The Fire Ghost (Phantom Elements Book 2)

by Jennifer Campbell

  “Stuck in the friend zone, bro? Friend zone, population, you?” Harbor asked.

  Olivia elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Ashley’s friendship means a lot to me,” Dom answered, stiffly.

  He looked so handsome and mature in his perfectly fit pullover and pressed jeans. Ashley could feel herself swoon. He had won her parents over, Ashley was sure of that. She just wasn’t sure about how she felt. She wasn’t sure if her magic was complicating things.

  “Guys!” Brooklynn came bursting out of Olivia’s house. “Let’s go! It’s time to camp out! It’s time to save the storefronts!”

  Chapter 16

  Into the Fire

  The camp was wildly successful. Campers from all over northeastern Oklahoma came out to the ranch. For three days, they went fishing, sailed around the lake in canoes, and Harbor even showed all the kids how to noodle. He caught a catfish with his bare hand, leaving all the second graders to run, squealing down the lakeshore to hide behind Olivia.

  Dylan and Brooklynn were in charge of games. They played soccer in giant inflatable bubbles that allowed you to run and bounce into your friends, without hurting yourself. After lunch, Dylan could be found napping in the bubble, warmed by the sun, and away from any germs that might come his way.

  Dom was coordinating the activities with expert precision. There wasn’t a gap in the schedule or a mishap to be found. Ashley was handling first aid and Isaac, Ruby, and Keegan were on meal duty. Ruby loved to make food into shapes and faces. It’s a little strange when you’re thirteen, but the crowd of six and seven year olds all loved their pancake faces, vegetable ninja throwing stars, and fruit solar systems, completed by a galactic swirl of yogurt dip.

  Blaze was running the zip line and wowed all the kids with his flips and tricks, as he came sailing through the trees. Ashley found herself glancing over a time or two after a very impressive backflip. His charisma pulled everyone in, and by the end of the camp, he had a blooming fanbase.

  “Blaze is so hot,” one of the girls squealed to her friend, as they walked by the first aid station.

  Just then, a howl erupted from the zip line that could peel the bark off the trees themselves. Ashley ran over to find Blaze in a heap on the ground. His leg had fallen on a tree root, twisted and gnarled. The rough bark had torn through his sweats and scrapped most of the skin off the back of his leg.

  “Oh, no! Blaze!” Melody Lockhart, who was helping with the zip line, fanned herself during her very impressive freak out.

  Ashley could tell she was scared of the blood, but wanted to look cool in front of the new boy from Tulsa. It wasn’t going very well for her. She was starting to sweat off most of her makeup.

  “Go get Ashley,” Blaze demanded, wincing through gritted teeth.

  Ashley was already on her way over, with gauze and bandages. She had to make sure to keep the wound clean. Blaze had missed the landing pad by fifteen feet. He must have gotten distracted, Ashley reasoned to herself.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Melody whined.

  “I’m sure he will,” Ashley said. “Go get Domino, the one in the Madrid hoodie.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Blaze insisted. “Don’t bother him. He’s probably busy.”

  “Not too busy to watch you bleed,” Dom said. “What were you thinking?”

  “Shut it, Chavez,” Blaze shot back.

  Blaze leaned back as he propped his injured leg up on the cot at the first aid station. Ashley was able to slow the bleeding enough to roll her mom’s blend of plant oils over the wound. She carefully wrapped Blaze’s leg, as he watched her, amazed at her ability to dress the wound.

  “Amazing,” Blaze whispered, almost to himself. “I knew it.”

  “Blaze, you lost this,” Melody interrupted, running up to the first aid station, but then slowing down to catch her breath.

  Melody produced a necklace. It was an iron O, with a bar slashed across the center, strung onto a leather cord.

  “Thanks,” Blaze said, roughly, and shoved the necklace into his pocket.

  Melody looked from Blaze to Ashley, and then back to Blaze again. She turned, crestfallen, and walked back to the zip line.

  “What was that?” Ashley asked, pointing to the necklace.

  “It was my grandfather’s,” Blaze answered.

