But Jackie was gone, the bed made and the pillows fluffed, like no one had ever slept there.

"Any more reasons I shouldn't kiss you now?" he asked her. She opened her mouth, but her reply was lost in the abyss as his lips melted into hers.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she was letting him drag her across the room to her bed. Something was terribly wrong, and yet this is what she wanted, wasn't it?

This is what she saw in flashes of light whenever she was near him, one of the many delectable possibilities. Now it was all happening, happening so very fast . . .

His mouth was on her neck, and suddenly it wasn't feeling so wonderful. "It burns," she said to him. Then louder, "You are burning me."

As his lips continued their downward voyage toward her collarbone, she heard his smooth voice say, "It is just the heat of the fire between us. Do you feel the fire?"

Ash woke up. The dream-Colt, the feel of his hands, his lips-evaporated. But the heat did not. If anything, the room felt hotter than it had before, and now it was glowing ruby and orange, as if she had gone to sleep in California and woken up in h.e.l.l. Her throat was parched.

If only she could reach over and find her gla.s.s of water . . .

It was then, when she touched flame, that she realized her bed was on fire.

The prison of flames surrounded her on all sides, crackling and eating away at her comforter, while the blaze danced higher and higher toward the ceiling.

255.

Ash had the presence of mind to stand up before the flames grew any taller, and with a crouching start she hurdled over the fire. She landed in a roll and tumbled toward the window. It was only when she landed outside of the infernal prison that she discovered that her night-s.h.i.+rt was on fire as well. She pulled it off so quickly that it ripped, and she proceeded to pummel it against the floor.

Jackie chose to wake up at that moment, staring in hungover stupefaction first at the burning bed, then at Ashline, standing in a sports bra and boxers, and beating her singed s.h.i.+rt against the carpet.

"Your bed is on fire!" Jackie shouted.

"I know!" Ash said, flinging her s.h.i.+rt across the room.

"We need to put it out with something!"

Jackie had dropped out of bed and was hopping from left to right, like she couldn't decide whether to run for the door, try to fan the flames, or scream for help. "We could . . . beat it with your blanket?"

"My blanket is what's on fire, genius!" Ashline dashed past her and grabbed Hayley's quilt. In her mind she tele-graphed an apology to her absentee roommate for what she was about to do. She secured two corners of the quilt with her hands, and then began to beat the fire with it.

It took nearly a full minute of dancing around the bed while Jackie ran back and forth in a panic. Finally Ash sequestered the last rebellion of fire that was still burning near the headboard. With several quick strokes with Hayley's quilt, she pounded out the remaining flames.

256.

Jackie stopped fidgeting long enough to pry open the window and let out the last tendrils of smoke. Ash took a heavy breath but kept the seared quilt on her shoulder, in case the fire should ignite again without warning. She quickly scanned the room for damage. Her comforter, the same timeworn and beloved blanket that had kept her warm at night since elementary school, was now a mess of char marks and rips, an immolated rag of what it used to be. Hayley's quilt, too, had been sacrificed in the process, beyond what any dry cleaning could repair. A goose might as well have exploded in the middle of the room, because there was feather down scattered all over the floor. And on the ceiling the malfunctioning smoke detector chirped once before returning to its song of buzzes and sparks.

"Need air," Ash mumbled, and dashed over to the open window. She was just slipping her head outside, preparing herself to puke all over the rhododendrons below, when she saw the figure standing out on the quad.

It was Eve, watching her from the lawn. Again.

"You b.i.t.c.h!" Ashline shrieked, unable to contain herself.

Inside, Jackie took a frightened step back. "Me?

What did I-"

"Not you," Ash snapped. "Stay here." Jackie sagged and fell back onto Hayley's bed while Ash burst through the door and hustled down the hallway.

Outside on the quad Eve was nowhere to be seen.

Ash cursed and stomped the ground. To believe that her 257 sociopathic sister had really returned with a pure heart and a plan to reunite with her lost sibling . . . Well, Ashline was just a fool.

She was fuming with such pa.s.sion that she didn't notice at first the girl standing behind her.

"Ashline?" Raja hugged her nightgown tightly around her waist and s.h.i.+vered in the cold. "Was that you who just stampeded past my door? What's wrong?"

A full minute pa.s.sed while Ash simply let the heat from the fire roll off her and up into the night, while she breathed in the smoke-free air. "The scrolls that Serena gave us on the beach," she said at last. "From Jack." She hesitated, remembering that Serena had forbidden them to share their prophecies with one another. But now that Eve was back in the picture, it seemed like the right time to put aside discretion. "Mine told me to 'Kill the Trickster.'"

