Afterglow (Wildefire) by Karsten Knight Read Free Book Online Page B

electrocution at the Renaissance fair, it had been pretty easy for Ash to convince him that her hotel room would prove a better safe haven than his frat house, since Colt and Eve probably knew where he lived. He had grumbled a little bit about how spending the night with a random girl in a Boston hotel room was going to be tough to explain to his girlfriend, but Ash just pinched him hard until he shut up.
    Now it was nearly noon, with the sunlight peeking through the hotel room blinds. While Ash did research on her laptop, Modo was out cold on the scratchy twin-size bed, lying on his back with his chest rising and falling in bellowing snores. Still, it was the memories of the dream—the vision—she’d experienced last night that dominated her thoughts.
    Memories from her previous lives had bled into her dreams before; it was a curse thrust upon her by Colt weeks ago. After nights spent dreaming of her last incarnation in the 1920s and 1930s, her restless brain had apparently moved on to the life before that one. It had been strange inhabiting the brain of Pele and knowing now that the volcano goddess wasn’t just her, but a composite of all three Wilde sisters.
    Still, the vision left Ash perplexed. Ash had trusted the Cloak, who insisted that they’d split Pele into three goddesses because she’d proven to be too volatile and dangerous as one entity . . . but the Pele in her dream didn’t seem so bad, did she? A bit impetuous, a bit quick to anger, but she’d mostly been concerned with protecting Colt.
    What could Pele have possibly done that would instigate the Cloak to take such an unthinkable, drastic measure: splitting a soul apart?
    Then there was Colt. In her vision, Pele had truly believed the trickster’s tale about being washed up on the Hawaiian shore merely by chance, but now Ash recognized it for what it was: another one of Colt’s lies. Each lifetime since the Cloak had stripped the gods of their old memories, Colt had capitalized on her inability to remember him or their longstanding romantic history together, and he’d manipulated his way back into her life. He would always pretend that he was just meeting her for the first time, and usually pretended to be human as well. Perhaps he’d watched Pele walk that rocky beachfor weeks before he finally faked washing ashore, unconscious and half-dead.
    Strangely, despite all the lies he’d ever told her, Colt had always used his real name.
    Ash was so involved in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice that the snores had stopped until Modo’s head was peering over her shoulder. The guy moved stealthily, considering he had a serious limp. “What are you doing?” he asked, far too wide-eyed and alert for someone who’d been passed out until just moments ago.
    “Looking at porn,” Ash said, gesturing to the laptop screen. “Also, searching Amber Alerts in the New England area over the last few months.”
    “Amber Alerts?” Modo echoed. “Like missing children?”
    Ash nodded. “Before my little sister took Colt, Eve, and Proteus through a portal to Boston, Colt mentioned something about how Rose could only form portals to places she’d seen before. So unless my six-year-old sister has been jet-setting through Massachusetts on her own, there’s a good chance that she may have originally been adopted by a family here . . . and I really doubt that her family willingly donated her to be some sort of lab experiment in the Central American jungles.”
    Modo flipped another chair around and dropped down next to Ash. “Maybe her adoptive parents thought they were sending her to summer camp?”
    “Or maybe . . .” Ash double-clicked on one of theAmber Alert listings . . . and after six lines of reading, she knew she’d found her match.
    Monterey, Massachusetts. April 23. Six-year-old Penny Wallace was forcibly taken from her home in Berkshire County at approximately 2:15 a.m. on Thursday morning. Penny is described as being of