  “You should keep the gauze on,” Ashley warned. “You could get an infection.”

  Blaze promised her that he would, but underneath the bandages, he already knew that the wound had healed completely. He wasn’t sure if it was Megan Nirran’s herbal medicine or Ashley herself, but he knew that when he unwrapped the gauze, his leg would be as good as new, just like his dad said it would be.

  Later that night at the last bonfire, Ashley sat next to her Aunt Cynthia. The bonfire had grown to epic proportions, and everyone else had gone to get chocolate, graham crackers, and marshmallows for s’mores. Ashley hung back with Cynthia. She wanted to ask about her granddaughter, Olivia.

  “Is Olivia showing any of the signs?” Ashley asked.

  “Not that we know of,” Cynthia said. “However, the water level in the lake is rising and falling at a strange pace. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  Ashley and Olivia hadn’t talked that much over the course of the campout. Olivia was busy with her boyfriend, her friends, and generally her new life. Ashley was jealous. Why was it so easy for her?

  “It wasn’t always that easy,” Cynthia answered, reading Ashley’s thoughts. “She almost drowned in a boating accident when she first came to Prue. She probably should have died, but Harbor saved her.”

  “Really?” Ashley asked.

  “Maybe,” Cynthia answered. “Or maybe she’s like you, and wouldn’t possibly be able to drown if she tried.”

  “I could drown,” Ashley answered, thinking about the absurdity of the statement.

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t be able to burn. Or maybe you would. There’s only one way to find out,” Cynthia said, grabbing Ashley, and pushing her directly into the bonfire.

  Chapter 17

  Trial by Fire

  The ropes cut into Eva’s skin, binding her wrists to the sturdy, wooden stake, driven in the ground just that morning. She had been working on teleporting, disappearing and reappearing, but she was only able to move a few feet. She needed more time to work on her craft.

  She didn’t want to give Prospero Phillips the satisfaction of seeing her burned alive, but she had no choice.

  “Are you ready to answer for your crimes, witch?” Prospero Phillips sneered at Eva.

  The growing crowd of colonists jeered and hissed. No doubt they were convinced that they were sending her back to the underworld where they thought she belonged. The New World spooked them and they were always afraid of things they didn’t understand.

  Eva turned to the marsh. She could sense Titus nearby. She could hear his thoughts. He was ready with his musket, ready to kill her and put her out of the agony of being burned alive. The sad irony would be that the man she loved the most would be the one to cause her death. She could manipulate metal, but she wasn’t fast enough to stop a musket ball.

  “Light the pyre,” Prospero boomed, “and send this unholy demon to her death. May her soul be cleansed by the fire.”

  That quite hurts my feelings, Eva thought to herself. She was readying herself for death, not by the fire, but by Titus’s musket ball, when she sensed another presence, hidden in the marsh, along with Titus. The presence was both younger and older than Eva.

  Don’t shoot. You don’t need to kill her. It doesn’t hurt.

  Prospero lit the straw under Eva’s feet. The flames instantly spread over the dried straw. Eva braced herself for the raw burn of the flames, but there was only warmth spending over her feet. The flames spread higher and licked at Eva’s skirt, then c
onsumed her whole dress in flames.

  Scream.

  The presence in the marsh told Eva to scream, as though she were being burned alive. She was being burned alive, but she felt only a warmth, spreading over her, as though she were standing by the fire and not consumed within it. She tried to steady herself and scream as though she were writhing in agony. Her dress and shoes melted to her body, but what should have been agonizing, only felt like a hot blanket, fresh from the laundry kettle.

  After a few minutes Eva stopped screaming. The flames shot higher, a few feet taller than her head. She gazed up at the flames. She had no idea how long she had been there, but the night sky was black. There was no light from the moon. The colonists were long gone, traveling back to their farms. Only Prospero remained, looking on at Eva’s burning body with a smug satisfaction, but even he grew tired and left Eva smoldering, still tied to the spike.

  “I can’t,” Titus cried.

  “You have to help me,” Patricia Freya hissed.

