ASHES OF THE PAST

Chapter 1 Star’s POV The gates were open. That was the first wrong thing. Papa locked them at sundown, every night, no exceptions, and Mama, who argued with him about almost everything, never argued about that. I pulled out my earbuds and stood there with my backpack hanging off one shoulder, listening. Crickets. A dog barking somewhere down the hill. Underneath it, a low, hungry crackle I didn’t understand yet. Mateo’s guard booth was empty. His cap lay in the gravel beside it. Mateo had worked for us since before I was born. He taught me to whistle with two fingers. He never left his post. I called his name, and the dark swallowed it. Then the gunshots came. Three cracks, sharp and close, from the far side of the house. An engine roared to life. Tires screamed on the service road, and two sets of headlights swept across the trees and vanished. I should have run the other way. Everyone says that afterward, as if fear were a choice. But the shots had come from behind our house, and my mother was inside it. My fingers went to the necklace at my throat before I knew I was moving. Silver, cool against my skin. Mama had fastened it on me the day I turned twelve and told me never to take it off. I ran. The drive was longer than I remembered. The house came into view in pieces: the white columns first, then the windows, every one of them glowing orange. Smoke rolled off the roof in thick black coils. Somewhere inside, glass burst, and the whole house seemed to flinch. “Mama!” The front door stood open. The heat shoved me back a step, and I stood there coughing, eyes streaming. I pulled my sleeve over my mouth and went in anyway. The foyer was a furnace. The chandelier lay shattered across the marble. Flames crawled up the staircase curtains and across the portraits in the hall, curling the faces. I kept low, one hand on the wall, and the wall was hot enough to sting. “Mama! Papa!” No answer. Only the roar. I passed the dining room. The long table lay overturned, Mama’s crystal glittering in the ash like spilled ice. I passed the hall mirror, cracked down the middle, and my own face stared back at me in two halves, pale and wide-eyed. The study door hung from one hinge. I saw her through the gap. Papers covered the study floor. The painting above the desk had been torn aside, and the safe behind it gaped open, empty. Mama lay on the floor beside Papa’s desk, one arm stretched toward the doorway, as if she had been crawling. Her silk blouse was dark and wet. Her hair, her beautiful, always-perfect hair, was loose across the rug. I don’t remember crossing the room. I remember the floor under my knees, and her face in my hands. There was too much blood. I pressed my palm to the dark stain at her side and felt it pulse warm between my fingers, far more than I could stop. Her breath came in shallow pulls, each one rattling. “Mama. Look at me.” Her eyelids fluttered. Her eyes found mine, black like mine, and for one terrible second there was nothing in them at all. Then there was. “Estrella.” It was barely a breath. “I’m here. I’m here, we have to go.” “Where is your father?” “I don’t know. I don’t… Mama, please.” Something eased in her face. “Good,” she breathed, and I didn’t understand it. I would not understand it for a long time. Her fingers closed around my wrist. They were so cold, in all that heat. “Listen.” “You can tell me outside. Please, we have to…” Her hand slid from my wrist to my throat. To the necklace. She pressed the little silver pendant flat against my skin, hard, until it hurt, and her eyes held mine with a force I had never seen in her. It wasn’t fear. It was command. “Don’t…” Blood shone at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t let…” A beam cracked overhead. Sparks rained down, and one landed on my face, just beside my lips. I cried out. The pain was white and instant, and she flinched with me, as though she felt it too. “Don’t let anyone see it,” she whispered. “Promise me.” “I promise. Mama, I promise, please.” Her hand fell away. “No. No, no, no.” I shook her shoulders. Her head rolled to the side. Her chest did not rise. I tried to lift her. I couldn’t. She was so heavy and I was so small, and my arms stopped listening. The ceiling groaned. Smoke pressed down on me, thick and sweet and awful, and the edges of the room began to blur. Then, through the roar, I heard boots. Not one pair. Several. Calm and unhurried, crossing the foyer. They did not sound like men running from a fire. They sounded like men who knew exactly how long they had. I tried to scream. Smoke filled my mouth instead. “Is it done?” a voice asked. Low. Unbothered. “Almost.” A second voice, closer. Right above me. “Get the girl out before the roof goes.” A hand closed around my shoulder. I felt myself being lifted. I felt the heat fall away from my back. I tried to say her name, and nothing came. The dark rose from the floor and took me. I woke on wet grass with the sky full of smoke and sirens crying somewhere down the hill. The corner of my mouth was burning where the spark had landed. My fist was clenched so tightly around the necklace that the clasp had cut my palm. Behind me, the house I was born in was coming down, one beam at a time. Someone wrapped a blanket around me. Someone else said the name of a hospital. I kept staring at the study window, at the flames filling it, the last place I had seen her. A fireman knelt over me, shouting something I couldn’t hear. Neighbors in nightclothes crowded the gate, whispering, crossing themselves. I heard one woman say it was a gas leak. I heard another say it was not. One man stood apart from the crowd at the edge of the lawn, in a pale suit, the only person not watching the house. He was watching me. When our eyes met, he did not look away. Then someone stepped in front of him, and when they moved, he was gone. Papa’s car came tearing up the drive, and he fell out of it before it stopped, his tie loose, his face gray and slick with sweat. He looked at the house. Then he looked at me. He crossed the grass in four strides and gripped my shoulders so hard it hurt. He did not ask if I was hurt. He asked, “Did she say anything?” I opened my mouth to answer, and I remembered the promise. “No,” I said. It was the first lie I ever told him. Somewhere behind the smoke, I could still hear that calm voice saying almost. Almost what?