Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  He made a smothered sound and flailed at it, but its gelatinous surface merely quivered gently and absorbed the blows; they sent ripples over its—skin?—but did not dislodge it. When he grabbed the extensions attached to his head, they gave in his hands like jelly but did not weaken.

  “Enough,” came a commanding voice, loud enough to be heard through the things blocking his ears. “He’s awake. Reading his panic will do you no good.”

  Instantly the appendages retracted, freeing his mouth and ears, and the great mass rolled quiveringly off him. He sat up in bed, gulping in air and pushing as far away as he could get from the thing, until his back was against a wall.

  With a gooey plop the thing landed on the floor. It surface was translucent, like a jellyfish, and every quiver sent light shuddering over it. Nausea rose in Tanner, and he swallowed hard. What had that thing been doing to him?

  “He wasn’t hurting you,” came the voice again, and he tore his eyes from the gelatinous form to find Melisande watching him from a seat across the room.

  His heart gave a thud of dismay. A bit wildly he looked around him and saw that he wasn’t in the Sumner basement, or in Joy’s room, or even in Joy’s hospital room.

  He was back in his old suite in Melisande’s house.

  The abstract modern art, the thick pale carpet, the streamlined furniture were all just as he remembered them. The only difference was the disgusting blob thing, now sitting motionless on the floor, and the metal bars that stretched across the room from floor to ceiling, shutting it in with him—and preventing him from reaching Melisande, or the door.

  “What’s going on?” he croaked, his mouth dry with dread and revulsion. “What is that thing?”

  Melisande’s smile was as composed as ever. “That thing, as you call it, is an old friend. You’re just seeing him without his face on.” She gave an encouraging nod to the iridescent mass. “Go on,” she told it. “Show him your party trick.”

  The glob instantly stretched upward, shooting out two armlike extensions, as the top extended into a bulbous shape supported by a stem—like a head and neck, Tan realized. At the same time its base split into two, so that it was roughly humanoid. It stood as tall as Tanner would have been if he’d been on his feet. As he watched in revolted fascination, the thing continued to refine its shape, with hands and fingers forming at the ends of its arms, and feet taking shape at the bottom of its stumps. In seconds it had come to look like a roughly formed but featureless human, like a store mannequin.

  “Now comes the spectacular part,” said Melisande, as color bloomed on its surface in a hundred places at once, running like paint but in all directions, drawn not by gravity but by some other force or intent. Textures rose now on the thing’s surface, and as colors moved and melded they took on different finishes: matte for skin, glossy for hair, and a woven texture for the jeans.

  It was a duplicate of himself.

  Slowly, Tan swung his legs to the floor and got off the bed. The duplicate watched him, not moving, and smiled as it took him in. It made no motion toward Tan when he reached up and gingerly prodded its shoulder. Its skin felt real. So did the resistance of muscle and bone beneath it. It even had the scar where Melisande’s dagger had cut him on Samhain night.

  “Does it talk?” Tan asked.

  “Of course I talk,” said his double, in a voice that wasn’t his. “A fine husband I’d be to Joy if I couldn’t talk.”

  He recognized the voice now, and fury surged hotly into his chest. His fist shot out, but the double was ready, catching his wrist before the blow connected.

  “Ah, ah,” the double chided in Raven’s voice, holding his arm immobile. “You don’t want me to go home to my little wife looking all roughed up, do you? I don’t know what I’d tell her.”

  His smugness was more than Tanner could take. “Get out of my shape or I’ll punch your face in. You’re not going near Joy.”

  Raven’s familiar mocking smile looked alien on his own face. “I certainly am. It’s my best opportunity yet for connubial bliss; I’m not going to pass it up just to please you.”

  When he threw a punch with his other hand, Raven caught that too and simply laughed at him. Struggle as hard as he could, he couldn’t budge the grip on his fists.

  “Don’t bother,” Raven said. “I have all of your instincts and all of your strength. I know how you fight, so can’t catch me off guard. By the way, I have to say how pleased I am to be so fit. I must commend you on keeping in shape.”