  She had been crafting a decennium spell, allowing her to go back in time for a half cycle of the sun. She only had a few hours left.

  “Who are you?” Titus asked.

  He looked at the woman with Eva’s silky auburn hair and green eyes. She was wearing a thick woolen cloak and pants. He had never seen a woman in pants.

  “I’m her great niece, but I’m pretty sure I’m her great granddaughter, because she’s going to marry you. Now help me, so you two can ride off into the sunset and have dozens of children.”

  “But she’s dead,” Titus protested with heaving sobs.

  Patricia slapped him across the face.

  “Help me,” she hissed, and crept her way along a low fence to Eva’s body.

  Patricia produced a large hunting knife and cut Eva down. A low moan escaped from her blackened, cracking lips. Patricia pulled a bottle of water from her bag and put it to Eva’s mouth. Eva gulped the water, spilling it down the sides of her charred face.

  Patricia pulled the blackened skin and melted fabric off Eva, revealing perfect, new skin. She ran her fingers through Eva’s burnt hair, and it grew back in long and glossy.

  “Patricia?” Eva asked.

  Her voice was raw from the smoke. Patricia nodded. She wrapped Eva in a blanket. Titus watched with wide eyes.

  “I was meaning to tell you, Titus,” Eva choked on her words.

  “As long as you’re alive,” he said, wrapping his arms around Eva.

  “You have to leave tonight,” Patricia said, shoving her leather bag at Titus. “This is a gift from one of your other granddaughters, Louisa.”

  Patricia took off her cloak and snapped it into the wind. When she turned the cloak around, it disappeared into thin air. Patricia wrapped it around Eva and her whole body became invisible. The cloak seemed to be spun from the air itself.

  “And this is from Camille,” Patricia said, handing a dozen bars of pure gold to Titus. “You have to leave, now. Go to the coast. Go north, go south, it doesn’t matter. Just leave.”

  “I have plans for a ship,” Titus said. “We’ll go to the coast and sail for England as soon as we can.”

  “You’ll be at war with England,” Patricia said. “Stay in the Americas, but stay away from Massachusetts. Use the cloak if you need it.”

  “How?” Titus asked, bewildered by Eva and her much older great great granddaughter standing before him. Eva looked to be back to normal, except for the fact that she was cloaked in pure air. “Did you know?”

  Eva shook her head.

  “Our sight isn’t perfect. Our powers grow with time. I wonder what I could do if I had more time,” Eva said.

  “You will have more time, but you have to go,” Patricia said.

  Eva and Titus didn’t stop for anything. They bought a horse and wagon and headed all the way down to Virginia, with Eva safely invisible in the back of the wagon. For the rest of her life, no one would have any idea that Eva Glass existed. Everyone assumed she was dead, burned up in the fire, three days before her seventeenth birthday.

  Chapter 18

  Why Did You Do That?

  Ashley sat, staring at her hands in the flames. She tried to scream, but hot, smoky terror gripped her throat. She felt hands grab her and yank her back, out of the fire.

  Her hands shook, charred black and oozing bloody, melted flesh. The skin was liquified on the surface of her hands. Still, she didn’t feel any pain. She felt warm heat, up to her elbows.

  “Just as I thought,” Cynthia nodded.

  “What?” Ashley screamed, holding her roasted hands out to Cynthia.

  The flesh was starting to peel, curling back on itself.

  “You don’t have to be so dramatic.”

  Cynthia grabbed Ashley’s hands and slid the charred skin from Ashley’s arms, revealing new, beautifully glowing skin. Even her fingernails grew in shiny pink, and perfect.

  “Why did you do that?” Ashley shouted.

  “Lower your voice,” Cynthia whispered.

  “You just pushed me into a fire,” Ashley hissed.

  “Well, you didn’t get burned, did you?” Cynthia shot back.

  “No, but why?” Ashley asked.

  She waved a hand through the flames one more time, stopping to singe her palms. She took them out and brushed the char off her hands, like wiping away dirt after working in a garden.