"I don't follow," Raja said. She wrapped a corner of her nightgown around Ashline's bare shoulder. "And you smell like smoke."

"I just realized what Jack wants me to do." Ash stared across the quad, at the empty s.p.a.ce where Eve had been standing.

"Does it involve coming inside and warming up?"

Raja asked hopefully. When Ashline didn't laugh, Raja stepped in front of her and touched her elbow. "You can tell me."

Ash trembled, but not from the cold.

"I'm supposed to kill my sister."

258.

HANDPRINT.

Tuesda y "That the last one?" Ashline asked as she lowered her sponge from the bedroom wall.

Jackie placed the large box fan in the semicircle with the other four. "There were only five in the supply closet.

I'm sure there are others in the boys' residence, but I figured, 'Hey, can we borrow all of your industrial fans to clear out smoke odors in East Hall?' would sound a little fishy."

Ashline pointed to herself. "Irritable, sleepless girl here. So if we could try to use our sarcasm filters this morning."

After she'd plugged the new fan into the power strip, Jackie moaned and rubbed her head. "I'll trade you an hour without sarcasm for three ibuprofen."

"Top drawer," Ashline called over her shoulder, and went back to scrubbing. She had worked her way up the wall, but she'd already missed first period, and the ceiling was going to have to wait until three p.m.

259.

When her wrist had grown sore and she felt certain she was approaching the onset of carpal tunnel, she dropped off the step ladder with a grunt of defeat. "Well, I think we've downgraded the fragrance of the room from The Bed Is on Fire to Musky Mesquite." She poked the wall. "Fortunately, recycled plastic milk jugs don't seem particularly odor absorbent."

Jackie popped a handful of Advil and swallowed without water. "Ash, you know I'm your friend first, but I don't know as the floor prefect how I'm supposed to overlook writing up an incident report for this. You could have been burned alive."

"Yeah, and what's the incident report going to say?"

Ash tossed her sponge into the soap bucket. "I can see it now. 'I woke up somewhere between intoxication and hangover in somebody else's bed to discover that Ashline Wilde's comforter had spontaneously combusted . ' Riley will definitely promote you to hall prefect for that one."

"There could be an electrical short somewhere in this room. And that smoke detector needs to be replaced.

There was a bonfire directly beneath it, and it didn't so much as beep!"

"Deep breaths," Ash instructed her friend, and plopped down beside her on the bed. "I told you that it was probably just my heating blanket malfunctioning. Next week, when the room no longer smells like the inside of a charcoal grill, we can have buildings and grounds install a new smoke detector. The residence hall 260 is made of plastic anyway, It's not going to burn down over the weekend."

"You're not made of plastic," Jackie reminded her.

"Well, I must be made of asbestos, then, because there's not so much as a grill mark on me. See?" Ash rolled up her sleeves to show Jackie. "So stop worrying, go hydrate yourself, and GO BACK TO BED."

"Fine." On her way out of the room, Jackie picked up one of the fans and aimed it directly at Ash. Her hair billowed around her.

Ash laughed and held her hands in front of her face.

"Brat!" But as Jackie was leaving the room, she couldn't help but say, "Believe it or not, these days it feels like you're my last anchor to humanity . . . and for that I love you."

"You know," Jackie said, "sometimes you say things that creep me out. But I love you, too."

At this point Ash was growing far too accustomed to having her day descend from normalcy into chaos . . . and earlier and earlier each day. For now she could only hope there was a limit of one strange incident per morning.

So that left one lingering question as she sat in French cla.s.s. Did her bed igniting count as late Monday night or early Tuesday morning? She had fallen asleep, and she had dreamed, which meant she had at least entered her REM cycle before she'd woke to find herself engulfed in flames. That had to count for today, right?

261.

As she stared at her reflection in the glossy screen of her cell phone, the exhausted ragam.u.f.fin that stared back at her said, "Wishful thinking, kid."

For once Monsieur Chevalier wasn't picking on Ashline, or hara.s.sing her to answer him in a language she could barely comprehend let alone speak competently; she guessed this charity was some combination of pity for her drowned-rat appearance and grat.i.tude that she'd watched his rehearsal with Serena on Monday.

Just when she was counting down the moments until lunch so she could head back through the rain to East Hall for a lukewarm five-minute shower, the intercom buzzed at the front of the room. Monsieur Chevalier, who was in the middle of describing some film called Jules et Jim, audibly muttered "Merde" before slogging over to the door and picking up the phone. He said four words, three of which were "Oui," before he slammed the phone back onto its cradle and leveled Ashline with a look of disapproval. "Madame Wilde. The headmistress kindly pet.i.tions your presence in her chambers, posthaste."