  Breathing hard with effort, unable either to free himself or to deal Raven the beatdown he so richly deserved, Tanner looked from him to Melisande, who still sat calmly in her chair, watching them. “Tell me what’s going on. You don’t need anything from Joy or Rose—you know they didn’t retain any of your powers. There’s no point in sending Raven on another recon mission.”

  “Call it a precaution,” said Melisande. At a gesture from her, Raven released Tanner’s wrists, and he resisted the urge to rub the circulation back into his hands. “I would very much like to know how your stumpy bride managed to defeat me on Samhain night. It would be foolish, now that I’m returned, not to learn all I possibly can about whatever power she possesses.”

  For a second his curiosity overpowered the rest of his emotions. “How the hell did you return? Raven’s little plan for the concert didn’t go through.”

  “Once you and Steven began fiddling around with history, it was fairly simple,” said Raven. “The instability you created gave me the perfect opening—you and Miss Rosenbaum. All I had to do was find one of the holes in history and pull Melisande through it. It was easy—as easy as stepping into your shoes.”

  Tan’s mind was already back on Joy, and a recollection eased his urgency very slightly. “Joy will suss you out,” he said. “Last time you tried this, she had your number in five minutes. You may have my looks down, but you won’t get anything else about me right.”

  Raven smirked with Tanner’s face. “I was forced to improvise that time. But now that I’ve had a chance to swim around in your head, soak in your memories, marinate in your muscle memory, I’m perfect in the role.”

  Tan shook his head in relief and grim satisfaction. “Joy will know it’s not me.”

  His mirror image gave him a grin that was more like his own than Raven’s, and Melisande chuckled. “She’s already had two weeks to find him out,” she said. “Yet she’s none the wiser. Apparently Raven makes a very good Tristan.”

  For two weeks he’d been unconscious while this impostor was deceiving Joy? Living with her, touching her—please, not that. “Don’t you lay a finger on her!”

  “And what’s to stop me?” taunted Raven, and when Tanner lunged at him, he simply stepped backward through the bars. His body seemed to ooze around them so that in scarcely more than a second he stood securely on the other side as Tan strained his arms through the bars, yearning to throttle him.

  “You bastard,” Tan choked. “You stay away from Joy.”

  “Don’t forget your little Rose,” said his double. “She’s growing very quickly, too. It’s a shame you haven’t been around for that. Joy says she looks more like me every day. She means you, of course,” he added. “But she doesn’t know that.”

  Rage threatened to suffocate him at the thought of this smirking, soulless thing holding his baby daughter. If he could just reach him, he’d punch his lights out. “Leave them alone,” he ordered. “If you go back to them I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” inquired Melisande. “You’re in no position to issue threats, my Tristan.”

  “I’ll get out of here sooner or later, and then I’ll show everyone what he is.”

  His usurper shrugged, unconcerned. “I’m well established in your place, Tristan. No one has any doubts that I’m Joy’s husband and Rose’s father. I only came here today to collect a few grace notes for my performance. But soon I won’t even need to do that.” He smiled the sharklike smile that was pure Raven. “I’m already a
better you than you are. I come equipped with a lot more modes than brooding teenager—and I give an amazing foot massage.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Tanner could only watch, seething at his helplessness, as his double sauntered out of the room.

  He strained at the bars with all his strength, but they didn’t budge a millimeter. “I wouldn’t bother,” said Melisande, rising from her chair and approaching him. “They weren’t forged in earthly fires. Trust me, you can’t get free by brute force.”

  “What is he going to do to Joy and Rose?” he demanded.

  A flicker of impatience crossed her smooth features. “If you’re worried that he’ll hurt them, don’t be. His mission isn’t vengeance—not yet. He’s only to observe and report back to me.” She gave a delicate shudder. “And the boredom of what he reports is beyond my power to express. You would never have been able to resign yourself to such a tedious existence, my love. A few more weeks of it and you would have left of your own accord. Raven and I merely relieved you of what would have become an intolerable burden.”

