Disclaimer: All concepts and characters belong to L.J. Smith and her publishers. They are used here for non-profit entertainment without permission. Barred from that statement are any and all characters who did not appear in her books or her head. Namely, Nina Rosette. If you want to borrow her, please just let me know.

Rating: PG-13 (Language, mature content)

Spoilers: My previous NW fan fiction and the NW books before Strange Fate.

Where There’s Smoke

Part One

Consciousness slowly returned as Ash Redfern rolled on top of her and swatted blindly at the bedside table. "You're crushing me," Nina grumbled, trying to scoot out from under him.

"Hold on," Ash muttered in reply, and Nina felt his muscles tense as he tore the alarm clock's cord from the socket. Blessedly, the beeping stopped.

Ash collapsed beside her and drew the mess of blankets back over them. Nina rubbed her eyes clean, once again grateful for the thick drapes that kept the sunlight out of Ash's bedroom.

"What time is it?" she asked hoarsely.

Ash lifted his watch for a moment and then let it flop down, as if that tiny effort was too much to ask. "Quarter to nine."

Nina groaned and sat up. A fragment of the dream came back to her, just the sound of glass breaking, but it was disconcertingly real in the quiet bedroom. "I've got to get going," she said uneasily.

"Unh uh." Ash grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back down beside him.

"Ash," she whined. "I'm supposed to meet Robin at the library at ten."

"You just got here three hours ago."

"Well, stop working the night shift and our schedules might coincide more often."

He grinned lazily and closed his eyes. "Me quit the night shirt. Yeah, that's likely."

Nina tilted her head back to see his face. There was a contented smirk on his full lips and tender smile lines at the corners of his eyes. She relaxed against him and breathed in the deep scent of night air and pine cones.

In the four and a half months they'd been together, she had found him alternately hot and cold. There were times when he would happily sweep her into his arms and confess his secrets with a smile, and other times he would balk at making the admission and pull away with fear in his eyes.

She gave him space, when it seemed like he wanted it. He fixed her breakfast in bed on days when she had finals. She knew what topics to avoid, his ex, his parents, his time at boarding school, and he knew never, ever, to ask if she'd remembered her insulin. She understood why he couldn't tell her where he worked, he put 2% milk in the fridge behind the bottles of O negative.

Maybe their relationship was strange, an emotionally scarred vampire dating a workaholic college student. Nina had given up worrying about it and contented herself with the present.

Which was slowly ticking by while she wallowed in bed.

Letting out a deep sigh, she sat up and swung her legs out from under the blankets. "God dammit, Ash, it's cold storage in here."

"And you're not helping matters under the covers any, either," he groused, grabbing for her hand.

Nina pattered down the hallway and found the thermostat set at fifty again. Ash wasn't real great at noticing uncomfortable temperatures; he said it was a vampire thing.

She entered the bathroom leading off Ash's bedroom and turned the hot water on in the tub. Ash was starting in on his first round of "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall," as she pulled her clothes off and stepped into the shower.

The faint sense of dream still clinging like mist to her skin rinsed easily away. The first time she'd had a nightmare in Ash's bed it had haunted her for days afterward, but she was getting used to them. It was the essence of him, she supposed, soaking into the mattress, staining her dreams. But they probably weren't nightmares to Ash.

They'd had a fight three weeks ago that had cemented her mental image of his ideals in her mind. He'd eaten a rabbit in front of her, just chowed down on the thing while they were watching TV. Nina had gotten upset, but he couldn't see what the big deal was, it was just a rabbit and he wanted the blood. Nina had been right when she summed him up the night they met; he barely thought to look at a situation from the other person's point of view.

He'd felt awful about it afterward, once Tern explained to him that sometimes girls didn't like to watch the mouths they kissed latching onto jugulars. Nina couldn't really be angry at him, knowing that he had grown up in a family with three sisters who all acted the same way. She had apologized, but Ash insisted it was his fault, that he was a thoughtless, insensitive asshole who deserved to be staked.

"It's not that big a deal," she'd told him. "I'd just rather you didn't feed in front of me like that. A wineglass of blood at the table I can handle. A bunny is harder."

He'd sworn never to do it again.

