Casting Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  * * *

  William and Sheila were watching a DVD in his dorm lobby when his phone dinged yet again to signal incoming email. “This is ridiculous,” said Sheila, reaching across him to grab the phone from the sofa arm. “Enough interruptions. I’m turning off your phone.”

  “Better leave it on,” said William. It seemed like there were always more details about the concert to be worked out; every few minutes a call or a text or an email came through for him. “Anything important?” he asked, when she didn’t relinquish the phone.

  “No, just spam. I’ve deleted it.” She settled herself again into the curve of his arm. They had the lobby to themselves, and the DVD was mainly an excuse to spend a rare couple of hours together when either or both wasn’t tied up in rehearsal. “Have you guys firmed up the set list for the festival? I know you’ll be playing ‘Mesmerize,’ of course.”

  “Yeah.” He still wasn’t entirely easy in his mind about that, even though logically he knew there wasn’t any real connection between Blake’s song and the wackaloon supermodel. “Why did the fans choose that song, I wonder?” he said. “To associate with Melisande, I mean.”

  “It means AC is getting famous. And I guess maybe since she had roots here, they’re making that connection. Who else local has done a ballad that her fans could pretend is about her? Not Bitchkrieg, that’s for sure.”

  “I guess you’re right. They don’t exactly do ballads. Did you hear that Monster of the Week found a new lead singer? Apparently they’re going to start touring soon.”

  Sheila gave a disdainful sniff. “You should take them to court for playing your song without permission.”

  “I don’t see any point in that. It must have been Eric’s idea, and he’s in no position to do it again.” He paused the movie, frowning. “I wonder how he’s doing. I should go check on him again.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. His parents are with him; there’s no need for you to go hold a bedside vigil too. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about him.” She drew his arm closer around her. “I’d rather talk about you, and how successful you’re becoming. But I think we should work on your image a little.”

  “I’m not going to shave my head or go vegan or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Of course not, doofus. I just thought it would be neat if you got a tattoo.”

  He gave a mock shudder. “I have a thing about needles.”

  She opened her eyes very wide. “But they’re really sexy.”

  “Needles?”

  “No, dork. Tatts. What do you think of this one? It would be really appropriate.” She held up his phone to show him an image. The complicated design of circles, lines, and squiggles seemed somehow disquieting, but he had no idea why it should; he couldn’t recall ever having seen it before.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s kind of an ancient good-luck symbol for musicians.”

  “Oh.” He studied it again, searching his memory, but he could think of no reason why the unfamiliar design should disturb him. “I don’t know. How about something less obscure, like… a bat?” He had a sudden image of an inked bat whose outstretched wings bent and flexed with every movement.

  “A bat? What are you, Ozzy Osbourne? That’s so hokey.”

  “I don’t see why this alien cave-drawing thing is any better. But it doesn’t really matter, because I’m not going to get a tattoo.”

  “Are you sure?” She took one of his shirt buttons between finger and thumb, twisting it. “It might bring you luck. And it would definitely help you get lucky.”

  “Oh really?” Despite himself, he was interested.

  “I know it sounds silly, but I just really like guys with tatts.” She brought her lips close to his ear. “It’s kind of a turn-on.”

  “Flirt.” When she moved in for a kiss he returned it willingly enough, but when she showed no signs of stopping he gently pushed her back. “Sheila, you’re not going to change my mind this way.”

  Immediately her brows drew together in a scowl. “Fine. Be that way. All I ask of you is this one little thing. What kind of boyfriend are you to deny me something as insignificant as a tattoo?”

  “Well, what kind of girlfriend are you to pressure me to do something I’ve told you I don’t want to?” he returned.

  She glared at him for a second, the blue eyes glacial, but he didn’t back down. Finally she thawed.

  “Oh, all right. I guess it wasn’t a good idea. I just have this superstitious streak, and I wanted to feel like you were being protected. I mean, look at what happened to Eric. I don’t want anything like that to happen to you.”

