The Shadow and the Rose

by Amanda DeWees

  Chapter 25

  At the Clay County Medical Center, Joy and Tanner were separated, to the vocal displeasure of both, but soon enough Joy was able to join Tan in his room. She had been looked over and given an ultrasound, and both she and Rose-to-be were pronounced healthy. Tanner’s wound turned out to be fairly superficial; he needed stitching up but no blood transfusions. They were keeping him overnight, however, given his state of exhaustion. Joy had stepped in before Melisande could finish him off, but the succubus had clearly already sucked much of his strength away in the days leading up to Samhain. The symbols drawn in herbal unguent on his body—now sponged clean—had further muddled his thinking.

  “I’ve been feeling so woozy and lightheaded I could hardly think straight,” he confessed.

  “Well, obviously you weren’t at a hundred percent, or you wouldn’t have attempted suicide by succubus.” She kept her tone light, but her heart still constricted whenever she thought of how close she had come to losing him.

  He was silent for a moment. Lying in the hospital bed in a cotton gown, he looked depleted and vulnerable. “After I chickened out and went back to her that night after we talked, I figured you wouldn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”

  “Why did you go back? Please tell me it wasn’t to protect me.”

  “I can’t even say now if it was that, or if it just seemed useless. But after failing you like that, I... I didn’t think there was any reason to keep fighting her.”

  “But you know better now, right?” she asked anxiously.

  He gave her a tired smile. “I should have known you wouldn’t give up on me.”

  “That’s a promise,” said Joy, and snuggled closer to him on the hospital bed.

  They were finally alone after the bustle of the last few hours. Dr. Aysgarth and Mo had seen them safely admitted before leaving with Dr. Fellowes, who was still looking shell-shocked and feeble. Joy guessed that he would be retiring from council duties, and Dr. Aysgarth confirmed that guess in a decided voice.

  “In fact, I’d like to offer you his vacant seat on the council,” said the principal. She held up her hand as Joy started to respond. “But you won’t be taking it right away. I’m sorry to tell you this, Joy, but I’m going to have to suspend you. Your academic performance has gone all to hell this semester, and you’ve been blatantly cutting classes. And there’s the matter of fighting with Sheila.” Then she added with the suspicion of a smile: “But somehow I doubt that house arrest will be too arduous a punishment, now that you have such good company. You may even want to stay suspended until Baby Sumner is old enough to be left with a sitter.”

  Joy laughed and said that suited her just fine. As the principal turned to leave, Joy thought to ask, “You did take Raven in for questioning, didn’t you?”

  Dr. Aysgarth thought. “That’s the dark saturnine one? I haven’t seen him tonight.”

  When Joy thought about it, she couldn’t remember seeing him in the garden either. “I wonder if he suspected things would go bad and bailed beforehand,” she said, although that didn’t jibe with what she had seen of him.

  “We’ll keep an eye out for him,” Dr. Aysgarth promised. “Someone that close to Melisande must know where all the bodies are buried.” Joy couldn’t repress a shudder at the turn of phrase.

  Gail and her husband stayed on after the principal had gone, sitting with Joy through her examination and little by little learning about the events she had experienced that night. “Who’s with Tan?” she asked, and learned that her friends had all crowded into Tasha’s car and insisted that she bring them to the hospital. Joy imagined Maddie and Clark interrogating Tanner and groaned. She hoped they’d be gentle with him.

  When Joy was finished telling her side of the story, Gail began. “It was your father who’s responsible for us finding you,” she said. “He couldn’t reach you, so he gave me a call and insisted that I find you. I talked to some of the girls, and—well—”

  “They told you about the scene at the bonfire,” guessed Joy, “and you sent out a search party.”

  Gail nodded. “Essentially, yes, although it was really when we found Dr. Fellowes that we started to realize how serious the situation was. He had this wild look in his eye and was going on about his ‘pale mistress,’ and Mo figured out what he meant. But he couldn’t tell us where you were, and the track we found stopped short in the middle of the woods.”

  “Where the rose garden appeared,” said Joy. “How did you get there?”

  “Honestly, I don’t think it was anything we did. We were just standing there wondering where to look next, and there was a flash of light, and all of a sudden we were there. It may be that Melisande had laid down some kind of cloaking spell, and it was broken when she lost her strength. Or it may be that she had nothing to do with it. We’re still trying to figure out that part.” Gail glanced at Joy’s arms, protectively crossed over her stomach. “What did happen when you defeated Melisande?”

  “I’m not sure myself,” she said. “My best guess is that somehow the direction of energy transfer was reversed. Maybe the blood had something to do with it—maybe when I scratched her it made her vulnerable. But it felt to me like the life and youth and beauty she lost was absorbed into”—she patted her belly—“little Rose here.”

