Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “We didn’t come here to cause trouble,” she said, forcing herself to add, “Miss Aysgarth. We’re hoping you can help us.”

  “In what way?” Their hostess seated herself on a cushion, folding her legs in front of her lotus style. Her feet were clad in metallic ballet flats.

  “This is difficult to explain,” said Joy. She’d had the entire journey in which to frame her story, but no one approach seemed any less likely than another to result in their being laughed out of the house. “Maybe I should ask you first,” she said. “Are you familiar with Ash Grove High School for the Performing Arts, in North Carolina?”

  She had hoped for, at best, a yes, but the answer stunned her. Eleanor Aysgarth’s eyes widened, and she rocked back slightly on her cushion as if struck. She looked from one to the other in amazement. “You are the messengers?” she breathed.

  Joy and Gail exchanged uncertain looks. “Um…”

  Miss Aysgarth’s hands darted out to seize each of them by the wrist. Her arms were stacked with bracelets, and they clattered with the sudden movement. “I knew you would come,” she exclaimed. “You won’t find me unprepared. Is it upon us, then? The catastrophe that was foretold?”

  “Um,” said Joy again. “Maybe you can tell us what you were expecting…?”

  But their hostess was already on her feet, turning on a floor lamp and throwing wide the glass doors of a bookcase that had previously been hidden in the gloom. She scanned the spines quickly, pulling a volume occasionally from a shelf and tossing it in their direction. Joy and Gail caught the books as they sailed over to them. Aleister Crowley. Edgar Cayce. Arthur Machen. Marion Zimmer Bradley. Some of the authors Joy had never heard of.

  “I’ve been preparing for this day,” continued their hostess. “From the time I was a young girl, I knew I would be called upon in a day of crisis for Ash Grove. You may not have known anyone before with authentic psychic gifts, but mine were revealed to me through a vision of Josiah Cavanaugh.” She stopped pulling books from the shelves and stood for a moment in reverie. “I was nine years old, and this gentleman in the finery of another age stepped out of thin air to tell me that mine would be an important role in averting the end of the world.”

  Gail gave Joy a look that said, Is she for real? “The end of the—”

  “Or as good as. When the chain of past events becomes so weakened that time itself becomes unstable, nothing is safe anymore.” She plumped down on her cushion once more, holding a big leather-bound book in her hands, whose pages she quickly riffled through. “Unscrupulous beings can exploit the instability, turn it into power—aha, here we are.”

  She turned the book around and pushed it across the table toward them, one long silver fingernail pointing at an illustration that seemed to be a woodcut.

  A moustached man who resembled the statue of Josiah Cavanaugh on campus stood at the mouth of a cave. In one hand he held aloft a lantern; in the other, a book. The mouth of the cave was all darkness except for countless pairs of staring, white, pupil-less eyes.

  “It represents the forces that Cavanaugh attempted to contain and channel,” she explained, sounding more like the school principal and less like the country palm reader all the time. “Not necessarily evil forces, but capable of bringing chaos. With the tools of insight and learning—represented by the lantern and the book—Cavanaugh stepped in to bring order. But now that order has been overturned.”

  “How do you know all this?” demanded Gail.

  “It was told to me in that vision. But how did you know to seek me out?”

  Joy answered that. “In my past, mine and Gail’s, you were the principal at Ash Grove. You were also head of a council that monitored supernatural activity on campus and tried to keep everyone safe.”

  “The principal! That’s such an honor—and it must be so exciting, the constant challenge of pitting my wits against the forces of chaos.”

  “Well, most of the time it’s just pitting your wits against hormonal students and helicopter parents,” Gail said. “That’s the thing: usually Ash Grove is pretty quiet, because of all the safeguards in place. It’s not often that things come unglued. And they’ve never come unglued this badly—not so much that the effects reach the whole world.”

  “History is being rewritten?”

  “Exactly,” said Joy. “So even though we remember that past, pieces of it have already vanished—and more are disappearing all the time. The last time I checked, you weren’t recorded anywhere as being connected with Ash Grove. But we’re hoping you can still help.”

