"Ashline," Serena said with a knowing smile, "we are the G.o.ds."

With that, Ashline opened the scroll and held it out at arm's length. The words were messy, written in blotchy black ink and in a scrawl that was clearly the writings of a blind girl, but large enough that they were easy to read.

The instructions that Jack had prophesied for Ash were only three words long: 166.

KILL THE TRICKSTER.

Before Ash couldn't even attempt to process the cryptic message, Lily said, "And what if we don't want to do what Jack has asked us to? What if I don't feel like indulging some crazy man from the Midwest who thinks he's an oracle? What happens then?" She was trying hard to be irreverent, but even Ash noticed the way she tenderly rolled up the scroll when she had finished reading it.

While the question lingered in the air like a bad odor, the skies finally opened up once more, and the drizzle began to fall. Serena looked up at the sky and blinked. "I don't know. But let's not find out."

Ashline s.h.i.+vered and tucked her scroll into the waistband of her mesh shorts. "Sounds like a good idea to me."

167.

INTERLUDE.

Centr al Amer ica You watch her for three days. So do the scientists.

Man in Suit hasn't shown his face since the first day they trapped the little girl in the citadel, but the other white coats still linger, waiting, waiting for . . . Well, who knows what they want. A miracle maybe. But White Coat B has his doubts. He disappears for large chunks of time, gets a full night of rest, enjoys longer meals.

It's White Coat A who has conviction. He eats all of his meals standing at attention on top of the wall, looking down on the test subject. He always takes the second s.h.i.+ft sleeping, which he keeps brief. As the girl grows hungrier, the bags under White Coat A's eyes grow darker.

When he jots in his notebook, he rarely glances down at the page. He spends long stretches of time on the first day trying not to blink, as if, in the instant when his eyes close, he might miss a miracle.

168.

But the miracle won't come for three days.

Day 1: The girl spends the better part of her day crouched over the water trough in the middle of the "courtyard." She stays like this through the morning and well into the afternoon. Every once in a while she reaches out and touches her reflection. The first time the ripples roll through the mirror image of her face, she backs away, startled.

In the late afternoon she must feel the heat of the sun on the nape of her neck. She keeps glaring unhappily up at the sky, almost p.i.s.sed, like she wishes she could s.n.a.t.c.h the glowing orb clean out of the heavens and submerge it in this tub of water. Sometime in the early evening she strolls determinedly toward the tree in the southwest corner-until now she's avoided looking at the trees altogether-and she knocks on the trunk several times. Whether she is hoping for a reply, you don't know, but she waits only a few seconds before wrapping her arms and legs around the rough bark. And she climbs.

Like a caterpillar she bunches up her body and then extends, bunches and extends, moving efficiently up the trunk using only her knees and hands. When she reaches the top, she rips out some of the lower fronds and tosses them to the ground below. She makes quick work of the tree until the soil is littered with palm fronds. Satisfied, she scoots halfway down the trunk before jumping the remaining distance to the ground.

169.

In her arms the girl gathers a bouquet of fronds, hugging them to her chest as if she had just been given a new teddy bear. She hauls them over to the water basin and, one by one, lays them across the trough until the water has absolutely no exposure to the air.

White Coat A scratches his head pensively, and then understanding explodes behind his eyes. He scribbles the word "EVAPORATION!" in his little notebook and underlines it several times.

Day 2: Boredom sets in. Then hunger. In the early part of the day, the girl leans against the trough, wrapping the palm fronds around her head in a leafy crown.

At one point she holds a frond in each hand and hops around silently flapping her "wings," like a little Icarus longing to take flight. Closer to noon she undertakes an arts and crafts project by weaving several fronds together until she has a rudimentary but recognizable basket. She grins elatedly at her creation and for the next hour proceeds to play basketball with stones that she finds.

By the time she runs out of stones, her grin fades completely. The sun is high and hot again.

The moaning starts at dusk. She wraps her hand over her belly and gurgles. Later she walks over to the corner of the garden and vomits under the shadow of the northeast tree. Mostly water comes out, along with any remaining vestiges of her dinner from forty-eight hours before. When the dry heaves finish, she walks back to the water trough and curls up on the bed of fronds she made 170 for herself. Strange how even in the cold of the jungle night, she never s.h.i.+vers.

Day 3: It's going to rain. Even the macaws, which are jabbering excitedly up in the canopy, seem to know it. The girl moves slowly, weakened by hunger, but she never takes her eyes off the sky.

The drizzle doesn't start to come down until an hour before dusk. Soon it increases to a pour, the droplets coming down in long, cold strands, liquid icicles sent like darts from the sky. The girl smiles, interestingly, fool-ishly. The rain may replenish her water, but it's still only a matter of time before she starves to death.

Before you can wonder further on this, she drops to her knees and plunges her hands into the soggy ground.