Ash stood up and gave him a curtsy on her way out.

"Merci, monsieur." As soon as the door was shut, she found herself scowling at the empty hallway. If Jackie had ratted her out to the headmistress, then so help her G.o.d . . .

She didn't even bother to greet the receptionist as she stormed through the waiting room. It was time to just meet her fate and resign herself to whatever conse-quences would follow. How was the headmistress going 262 to spin this one to make it look like her fault? Playing with matches? Smoking in bed? At least she wouldn't have to spend her Wednesday throwing up with nervous-ness over her impending match against Patricia Orleans, or worrying about finding a dress for the masquerade ball.

"Headmistress," she said as she stepped through the door, "I-"

Headmistress Riley was not alone. Ash couldn't see the person sitting in the other chair, only a sleek feminine hand gripping the armrest.

To make matters stranger, the headmistress had a bright smile on her face. "Ashline. Just the girl I was looking for."

Ash coughed. "And here I was thinking there was a warrant out for my arrest."

The headmistress opened her mouth, and Ash could all but hear the accusation in her head- Oh, Lord. What on earth have you done now?

But she stamped out any further suspicion for the benefit of the third party in the room. "I know you're not officially part of our student amba.s.sador program, but we have a prospective student visiting Blackwood just for a morning tour, and she specifically asked if there were any other students from New York whom she could shadow today. Allow me to introduce Elektra Quentin."

"h.e.l.lo," Eve said, rising from her chair. She held out her hand across the divide. "Pleased to meet you . . .

Ashline, was it?"

263.

Ash said nothing. Visions danced in her mind's eye, of the lightning shooting out of Lizzie's open mouth, of waking up to her bed on fire. But Eve extended her hand a little farther, and Ash finally seized it.

She squeezed firmly, hoping to inflict some pain on her older sister, but Eve merely squeezed harder until Ash was forced to retract her hand with a wince. "Welcome to Blackwood, Elektra Cute."

"Quentin," Eve corrected her, but grinned smugly.

She had traded her usual black and gloomy apparel for a s.h.i.+n-length tartan skirt and a conservative blue top, b.u.t.toned all the way up to her neck. Ash had never seen her sister's hair up before, but she had fas.h.i.+oned it into a large bun on the top of her head, with what looked like chopsticks holding it in place.

The headmistress came up behind Eve and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Elektra doesn't want to impose on your day in any way, so just go about today like any other Tuesday. You can escort her to the front gates after lunch so she can catch her limousine."

Eve released a small giggle. "I perked right up when Headmistress Riley said you had physics today. Although I have to say, I was a little disappointed to hear you don't offer a cla.s.s in meteorology."

"Well, off you go." The headmistress ushered them both toward the door. "If you hustle, you might be able to make the last part of what I'm sure is a riveting French cla.s.s with Monsieur Chevalier."

264.

"Golly," Eve replied.

Ash lingered in the doorway. "Um, Headmistress?"

The headmistress had crossed the room to her giant world globe. "Yes, Ashline?" Her thumb lingered somewhere in the sprawling blue of the Pacific Ocean.

The fingers of Eve's right hand blossomed open, revealing an orb of electricity s.h.i.+ning like a pearl in her palm. The threat was clear. One word, and . . .

"I . . . I just wanted to say thank you for this opportunity." Ash took Eve firmly by the arm and dragged her out of the room and through the reception area.

They weren't three steps into the hall before Ash grabbed two fistfuls of Eve's blue s.h.i.+rt and shoved her up against the wall, hard. "Are you out of your mind?

Masquerading as a prospective student in my new school?"

Eve peeled herself off the wall and fixed her s.h.i.+rt.

"You know my education has always been high priority to me, and I think that with Blackwood's reputation for stimulating the intellect-"

"Eve!"

"I hate to break it to you, cupcake, but this was your idea." Ashline's face wrinkled with a combination of bewilderment and nausea. Eve continued anyway. "You said you wanted to spend time with me but you needed to finish your school year first. So I thought I'd give you the best of both worlds: the Wilde sisters, reunited, while you pretend to be a mortal for another month."

"This is not what I had in mind," Ashline growled.

265.

"How can you expect me to play make-believe like everything is honky-dory between us after you sabotaged the smoke detector and lit my G.o.dd.a.m.n bed on fire?"