  The alternate Eleanor Aysgarth smiled. “I believe I can,” she said. “I’ve had more than thirty years to prepare for this day. For as long as I can remember, it’s what I’ve been waiting for.”

  * * *

  Steven waited.

  Rose was tucked cozily into a canvas baby carrier he wore strapped against his chest, so both his hands were free. She was half dozing now, quiet and content, and he sang “You Are My Sunshine” to her under his breath. He had taken up a post in his wingback chair near the front door, where he’d be inconspicuous but able to nab the imposter as soon as he entered.

  Until today he hadn’t had any suspicions. Well, not many. He had noticed a change in the dynamic between his daughter and son-in-law, but that could be chalked up to making adjustments to a new baby. But earlier that day, when he’d been putting a load of laundry in the washer, he found himself with Tanner’s Killers sweatshirt in his hands.

  That was impossible. Tanner had left the house that morning wearing that shirt. It was too distinctive for Steven to have mistaken it for something else, and Tanner owned only one. Steven remembered how pleased his son-in-law had been when Joy had found it for him at the thrift store, back before… back before he’d tried to bring Anna back and started unsettling things.

  At that point Steven got himself and Rose loaded for bear. He checked that her silver bracelet with its rowan charm was still intact and hung a small charm bag of protective herbs around her neck. She made interested little noises at the activity, watching him with her big blue eyes, and he had to pause to dote over her for a few minutes. She was an irresistible little charmer like Joy had been as a baby, and it made Steven’s blood boil to think that an imposter had been holding her and treating her like his own child.

  “We’ll get your real daddy back,” he promised her, and couldn’t resist adding in singsong, clapping her little hands together, “Yes we will, yes we will!”

  When he heard the minivan drive up, he readied himself. As soon as the door opened and the young man stepped inside, Steven popped the loop over his head and tightened it around his neck.

  “What the hell—Steven, what are you doing?” demanded the imposter, trying to loosen the loop of the animal catch pole with which Steven held him.

  “Protecting my family,” said Steven. “Don’t bother trying to get loose or shift out of it. The wire is silver, and the pole is cut from rowan. Those are runes you see carved on it. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Tanner’s double stared at him with a plausible show of confusion. The resemblance was so convincing that it was no wonder Steven had been fooled all these weeks. “What are you talking about?” he exclaimed, still speaking in Tanner’s voice. “Why would I want to go anywhere?”

  “Because I know who you are.”

  “Of course you do. I’m your son-in-law.” His eyes darted around, looking, Steven supposed, for an escape route. His fingers tugged ineffectually at the loop around his neck and finally dropped away. He gave a short sigh. “You’re not buying it, are you?”

  “No, I’m not. It’s Raven, isn’t it? Working on Melisande’s behalf, as always.”

  The shifter licked his lips and gave him a cagey look. “As far as that goes,” he said, “I may be open to other offers.”

  “Interesting, albeit unlikely.” Steven sat down again in his chair, one hand gripping the pole, the other absently going to pat Rose’s back as she started to fuss.
“Let’s talk about where my son-in-law is and what it will take to get him back.”

  “Ah.” The eyes that were so like Tanner’s watched Steven’s face warily. “The unfortunate thing is, by now he may well be dead. But then, he’s been lucky before, and heaven knows Melisande is capricious. She may not have killed him after all—or not yet.”

  Steven handed him his cell phone. “You find out,” he said, in the tone that his students had learned to dread. “Find out right now.”

  Chapter 21

  Tanner didn’t know where he was. He could hear traffic close by, and when he stooped down to feel the surface on which he stood, he touched grass. Venturing over a few feet, he encountered concrete—or was it asphalt? He was afraid to move too much in any direction, given the cars he could hear whooshing by. He wouldn’t put it past Melisande to have dumped him on the median of a highway, so that he’d get hit by a car if he stirred from the spot. She’d only said she would free him; she hadn’t said she’d send him back home.

