Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “I’ve got it. No, don’t try to help—you’re putting your hand in my potato salad.”

  A lot of help he’d be in averting Melisande’s rise to power if he couldn’t take a goddamn drink of water without screwing it up. He listened to Billups scoop up ice and dump it in the glass, fighting the despair that was trying to take hold.

  He couldn’t let it get to him. What would Joy tell him, if she were here now? That he had plenty of other ways of being useful. He’d just have to figure out what they were.

  He was grateful when Billups took up the conversation as if it hadn’t been interrupted. “So what you’re saying is, gorgeous people have problems too.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what I mean,” said Tanner. “We get the flu too. We have our hearts broken and flunk geometry and everything.”

  “Just like us little people,” said Billups. “What was it Shakespeare said—‘Hath not a hunk eyes?’”

  Tanner didn’t answer, and he could hear Billups suck in a breath through his teeth when he realized what he’d said. “Oh, shitsnacks,” he gasped. “I’m so sorry, man.”

  Tanner made himself shrug. “Gotta love that Shakespeare,” he said mildly. “A quote for every occasion. Will you try Joy’s number again?”

  * * *

  It was suppertime when Joy and Eleanor Aysgarth reached the Sumner house. An unfamiliar car was parked there alongside the Sumner vehicles, and when they went inside they found Joy’s father sitting at the dining table with Standish Billups, the reporter, who they hadn’t seen since before Rose was born. The two men were talking in low tones, and their faces when they looked up and saw her were grave.

  “Ah, Joy, I’m glad you’re finally here,” said her father. “And this must be—good heavens. Eleanor?”

  “That’s right,” said Miss Aysgarth cheerfully, apparently not offended by his thunderstruck expression. “You must be Joy’s dad.”

  Recovering quickly, he shook the hand she extended, making her bracelets jangle. “Steven Sumner, and this is Standish Billups. Joy, didn’t you get any of Tanner’s voicemails?”

  “No. Is something wrong?”

  Her father hesitated.

  “Short version is yes,” said Billups. “You should get Tanner and then we can all talk. He’s with Rose now.”

  She didn’t want to be rude, but… “What are you doing here?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “I gave Tanner a lift.”

  But the minivan was parked outside the house. And how was it that the reporter was the one to give Tan a ride? There was something strange about the way he looked at her—both him and her father. Aloud she said, “Miss Aysgarth, why don’t you start catching Dad up while I check on Tan and the baby.” She started out of the room, but her father caught her arm.

  “Joy, you need to prepare yourself.”

  His tone was so somber that it sent a ripple of alarm through her. “For what?”

  “Tanner.” He hesitated again. What was so bad that he couldn’t say it? “He’ll really need you to be strong for him right now,” he said finally.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Just try to be cool, okay?” said Billups. “Don’t freak out on him.”

  They were scaring her. As soon as her father released her arm she half ran to her bedroom.

  When she reached it, though, everything seemed calm. The door was slightly ajar but the room was dark, so perhaps Tan had put Rose down for a sleep. She pushed the door farther open. In the darkness beyond where the light spilled in from the hallway, she saw Tanner standing by the crib with his back to her. “Tan?” she whispered.

  He stirred and gave a brief nod without turning around. Joy came to stand next to him, finding Rose sleeping peacefully in her crib, one fist clutching her yellow blanket.

  “Is she all right?” she asked.

  Another nod. “I love listening to her breathing,” he said softly.

  For some reason the sound of his voice brought a warmth welling into her heart that she hadn’t felt in far too long. She moved closer to him and slipped her arm around his waist. Maybe things were coming right after all—maybe one part of this terribly upside-down world was actually changing back to the way it should have been all along.

  “Let’s go to the kitchen, where we can talk,” she whispered, marveling that for the first time since the reboot she felt the old chemistry with him, that rush of pleasure at his nearness along with the magnetic pull to be nearer still, to be touching him.

  But he resisted the tug of her hand. “Let’s stay here a little longer.”

