom left, Ashley walked down to Valley of Ashes. The tiny bell on the door jingled inside the tortoise shell, signaling Ashley’s entry.
“Ashley, come in,” Patricia invited.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Well, it is you,” Patricia answered.
Ashley focused on a book in front of her aunt and slid it slowly into her hand.
You’ve been working..
“Yes, I’ve been working,” Ashley replied, letting it sink in that she could hear thoughts, if she tried hard enough.
Patricia sailed the book back to her and flew the pages open with barely a glance.
“Come back tomorrow and we’ll work a bit more,” Patricia said as she snapped the book shut with another quick look. “But be careful. Our magic is old, older than the New World, and magic is a slippery slope.”
Chapter 11
Dream On
The next day at school, Kylie swished up to Ashley in the hallway outside their third hour class. When Ashley asked where Tessa was, Kylie explained that she told her to clean out the supply closet for the booster club. When she didn’t do it right the first time, she made her clean it again.
“I’m sorry I missed your text,” Ashley apologized.
“Oh, it’s fine. I just assumed that you had one of those phones for poor people that don’t get texts.”
“What?” Ashley asked.
“It’s fine. Listen, we need to visit everyone’s house to make sure that their living standards are up to snuff. I know you live in one of those shabby apartments above the storefronts, so the student standards committee needs to make sure that you have running water and everything.”
“It’s been fully remodeled.”
Ashley had new mosaic glass tile, for crying out loud.
“We just need to check,” Kylie said with a patronizing smile.
“My room is on my travel blog,” Ashley offered. “My dad used to bring us with him when he traveled with Doctors Without Borders.”
“Your dad is a doctor?” Kylie asked.
“He’s a pharmacist. They kept a pharmacist on staff.”
Ashley was getting irritated.
“So, not like a real doctor, then?”
“Isn’t that Baron, coming down the hallway?”
Baron was strolling down the hallway in a navy wool car coat. Greg was bumbling along behind him. Greg stopped when Baron paused to talk to someone. Baron smiled and made conversation, but Greg’s beady eyes darted around. He seemed awkward and nervous.
Ashley had no interest in Baron, but she wanted to distract Kylie so she could dart into class. Dom was already in class with his chemistry book out, ready to work on the day’s assignment. They were melting sugar and salt. They wouldn’t be able to melt the salt, not with a bunsen burner. Ashley knew that already, but they would try.
“So, you like Baron now?” Kylie scoffed.
“No,” Ashley retorted, with a good amount of honesty. “I don’t.”
“Good,” Kylie returned. “You don’t have a chance with him. So, dream on.”
“Yep, you’re right. I have no shot. Check out my blog. Make sure I don’t live in a dumpy shack.”
Ashley ducked past Tessa who was done cleaning the booster club’s supply closet, and ran into Brooklynn.
“Nice shot at practice yesterday,” Ashley offered.
“Thanks,” Brooklynn beamed. “I didn’t think anyone noticed.”
Blaze hopped up behind the two of them and draped his arm around Ashley. He raised his other palm for a high five from Brooklynn. She rolled her eyes, returned the high five, and plucked Blaze’s arm off of Ashley.
“We have to get to class,” Brooklynn said, stressing the last word.
“I’m sorry,” Ashley whispered.
“What? Why?” Brooklynn seemed puzzled.
She thought back to the night she first met Brooklynn and Blaze. He was so friendly with Brooklynn, she had thought he was her boyfriend. When she told Brooklynn, she just laughed.
“I texted Blaze later and asked what was up with that. He was totally showing off for the new girl. Dylan’s not a show off. He’s the coolest.”
Ashley blushed. She shook her head when Brooklynn offered her a squirt of hand sanitizer and peered into the classroom. Dom was copying the molecular structure for sodium chloride. The muscles of his jaw tensed as he concentrated. He was twirling his pencil. He had been to the barber yesterday and his hair was perfectly gelled into place.
She glanced back to Blaze who was sticking a pair of google eyes on a poster of George Washington, next to the history room. He was in the center of a laughing crowd, soaking up all the attention. He was all smiles. She should have sensed the dark storm coming from Dom, in all his buttoned-up stiffness, not Blaze.
Blaze looked over the crowd to Ashley. He raised a palm in a wave and grinned when he saw her. She smiled, shook her head, and headed off to class. She slid into her stool next to Dom. He was concentrating on drawing the structure of an atom.
“I don’t trust atoms,” Domino said. “I hear they make up everything.”
“Oh, wow. That’s bad, Dom,” Ashley laughed.
He made the worst jokes.
They gathered their materials to start the experiment. They were almost finished filling out their lab sheet, when Kylie turned around.
“Is Tessa done with your lab sheet?” Ashley asked.