Her fingers pull aside handful after handful of soil until she spots something in the shallow earth. She loads a few clumps of dirt into her basket, and when you float down closer, you can finally see her precious cargo: a ma.s.s of worms wriggling in the mud pie, confused by their sudden exposure to the jungle air.

White Coat A, galvanized by the sight of the girl at work, casts his notebook to the ground. He looks ready to jump the citadel wall to observe her close up, but settles for leaning as far over the railing as gravity will allow.

The rain splatters down around her. The thunder growls explosively overhead, and the girl goes to work.

She heads to the southeast corner of the citadel and sets the basket down next to a pile of fruit that has fallen from 171 the tree. There she finds a stone with a sharp edge, and with the verve of a serial killer, she stabs the stone into one of the plumlike fruits. Nectar spurts up onto her face, and she wipes it clear with her hand. Several strikes later, the fruit splits in two, right through the core. From the basket she produces two worms and mashes them into the open pulp. She plants a half-live worm, still writhing, on top of the fruit as if she were placing an angel atop a Christmas tree.

She moves from tree to tree, repeating the process at each of the four corners of the garden. Once she completes the task, she returns to the trough and washes her face in the water basin.

Then she sits down in the dirt.

She waits.

Eventually the jungle storm that had come in with a roar exits with a whimper. Light peeks out from behind the clouds, and with it returns the squawking of the macaws.

The first bird must be a hungry one. A little brown thrush drops down from the canopy above. Twenty more thrushes quickly follow suit and cascade from their perches down into the four corners of the garden. Some peck at the soil itself, but most of the birds take the bait and gorge themselves on the delicious buffet the girl has left out for them.

She doesn't have to wait long for results. The feeding frenzy has barely begun when, from the southeast corner, 172 their echoes a harsh squawk. It is the overeager thrush that came to dinner first. It flaps its wings, attempting to take flight, only to crash beak-first into the ground. Its body shudders violently before it rolls onto its back. Its legs twitch and its talons curl for the final time.

This ritual repeats in the northeast and southwest corners of the garden as well, a cacophony of birds dying violently in the wake of their last, poisonous meal, as the venom from the fruit seeps into their nervous systems.

The girl wanders unhurriedly over to the northwest corner. The birds are feasting hungrily on their fruit-and-worm c.o.c.ktails, but when she gets close enough, the remaining thrushes explode up into air, vanis.h.i.+ng into the dusk light with heavy bellies.

Three days' worth of hunger overcomes the girl, and she lunges for one of the fruits at the base of the tree.

She sinks her teeth voraciously into the supple skin, and nectar bursts over her cheeks. Within seconds it's only a core. She dives for the next fruit and rips into it.

The two scientists watch with bated interest. She's done it.

Halfway through her third fruit, the girl's chewing slows and eventually stops altogether. Her eyes glisten and she holds the fruit out away from her body.

She crumples to the ground clutching her stomach.

Her tortured screams echo up into the trees. The fruit tumbles across the dirt before coming to rest against the concrete of the citadel wall.

173.

You catch only snippets of what the scientists, who have exploded into full-blown panic, are saying above.

White Coat A: ". . . the venom . . . not this tree!"

White Coat B: ". . . get the antivenin . . . not much time until . . ."

White Coat A: ". . . down there. Stay with her until I get back!"

White Coat A vanishes from the railing. White Coat B adjusts his gla.s.ses and stares down at the ground, contemplating whether the fall will injure him. White Coat A shouts something in the background, and White Coat B mouths "Screw it" and climbs over the railing so that he's dangling from the other side. He drops the remaining fifteen feet to the ground, but lands wrong on his ankle. He curses with pain, but still frantically hobbles with a limp over to the Northwest corner.

He limps to a halt. The earth beneath the tree where the girl had been rolling in pain a minute earlier is now empty, but the dirt shows signs of fresh struggle. White Coat B, perplexed, gazes 360 degrees around the empty courtyard before walking over to the half-eaten fruit that fell from her hand. He picks it up and studies it. He brings it closer to his face, raises it to his nose, inhales its sweet aroma. . . .

The fronds of the tree overhead rustle. White Coat B has time only to look up and watch the girl, like a feral beast, nose-dive out of the tree, her eyes wild and her fingers extended. He collapses to the ground under her 174 weight. Before he can toss her off him, her hand pulls back and her clawed fingers come slas.h.i.+ng across his throat like a pendulum. Red blood splatters against the previously clean whitewashed citadel wall. His feet shudder, but before he can even try to scream through his devastated throat, his eyes roll back into his head and he's gone.

The girl examines the blood covering her hand, innocently, curiously. She holds it up so that it eclipses the emerging dusk moon. The crimson around the end of her hand glistens faintly like a corona. On a whim she brings her hand up to her face and smears the blood beneath each of her eyes.

