Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)
Page 11
But when he saw her, the same thing happened that always did: the guilt. The nagging feeling that she and he between them had killed Sheila.
He couldn’t even look at her anymore without seeing Sheila there too. It was as if Maddie had acquired a new shadow, a thin red-haired shadow that reproached him and made him feel that he didn’t deserve to be happy, and maybe Maddie didn’t either.
So they weren’t. William had made sure of that. And if he drove Maddie away from Ash Grove, as it seemed he might, he would have screwed up the lives of the only two girls he’d ever loved.
He wondered if this was Amdusias seeking revenge. Maybe the demon was angry at being denied and had put a curse on him and everyone he cared about.
No, that would have been too convenient. This was all on him. He couldn’t shift the blame anywhere else.
“Dude,” Jeremiah was saying. “The countdown’s about to start. Come on!”
He just shook his head, and Jeremiah finally said, or shouted, “Suit yourself,” and joined Tasha by the bar, where she handed him a glass of champagne.
McCloskey himself was standing at a microphone and leading the countdown. “TEN!” everyone shouted, on his cue. “NINE!…”
William turned his eyes back to the tabletop. Was Maddie in bed now, alone with that convenient sore throat? He deliberately sharpened the pain in his heart by calling up the image of her face, stricken and shocked as it had been when he left her. Maybe she’d get fed up with the way he was treating her and go back to Derek or one of her other exes. Maybe he had hurt her so much that she’d take some random guy to bed tonight, the way she had with him. He wouldn’t blame her. He understood it now, that impulse when you were hurting to reach out for someone to take you out of yourself.
Ten percent? Try ten thousand.
The countdown continued, but he shut out any thoughts of celebrating. No way was this new year going to bring anything but more misery to anyone in his life.
Chapter 9
Joy and her fiancé were having a low-key New Year’s Day hanging out in the living room. He was picking lazily at his acoustic guitar as she pretended to read a Southern playwriting anthology, supposedly in search of material for her senior project, but mostly just enjoying listening to him play. When there came a knock at the door, she said, “I’ll get it,” and uncurled herself from her comfortable spot on the sofa next to him.
She opened the door to find a stranger on the doorstep, a tall young man maybe a year or two older than her whose eyes kindled with eagerness when he saw her. His gaze seemed all the more intense because his eyes were hooded under sharply angled brows beneath a thatch of wavy brown hair. The strong lines of his jaw and cheekbones were set off by a mouth full and curved like that of an angel in a Victorian stained-glass window. She could half imagine huge white wings unfurling from the strong shoulders.
But that was fanciful. He was dressed like a mortal, in jeans and a sweater that fit snugly to his fine physique, and probably he was only here for some completely boring reason, like selling magazine subscriptions or hoping for tutoring from her father. All the same, when he smiled, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the sun had burst through the cloud cover and golden trumpets had begun to play.
“Happy New Year,” he said, with a warmth that seemed to mean more than the words.
“Happy New Year,” she repeated automatically. It was a little overpowering being in the presence of so much beauty.
When she didn’t say anything more, the smile dimmed slightly. “You do know me, right?” the vision asked.
“I’m sorry,” she began, and his face changed: shock and dismay smoothed all the animation away. “Have we met before?” she asked.
“I thought we had,” was the peculiar reply.
She dredged her memory. Surely she couldn’t have forgotten a guy this gorgeous if they had met. “Oh wait, you’re the guy from the billboards, aren’t you? The Sybarite ads.”
His luminous grey eyes seemed to dim with disappointment and confusion. Clearly that wasn’t what he’d hoped for her to say.
“I guess so,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Are you one of Mom’s students? Or my dad’s?”
“Yeah.”
Cryptic much? “Well, they went to a champagne brunch, but I guess you can come in and wait. My fiancé and I aren’t doing anything important.”
“Your fiancé?” he repeated, staring. “You’re engaged?”
The disbelief in his voice stung. “Believe it or not, I found a guy who wasn’t hung up on looks,” she said stiffly.
“I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just… you’re so young.”
This reaction she was used to. “You don’t have to say it: we should wait, we have our whole lives ahead of us. We got the memo.”
He just looked at her in a sad sort of disbelief, and she dialed the indignation back. “If you’d rather come back later, that’s fine.”
“No, I’d like to wait.” He sounded so subdued. What was it that had hit him so hard?
She stepped back to let him in, noting as he passed how nice he smelled; clean and masculine, like cedar and pine woods. Then they both reached at the same time to shut the door, and his hand brushed hers. The softest touch, but it jolted through her with a cascade of sensory confusion. The tangy sweet fragrance of wild roses. The thud of his heartbeat as she laid her cheek against his bare chest. The touch of his lips on hers.
Heat blazed in her face as she came to herself. He was staring at her with so searching an expression that she immediately looked away. This was all in her mind. She was standing in the living room of her own house, blushing furiously because her hand had touched that of a random friend of her father’s.