  “Don’t worry,” said William, touched and surprised. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

  Chapter 25

  The Sumner house seemed even more empty after Joy’s departure than Tanner had expected it would. Steven’s dismissal as council security chief hadn’t changed his schedule: he still spent most evenings away from the house, wherever it was that he carried out his mysterious research. When he was at home, aside from quick foraging excursions to the kitchen, he spent all of his time shut in his room. From the occasional glimpse when his door was opened, Tanner gathered that he was doing online research as well as reading through the stacks of old leather-bound books that covered every available surface. Occasionally Steven would disappear and return to the house with strange bundles: herbs, bones, incense, parchment scrolls. Sometimes Tanner could hear him muttering what sounded like incantations.

  It freaked him the hell out.

  He took to spending as little time as possible at the Sumner house. He went on long runs to burn off some of the restless energy that dogged him, and spent hours every day practicing with Aerosol Cheese and on his own. The solstice festival would be by far AC’s biggest gig yet, and he didn’t want to let the guys down. Jeremiah was so pleased with his progress that he had offered him a couple of lead guitar parts, and Tanner was practicing all the harder to do justice to the trust put in him.

  Mainly he tried to keep busy enough so that missing Joy wouldn’t gnaw at him so much. It hurt, just plain hurt, not to have her with him. Not to see her adorable face across the dining table in the evening, not to talk over their plans for the future together, not to kiss her or make love to her. He remembered how it felt to place his hand against her firm rounded belly and feel Rose kick against his palm, and he gritted his teeth and ran another mile, played another set, worked another shift with Bobby.

  The other thing that ate at him was the fear that somehow the succubus would come back into their lives. Even in her supposed retirement, she was still all too present. In every checkout line he saw tabloids with headlines like “MELISANDE’S FANS URGE STAR TO SHINE AGAIN” and “FANS TO MELISANDE: WE MISS YOU!” Even worse were articles by Standish Billups that seemed determined to stir up suspicion about the succubus’s supposed retirement, like “MELISANDE’S MYSTERY MALADY: COVER FOR FOUL PLAY?” and “WHERE IS MELISANDE? FANS URGE POLICE TO INVESTIGATE.” It made him uneasy. Even aside from the suspicion that might fall on him because of Billups, the more people stayed loyal to the succubus’s memory, the more power she still held—dead or alive. And now that she was no longer securely stowed away by the council, any power at all was too much.

  At least Joy was safe. Even though they’d agreed that she shouldn’t contact him directly without great cause, from time to time Donna would text him a short all-clear bulletin to ease his mind. But his nightmares were still frequent, and he became almost compulsive about checking the security measures he and Steven had put in place.

  And this connection between the succubus and the solstice concert bothered him. Facebook pages and websites had sprung up all over the place to mourn Melisande’s supposed illness and organize the effort to pay tribute to her, and particularly to urge her followers to light a candle and keep her in their thoughts when “Mesmerize” was playing. The sheer volume of fanaticism was creepy, and he didn’t want to feed into it in any w
ay.

  “I really don’t feel good about this whole movement to memorialize Melisande,” he said the next time the band met for rehearsal.

  The new drummer grinned. Ace was a laid-back Murphy High senior with an unapologetic mullet and sleeve tattoos. “Nice alliteration, bro,” he said.

  “I don’t see any way around it,” said Jeremiah. “We can’t control all these people out there who want to pay homage to her, and we can’t pull ‘Mesmerize’ out of our set list.”

  “We can’t?”

  “Dude, it’s selling like crazy. We’re into the thousands of downloads now. It’s the most popular song we’ve had since ‘She Says Yes.’” Bootlegs of that were still circulating, and periodically they had to do an internet sweep to get them removed. Until now, the only other song that had come close in popularity was their cover of “She Sheila.” “I honestly don’t think the audience will let us get away without playing it. I’ve had so many kids ask me about it already. Seriously, I think they’d storm the stage. They’re that worked up about it.”

  “Yeah, everyone’s been pestering me about it too,” said Blake. “And to be perfectly honest, I’d hate for the first good thing I’ve written to get dropped from the lineup.”

  “Do you agree?” Tan asked William.

  William shifted his weight. “I think we need to know more about the backstory before we can make a final decision.”

  The hedging surprised him. “You all know already that my life was in danger because of her,” he said. “Except for Ace, you were all part of the rescue party Joy sent out that night.”

  “But we weren’t right there on the scene,” Blake pointed out.