  The searing pain had faded, but when he put his fingers to his face he felt a horrible new landscape. He didn’t know what he must look like, but he had a feeling it was pretty bad. “I wonder,” she had mused before he lost consciousness, “how your Joy will feel about her husband now that he’s lost his beauty. I suppose we’ll find out how strong her love for you really is.”

  It showed how little Melisande understood Joy—or love, for that matter. We’ll get through this, he told himself, pushing the panic down. I just need to get home. We can figure things out together then.

  Until then, being trapped somewhere he couldn’t see was going to drive him crazy. He wanted to be moving, making progress—and the harpy hadn’t even given him so much as a white stick. He was helpless, or almost. He stuck a thumb out. Maybe a passing driver would help him out.

  It wasn’t long before he heard a car slowing and pulling over. “Hello?” he called. “I need help. Can you make a call for me on your cell phone, or give me a lift to a phone?”

  The car’s motor cut off. “Lindsey?” It was a man’s voice. “Holy Moses on a flaming toboggan, it is you. What in god’s name happened to you?”

  “Standish Billups?” Tanner sounded every bit as stunned to his own ears as the reporter did. “Where are we?”

  “Couple or three hours north of Brasstown. Was it a bear, or a motorcycle accident? We’ve got to get you some help, dude.”

  “I’m fine for now,” he said. He thought so, anyway; when he’d first put his hands to his altered face, it didn’t hurt, and the wounds felt like they were already closed. How generous of Melisande to heal him after doing the damage. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was listening in on the police band when your father-in-law called in to tell them Melisande had threatened to kill you and have your body dumped somewhere. It didn’t sound like they were going to follow up on it, so when I saw the car leaving her house, with someone—you, I guess—in a hood, I followed it here. How the hell did you end up like this? I hardly recognized you. You look like Darth Vader without his mask. If he got put through a wood chipper.”

  “Don’t break it to me gently or anything,” said Tanner tightly. “Just tear the band-aid right off.”

  “Man, I’m sorry, but it’s bad. It’s gonna break Joy’s heart, you know that, right?”

  “Let me worry about Joy’s heart,” he snapped, before remembering that he needed Billups’s help and shouldn’t piss him off. “Can you get me back home?” he asked more meekly.

  Billups sounded doubtful. “I dunno, dude, I think a hospital’s what you need.”

  “Not yet. Right now I need to get home. I’ll tell you everything I know,” he said recklessly. “Everything about Melisande, about the black magic and sacrifices and spells. Anything you want.”

  “You’ve got a deal.” There came the sound of a car door opening, and he felt Billups take him by the elbow and guide his footsteps. “Here you go, here’s the front seat. Just climb in and—oh, shit, I’m sorry,” he added, as Tanner cracked his head smartly against the car roof. “I guess I should have done the cop thing and kind of guided your head in, huh?”

  “Yeah, that might have been a good idea.” Tanner rubbed his head as the reporter shut the car door. He had the strangest urge to laugh. Of all the people who might have come to his rescue, the last one he’d have expected was this guy.

  “I should have warned you,” came Billups’s voice, now from the seat beside him. “I’ve never really been around a, you know, vision-impaired person before. There’ll be a learning curve.”

  “I’ve got a lot to learn about being blind too.” He made himself say blind, so he’d start getting used to it. So the panic would go away.

  He’d manage, he told himself fiercely. He’d adjust. And it wasn’t like he’d be alone; he’d have Joy helping him. Joy loved to be needed; she’d do fine.

  Still, never to see her face again—not to be able to see Rose as she grew up—

  But he’d be with them. That was what mattered. Hurry, he silently willed Billups as the reporter started the car again. “Can you make a call for me? I need to warn Joy and Steven. It’s important.”

  “My phone’s charging. Sorry. I’ll pull in at the next gas station and you can use the pay phone. What do you need to warn them about?”

  Tan grinned mirthlessly. He might as well let Billups know what he’d gotten himself into. “A demon achieving goddesshood,” he said.

  Silence from the driver’s seat. Then, “Uh… can you unpack that a little for me?”