Nina climbed out of the shower and into a satin robe she found hanging on the back of the door. Ash's apartment was full of elegant stuff, none of which she ever saw him use. The cupboard in the kitchen full of gold plated dishes was neglected in favor of Tupperware cups with lids, and he preferred Great Land tee-shirts to the silk ensembles crumbled in the floor of his closet.

She was testing her blood sugar when he came up from behind and put his arms around her waist. "I don't suppose you could stand Robin up just this once," he ventured.

"Remember two weeks ago when you talked me into staying for dinner? That was me, standing Robin up."

Ash darted a quick glance at her before lifting her still-bleeding finger to his lips. His gentle sucking motion tugged at all her nerve endings, and Nina hand to concentrate to keep her hand from clenching around his chin. A shudder ran through both of them as though a wave had crashed against their legs and they had momentarily lost balance.

One of these days, the sex was going to get kinky. Nina knew that, and it frightened her. Up until now the sex had been good, solid, all-American, and the blood drinking had been a titillation he used to tease her occasionally. But eventually, by laws of nature or perversion, the two would have to mix. The temptation was impossible to resist, knowing that every inch of nerve in her body might shiver like a wheat field blowing in a wind....

If not for the vampire thing and the blood thing, Nina was aware that she could have fallen in love with him. Very quickly, very deeply.

Yes, it was a good thing that the blood pounding through her treacherous heart was the same thing that kept her from making a huge mistake.

Nina reluctantly tugged her finger out of his mouth, and Ash fell weakly back against the bathroom door. There were bright, clown-like spots of color in his cheeks.

"Are you okay?" Nina asked.

He opened his eyes and gave her a beautiful smile. "Human blood," he murmured. "Been a while."

Nina stepped back without realizing she had, her hip bumping painfully against the edge of the sink. She turned away and measured out the morning's insulin dosage with shaking hands. Yeah, sometimes he scared her a little....

"Sorry," Ash whispered softly against her ear. The backs of his hands grazed her shoulder bones before he stepped back into the bedroom. A moment later she heard him flop onto the bed.

She was spitting out her mouthwash when the doorbell rang. "Don't get up," she said, traveling quickly through the bedroom. "I'll get it."

"Could be Tern," Ash told her.

"You're naked."

He smiled. "Could be amusing."

"Oh, hush."

Nina couldn't help smiling to herself as she tightened the belt of the robe around her waist and walked to the front door. It would be a real shame if she let this vampire thing get to her. A damn crying shame.

She reached for the deadbolt only to find that Ash had neglected to lock the door again. She pulled it open and saw a girl about her age standing in the carpeted hallway. She had dark hair and a solid tan, but her rather nice figure was mostly hidden by a sweater three sizes too large and far too bulky for the weather.

"Hi, can I help you?" Nina asked.

The girl appeared somewhat confused and Nina noticed the huge circles under her eyes. Somebody hadn't been getting a whole lot of sleep. "I'm sorry, I'm looking for Ash Redfern. A friend told me he lived here, but I guess he's moved out-"

"No," Nina said coolly. "He still lives here. He's just getting out of bed, he could probably talk to you in a couple minutes. Would you like to come in?"

The girl’s face registered surprise, and possibly disgust. "Thanks," she said stiffly.

Nina showed her to the living room, which was a horrific mess, and offered her a cup of the yet-to-be-made coffee. The girl declined, and Nina watched eyes travel over the room. Apparently she'd never been here before, which made Nina wonder exactly how she knew Ash.

"I'm Nina Rosette, by the way," she said, offering to shake. "Can I tell Ash who's here?"

The girl's hand was dry as chalk, and it trembled in Nina's grip. "Please tell Ash that Mary-Lynnette Carter is here."

Part Two

Ash noticed that he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to stop. It was a bad habit he'd taken to lately, one of many.

Like pressuring your girlfriend to let you drink her blood, he chided himself.

He had no right, he knew that. Circle Daybreak's number one rule was equality between humans and Night People. He was betraying the whole idea if he started thinking of humans as food again.

But oh, sometimes when he held her, and kissed her throat, and when the rich scent of oatmeal soap drifted off her skin...