  There was tension in his voice she hadn’t noticed before. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Let me turn on a light.” She wanted to be able to read in his eyes what troubled him.

  “No.” The quick word stopped her. “Not yet. I—I need to prepare you.”

  The same thing her father had said. “Prepare me for what? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s going to be a shock. It’ll be hard to get used to, I’m afraid.” He too was whispering so as not to disturb Rose, and anxiety tightened the whisper until it was almost inaudible.

  “Tan, please tell me what’s wrong.” She took his hand in hers and drew him toward the band of light that fell through the doorway, and after resisting a moment more he gave in and let himself be led. When the light fell on his face she gasped, and her hands flew to her mouth to stifle a cry.

  He had no eyes.

  His skin sank into the empty sockets, with violent scars puckering the outer edges. Where his eyebrows had been were angry ridges of red skin, shiny with scar tissue.

  What in heaven’s name had done this to him? “Tan, my god,” she whispered, her voice cracking. Tears started from her eyes at the cruelty of the wounds that disfigured the face she loved so much. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. What happened?”

  “I don’t need a hospital,” he said wearily. “This was Melisande’s price for setting me free. And a warning.”

  “Melisande! How on earth—but you must be in agony. Let me get some—”

  His voice stopped her. “Please stay with me.”

  It was tormenting her that she couldn’t do anything to help. She reached up to touch his face, but her hand stopped just shy, afraid of hurting him. “Can I touch you?”

  A rueful laugh. “If you want to.”

  Her fingers were shaking as she traced the ruined features, touching where the jut of browbone tautened the newly healed pink skin where an eyebrow had been before. Grief squeezed her heart so tight that she could hardly breathe, but there was sweetness as well as horror, for she felt again what she had been missing: that reaching of her soul for his, the sense of belonging. She raised her other hand to his face and gently held it against his skin, feeling a more than physical warmth, as tears slid down her face.

  “Joy.” His voice shook. “I want to kiss you so much it hurts. But I don’t want—”

  “To what? Frighten me? You could never.”

  “It’s not that. I figure you can close your eyes, picture Jude Law even.” The brave little joke made her love him all the more, if that was possible. “But I’m afraid I’ll stick my nose in your eye or something.”

  She was almost glad he couldn’t see her face at that moment, because she knew her smile must be the most pathetic and warped thing that had ever existed. “Here I am,” she said, and raised herself on tiptoe to kiss his lips.

  At once his arms went around her, pulling her closer, and he kissed her as if he’d never stop, with a searching hunger that came near to breaking her heart. Why couldn’t she have given herself so freely all these weeks past? She gave herself up to his embrace with all the love that she had feared was gone forever—the only thing she knew to give him now that he had lost so much.

  “I know it must be bad,” he said at last, when he finally released her. “Stan said it’s horrifying. I’m sorry that I can’t make it easier for you. With Rose it won’t be so hard, at least
.”

  She swiped impatiently at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling from her eyes, every one reminding her that Tan was denied even that small relief. “What did you mean about being freed? You were here up to this morning.”

  He hesitated. “This morning wasn’t me,” he said reluctantly. “It—it hasn’t been me for a while. I couldn’t come to you—she had me locked up—”

  It finally made sense. Even in the shock of this revelation she felt a rush of relief to know that it wasn’t really Tan whom she had been so strangely indifferent to. No wonder she hadn’t felt the old love for him—it wasn’t him at all. “It was something in your shape,” she realized. “I should have known.” But after disbelieving him before, she hadn’t dared to trust her own instincts.

  “There was no way you could have known,” he said. “Raven’s been feeding off my memories, my thought patterns, everything. He made himself into a perfect duplicate.”

  “Not quite perfect. I knew something was wrong—I just thought it was me.” She drew him to the bed and made him sit, and turned on a night light before she came back to him. In the gentle light his ruined face was no less horrifying, but she needed to become accustomed to it. Taking his face in her hands, she brought her lips gently to his scars, tasting her own tears on his skin. Wishing that, as in the old fairy tale, her tears could restore his sight.