  When Tanner got Billups to call Joy, he got her voicemail. He tried Steven, got voicemail. Bobby, voicemail. The Hartwells’ land line, busy. Dr. Aysgarth, no one by that name at that number. Mo, number out of service. The Brodys, out of service.

  “Are you sure you’re remembering the numbers right?” asked Billups—who by now had become Stan—and Tanner shook his head.

  “I’m not sure at all. But I don’t have my phone any more.” Yet when Stan tried to get the numbers online or from the automated service, no one from Ash Grove was even in the system.

  “That can’t be good,” he said, and Tanner agreed. But all he knew to do was to keep trying, having Stan send texts to all the numbers he could remember and keep calling Joy’s and Steven’s numbers.

  They had stopped at a burger joint so that Stan wouldn’t have to drive and dial at the same time, and while they were there they grabbed some burgers. Stan loaned Tanner some sunglasses to disguise the worst of his injuries, but even so, Tanner could hear the way the place went silent when they entered. It didn’t do much for his confidence.

  He wasn’t sure how much Stan believed of his story about the succubus, the shapeshifter, and the music demon. Maybe the reporter was just humoring him. But as long as he took Tanner back to Ash Grove, it didn’t matter a lot if Stan thought he was crazy.

  “Tell me something,” Tanner said. It had been bugging him, and he wanted to think about something other than his injury and Melisande’s plotting. “You really seemed to have it in for me. You all but accused me of murdering Melisande. Why did you keep after me like that?”

  He could hear Stan shift in his seat. “Well, Melisande stories are always a sure sale. There’s real money to be made there, and in this economy—”

  “It was more than that. You almost seemed to have some grudge against me. What did I ever do to you?”

  There was silence for a moment, and then a sigh. “You got all the girls and all the breaks. You and all the good-looking guys like you. Doesn’t matter how much of an asshole a guy is; if he’s handsome enough, everything’s gonna go his way.”

  Seriously? Tanner wished he could see Stan’s face to tell if he was yanking his chain. “You hated me because of my looks?”

  “Well, when you put it like that… okay, yeah. I did. I resented the hell out of you. I’m just an ordinary guy; I’ve never had an easy time of it like you, with your modeling career and being a celebrity a
nd having women fall all over themselves to be near you.”

  Tanner was shaking his head. “My looks haven’t exactly been a plus, dude. They just got me beaten up by guys who thought I looked like a sissy, and then they got me picked up by a succubus to be her love slave.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just have to take your word for it that that part didn’t rock,” said Stan dryly. “But your looks also got Joy’s attention.”

  That threw him. “Joy’s not like that.”

  Stan gave a snort. “Don’t kid yourself. Everybody’s like that. It’s human nature; we’re wired to go gaga for beautiful people. If it had been some schlub like me in the graveyard that first night, you can bet there wouldn’t have been any of that flirty banter back and forth. The minute I tried to kiss Joy, she would have kicked me in the nuts and Maced me. Sure, now she loves you for more than your looks. But don’t try to tell me they didn’t help.”

  Tanner ate his french fries in silence. Whether that was true or not, it would be asking a lot of Joy to look past his disfigurement, even if it hadn’t been such a huge change from the way he’d looked before. He couldn’t imagine having to look across the breakfast table every day at Leatherface without wincing.

  This is Joy you’re talking about. Give her some time and she’d get used to it, just like she’d accepted the uglier parts of his personality. And maybe, when everything was over and Melisande wasn’t a threat any longer, he could look into plastic surgery. Not to make him look like a model again, just to get him to where he wouldn’t make small children cry, the way he could hear one crying now.

  “It’s okay, the scary man won’t hurt you,” he heard the mother whisper, and his heart constricted painfully. Would Rose be scared of him too when she grew old enough to notice the difference between him and everybody else?

  The french fries had turned to styrofoam in his mouth. But when he reached for his water glass he knocked it over and heard ice clatter over the tabletop. “Dammit,” he said between his teeth. “I’m sorry.”