Stop it, he ordered himself. You want to drive her away? You want to ruin another relationship? You want to self destruct the way Quinn did?

He loved her, he knew he did, and this time he couldn't blame on some cosmic force beyond his control. He swore he wouldn't ever sip her sweet blood again if it meant losing her.

Speaking of Nina, he noticed that she was back in the room, leaning against the wall beside the door. Her head was down, satin black hair sliding over her shoulders.

"Nine?" he asked, lifting his head.

She met his eyes and swallowed. "Mary-Lynnette's here to see you," she said flatly. "She's waiting in the living room."

Ash's vision quivered, the edges of the room turned blurry. "What?" he said, but Nina was already walking away from him. By the time he reached the bathroom door, she had locked it. "Nina!" he called, knocking hard enough to leave the imprints of his knuckles in the wood.

"She's waiting," Nina told him.

"Look, I know this is weird, and I swear I have no idea what she's doing here. I just...."

"I have a right to feel threatened, don't I?"

"Yes, I mean, no. I mean, yeah, you have a right to but you don't need to...."

Nina opened the door a crack and looked at him coldly. "I don't want to play games with you, Ash. You say it's over, fine, go out there and prove yourself right."

He stuck his foot in the door before she could close it. "I don't want to play games, either. Don't loose faith in me now, Nina."

She nodded and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead. "Don't forget to put some pants on before you go out there," she said with a twinge of a smile.

Ash reached for the closest pair of jeans on the floor and fumbled in his drawers for a clean shirt. Confusion bubbled in his stomach like so much Alka-seltzer, and every emotion he'd felt for Mary-Lynnette in the last few months rose up again. The anger came back most quickly, that sharp loneliness that never failed to set a burn in his chest.

She was sitting on the couch, looking at a pack of photographs from the coffee table. They were from a night-time trip he'd made with Tern, Juniper, Quinn, Rashel, and Nina to the San Franscisco Zoo. They'd had a surprising amount of fun, hunting rare animals–"For crying out loud, don't kill them! They're endangered!"–and playing with the dangerous snakes. Ash thought it had been good for Quinn, too, some time for him to get things back on track. He still wasn't working, but Mona expected him back on part-time duty within a month.

Ash looked at Mary-Lynnette and winced. He didn't want to see her, he just didn't. He was happy with Nina, he was happy with work, and most importantly, he was pretty happy with himself. He didn't need this now.

Mary-Lynnette saw him and the photos fell out of her hands. Bright sunlight brought out the shiny red glints in her hair and made Ash's head hurt, only adding to his annoyance. "What do you want?" he asked simply.

She stood up and rubbed her palms on her jeans. "I taking a job far away. I probably won't be back, and this will be the last time we'll ever see each other. I just wanted to say goodbye. Make sure you weren't furious at me."

Ash started to grind his teeth and stopped. "Where are you going?"

"It's...hard to explain. All that matters it that I won't be back."

He nodded. "Goodbye then."

As he turned away, she said, "Please, Ash, don't."

He glanced over his shoulder. "Don't what?"

"Don't make this harder for me than it already is. I never meant to hurt you."

His chest rose more quickly as the anger surfaced again. "What did you mean to do, then?"

"I...." She swallowed hard and shook her head. "I'm sorry I couldn't handle it. I tried."

"You never tried, Mary. Don't patronize me."

"What did you want me to do?" she cried.

"Visit, call, write the occasional letter. Let me know how you were doing. I didn't ask for a hell of a lot."

"I'm sorry if I'm not the most open-minded person in the world," she snapped, getting angry herself. "I can accept a lot of faults in a guy, but you're....you're a...."

"A vampire," Ash finished. "Yes, I'm aware. I suck blood and stalk the night and I kill things. And that's unacceptable to you. Fine, I get it. But you should have just come out and said it instead of leading me on for a year and a half."

"I never lead you on!"

"Of course you did!" They were only a few feet apart, and Ash knew the people next door could probably hear them but didn't care. "What did you think you were doing all those times you implied that I was still too evil? That I hadn't repented enough, that I wasn't sorry enough for what I'd done."

"If your damned guilty conscience is giving you problems, Ash, that's not my fault. You made the decision to live like this."