She lowers her hand, the curtain coming down, and behind it stands White Coat A. He has a syringe in his hand, but when he sees his colleague's blood painted on the girl's face, he drops it, needle down into the soil so that it stands upright.

"Wait-," White Coat A starts to say, lifting his hands.

The little girl lunges.

175.

PART II: PANTHEON.

CHAIN GANG.

Sunda y Ashline emerged out of the nightmare right into one of the worst migraines of her life.

It was like a pitchfork right through the back of her skull, the tines slicing neatly through the gray matter. As she tried to open her eyes, one of them lingered closed.

Swirling around in the pain was a mosaic of colors from her dream. The emerald of the jungle canopy. The fresh mortar of the prison walls. The linen white of the lab coats. The crimson stains afterward. All etched together in one grisly stained-gla.s.s window that refused to fade even on this side of consciousness.

She could almost feel the heat rising from her forehead before she even put the back of her hand to her skin, which was hot to the touch. Maybe she'd contracted malaria from her jungle dream. Her temples throbbed with each stroke of her pulse. So loud, in fact, that it almost sounded like someone was pounding on the . . .

179.

Knock, knock, knock.

Ashline ma.s.saged her face roughly with the palm of her hand, a futile attempt to rub the sleep from her eyes.

Pound, pound.

"Enough," Ashline mumbled. She grudgingly slipped out from between her sheets, trudged across the room, and opened the door.

Bobby Jones looked like a wet badger. He was dressed head to toe in his soccer gear, from the mud-stained knee-high socks right up to the stupid shamrock headband that he superst.i.tiously wore to every game and practice . . . and never washed. She blamed the headband for at least 50 percent of the offensive boys' locker room odor that washed over her as soon as she opened the door.

How much of the water that had soaked his number thirteen jersey was the morning drizzle, and how much was sweat? Ash didn't want to venture a guess.

When he didn't say anything, Ash could think to say only, "You smell like a used towel."

"Came right from practice." He ran an anxious hand through his tousled hair. "Didn't have time to splash on any of that Polo cologne you like."

Ash wrinkled her nose. "You'd have to fill a hot tub with cologne to improve the lovely fragrance you're exud-ing right now."

"Would you get into the hot tub with me?" Bobby flashed a wicked grin.

Ash took an exaggerated step back into her room.

180.

"And thanks for coming, Bobby." She started to push the door closed.

"Wait-" His hand shot out to hold it open, his fingers dangerously close to being crushed in the door.

He was really at the mercy of Ashline, who with a sharp kick could have made the whole thing look like an accident. Did he really need the use of both hands in soccer anyway?

"Bobby, what is your malfunction?" Ash threw the door open so that it slammed against the inside wall. "Is there an apology in here somewhere? Did you come with some plea to reunite? Or did you just want to have the last word?"

"Listen, I left in the middle of practice to come here."

He put his hand on the door frame and leaned in. "Right in the middle. I literally was about to throw the ball in bounds, but then I dropped it and just started running to get here. Everybody must have thought I'd gone crazy, or really had to take a s.h.i.+t."

"Great image."

"I messed up," he said, and before Ashline could protest, he brushed past her into the room. He gestured wildly as he continued. "I mean really messed up, and it's messing me up. My whole schedule. My stomach feels all tight, I can't sleep, and I look like a racc.o.o.n when I wake up. If I keep playing like s.h.i.+t out there on the field, pretty soon coach'll kick me to second string."

"You want me back so that you don't get demoted to 181 JV?" Ashline laughed dryly. "You sure know how to make a girl feel special."

He waved his hands frantically, like he wanted to expunge his poor choice of words with a pencil eraser.

"Forget the soccer stuff. I just miss you. It's been like h.e.l.l this past week."

"Weekend," Ash corrected him. "Half weekend."

"See!" he shouted. "I can't even keep time straight anymore."

Ashline glanced self-consciously out the door as two soph.o.m.ores walked by, eyeing first her and then, with no small amount of envy, Bobby Jones. "Keep your voice down," Ash whispered. "This isn't a tailgate."

Something sparked in Bobby's eyes. He was staring down into the wastebasket next to him and nodding furiously. "I know what I can do to make this right," he said.

As Ashline watched, caught somewhere between wanting to throw him out of the room and her own morbid curiosity for what he had in mind, Bobby reached into the wastebasket, pulled something out, and then handed it to Ashline.

Ashline turned the broken alarm clock over in her hands, touching the long crack in the plastic casing.

"Wow, and it isn't even my birthday."

Bobby didn't laugh. Instead he positioned himself in the doorway, exactly where he'd been standing the night of their breakup. "There's only one way to remedy this,"

he said. "You've got to hit me with the alarm clock."

182.

Ashline gawked at him without blinking. When she was younger, Eve promised her that she would one day drive the boys crazy. . . . She had no idea that she'd meant it literally. "Did you take a soccer ball to the head at practice?" she asked.