Circle of Ashes (Wish Quartet Book 2)

  Circle Of Ashes

  Wish Quartet Book Two

  Elise Kova

  Lynn Larsh

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  A Letter from the Authors

  Dedication Page

  Map of the Society’s Mansion

  Map of North America (2057)

  1. Blink

  2. Not a Drill

  3. Shattered

  4. Stand Down, Soldier

  5. Mugicha

  6. Takako’s Wish

  7. Restrictions

  8. Waiting Game

  9. Late Night Visitor

  10. Seven-Hundred and Thirty

  11. If Looks Could Kill

  12. Easy Peasy

  13. Hotshot

  14. The Craftsman’s Plan

  15. Ken and Goofo

  16. Useful Skill

  17. ESP

  18. A Step Up from Prince

  19. Needs and Brodies

  20. Julia

  21. Man Made Reckless

  22. A Moment of Peace

  23. Plan C

  24. Target Practice

  25. Twelve Hours

  26. Together

  27. Breaking and Entering

  28. Final Hope

  29. We Wait

  30. Please

  31. Their Last Meal

  32. Draw Straws

  33. Favoritism

  34. Snow’s Choice

  35. Until the End

  36. One-Seventeen A.M.

  37. Goodbye

  Wish Quartet Book Three

  Elise’s Acknowledgements

  Lynn’s Acknowledgements

  About the Author: Elise Kova

  About the Author: Lynn Larsh

  Also by Elise Kova

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events in this book are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  Published by Silver Wing Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Elise Kova

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form without permission.

  Cover Artwork by Elise Kova

  Editing by Rebecca Faith Editorial

  eISBN: 9781619849044

  Print ISBN: 9781619849037

  A Letter from the Authors

  On behalf of Lynn and Elise, thank you so much for reading our book! Your support enables us to continue to weave stories that we hope you enjoy for years to come.

  We also hope that you secured your copy of this book legally.

  Did you know that the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal? Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  Make sure all your books come from a verified retailer, publisher, or the author themselves, and not an illegal download site. Do your part to help protect authors so we can keep making the stories you love.

  To find all retailers where you can obtain a physical or digital copy of this work legally, please visit Elise’s website: http://elisekova.com/circle-of-ashes-wish-quartet-2/

  for those who pay the cost

  Chapter 1

  Blink

  JOSEPHINA ESPINOSA THRIVED on chaos.

  She had been an agent of anarchy for years, operating under various organized crime syndicates (whoever had the deepest pockets at any given moment) with little concern and even less remorse for her actions. She’d worked until her fingertips were calloused from typing, her eyes were bloodshot, and her throat was raw from energy drinks. Jo had given her life to her craft, quite literally when she’d been gunned down by the Rangers of the Lone Star Republic.

  No, she’d watched her friend get gunned down by the Rangers. Jo had narrowly escaped thanks to a magical circle meant for casting wishes and the vague memory of her grandmother’s stories. It was a circle that she had fully expected to die in, but instead it, and its master Snow, had woken the latent magic in her veins and brought Jo into the Society of Wishes—a place where Jo’s life had only grown crazier, granting one wish after the next for four months straight.

  Until now. . . when the world was quiet.

  She stepped out of the recreation room, pulling her watch off the small shelf next to the door and freeing up the space for someone else in the process. Jo fitted the thin black band around her wrist, the device critical to her new world of magic. A world that was beginning to feel almost. . . mundane?

  Jo rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and started down the hallway. The lights were dimmed and the windows in the central Four-Way were dark. According to her watch it was somewhere around three a.m. and it felt like there was not another living soul anywhere in the mansion.

  Her feet stilled, stopping her in the center of the intersecting halls. Peering down the stretch that led into the common area, Jo caught a glint of movement. It was like a flash of light off a sequin, or ribbon of silken fabric. Curiosity got the better of her.

  Tile became carpet down the long stretch of hall, muffling her footsteps. Couches, chairs, and small tables—more than could ever be occupied should every member of the Society decide to descend on them at once—absorbed every sound she made. It was so still that her ears were almost ringing, like the world was holding its breath.

  She crossed the threshold into the common room, and looked around. There was no one in the kitchen, at the gaming table, or on the couches. The television was off and the patio was unoccupied.

  “Huh,” Jo murmured softly to herself, rubbing her eyes again. She must’ve been staring at the screen for too long.

  When Jo lowered her hands, she was no longer alone.

  Jo took a full step backward, her soul leaping from her skin and fleeing down the hall from where she’d come. Standing at the edge of the pool, staring at the purple-hazed mountains in the distance, was a petite woman. She wore a dress of rainbow ribbons, tied tightly around her chest and arms, bowed to synch the fabric of her skirt. Her hands were folded at the small of her back.