  Nothing so miraculous happened, but she felt his hand fumbling over her hair and coming to rest on her cheek. “It’s been hell,” he whispered. “Not being with you and Rose—knowing that he was here in my place.”

  “You’re here now. And we’ll never be separated again.”

  He gave another of those rueful laughs. “You’re not kidding. I’m afraid I’m going to depend on you for a lot, especially at first. You’ll have to be my eyes until we can get me a guide dog. But I’ve been thinking it over all during the ride home.” His voice was taking on confidence as he spoke. “Even if I can’t go back to working in Bobby’s shop, there are other ways I can bring in money. I can still play in the band, for one thing. Maybe I can even do some composing. You can help me with the lyrics—you’ve got a knack for it, you know.”

  She couldn’t speak for a moment. With this terrible thing that had happened to him, he was thinking of her. Of providing for her and Rose. She had never felt so humbled—or so loved.

  “And I know there must be other ways I can pull my weight,” he went on when she said nothing. “We can get William to help us set up your computer for voice recognition. And I can learn to do a lot for Rose, even if it’s not stuff like picking out her clothes. It won’t all fall on you. It won’t be so bad.”

  He was trying to reassure her, when she should have been the one comforting him. She hugged him tight, overwhelmed with love and gratitude. “We’ll be just fine,” she promised, keeping her voice from wobbling only through sheer willpower. “You’ll have to be patient with me, though. I’ll have to learn how to help you, how to rearrange the house so you can find your way around, so you’ll know where things are… I have a lot to learn.”

  “So do I,” he said. “But we’ll help each other through.”

  The trust in his voice squeezed at her heart. He hadn’t given up on himself, or her. She sent a brief prayer of thanks into the universe for that and said, “I just hate that you’ll be missing so much.”

  “I can still touch you and Rose,” he said. “And hear you, and everything else.” He nuzzled her hair. “Have I ever told you how much I love the smell of your shampoo?”

  She couldn’t stop marveling at his courage. She didn’t know if she could have been this strong. She’d have been raging, crying—well, raging anyway. Abruptly she pulled out of his arms. “Stay here a sec,” she told him. “I’ll be right back.”

  Racing back to the dining room, where Eleanor now sat conferring with the others, she seized her father by the arm and pulled him to his feet. “Come with me,” she commanded, and towed him to her room. “Look at Tan,” she said, pointing. “Look what Melisande did to him. You’ve got to heal him.”

  Her father made a visible effort not to wince when his eyes came to rest on his son-in-law. “I’ve seen what she did to him,” he said quietly. “It’s appalling for Tanner, yes, and he’ll have a great deal of adjusting to do. But he’ll be all right with us to help him.”

  She darted back to Tan’s side and wrapped her arms around him. “There’s got to be a way to give him his eyes back,” she said. “Or—or make new ones, or something. You’ve got to find some magic that will fix this.”

  “Joy,” Tan said uneasily. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  Her father’s face was sober. “I think that’s beyond my level of skill, Joy. And even if it weren’t—”

  “Then find someone who can do it!” She was crying again, and trying to do it silently so Tanner wouldn’t know. “We can’t leave him like this.”

  Tanner turned his ruined face blindly toward hers, and she realized with a terrible shock that habit was making him try to seek her eyes out. “Joy, I know it’s a lot for you to deal with. But you’re strong. Just give yourself time—”

  “It’s not me I’m thinking of,” she cried, horrified that he could think it of her. “I love you no matter what. But knowing that every minute you’re struggling because you can’t see—I want to save you from that.”

  He smiled, and on his half a face it was a sight that tore her heart in two. “That’s my Joy,” he said very quietly. “But you can’t rescue me from everything, babe.”

  She buried her face in his shoulder for a moment. It was unbearable; they had to find a way to defeat this. She raised her head and sent her father a look of naked entreaty. “Dad. Please.”