“No,” Kylie shot out the word like a blow dart. “She’s still getting my stuff.”
Ashley wasn’t sure if Kylie was mad at her for calling her out, or at Tessa for being slow with her lab materials. It was probably both.
“Baron!” Kylie sang out.
Baron Watson was passing by the open door. Kylie hopped up to go talk to him at the door. Ashley focused on her teacher, Mrs. Martin’s thoughts. From what she gathered, Mrs. Martin wished she could tell Kylie and Baron to behave and follow the rules, but she just couldn’t. The charter school p
aid a healthy stipend and the teacher pay situation in the state was dire. It is what it is.
“Hey, Chavez,” Baron shouted at Dom, with Kylie standing behind him, giggling into his monogramed pullover. “Try not to cook burritos on the bunsen burner.”
Baron moved away from the door. Mrs. Martin wished she could follow him and write him up, but she couldn’t.
Ashley was livid with anger. Dom was the best guy she knew and he wouldn’t say anything back to Baron to get in trouble. Ashley stared daggers at Baron. Suddenly, their bunsen burner shot up flames.
“Ash, I didn’t turn the gas on,” Dom hissed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
The flames died down and Dom turned the burner on correctly. Ashley was mortified for Dom, angry with Baron and Kylie, but shocked that she could make fire.
“What’s next, smoke out of your ears?” Dom asked.
“You’re the one who should be mad!”
“Look,” Dom turned to Ashley when Kylie was across the room. “I could get mad every time that Baron makes some stupid, donkey remark about me or tries to make himself feel better about only having greasy Greg as a friend, but I don’t. I don’t care. I stopped caring a long time ago. The only person you can control is you, and I can’t make Baron stop being a wheezing bag of dog turds, but I can choose to stop caring.”
Dom sat back in his chair and threw his hands up.
“You are the best person I’ve ever met,” Ashley told him.
Dom chuckled quietly.
“Well, then, you need to meet more people.”
That night, Ashley tossed and turned. She could only pick out pieces of her dream, but she recognized her great aunt, Eva. She ran through a bare forest. Snow covered the ground. She ran past three carved headstones, not stopping. The ring of a hammer on iron sounded through the forest and Eva ran toward the sound. Her feet were bare and ached with cold.
Ashley rolled over, tangling herself in her sheets. Horses hooves pounded behind her. Her dream world was gray and freezing, filled with cold terror. She could see Eva running toward the ringing sound of the blacksmith’s hammer on metal.
“Titus!” she screamed, her voice raw with thirst.
The horses pounded behind her. She ran, faster, tripping over gnarled tree roots. A rough hand reached down, as one of the riders on horseback grabbed Eva’s arm.
Ashley shot up, awake, in bed.
Her sobs came out choked. Her feet were freezing and aching. She tried to flex her toes, but couldn’t. She tried standing up, slowly.
Across from her in the frame, Eva sat still, gazing over Ashley’s bedroom, with sad, somber eyes. She looked trapped. Ashley padded over to the frame. She thought she might still be dreaming as she pulled her finger through the thin layer of frost that covered the frame.
Ashley shuddered and headed for the shower. The hot water washed away the ache in her feet, but when she got out of the shower, she gasped. Her breath caught in her chest. There, on her arm, was a dark purple bruise forming where the man on horseback had grabbed Eva in her dream.
Chapter 12
The Prophecy
Ashley walked to school alone, avoiding her friends. They were busy, anyhow. She passed Aalish’s Deli. Isaac was setting up the thermal meat scanner he invented for his mom and packing up some bagels to share. Last week, he had scared Dom nearly to death on the walk to school by putting slices of olive loaf all over his face and using the voice changer he had invented in robotics class. He ran toward Dom, making ghastly zombie sounds. He did look like a zombie with sliced deli meat all over his face.
Keegan and Ruby were fixing macchiatos for themselves at Mr. Beantown. Brooklynn was kicking her soccer ball down the sidewalk, eating a granola bar.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Brooklynn shouted.
Brooklynn kicked the soccer ball with expert precision so it flew squarely toward Ashley. She turned to the side and raised her knee to stop it.
“I know. I left a book at Valley of Ashes,” Ashley lied.
She was really going to visit Aunt Patricia, to work on controlling her magic. She could slide objects quickly, start larger fires, and mend things that were broken. She didn’t realize that she fixed the frame, the first time she had dropped it. Ashley asked why her mom didn’t have powers like she did. Aunt Patricia said that the elements determined their powers and whether she knew it or not, her youngest sister, Megan Nirran, put a small amount of plant magic in each oil blend she prepared.