  He tried to shut out her words. She didn’t know. How could she? She wasn’t even human, so she had no way of understanding what bound him to Joy and Rose. Something beautiful and tender—something that that sickening Raven was exploiting. The thought of Joy, trusting and innocent, opening her heart to that inhuman thing made him almost physically sick. Just as horrible was the idea of his tiny, helpless baby daughter in the shapeshifter’s grasp.

  He had to believe that Joy would figure out the truth, as she had before. She knew him better than anyone; she’d be able to tell a fake from the real thing. The thought brought a flicker of hope. Maybe she’d been playing along, pretending she hadn’t caught on, as she figured out how to protect herself and their daughter from the thing wearing her husband’s face.

  After all, Joy had defeated Melisande. Who was to say she couldn’t defeat Raven as well?

  Chapter 18

  “The weirdest thing happened,” said Tanner that Thursday evening, after Joy had put Rose down and joined him in the living room, where he was strumming his guitar. “Bobby told me today that he and Donna are getting divorced.”

  “What?” Joy stared at him in horror. “You’re kidding! That can’t be true.” But he didn’t retract it. Stunned, she could only say, “I can’t believe it.”

  “I know, right? I never saw it coming.”

  “What on earth happened? And how can you be so calm about it?” She would have expected him to have told her as soon as he got home from work, to be as broken up about it as she was—no, more. They were practically his parents.

  He shook his head helplessly. “I guess I’m in shock. It just doesn’t seem possible.”

  “You can say that again.” She tried to think of any moment that could have told her this was coming, any hint of discord or tension, and came up with nothing. Bobby and Donna had always seemed entirely in harmony with each other, so unified that the thought of them apart seemed unnatural. “I wonder if it’s something to do with Ginny,” she said finally.

  “What about Ginny?”

  “Didn’t they tell you? She’s moved back in with them. She and her husband are separated now.” There hadn’t been any warning about that, either. Frowning, she said, “Does it seem to you like a lot of people are breaking up all at once?”

  He set aside his guitar. “What, you mean there are others?”

  Joy counted on her fingers. “Bobby and Donna. Ginny and Chuck. Maddie’s mom and stepdad. Tasha and Jeremiah. And all since the reboot. That seems weird to me.”

  He thought about it. “If it was Maddie and one of her boyfriends, it would be business as usual, but everyone else… what do you think’s going on?”

  “I’m starting to wonder if the reboot went wrong. Should we tell the council?”

  “It’s not a whole lot to go on. Maybe I should dig around a little first, see if it’s happening to any more people.”

  “I’d hate to put it off and find out later we could have prevented things from getting worse,” she said. What was more, if all these other breakups were fallout from the reboot, maybe her strange numbness toward Tan was part of the same pattern—and that would be the best news she could get.

  Even more reason, she told herself, to talk to Dr. Aysgarth about her issue. She’d foolishly put it off, hoping it would go away on its own and she wouldn’t have to discuss something so terribly personal with the principal, but maybe that was the wrong thing to do.

  “You may be right,” he said thoughtfully. “Tell you what, tomorrow I’ll stop by campus and see Mo, see what he thinks about it.” He drew her close and kissed her, rumpling her hair fondly before he released her. “We’re so lucky that nothing’s gone wrong with us.”

  She dropped her eyes to hide the guilt that rose up in her. She shouldn’t let him go on thinking things were the same; it wasn’t right to deceive him like this.

  But if there turned out to be a way to cure it before he had to know about it, wouldn’t that be better? It would save him needless pain, wouldn’t it? She was still debating when his ringtone went off.

  “Yeah? …Okay, I’ll be right there. Larry needs me to help him with a plumbing issue,” he told her. “I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so.”

  She nodded, half relieved that she could delay her decision a little longer, and smiled a goodbye as he pulled on his jacket and let himself out of the house.