Her fiancé was still sitting on the couch playing his guitar, and at the sight of him the stranger’s head rocked back as if he’d walked into a telephone pole. “William?” he said in an incredulous voice.
William gave him an uncertain smile. “Sorry, we met?”
It took the visitor a few seconds to come up with an answer. “It’s been a while,” he said finally. “I used to be at Ash Grove. Tanner Lindsey.”
Joy’s memory clicked into place, and she stared at him in surprise and a little bit of apprehension. Tanner Lindsey had been thrown out of Ash Grove… when, about two years back? He had been a notorious troublemaker, spray-painting graffiti on the roof of the dining hall, riding his motorcycle inside the theater. What on earth was he doing here?
William must have been having similar thoughts, because his brightness sounded a little forced when he said, “Good to see you again, man. What are you up to these days?”
Tanner sat down slowly in an armchair as Joy took a seat beside William, snuggling close to him. She had a vague wish for the reassurance of being near him. Tanner was staring at the two of them as if they were somehow remarkable.
“Up to,” he repeated absently.
“Modeling,” Joy prompted him. “You’ve seen the billboards on Highway 64, William. But how come we haven’t read about you?”
“I go by the name Tristan now.”
He wasn’t very forthcoming. It was none of her business, but couldn’t stop herself from asking, “What did you want to talk to Dad about?”
He seemed to come to himself. “Oh. I’m thinking of applying for college and needed to talk with Ste—with Dr. Sumner about something on my transcript.”
“You were in the music track at Ash Grove, right?” asked William. “Still playing?”
“From time to time.” The guy named Tanner was staring at Joy again, searching her face as if for something he didn’t see. When his eyes dropped lower she shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny.
“Is your engagement a recent decision?” he asked.
She felt herself blush at the implication, and snapped, “It’s not a shotgun wedding, as if it’s any of your business.” Checking her waistline. The nerve.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’
s just, well, at our age…”
“We know it’s unusual,” said William calmly. “But when you’re sure, why wait?”
“You’re that sure?”
He seemed to be directing the question to Joy more than William, and she said instantly, “Of course,” feeling somehow that she needed to defend him. “William’s the kindest and most talented guy I’ve ever known.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “I think you’re a little biased.”
“No, you are incredibly talented.”
“They just taught you to say that in girlfriend school.”
On an impulse that she didn’t stop to examine, she drew his face down to hers and kissed him. When their visitor coughed, she released William and felt herself blushing again. They usually didn’t go in for PDA. Why had she felt the need to do that in front of Tanner Lindsey?
He didn’t comment, though, or not directly. “How did you two get together?” he asked.
William liked to tell the story. “It was at the Beltane dance last spring,” he said, setting aside the guitar. “My band was playing, and I looked out at the dance floor and saw Joy dancing in a group of girls, and it was like I was seeing her in a different way from before. We’d always been friends, but that night for the first time I looked at her and wanted her to be more than that.”
Their visitor didn’t look he was enjoying the story. “What happened then?” he asked, almost grudgingly.
“I happened to know Joy’s Achilles heel. She has a weakness for roses.”
“Really?” exclaimed Tanner, and she thought of that brief burst of impressions when their hands had touched, the fragrance of wild roses, and she averted her eyes quickly.
“So I asked the guys to play ‘Kiss From a Rose,’ without me, and dedicate it to Joy from me. And then I just went up to her when they started to play and asked her to dance.” He smiled at her, his eyes behind their wire-rimmed glasses warm with reminiscence, and the memory made her smile too. He had always been such a dear friend, and to see him standing there in his rented tux and a shy eagerness, as the song played…
“It was like seeing him for the first time,” she said. “I’d always loved him as a friend, but that night he was different. We were different together.”
“I knew that song would do it,” said William complacently. “You always cried whenever it played on the classics station.”
“I did not.”
“Did too. You still do.”
“Well, you always get all misty-eyed when you hear the Elvira Madigan concerto. I should start calling you Emozart.”
“Lies! Foul lies!” He lunged at her and tickled her stomach, and she squealed, swatting at his hands.
Tanner’s grave voice cut across their horseplay, and she subsided, embarrassed, as he asked, “So then you got engaged?”
“That fall we did,” she said. “We’ll probably hold off on the wedding until we graduate from college, but it’s nice to have everything already squared away.”
“I see,” said Tanner. For some reason the entire conversation seemed to be depressing him—no, not just that; he looked like he was in actual pain. His feelings were so naked that she was embarrassed for him. It didn’t seem polite to sit there watching.
“I’m going to get something to drink,” she said, standing. “Y’all want anything?”
When they accepted, she went to the kitchen to fill three tumblers with ice and soda. As she returned with them to the living room, Tanner sprang to his feet to take them from her. “I’ve got it,” she said, moving to set them down on the coffee table, but it was too late: his fingers brushed hers, and again came a disorienting rush of images and sensations.
His face framed by red roses, he was smiling down at her where she lay. She felt grass against her bare back, and the light caress of his fingers moving from her lips to her throat to—
She jerked away, and one of the tumblers fell to the floor, spilling ice and soda across the rug.
