Circle of Ashes (Wish Quartet Book 2)

  Vines clung to the side of the church, markings on the stone indicating where someone had attempted to cut back the foliage. Awnings and rooftops cast the ground in near-perpetual shadow, the grasses under their feet struggling to grow. Stones seemed to be in no particular order. The newest looked as if it had seen a thousand rainstorms since it was placed.

  There were no footprints save Nico’s. There were no epitaphs on the tombstones or mementos left. Just little weather-worn nubs insisting on remembrance to an earth that threatened to claim them once and for all.

  In the shadow of the church, in the back corner, Nico made his way to a gravestone that had been sheltered enough from the elements, preserving some of its engravings. The name written confirmed Jo’s suspicions, but even if the letters had been expunged by time, the carving of a woman’s face would’ve been recognizable to Jo anywhere.

  “Julia,” she whispered.

  “My muse.” Nico knelt down before the grave. He ran his finger through the dirt and quickly scribbled a star on the corner of the tombstone. Then, and only then, did he return to his watch, clocking out of time. “My compass star, always guiding me home, ever lighting my life.”

  “She was truly stunning.”

  “My wish was to save her, you know.”

  Jo didn’t know. She had made the broad-stroke assumption that his wish related to Julia based on the way he spoke of his lost love and a few other comments Jo had interpreted. Still, the details were obscure.

  “Save her how?”

  “I was not the only one to notice the ethereal nature of my Julia.” Nico ran a hand over the top of the tombstone, as if caressing it. “There were others, of course. But she only had eyes for me, and I for her. At least, until someone too powerful turned his gaze to her.”

  “Who?” Jo’s voice had dropped to a whisper. Her research came back to her—the mention of a mistress.

  “Pope Alexander VI.”

  “A pope?” Jo hadn’t wanted to be correct in her assumptions of possible connections. “I read. . . I mean, weren’t they all pious and whatnot?” She didn’t actually know; the Catholic Church had been absorbed by the state of Italy during World War III in a play for its global reach and resources. While it still technically remained its own entity, it had long since fallen from public consciousness in the countries of North America as anything more than a puppet of a foreign power.

  “Supposedly—ideally. But ideals are like the subjects of paintings. Lovely to look at, but categorically untouchable.” Nico trailed off and sighed. “The Vatican had commissioned me for a Madonna. Foolishly, I used Julia for reference.”

  He hung his head. Such a sad weight settled onto the shoulders of the man that Jo nearly tried to hoist him back upward. But she found herself pinned in place by the gravity of Nico’s sacrifice.

  “The pope was known for his mistresses, you see. It was one of the worst-kept secrets in Italy. I should’ve known.” He turned to her, eyes shining with grief even after all the years that had passed.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Jo whispered in response to that probing stare.

  Nico huffed softly, shook his head, and looked back down at his empty hands. “They sent for her, so that she could impart further ‘inspiration.’ They took her from me, making it as if we had never promised ourselves to each other. My Julia, my light, was to be extinguished as nothing more than a new toy for that wretched man.”

  “So you made a wish.”

  Nico nodded gravely. “I had heard about it, whispers here and there. But I finally located a woman who could grant me the details I sought, someone who designed herself as a high sorcerer. After that. . . it was simply a matter of casting the circle.”

  Jo wondered what he used to cast, but he didn’t say and she didn’t ask. She could guess well enough, given the severity of his wish.

  “And Snow saw your magical lineage, so you ended up as a member of the Society.” She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been presented with the same impossible choice Snow had given her.

  How did Nico choose? Life in a world with his Julia, but she would live in unimaginable pain. Or life in a world where his beloved would never think of him again, but thrive?

  “I did. But the pope was assassinated and my Julia walked free before any harm was done to her. She lived a good life here in our Florence, eventually marrying another and having a whole brood of children.” Nico smiled, but Jo wondered how much sorrow he’d felt over the years—watching his love, his betrothed, marry another with no recollection of his existence.