  Larry had needed Tan pretty frequently in the past couple of weeks for these after-hours chores. She was almost grateful, though, since it meant less time putting on her act of okayness.

  Maybe Mo or Dr. Aysgarth would have the solution, and would know how to help her get back to feeling the way she used to about Tan—and how to set things right with formerly happy couples like the Hartwells and Tasha and Jeremiah.

  It was a pretty enormous maybe. But she was going to have to pursue it as long as there was a chance that it could come to pass. Suddenly too impatient to wait for Tanner to talk to Mo about it, she reached for her phone and started a text to Dr. Aysgarth.

  * * *

  When Mo’s voice boomed, “Come in,” William pushed the office door open and stepped into the dim, messy office. Mo looked up from his computer monitor.

  “Ah, young Russell,” he said cordially. “Close the door, have a seat. The switchover still treating you well? Tell me things.”

  “You seem chipper,” William ventured, doing as bidden and dropping into the chair in front of the desk. “Does that mean everything’s still going all right?” It was a Friday morning just over two weeks after the reboot, and William still felt like he was walking on eggshells.

  “The signs look good, yes. A few minor oddball things that may be anomalies, but hopefully nothing more serious.” He tapped briefly on his keyboard and then sat back against the cracked leather of his chair. “For some reason, I’ve been craving eggplant parmesan,” he added. “Always hated eggplant before. Still, nothing to worry about… at least, as far as I know. If the whole hemisphere is suddenly craving it, we could be in for a shortage. And who knows what that could lead to? This could be the start of what the future will call the Great Eggplant Wars. First hoarding, then skirmishes in the produce sections of grocery stores. Eventually the national guard will be called in to put down fighting in the eggplant pastures… it could get ugly.”

  This was downright giddy for Mo. “I’m glad everything went okay,” said William, trying not to sound impatient. He hadn’t come here to spin food-based alternate histories.

  Mo must have sensed his impatience. “How about you?” he asked. “Memories seem to be in place? No sudden desire for breadcrumb topping and melted cheese?”

  “My memories are back, yeah.” It was surreal to look back over the last month and a half. Being engaged to Joy, then being co-opted by Maddie—but some of the recovered memories had been more painful.

  “I’m still having a hard time accepting that Sheila’s gone,” he confe
ssed. “I feel this need to talk to someone about it, but I don’t know who.” None of his friends had really liked her, so he couldn’t expect them to understand.

  “It may surprise you to learn,” said Mo, clasping his hands over his broad belly and regarding William with a thoughtful look in his bulging blue eyes, “that I was in love once. Well, that may not be surprising in itself, but the fact that it was reciprocated… anyway, it was a long time ago, and the circumstances were different, but I remember it vividly.”

  “What happened?”

  “She grew distant. Didn’t have as much time for me. Finally she told me she’d been seeing someone else on the side. My best friend.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Ouch indeed. Handsome guy, an athlete. The three of us stayed friends; I was best man at their wedding. But being around her… it got less painful over time, but it was never easy.” He fell silent a moment. “You can know she’s not good enough for you and still feel like hell that she’s not in your life anymore.”

  That was it—the thing that no one else got about Sheila. He wasn’t denying that she had done, or tried to do, some rotten things. But the loss of her still left a ragged hole in his life.

  It was nothing against Maddie, either. He didn’t want to lose her. But knowing she loved him didn’t make everything else all right, as he’d once thought it would. She was a huge, important, wonderful part of his life—but she couldn’t solve all his problems for him.

  “You never met anybody else?” he asked. He knew it was a personal question, but since Mo seemed to be in a sharing sort of mood, he figured it was okay to ask.

  The teacher shook his head. “Nobody like her. And eventually I found that I didn’t want anybody else. I’d come to like my single state. But that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. I gather you and Miss Rosenbaum are mending fences?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think she knew how serious it was going to be to make that wish. I don’t blame her for that. But I feel like I’m kind of in limbo.”