  “It’s not a party trick,” Cynthia warned. “You were only born with so much magic. You need to work to keep it up. That’s why your mother is so weak. She was always scared. She didn’t understand.”

  “Is that why the storefront came open?” Ashley asked. “So that we could all be closer?”

  “Yes,” Cynthia answered. “There are forces hunting us. Patricia and I have both seen it, but we are getting older, and our sight is limited. When we’re together, our magic is stronger.”

  “Patricia said my element is fire. Do you think Olivia’s element is water?” Ashley asked, gazing out to the lake at Harbor and Olivia paddling around the lakeshore in a small rowboat.

  “She never should have survived that accident. The water levels shouldn’t rise and fall this much, but I don’t know,” Cynthia said. “What’s more, her blood is spilled in that water.”

  Cynthia shook her head and stopped talking. A crowd of kids ambled over to the fire with marshmallows in hand. A funny looking boy stuck eight marshmallows on sticks into the fire and pulled them out, flaming balls of sugar.

  “I am Mallow, the god of s’mores!” he bellowed, shaking his large body in some sort of strange luau dance.

  “Aiden, you’re nuts,” Kai rolled his eyes.

  “Fear and bow before Mallow!” Aiden said over his shoulder, pausing the dance to blow out two of the marshmallows and swallow them whole.

  “Mmmm, Mallow is pleased,” Aiden croaked through marshmallow goo.

  Ashley and all the other kids around the fire laughed at Aiden’s dance, egging him on to perform more tricks. Ashley joined the other kids and Cynthia got up to join the rest of the adults at the lodge.

  Ashley stared into the fire. The flames were mesmerizing. It seemed strange, but she felt herself growing stronger off the fire’s energy. She could feel the heat of the flames fortifying her body and her hands vibrated and pulsed where they had been in the fire.

  “Show me Eva,” she whispered.

  Ashley gasped as the flames parted. She recognized her Aunt Patricia and a man pulling a burned, smoldering, human body off a spike, buried in the ground. Ashley cringed as Patricia wiped the blackened skin off the body, revealing glowing, perfect skin beneath the burns. The man tenderly wrapped a blanket around Eva.

  This must be who she was running to, when she was in the forest, Ashley thought, recalling her dream. That must be Titus. She wondered how P
atricia got there, but remembered that with magic, anything was possible.

  The man picked up Eva, placed her in a wagon and drove off, away from the colony. As they drove the wagon, headed south, Patricia exploded into a ball of light, leaving only tiny shards of ashes floating down from where she had once stood.

  The vision was clear as day, wrapped in the flames of the bonfire. The fire parted once more and Ashley peered in closer, to get a better look.

  There was another man, short and squatty, but dressed in the finest clothing. He waddled over to the smoldering stake.

  “Where is the girl?” the man bellowed.

  “Prospero, sir, we don’t know where she could have gone,” a man answered.

  “Lieutenant Phillips, you saw her burn, yourself. With thine own eyes, sir,” another man said, shaking in Prospero’s presence.

  Ashley could see that the ashes Patricia left behind were still floating in the air. Some of them were drifting closer to Prospero Phillips. His face reddened as he stamped his feet and threw his leather hat on the ground.

  I’ve seen that hat before, Ashley mused to herself.

  Prospero’s eyes grew yellow and his backbone and ribcage twisted and popped as Patricia’s ashes fell down. His skin and body grew dark and formed an inky black shadow around him. The men at his side backed away slowly. Prospero Phillips howled with rage, stood up straight, and sent his swirling shadow up and out into the night. The shadow formed a solid mass for a few seconds and then disappeared.

  “The shadow figure,” Ashley gasped.

  She couldn’t believe it. The shadow that Prospero’s rage made, when combined with the fire magic was terrifying, and the entity was still alive today. It’s like it had been growing, feeding off something, but what?

  “Whoa,” Ashley jumped a foot when someone behind her waved a marshmallow in front of her. She turned back to the fire, but she had lost the vision. A familiar rolling thundercloud invaded her thoughts. It had to be Blaze.

  “Did you see anything?” she asked.

  “Just you,” Blaze answered.