All Chapters of Thirty Years of Ash: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The words dropped the room into silence.The young woman who'd been scowling into her phone went rigid.She raised her head, locked a sharp look on me, and her voice came out cold."What's that supposed to mean?"Are you trying to take what's mine?"I let my eyes move over her face, unhurried.Fine, bold features, the corner of her mouth tipped up.All of it carrying the easy contempt of someone who'd never been told no.Thirty years ago a woman had sat in the front row of an auction and smiled while she ground my sister's life to powder.This girl had her eyes exactly.I looked away and turned a page in the catalog.My voice stayed flat, as if none of it touched me."An auction goes to the highest bidder."Until the hammer falls, everyone in this room has the right to bid."So why shouldn't I? And where does taking come into it?"I wasn't the girl who could only stand and watch while her sister was worn down until she died.For thirty years I'd worked real estate, buil

Douglas Reyner called almost before I'd sat down."Daphne, the board is unanimous. We do not support this."The Aldriches have roots all through this city, both of them hold power, and Camille is the thing they love most in the world."You place an unlimited bid on that girl's photographs today, and this company is finished by tomorrow."I ran a thumb along the edge of the phone."I'm not the one who took the pictures. If you want someone to blame, blame whoever did."Bidding is how an auction works. On what grounds am I not allowed to bid?"When it was clear I wouldn't move, his breathing got heavy."What do you actually get out of grinding this down?"Camille's barely into her twenties. Why go after an innocent kid like this?"The laugh came out of me before I could stop it, hatred rolling up through my chest.Camille was not innocent. Not by any measure.And her parents, Sebastian and Lenora Aldrich, deserved worse than anything I could name.When nothing landed, Dougla

The picture was grainy, but it showed the auction from thirty years ago clearly enough.A teenage Lenora in an expensive pink dress.A malicious little smile on her mouth, her paddle up in a gesture you couldn't look away from.The people below her had heard something, and they were roaring with laughter.The image froze there.Reporters lifted their cameras and started talking over one another."Mrs. Aldrich went to auctions like that when she was young?""You'd never know it to look at her now."I turned my head toward Lenora."A few minutes ago you stood up there and told us how much you loathe women tearing each other down, how you've lived your whole life with a clear conscience."My voice stayed level, one word at a time."So let me ask. Thirty years ago you sat in that room, looking at an ordinary college student who happened to look a little like you, and you put her private photographs up under an unlimited bid, in front of everyone."Whatever anyone offered, you'd

The instant the words landed, the room went dead as a grave.The flashes caught Sebastian and Lenora full in the face.They caught the exact moment both expressions seized up.Sebastian's pupils contracted, and with his mind gone blank he forgot to keep the mask on.It came out of him before he could stop it, disbelief all through it."Lydia? That college girl didn't have a sister."The sentence went through every lie they'd spent the hour weaving, like a blade.I laughed, low.Then I raised my eyes and held him cold."So at this late hour you'll finally admit it?"A minute ago it was all kindness and rescue, and you never once said her name. You knew exactly who she was."I switched the display.A full page of yellowed text-message records came up.Messages my sister sent me back then, from her old phone."Daph, there's a rich kid at school who has a girlfriend and he keeps hanging around me."I can't stand him and I can't shake him off."..."He asked today where our

There were men and women in that group, young and old.Most of them middle-aged now, every one of them carrying something furious and unfinished behind the eyes.The first to speak was a plainly dressed woman with a faint scar at the corner of one eye, Marguerite Vane.Her fists were closed, and she held the shake out of her voice by force."Lenora and I were in the same class. Somebody offhand said I was better looking than she was, and that was all it took. She carried it, got a group together, and bullied me for two solid years."Cornering me between classes, pouring ink over my books, and at the end of it she opened my cheek with a utility knife. I've had this scar for half my life."After graduation I went into a severe depression and shut myself away for five years before I could function. I took witnesses and physical evidence to the police. The Aldrich name reached further than any complaint of mine, and the whole thing sank without a trace."Before she'd finished, a sli