“Sorry, static electricity,” she said through numb lips, aware that both guys were staring at her. “I’ll get a sponge.” She walked back to the kitchen on legs made more unsteady because he had picked up the glass and spilled ice cubes and was following her.
In the kitchen she didn’t look at him but busied herself filling a glass with fresh ice. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him standing there silently, watching her. She popped open a fresh can of soda and held it over the sink as it overflowed. She was self-conscious about every move with him watching her.
“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.
“Nothing. Just a little shock, like I said.” When she had poured the soda out she set the glass on the counter between them. She wasn’t going to risk touching him a third time.
“Something happened,” he said. “You looked frightened. Of me?”
Not of him, exactly—just of her own thoughts when she was near him. But she wasn’t going to try to explain that. “It was nothing,” she said, trying to be brisk. “I remembered something, is all.”
“Something about me?” The hope that blazed in his clear grey eyes made him even more impossibly beautiful. She couldn’t look directly at him; it was like trying to look at the sun.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mumbled.
“Why not?”
That such a fantasy could pop into her mind at such a trivial cause made her feel miserably disloyal. Just because he was gorgeous didn’t mean it was okay for her to daydream about him. And telling him would give him an opening. For what, she didn’t know, but an opening all the same. “It wasn’t real.”
“Maybe what we think is real can change.”
What was that supposed to mean? She dropped her voice even more so that William wouldn’t overhear from the living room. “You don’t even know what I saw.”
For a second she made the mistake of meeting his gaze, and he looked steadily into her eyes as if he could read her thoughts there. “I may be able to guess,” he said, and her cheeks burned. He must be used to having girls fantasize about him.
“Well then,” she said shortly, “you know it’s something that didn’t happen.”
“But maybe it was supposed to happen.” He was speaking in a low voice too now, but it didn’t sound furtive. It sounded… intimate. “Maybe you saw something that’s supposed to be a memory.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Joy, please.” His voice was almost a whisper now, oddly plaintive. She dared to look at his face again, and found his eyes fixed on her searchingly. “I’m sure you’ll know me, if you let yourself.” He reached one long graceful hand toward her face, and almost mesmerized she made no move to evade him. His fingertips were just inches away from her cheek when, with a wrenching effort, she stepped away and grabbed a kitchen towel.
“Excuse me,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “I need to clean up that mess.”
She silently mopped up the spilled soda and sat down with William again as he and Tanner made conversation. Tanner kept mentioning things that, from his expression, she suspected he meant her to recognize, but she refused to play that game. She found herself getting angrier as the minutes passed. Why was he so cryptic? Why couldn’t he just come out and tell her what he was doing there?
With part of her mind she knew that it was easier to get angry than to look more closely at why he had affected her so strongly. He had upset the happy equilibrium of her life, and she resented it.
She could see that William too was increasingly puzzled by a subtext he sensed but didn’t understand, but he was too polite to ask their visitor what was going on. Altogether Joy was hugely relieved when Tanner Lindsey rose to leave.
“Thanks for the drink,” he said. “I think I’ll try another time to see Dr. Sumner.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Joy said, and to William, as an excuse, “I’m going to take down the wreath from the front door; it’s starting to molt.”
He turned his face away. His profile looked almost noble, as if he were an ancient knight from legend, cursed with immortality and doomed to wander the earth in search of—what?
“I want you to remember,” he said. “Remember us.”
Before she could ask what he meant, a man’s deep voice said, “That’s him, officers,” and she looked around to find two policemen and a stranger standing in the driveway. Behind them was a patrol car and an elegant black Jaguar, and a motorcycle that she realized must belong to Tanner.
Beside her, she felt his start of surprise. He stared at the expensively suited, dark-bearded man standing between the policemen. “Raven?” he exclaimed. “You’re still here?”
The man lifted an eyebrow in amusement. “As you see.” He looked sleek as a cat, his dark grey suit and purple shirt striking a sophisticated contrast to the policemen’s uniforms.
“All right, Lindsey, let’s get a move on,” said the younger of the two policemen. “Hands on your head, come on down where we can see you.”
“Why?” There was wariness in the word.
“You know why,” said the older cop, who had a spare tire and a long-suffering expression. “You just better hope Miz Melisande decides not to press charges. Now get your ass down here.”
His eyes darkening like thunderclouds, Tanner obeyed. With his hands clasped at the back of his head he slowly descended the stairs, and he made no move to resist as the younger cop led him to the patrol car and made him brace his hands on the roof to be patted down. Anxious, Joy opened the front door and called to William inside.
When he joined her in the doorway, the older cop was putting handcuffs on Tanner. “What did he do, officer?” William asked.
The sleek dark man in the suit was the one who answered. “Nothing that you need concern yourself with,” he said, with a smile that relieved the words of harshness. “My employer merely needs to have a meeting of the minds with Mr. Lindsey. If indeed he has the requisite equipment.”