"Like what? I changed my entire life so that I could please you. It makes me sick to think of everything I did for you, how I molded myself to be what you wanted." He stopped and found he couldn't look at her. So much he had been bottling up, not just the anger but the need and the regret and the missing.... "And then, just when I finally felt like I was good enough for you, what happened? You left me high and dry. No explanation, no apology, you didn't even have the decency to tell me it was over yourself." With horror, he realized his voice was shaking. "It was like the floor had dropped out from under me and every reason I'd had for doing every thing was gone. And then we got sent on this mission right away, before I had time to deal with anything and Quinn got skinned! They just ripped the flesh off his back in giant strips like bacon. And...oh christ-"

Mary-Lynnette closed the distance between them and Ash felt himself melt hopelessly into her arms, felt his mind sink hopelessly into her thoughts. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I never meant to hurt you."

Ash tried to push her away and didn't have the strength. His mother had been gone for too long, his sisters were far away, and these weren't the kinds of thoughts he could talk about guy to guy with Tern. There were so many things he needed to say to her.

Mary-Lynnette's mental voice rang in his head, wordless, just a rush of compassion and regret. Ash felt her slip in between his temples and panicked. This was wrong, it would only dredge up old feelings they had both long since put down.

I missed you, Mary-Lynnette told him. I knew what I must have been doing to you and I hated myself for it. I think about you constantly. I try to imagine what you're doing and I wonder if you're thinking of me.

She stopped speaking and a world of memory opened to Ash. He saw her in the forest beneath the stars, tears of frustration running down her cheeks as she tried to eradicate the doubt in her heart. A low moan coming out of her mouth as she imagined Ash losing control in a moment of passion and tearing her heart out.

You don't trust me, Ash realized. You never have.

Steel bars slammed down in his mind at the thought of Nina.

I'm sorry. I won't look.

When he turned mentally to look for his body, it had vanished. He was in too deep, no turning back now.

I'm sorry, she said. Truly, I am. I have no right to judge you.

Ash lost his energy for the fight and sagged miserably in her arms. I just wanted to love you, Mary. Even if I never saw you and never talked to you, I just wanted to know you weren't bothered by my loving you.

Part Three

Nina stood in the living room doorway and stared. Ash and Mary-Lynnette were a heap on the floor, wrapped around each other, hands clenched in hair, cheeks pressed together. Their eyes were closed, Nina didn't think they knew she was there.

They looked contented, right for each other. Nina's heart thudded dully and she wondered why she'd never thought Ash would be so easily swayed. True, he never wanted to talk about Mary-Lynnette, but he had assured her that the whole thing was over. And he had seemed so sure...

Still, she had never heard the whole story, only bits and pieces that Tern and Quinn dropped. Not enough that she had ever been totally sure Mary-Lynnette was gone from his life.

Well, she thought, Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

She considered getting a camera and cast that idea off as petty. She could be dumped, it had happened before. It wouldn't be terrible if she could salvage some dignity.

"Ash," she said, loudly, hoping to startle him. "I'm leaving."

He didn't twitch.

"Ash," she said, louder. When he still didn't move, she shouted, "Ash!"

A cold shiver ran through her. What, was he dead?

She leaned down to shake his arm and fell to her knees instead. In the one instant their skin touched, the full range of his connection to Mary-Lynnette was shown to her. The rush of heat poured over her, the envelopment of understanding and love that inevitably bound soulmates.

Nina crawled back, shaken, and climbed to her feet. She couldn't compare with that kind of connection, and she knew it.

She grabbed her keys off the counter and left the apartment.

Part Four

By the time Ash finally woke up, he didn't know where he was or what was going on. Mary-Lynnette he recognized, the rest of the room looked strange.

He kissed her head, pulled her close, and noticed a photograph on the floor. A photograph of himself sitting in a fountain with a pretty Chinese girl on his lap.

Nina, of course.

"Oh god," he moaned, and threw Mary-Lynnette away so hard she flew across the floor and slammed into the coffee table's legs.

It all came rushing back. The past quickly, like a coin dropped in a pool, and the last hours more slowly, more painfully. He had been so angry at her, and then so swept up in her, and then so lost in that comfort that only her presence could provide.