  As if sensing Jo’s presence, she turned with a smile. “Good evening.”

  “Hello Pan,” Jo replied quietly. The surreal nature of the interaction had elevated to possess a dream-like quality. Pan was never seen outside of her room, other than for wishes.

  “Can’t sleep?” she asked.

  “None of us can.” She hadn’t needed sleep since she was indoctrinated into the Society. It became a luxury, not a necessity, and even then usually elusive. “Just grabbing some coffee,” Jo lied, suddenly compelled to have a reason to both explain her presence and escape after the task was performed.

  “You’ve been sleeping for a long time, though.” The woman-child’s cat-like eyes seemed to flash in the darkness. “It’s time to wake up.”

  “What?” Jo breathed.

  Pan’s smile widened, and she turned back to the mountain.

  Without permission, Jo’s feet crossed the threshold of the room, leading her out onto the patio by the pool. Pan must’ve heard her steps, but she didn’t turn, or look, or say anything about Jo’s sudden presence. She continued to stare forward into the landscape that was shades of darkness—the fake ether that the Society was nestled within.

  “Do you feel it?” Pan whispered, ignoring or not hearing Jo’s question.

  “Feel what?”

  “The pull.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Jo went to turn away, leaving the cryptic (and likely messed up six
ways to Sunday) woman-child behind.

  “It’s coming.”

  Her feet paused once more and as Jo mentally scolded them, she found herself turning at the same time.

  The mountains Pan was staring at were suddenly ablaze, silhouetted by a now violently reddish sky. Jo blinked, and like someone clicking the remote on a channel, they were back to black. She took another step backward.

  “Soon,” Pan murmured. “It will end, soon.”

  Jo made the mistake of blinking again.

  The woman had turned, grinning like a madman directly at her, an angry sky illuminating her shoulders from behind. Jo pressed her eyes closed, and everything was back to normal once more, Pan’s back to her. There was not enough curiosity in the world to tempt her to ask what, exactly, was happening.

  So Jo turned, wide-eyed and trembling. She did not blink all the way back to her room, coffee forgotten.

  Chapter 2

  Not a Drill

  WHEN DAWN CAME, it found Jo still staring out the window of her room, overlooking Paris.

  She hadn’t left for the rest of the night, willing herself to forget, to feel a little stronger and less afraid. That act became easier with the first light. A normal sunrise scared away the demons and bogeymen haunting her thoughts. It seared her eyes and her mind, giving the whole affair a hazy, dream-like quality.

  Feeling safer (though she didn’t know from what), or at the least much braver, Jo finally ventured from her room. She headed right for a door with a carefully painted bird and a name written in elegant script. Jo gave it a few solid knocks.

  “You’re early this morning.” Nico opened the door with a smile, wiping his hands on a grungy paint-stained apron.

  “Yeah, I had a bit of a weird night.”

  “Come in and tell me about it? I’ll only be a minute more.” Nico stepped away from the door, leaving it open.

  Jo did as asked, closing the door behind her and leaning against it. Nico paused his motions over by his easel, raising his eyebrows questioningly at her unorthodox behavior. “I ran into Pan.”

  Four words, and she suddenly felt very silly. Pan was a fellow member of the Society, an odd one certainly, but hardly an unknown quantity.

  “That is odd,” Nico agreed. “It’s not like her to be out of her room without a wish.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Jo shrugged.

  “Is that all?”

  Jo paused, chewing on her tongue a moment. It wasn’t all, was it? She’d spent all night willing the interaction to go away, and now it suddenly felt distant, like a dream she’d forgotten, remembered, and was already forgetting again.

  “She said something weird, too.”

  “What?”

  “I—” if her mind was a car, it would’ve just stalled out. Everything stopped, sputtering. Jo just shrugged, trying to play it off more casually than she felt. “Can’t remember. I was up working and mentally spent at that point.”

  “Knowing Pan,” Nico made for the door, “she was doing it with the intention of being strange.” He clasped a hand over Jo’s shoulder. It was a sturdy support that pushed her feet into the earth and reminded her she was on stable ground. “I wouldn’t pay it any mind.”

  “You’re right.” Jo forced a laugh. “Not like I want to give her the satisfaction of taking me off my game.”

  “There’s the Josephina I know.”

  They made their way directly to the common area to begin their morning ritual. From underneath the TV, Jo retrieved two tablets and, at the same time, Nico busied himself in the kitchen. She turned for the two chairs they had pulled together by the pool, and stalled.