  “And you still love her, after all that,” Jo whispered mostly to herself, so she was startled when she got a response.

  “Immensely. There is no time or world where I love her less.”

  “I wonder. . . what that feels like.”

  “Have you never been in love?”

  Now, there was a question. Jo had certainly gotten around, experimented, had her fun, but love? Actual heart-pumping, world-shaking love? She thought she felt that for Yuusuke once, but the feeling wasn’t returned and it fizzled way too easily back into friendship to have been much of anything more.

  “Not really,” she finally admitted, to herself as much as him. It seemed almost. . . sacrilegious to attempt to lie, even to herself, in a place like this. Before a love like the one Nico still carried. “Not a love like yours at least. . . I don’t think I’d know it even if I saw it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My parents divorced when I was a kid.” Jo shrugged, turning her eyes skyward, blinking. Instead of seeing clouds, she saw spats between her mother and father, the precursors to the day he walked out.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Nico said, offering the usual platitude. “But that hardly means you don’t know, or can’t know, love.”

  Jo chuckled and shook her head. “No role models at home to equate to true love, really. . . And it’s not like there’s much room for it in the mob. Love just means people who can be hurt to get to you. It’s safer to act alone.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You haven’t seen what they’ll do to people who fall out of line.” Jo met his eyes, mostly as a challenge—one Nico did not attempt to meet.

  “I may not know what they’d do,” he conceded one battle, and continued another. “But I do know that love is its own form of protection—to have another that will look out for you, no matter what. To have an unquestioning shelter to retreat to when the world becomes too much to bear.”

  It was Jo’s turn to be quiet. She couldn’t argue with a man who had given his life for the woman he loved. Hadn’t she done the same for Yuusuke? Perhaps even if their love hadn’t been romantic, it was genuine.

  “I still wouldn’t know,” she mumbled in direct contradiction to everything in her mind.

  “Lying does not become you, Josephina.” Nico called her out with a gentle smile. Jo returned it weakly. He was the only man who could have her smiling while backing her into a proverbial corner at the same time. “And I mean that in all areas.”

  The smile fell from her lips. “Huh?”

  “I think you know exactly what love is.” He finally began walking back toward the gate, the transition in conversation begging a physical transition back to what their lives now were. “And I think you’re looking to find it.”

  “I don’t know—” A look from Nico had Jo changing gears mid-sentence. “I can’t.”

  “Why not? The foundation is clearly there, waiting to be built upon.”

  “We are talking about the same Snow, aren’t we?” The idea of there being the opportunity for something genuine between them seemed so outrageous that she had no choice but to clarify. The contrast between Nico’s counsel and Wayne’s was so disparate, Jo felt something like a short circuit sparking in her brain.

  “Who else?”

  “Snow is. . . he’s. . .”

  “If you doubt yourself when it comes to seeing the ways of love, fine. But you have made it clear y
ou don’t doubt me. I know what a love that transcends time looks like.”

  “Getting a little heavy, aren’t we? It’s not like he and I have even broached the subject of a date, even.” Jo laughed, feeling nervous energy creep up from somewhere deep within. She wanted to change the topic, desperately. And yet. . . didn’t. She had originally sought out Nico for clarity and all she felt was more of a mess.

  “Have faith in yourself, Jo,” Nico encouraged. “You know what to do.”

  “Wayne thinks it’s a bad idea. Too risky,” Jo mumbled.

  “I have no doubt. There’s no denying it is risky, and Wayne treasures this team—we all do.” Nico took her hand and looked her right in the eye. The other hand was held out, waiting, as the Door appeared over the gate, but Jo kept her attention solely on his face. “Trust me Jo: some people are well worth the risk of putting yourself out there and being hurt.”

  As he turned to input the code on the door, Jo took one more look at the cemetery. There were no flowers on the graves here. No mementos from loved ones. No mourners weeping. It was clearly a place that had been mostly forgotten by a world that had long since moved on from it.