Mary-Lynnette grimaced and sat up as Ash scrambled to his feet. "Nina!" he called, darting down the hallway. She wasn't in the bathroom, or the bedroom, or the spare room where he went to break things when he was angry. Her purse was sitting on the floor by the bed, but her keys were gone, and when he looked out the window, her car had left the parking lot.

His eyes lit on Mary-Lynnette and he felt the fury rise up in himself like a tornado forming. "Thank you!" he shouted at her. "Thank you for coming here for no reason and screwing me over again!"

Mary-Lynnette glared at him. "I didn't plan for any of this to happen. I just came here to make sure we were square. How was I to know you'd have turned into a pathetic basket case?"

Ash didn't realize he had the phone in his hand until the plastic casing shattered in his fist and the exposed wires shocked him. "Get the hell out of here," he growled.

"Fine."

He watched her fumble toward the door, still groggy, and added in a low, deathly cold voice, "I don't ever want to see you again, get it?"

"Also fine," she snapped, and the door slammed.

Ash found himself alone in his apartment. He got the phone from the bedroom and dialed Nina's dorm room number.

"Hello?" her roommate asked.

"Hi," he said, trying to sound like the calm, rational person he wasn't. "This is Ash, is Nina there?"

"No, she said she'd be back later today. Want me to take a message?"

"Yeah. Um....Tell her I called and I really need to talk to her, that what happened today wasn't what it looked like."

Chelsea laughed. "Oh god, I can't wait to hear about this one."

He managed to avoid swearing at her.

Part Five

Nina didn't want to go back to her dorm room. She also didn't want to go back to Ash's apartment. And if she went back to the library, she'd end up doing more school work, which wouldn't help this particular situation.

So she was driving around downtown Rachel, finding comfort in the monotony of stop signs and street lights and the hum of her car's engine.

So it was over. She was surprised by how much those words hurt, by the size of the hole left in her view of the future. Maybe it was just the shock that stung so much. She hadn't seen this coming at all. It was possible Ash hadn't, either.

But that didn't make it okay.

She was about to head through an intersection when she saw a cop with his siren going weave through the cross traffic. If she didn't stop, they would plow right into each other, and in a nanosecond, she had made her decision.

Her feet slammed on the breaks.

A loud thump sounded in her ears.

The car jolted beneath her, slamming her into the steering wheel.

Glass shattered.

"Oh shit," Nina muttered.

She was still for a moment, checking to make sure she could feel and move each limb, that her vision was steady and she could remember her name. When she was pretty sure she was uninjured, she climbed slowly out of the car.

From the car behind her, Mary-Lynnette Carter emerged.

She was rubbing her head, where there was a small cut. Her VW had crashed into the back of Nina's heavy old Ford, and the windshield had shattered on top of her. When she saw Nina, she seemed to shrink.

They stopped a few feet away from each other. Nina sighed, shrugged, and said, "I've got insurance, how about you?"

Mary-Lynnette nodded. "It's a rental, full coverage. It will probably pay for yours, too, since the accident was my fault."

"Nah," Nina told her. "It was an accident. I shouldn't have stopped so fast, but if I hadn't I would have hit the cop. There was no way you could have kept from hitting me." She sat down on the trunk of her car, noticing that the bumper had hardly even been dented. "We should probably wait for the police to fill out an accident report anyway."

They waited in silence for a few minutes, Nina sitting on her trunk, Mary-Lynnette leaning against her smashed rental car. Blood trickled down her forehead in a small but steady stream, and Nina reached into her car for a box of Kleenex.

"Here," she said, holding them out.

"Thanks." Mary-Lynnette pressed one to her bleeding forehead. The traffic swarmed around them, and the scent of exhaust was heavy in the air. "Listen, I want you to know that what happened this morning didn't mean anything."

Nina's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "You can't expect me to believe that."

"Don't then, it's your choice. But I get to explain, that's only fair."

"Fine, explain why you were asleep in my boyfriend's arms two hours ago."

Nina expected anger, but saw only sadness on Mary-Lynnette's face. "He's my soulmate, okay? I can't change that and neither can he. The situation doesn't work for either one of us, which is part of why I'm leaving. It's just too painful for us to be around each other because we can't help feeling this way and we can't work out all our differences."