  There had been more, her mind insisted. Jo stared, transfixed by the mountains in the distance, as though she expected a monster to suddenly grasp their peaks with its giant claws and hoist itself over.

  “Jo?” Nico’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Jo shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked as she approached.

  “I’ll be better with coffee. Nothing a hot cup can’t fix.” Jo smiled and handed him one of the two tablets. “For you.”

  “Thank you.” He propped it against his knees as Jo sat on the chair next to his, placing hers on her own lap. The Italian man finished situated himself, taking a long sip of his espresso, eyes fluttering shut. “It is truly a delight to have someone to share the mornings with.”

  “Honestly, I still have a hard time believing you’ve converted me into any kind of morning person.”

  “What is morning? What is night?” It wasn’t the first time he’d wondered as much, and Jo only hummed in response. When one existed beyond time, the hours ticking away on a clock became more guidelines than actual governances over life.

  “Oh, look at this.” Nico held up his tablet. A sketch glowed back at her in the dim sunrise. She squinted to make out the text below the picture:

  Rare Da’Vinci Artwork Discovered. On exhibit, one week only.

  “The man was a right loon.” Nico pulled the tablet back. “But it’s good to see his work still being appreciated so long after.”

  “You knew him?” Jo didn’t know why the fact surprised her. Even though Nico was a ray of sunshine in the form of a forever-nineteen-year-old man, he was actually more than five-hundred and seventy years old. “Of course you knew him,” she added hastily.

  “Not ‘of course’; he had a different patron than I and was already an old man when I was born.”

  The question of who exactly that patron was, or when exactly he was born, sat heavily on her tongue, until Jo washed it away with another sip of her latte. There were two rules, sort of, when it came to the Society:

  One: Use your magic to help grant wishes.

  Two: Ask no one about the wish that brought them there.

  She looked up from the news sprawled out across her tablet, and out at the mountains in the distance. They reflected in the stillness of the pool water before her, perfectly mirror-like and undisturbed, not even a hint of wind to mar its surface. The temperature was comfortably cool as well, as it always was, and the sun peeked from behind scattered clouds, as it always did.

  It was a paradise that sat just outside of reality, a utopia in which nothing changed. It was peaceful, quiet, and all the more maddening for it. She found herself liking those mountains and their perfection less and less.

  “How’re things in good old Britain?” Nico pulled Jo from her thoughts.

  “All seems the same.” Jo continued her welcome distraction of swiping through the morning’s news—“research,” as Nico had explained it. They never knew where a wish would come from, but keeping up with world news could give them a good indication. Additionally, it could sometimes help them think of creative ways to lessen the Severity of Exchange for the wishes that did come in by looking at things on the macro level. “Something to do with trade treaties.”

  “Still?” Nico leaned over, grabbing the side of the chaise closest to Jo. His eyes skimmed the article. “Well, at least we likely won’t get another wish about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the last wish.”

  Their last wish had involved taking down the CEO of a British competitor to the wisher. “Why would that have anything to do with it?”

  “We never seem to get a wish too similar in scope or region back-to-back. Snow’s choice? Chance? Something in the magic? Whatever the reason, it has always worked out that way.” Nico shrugged and tossed some of his scraggly brown hair from his eyes. As if sensing her next question before she did, he added, “As to the actual why it’s that way, none of us have the foggiest.”

  “I see. . .” Jo flicked away her frustrations by thumbing through news articles. She hated the reasoning: because magic. It was an underlying explanation to all things in her world now. As exciting as magic was, she wished she could understand it just a little more. Or she wished she could be like everyone else and just accept it for what it was and mo
ve on.

  “The variety does help keep things interesting, at least,” Nico offered.

  “It does.” Jo forced a smile. He was trying to cheer her up; she wouldn't make him feel bad for the fact.

  A loud ringing sound disturbed what had become an otherwise peaceful morning.

  “What’s that?” Nico twisted, looking over the back of his chair and into the common area behind them.

  Jo followed his gaze, squinting at the source of the sound. Their dark-haired elf now sat on the couch, glued to the television. He seemed not to notice the high-pitched alert the speakers were emitting.

  “Can you kindly turn that down, Eslar?” Nico asked.

  There was no reply.

  “Wait, I know that noise. Well, sort of.” Jo stood, leaving the tablet on her seat. “It’s like the warning they’d play when there was a tornado in the area, or ran drills for one.”

  “A tornado?” Nico followed behind, now giving the anomaly his full attention.

  She walked up the few steps and into the shade of the common area. The tile was cold under her feet, still almost icy with the chill from the night. But Jo barely recognized it. Her eyes were glued to the TV.