  But one man remembered. One man, outside of time, cared enough to show Jo that there was one force greater than circles, or wishes, or magic. It was the only force that could triumph over them all, lasting when all else was dust and stars on stones. Love.

  She could never again question if such a thing would be worth it.

  Chapter 21

  Man Made Reckless

  WHEN THEY RETURNED to the mansion, Jo went promptly to the common room to find someone who could give her an update on the status of the wish. The length of time she’d been out of commission—occupied with her own issues—now bordered on selfish. But she and Nico found the main areas of the mansion quiet.

  “Everyone must be busy,” Nico observed, already heading over to the kitchen.

  Jo had a mug in hand before he’d even procured the beans. “I hope everything is going well.” She looked around the empty room once more. “Do you think we were gone too long?”

  “We were hardly gone a few hours. All will be well,” Nico assured her with far more confidence than Jo could muster.

  That nagging fear of being useless still sat in the back of her mind. If there was one thing she refused to be in this new life of hers, it was useless. The moment she became useless was the moment her sacrifice meant nothing, and all her magic potential to help the world would be wasted.

  “I think I’ll stay here,” she said, as Nico moved to depart. “Just in case anyone needs me.”

  “Relax where you’re most comfortable. We’ll find you as needed,” Nico assured her.

  “I’m comfortable here. My usual chair is open and there’s this book Eslar lent me that I should really finish.” Jo paused and forced a smile. “Knowing him, if I don’t finish it and give him a proper report, I’ll get a talking to.”

  Nico laughed. “Then I shall leave you to it.”

  She watched him walk away. There was a downward slope to his shoulders that usually wasn’t there. Was he going to work on the painting of Julia? Jo swallowed the lump that had been lodged in her throat since the church.

  After an hour of not really reading (all that clung to her mind was something about a forest clearing and a carving), Jo could take it no longer and wandered back to the Four-Way, walking to the top of each stair and peering down the empty hallways before heading back toward the now-occupied briefing room.

  Eslar startled at her entrance, his eyes wrenching away from the Door as if he’d been staring at it for some time. Jo cradled her mostly-empty coffee mug between her hands and leaned in the doorframe, aware of Eslar’s eyes on her as she did so.

  “Everything all right?” she asked when it became apparent that he was not going to be the one to break the silence. For a long moment, Eslar merely stared at her; if Jo didn’t know better, she’d have said she was being analyzed. But eventually, he took a breath, letting it out on a sigh and looking away.

  “I should ask you the same.” He looked back to the Door. “You wandered off.”

  “Nico said he had your permission.” Not wanting to throw Nico under the bus, Jo added quickly, “But maybe I should’ve asked, too.”

  “You don’t need my permission, so long as you’re not affecting the Severity of Exchange.”

  Damn straight I don’t, Jo wanted to say. Instead she passed her mug from hand to hand and pretended to take a sip. He didn’t seem irked, so Jo let the matter lie. “I take it we weren’t the only ones who left?”

  “Wayne has returned to Japan to follow up on a few things,” he said, standing.

  “How’s it all going?”

  “Let’s find out,” Eslar said, simply, walking towards the double doors back to the mansion and motioning for her to follow. Jo took the last swig of her coffee and did as told, hurrying silently behind Eslar (every one of his long strides was two of hers) until the two of them were standing in front of the common room’s large TV. Eslar grabbed the remote and turned it on, the news station from the last couple of weeks still broadcasting the already-familiar anti-terrorism footage.

  Except now, new content flashed intermittently.

  “It would seem as though things are going smoothly.”

  “Yeah,” Jo replied, though mostly out of reflex; her eyes were still trained on the new updates. After her initial failure, it seemed almost unlikely that things would be going so well now. But Eslar wasn’t wrong; Takako and Wayne had managed to get Samson’s machine into the hands of the right people. Now all they needed to do was wait for it to pick up the inevitable seismic activity, and then the regions would be evacuated.