  “That must have been a terrifying feeling,” said Jim. “I wonder what that’s going to mean for her as she grows up.”

  Joy didn’t say it, because she knew how bizarre it would sound, but when the baby had moved inside her at that crucial moment, it was as if Rose had been feeling delight. She thought about her two brief meetings with the teenaged Rose; how bright and friendly and pretty—and, yes, normal—she had been. “Somehow I think she’ll be just fine,” she said.

  Now that she was alone with Tanner, she wanted to fill him in on her glimpses of their daughter’s future, but she knew it could wait. “You get some sleep,” she told him, stroking his hair back from his forehead. “I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving you again.”

  “I don’t know how I was lucky enough to find you,” he said. “You saved my life in so many ways.”

  She hugged him, but carefully, because of the stitches and the IV attached to his arm.

  “I hope I won’t ever have to again. Don’t scare me like that, okay?” She looked searchingly into his eyes. “I meant what I said. You may not believe in you, but I do. And you can trust me to know what I’m doing.” Most of the time, anyway.

  “You’ve convinced me,” he said drowsily. His eyelids were starting to look heavy. “If you think so well of me, there must be something salvageable here.”

  “Damn right,” she said contentedly. Then, “I can’t wait for you to be released so I can take you to meet my dad.”

  That opened his eyes in a hurry. “Oh, god,” he breathed. “He’s going to kill me.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? I’m the guy who knocked up his only daughter. And for that matter”—he struggled to sit up—“how am I going to support us? I don’t even have a career anymore. Oh, Joy, I’ve really gotten you into a mess.”

  “Stop worrying. You can work as a musician, or get a student loan and go to college. And I can tutor in English until the baby is old enough for me to get a full-time job. Maybe I can even find work as a voiceover actress. It’ll work out. Dad won’t let us starve.”

  Tanner groaned. “Now I’ve gotten his daughter knocked up and I’m freeloading off him. Dr. Sumner will never forgive me.”

  “Who is this I’m never forgiving?” asked a familiar voice, and Joy’s father stepped across the threshold.

  “Dad!” cried Joy, and launched herself across the room at him. She wasn’t sure whether she was happy or angry. “Why are you here? Isn’t it dangerous for you? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming. Sit down, I’ll get a doctor—”

  He kissed her on the forehead and held her at arm’s length. “Easy, kittycat. I’ve got my oncol
ogist’s permission.”

  He looked better than he had in ages. His color was good, and the glint of humor was back in his eye. In khakis and a denim shirt he looked younger than when he had set out for Oklahoma, even with the sprinkling of silver in his beard.

  “I got into town early this evening, so I could surprise you tomorrow,” he said. “Then when I talked to Gail and she told me what she was afraid was happening tonight, I had to come find you. I’m so glad you’re all right.” Then he got a proper look at her midsection, and turned to look at Tanner, who was doing his best to look like an upright, responsible young man who had never impregnated a teenage girl. “I gather that a lot has happened since I left,” he said to Joy.

  “Now, Dad, you told me you wanted me to be independent and handle things on my own,” she said, with more bravado than she felt. “So I want you to meet Tanner, your future son-in-law and the father of your granddaughter. Don’t kill him,” she added. “Someone else almost did that already.”

  “Hmph,” said her father, but he took Tanner’s outstretched hand and shook it.

  “Sir,” said Tanner, who was looking pale, “I want to assure you that I have every intention of—”

  Her father waved him to silence. “Joy is right. I told her to think for herself, and I can’t start second-guessing her decisions now. In any case, her mother knew what she wanted from a very young age. I think Joy is just following her mother’s example.”

  Joy beamed up at him. “I wanted to follow in her footsteps,” she said. “I just didn’t realize that this would be how I did it.” Thoughtfully she added, “It beats the hell out of playing piano.”

  “Just don’t make a habit of it, kid.” Her father put his arm around her. “Granddaughter, huh? Well, maybe the second one will be a boy.”

  “We can name him Thorne,” said Tanner, with a smile meant just for Joy. It drew her back to his bedside so that she could kiss him again.

  Joy refused to let either of the men she loved out of her sight that night. In the end, the hospital staff brought in two fold-down chairs for her and her father to set up next to Tan’s bed. Long after Tan had fallen into an exhausted sleep, she sat up telling her father of all that had happened.

  Outside the hospital, Halloween night passed safely into the new month. At Ash Grove High, the bonfire died down and was extinguished, and students straggled to their dorms for a few hours’ sleep before the morning. A breeze sighed through the woods behind the campus, meandered across the Hiwassee River, and finally wandered over to the old cemetery, where white roses bloomed out of season.