"What differences would those be?" Nina asked.

"Ash is...."

"A vampire, I know that part."

"I wasn't going to say that. He doesn't have any real set of values, no guidelines that he lives by. He does whatever strikes him to do, and he doesn't question if it's wrong or right."

Their eyes locked and neither one looked away.

"You haven't seen him in a long time," Nina said softly. "You don't know what you're talking about. Maybe once that was true, but not any more. It's mostly your fault, you know. You scared him straight. Or should I say scarred him straight."

"Ash will never be tamed," Mary-Lynnette said darkly.

"Then I guess it's good he found someone who doesn't want to tame him," Nina replied.

The police car finally arrived. A sweet black cop filled out a report and arranged for Mary-Lynnette's car to be towed. Then she gave Nina a ticket for driving without her license; in her haste to leave the apartment, she had left her purse in Ash's bedroom.

As Nina was starting across the street to call Chelsea–the lady cop wouldn't let her drive home without her license–Mary-Lynnette grabbed her arm. "Just be careful, okay?"

Nina glanced at her thoughtfully. "You've both got problems, right? I mean, it takes two to tango, the fault doesn't lie all with Ash. Maybe you should try to fix your own life before you fix his."

Part Six

Ash closed the front door behind himself, forgetting to lock it, and wandered numbly into the kitchen. He pulled out an IV bag of AB from the fridge and opened the valve in the tube so that the cold liquid poured smoothly into his mouth.

"Ash?" Nina asked from the doorway.

He sputtered and almost gagged.

"You're here," he gasped, wiping at the blood as it ran down his chin.

"I was in the bedroom. I assumed you'd hear me when you came in."

He shook his head, amazed to see her, and then quickly launched before she had time to change her mind. "I know you walked in on me and Mary and it didn't look very good-"

"No." She held up a hand and Ash stopped talking. "Don't try to justify it."

"But-"

"Don't," she repeated, walking toward around the table until she could pull out a chair and sit near him. Her eyes weren’t angry but thoughtful, interested. "I think I understand this now, about the two of you, why you can't stop loving her even though she's hurt you. See, I touched you while you were laying on the floor with her, and it all came so clear to me. She can get inside your head, can't she, and see all the places I can't. When I don't understand why you've done something, you have to explain it to me, but with her, she can just touch you and she'll know."

"That doesn't mean we're right for each other," Ash interjected. "Or that we'll get along."

"Apparently not." She leaned forward, intent, and took one of his hands in hers. "I went to the library and looked up ‘soulmate.’ I found a lot of myths, a lot of romance novels, and some weird young adult series. Anyway, it gave me an idea of how this is. I don't know all the specifics. I'm sure your relationship with her is complicated. How can it not be, when she knows so much of you? But I saw her today, and after we crashed our cars together, we talked for a couple of minutes, and I realized something. I don't expect our relationship to be perfect. I don't expect you to be perfect, and I know damn well that I'm not perfect. We're going to have problems. We probably already do. But I'm not ready to throw this thing away. I don't want to be in a relationship where I have to give up everything for that person. You did that with Mary-Lynnette, Tern's said as much, and I don't ever want you to do that for me."

"Don't rely on you always being there," Ash said softly. "That's what you mean."

"No, Ash, no." She lifted one hand to brush the golden hair off his face, and then cupped his cheek gently. "I mean that if you let yourself become some mechanical doll that I can program to do anything, I....I'm not going to love you the way I do now. You’d be somebody else."

He closed his eyes and Nina felt a drop of dampness touch her hand. "I don't know what to say."

"Then don’t say anything. I’m not asking for any promises."

At his coaxing, she eased from her chair into his lap. "I didn’t know girls could end a fight without demanding promises."

"Guess you haven’t been dating the right girls." She kissed him long and sweet, and added, "Don't try to be somebody else to please me."

He smiled against her lips. "Then I guess I won't be quitting the night shift, huh?"

Nina laughed silently and kissed him. "I guess not." She had been right all along. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

And where there’s fire, there’s ash.

The End

November 26, 1998

Jory San-Corinth