  It seemed so simple. So possible.

  But because of that, it also seemed very, very hard to believe.

  “I’m going to go give Snow an update,” Jo heard herself say before she’d even properly made the decision to do so. Surely Snow had already heard, possibly even had his own way of keeping up-to-date. But suddenly she found herself almost eager to tell him the news.

  She’d helped set things right. They’d managed to set the ball rolling. And somehow, her time with Nico had made something feel far more level inside of her. Hope, that’s what this feeling would be called. It was the calm assurance that everything was going to be okay.

  Eslar didn’t say anything when she left, but she didn’t miss the way his eyes followed her out of the common room. She tried to pretend there wasn’t judgment in them.

  This time, when she found herself in front of the solid, white door, there was no hesitation before her knuckles were rapping insistently against the wood. She had a reason to be here this time; she knew exactly what she wanted to say.

  Or at least, she thought she did, until the door inched its way open to reveal the man himself.

  All thoughts of the team, the updates, her redemption, the serenity Nico had given her, seemed to flutter out of her mind like a butterfly escaping an outstretched hand. She tried to grasp for it, that reason for being there that had seemed so clear only seconds ago, but all she could think was that he was right there, within her reach. And looking really, really good. A flowing white tunic hung perfectly over the stretch of his shoulders, his toned chest standing out beneath the low-cut ‘v’ of the loose collar. A sinfully tight pair of black slacks wrapped around his legs and thighs like a second set of skin. Jo felt her mouth go dry.

  How was it she had no control over herself when it came to this man?

  When her traveling gaze finally found its way back to Snow’s face, it was to find an expression of poorly contained amusement and an eyebrow raised accusingly. It wasn’t until then that Jo realized she’d been staring. And not just normal staring, but shameless admiring, possibly even leering. Damn, she might as well have been drooling too.

  She felt her face go hot, and she had to force herself not to look away in embarrassment. She cleared her throat, looking over Snow’s shoulder i
n blatant request. Snow’s face softened a bit, but the amusement still lingered at the corner of his eyes.

  Without a word, he stepped to the side, motioning for her to come in.

  His room looked just as outlandishly regal as last time, not that she spent much time looking at it after her initial assessment. The moment Snow closed the door and walked back into her line of sight, he once again managed to take up every ounce of her attention. This time, when he looked at her, Jo felt a distinct energy to the gaze, like the prickling in the air of lightning about to strike.

  She wanted to touch him, wanted it more than anything. She realized with a heady sort of clarity that it was something she’d been wanting for a long time, possibly even from that very first moment, surrounded by blood on the dirty floor of a backwoods barn in nowhere Texas. Quite possibly, it was something she’d wanted all her life, however impossible that was. Ever since his ethereal presence had slotted so irrevocably into her life, she’d wanted it. She just hadn’t realized how much.

  Something on Jo’s face must have given her intentions away, because without preamble or permission (though it would have been easily granted), Snow covered the distance between them and inched himself into her personal space.

  Though centimeters still remained between them, Jo could feel the heat of his body as though they were already touching. Eyes never leaving Jo’s face, Snow raised his hands, let his fingers trailed up her arms, keeping just enough space between that she could feel the fabric of her hoodie shift but could not yet feel the press of his touch beneath.

  “Do you know what you’re doing here. . . this time?” Snow asked, and his voice seemed impossibly low, rumbling with a velvety warmth that she could feel deep into her chest.

  She knew what she’d intended on being here for, initially, but that was as far from her mind as possible when she said, “Yes.”

  That centimeter of space between them suddenly felt like a mile-wide chasm, one that Jo was nearly vibrating with desperation to cross.

  Snow’s wandering, barely-there touch finally made it to her face; his palm gently, much too gently, rested against her cheek. She leaned into it without thought or care, shuddering against the feel of his thumb stroking an almost tender line across her cheekbone.