  “As much as it grieves me to see what’s been done to Tanner, I’m not going to touch him,” her father said solemnly. “After the havoc I caused trying to bring Anna back, I don’t dare. I’ve meddled too much in magic, and it’s jeopardized everyone’s safety. As for other mages”—he held up his hand as Joy started to speak—“there’s a possibility someone could undo this. But it’s a small possibility, and it will take a great deal of searching. It would be a mistake to get Tanner’s hopes up.”

  “We don’t have time for that right now anyway,” said Tan, and his voice carried so much authority that Joy looked at him in wonder. “We have to stop Melisande.”

  Chapter 22

  William and Maddie sat in the living room of a strange house in Greensboro, where an elderly housekeeper had ushered them to wait. The precise tick of an old-fashioned pendulum clock was almost the only sound. The room was furnished in severe pieces with squared-off corners that looked sharp enough to cut themselves on.

  Maddie sat on the edge of a sofa, drumming her fingers on the arm. With her other hand she gripped William’s tightly.

  Maybe too tightly. “Mads,” said William gently. “You’re cutting off my circulation.”

  “Sorry.” She transferred her death grip to his wrist. With things going crazy in every direction, she was scared he might vanish like Mo, and she wasn’t going to let that happen.

  He must have known what she was thinking. “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “If anything happens to separate us, we’ll find each other again.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” she said. “It’s freaking me out that people we know aren’t who they are anymore. I mean, look at this place.” She gestured to the stern, regimented appearance of the room they sat in, where no speck of dust or thread of cobweb showed, where the windows gleamed so cleanly under their crisp navy-blue valances that they were almost blinding. “This isn’t our Mo. I don’t want you to turn into some other William who’s a stranger to me.” It shamed her to hear how trembly she sounded. She hated being on this shifting quicksand. She liked to be the one who was making things volatile, not the one trying to cope with shifts that someone or something else had caused.

  William curved a hand around the back of her neck and drew
her close. Resting his forehead against hers, he looked into her eyes and said, “Even if I do, we’ll find each other. I promise we will.”

  As a promise, it wasn’t in his power to give. But it brought a little warm glow of pleasure all the same. “Damn right,” she said.

  “Can I help you?” boomed a voice. There was so much command in the words that they were instantly on their feet.

  The newcomer was Mo. But such a different Mo: standing so erect and with such stern formality that she would have known he was ex-military even if Joy hadn’t mentioned his service in the Marines. The familiar round bald pate was edged with white hair cut so short that the pink of his scalp showed through.

  Gone were the comfortably shabby, slobby clothes. This Mo wore a button-down shirt, a tie—a tie, for the love of fluffy kittens!—and crisply pressed suit pants. His shoes shone with a high gloss, and altogether he was so spit-and-polished that Maddie felt a dreadful pit of doubt yawn in her stomach. Was there anything left here of the Mo they knew—the Mo they needed?

  “Mr. Marzavan, thank you for seeing us,” William began. “Or should I say Colonel?”

  “It isn’t necessary to use my rank. And you are—?”

  William introduced them. His voice was tight, telling Maddie that he was as nervous as she was, even though his manners were impeccable. She was glad he was taking the lead; she probably would have blurted out something dumb in the first thirty seconds and gotten them kicked out of the house.

  The alien Mr. Marzavan actually shook their hands before taking a seat and nodding to them to sit down. He pinched the knees of his slacks up when he sat, she noticed. Worse and worse. Their Mo didn’t give a damn about his pants bagging. “And what can I do for you two?” he asked briskly.

  They had made up a story on the drive over. “We’re trying to track down a former teacher of ours,” said William. “At Ash Grove High School for the Performing Arts near Hayesville—maybe you know of it?” No sign of recognition came from their host. “Our teacher was the director of the music program, and a talented composer. He was also”—Maddie could see his adam’s apple jerk as he swallowed—“a scholar of supernatural lore.”