When Ashley asked which element gave her the powers she had, Patricia’s answer was simple. Fire. So, Ashley went to Valley of Ashes when she had the chance, to learn from Patricia about controlling her more potent magic, so she would avoid situations like the bunsen burner incident. If Blaze had to go to the student standards committee for sticking plastic google eyes on George Washington, then she would be chased out with pitchforks for real witchcraft. So, she had to learn to control it. Aunt Patricia said that with anything, the most dangerous person is someone who has no idea what they’re doing.
“Oh. I have Tech Team with Isaac. We’re tweaking the Mega Meat Scan. So, I’ll see you in third hour. Okay?”
Brooklynn reminded Ashley of a mother hen. She was always passing out sunscreen and checking in to see how everyone was doing. Ashley was grateful for her. She wouldn’t have made any friends, or felt as comfortable in her new school. She might have gotten stuck following Kylie around, like poor Tessa. Ashley smiled thinking about how Brooklynn befriended her and helped her through soccer tryouts. She felt warmth radiating from the center of her chest and focused it outward to her friend, who was walking away down Brady Street.
“Hey!” Brooklynn shouted. “I just found twenty dollars in my pocket!”
She turned and smiled at Ashley, who waved back at her friend.
Back at Valley of Ashes, Patricia Freya was lighting a candle and staring into the flame. In the glow of the candle, she watched her niece and smiled to herself, thinking of how funny the look on Brooklyn’s face was when she actually thought she had kicked a soccer ball three stories high, and how easy it was for Patricia to sail the ball through air and right through the window of Ashley’s attic bedroom.
Patricia blew out the flame and stared at the glass of water on her desk. The water vibrated and then, her oldest sister, Cynthia Stiles, appeared. She was having coffee with her daughter, Helen. Cynthia could manipulate water, the weather, and could influence moods. She could disappear and reappear, as well. Helen Stiles-Tamesis didn’t seem to have her mother’s powers, but her daughter, Olivia was old enough to soon begin manifesting the family magic.
When she was little, Patricia’s mother told her that one of the five daughters would have a daughter of her own, born with the powers of all the elements, just like their ancestor, Eva Glass had before them. Patricia never had children of her own, but she watched her nieces for signs of the family curse. For now, Ashley was only showing powers of Fire, but Patricia would keep a close eye on her. She would watch her through the candle’s flickering flame, and try to protect her family from those who hunted them, still to this day.
Chapter 13
Face the Front
Later that day, Blaze was turned around in his chair in American History, talking to Ashley. They were focusing on the colonial period, around the Boston Tea Party. The topic should have made Ashley nostalgic for home, but she found that she could barely remember anything about Boston.
Blaze was on edge today. Ashley wasn’t sure why, but she could feel the air around him crackle with tension. He was trying to be his usual, jovial self, but his thoughts rolled around, stormy clouds in his head. Ashley couldn’t pick up any words, just the mercurial storm that clouded over him. On the surface, his face was the calm, dazzling Blaze that everyone knew, but underneath, he was a volcano.
“Mr. Hathaway, face the front,” Mrs. Shields, their history teacher barked at Blaze.
“Yeah, Blaze, face the front,” Greg Morton, Baron’s squatty sidekick giggled.
“Fix your face, Greasy Greg. It’s permanently attached to Baron’s butt,” Blaze shot back.
The whole class gasped.
“The principal is going to hear about this!” Greg whined. “You’re going to standards again and you’re gonna get kicked out of Watson.”
Ashley felt hot anger to Greg and Baron, people like Kylie Phillips, who thought they could just do whatever they wanted. Ashley raised Greg’s history book off his desk. The heavy book stood, levitating for a few seconds. She wanted to smack him in the face with it, but instead, let it drop with a loud thud onto his desk.
“Greg Morton,” Mrs. Shields scolded and spun around.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know how-” Greg wheezed.
Mrs. Shields decided it would be better to keep going with the lesson. Baron Watson wasn’t in that class, so she had a little bit of wiggle room when it came to discipline. Greg sat fuming in his seat, his brown beady eyes darting to Blaze. Ashley could hear that he was already drafting a hateful email to the principal about Blaze. The thought angered Ashley. Greg was the one who started it.
Oh well, she thought to herself. A lifetime of servitude to Baron, or even worse, Kylie, was enough punishment for even the worst crimes.
After school, Ashley looked for Dom in the crowded commons area. She sensed he was opening up to the idea of looking for the Fire Ghost.
“Okay, okay,” Dom held up two palms.
Ashley had convinced him to take a night off from the restaurant to go look for the Fire Ghost at the museum. Dom insisted on not telling Blaze. He didn’t want him to scare anything off. Ashley had to admit, it was a good strategy. Blaze was becoming more and more unpredictable these days. Brooklynn was video chatting with Dylan, back in Prue, and Isaac was busy testing out Mega Meat Scan on some pastrami, but Keegan agreed to go along, that is, if Ruby could come along, too.
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