  Ace chimed in. “Yeah, I’m new to all this. This chick tried to kill you? As some sort of a cult thing?”

  “Sort of.” He wanted to tell them more, but even after all the weeks he’d been a part of the group he wasn’t sure they’d believe him. And furthermore—

  “I have a hard time believing you were in any danger from Melisande,” interrupted Sheila, from where she sat in the risers. “There must have been some sort of misunderstanding.”

  He turned to look at her. “I didn’t misunderstand her trying to kill me, Sheila. You weren’t there. You don’t know what went down.”

  His tone was verging on belligerent, but she didn’t flare up in response. “I’m not saying you made it up,” she said, almost meekly. “I’m sure it seemed real to you. I just think it would be good to know her side of the story.”

  Sheila was often present at rehearsals these days, apparently content to just watch and listen and applaud. Tanner couldn’t help being surprised at how supportive of William she was; he kept expecting some other agenda to reveal itself. But until now she had seemed to have no motive beyond being a good girlfriend. Tanner had never warmed to her, and that didn’t bother him; anyone who had treated Joy so badly didn’t deserve to be in his good graces. But he wondered now if he also distrusted her because of her looks. Sheila met the current standard of beauty, and she knew it. After almost two years under the thrall of a creature who used her beauty as a weapon, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to be paranoid.

  But paranoid or not, he didn’t want to try to explain his fears about the succubus in front of her. Especially because he didn’t know why he felt so apprehensive. So what if a lot of Melisande’s fans would be thinking of her at once? It didn’t have anything to do with him. And it didn’t change the fact that, in its current condition, the succubus posed no threat to anyone. Still—

  “It’s dangerous,” was his gut feeling. “The less we have to do with her, the better.”

  Jeremiah let out a gusty sigh. “Man, I’m sorry, but I don’t see how doing this number is going to make a difference one way or the other to her deciding to come out of retirement or not. If you feel that strongly about it, you don’t have to play. We can bring in someone else for that number, or rearrange the instrumentation.”

  Dismayed, he looked from one face to the next. “Does that go for all of you?”

  William opened his mouth to speak, but then Sheila piped up again. “I’m surprised at you, Tanner,” she said. “Putting your whims before the good of the band. That’s awfully prima donna behavior from a bassist.”

  Thanks, Yoko, he thought, but no one contradicted her. After a moment, when it was clear that this was the last word, Tanner shrugged off the shoulder strap of his bass guitar. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll be sitting this song out.”

  He thought William threw him an apologetic look, but no one asked him to reconsider.

  Increasingly it looked like there was only one person who might be able to put down the Melisande movement, and it wasn’t someone Tanner wanted to have anything to do with. But if Raven could stop this crazy tribute business, Tanner had to at least ask.

  When he pulled up at the guardhouse in the minivan, the security officer on duty did a double take. “I didn’t expect to see you, sir,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, it has.” It took him a moment’s strenuous recollection to come up with his name. “Is Raven in, Seth?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll just buzz him and—”

  “You can just let me through. No need to bother him.”

  He didn’t want to give Raven any more warning than he had to. The guard gave him a nod and activated the gate, and Tanner drove onto Melisande’s estate.

  It already felt like years since he’d left, and he wouldn’t have been that surprised to find the place overgrown, with a hedge of thorns grown up around the house as in the fairy tale. But someone had clearly been keeping up maintenance of the grounds. The topiaries were cleanly trimmed, and there were no leaves or pine needles on the driveway despite the trees that overhung it on either side. The lawns were still green and lush, but that wasn’t so unusual in the South in December, he reminded himself.

  When he pulled up in front of the house, its opulence struck him where once he had taken it for granted. The expanses of marble and granite, the copper roof and modern sculpture, seemed ridiculously ostentatious to him now. The house made no effort to harmonize with its surroundings, but demanded that they accept its invasion. He was surprised at the violence of the revulsion that curdled his stomach. He knew that he didn’t want to enter that house ever again.

  Everything was very still, and there was no sign of inhabitants until Raven stepped through the front door and stood awaiting him at the top of the steps. So Seth the guard had called ahead after all. Figured.

  “The prodigal returneth,” was Raven’s greeting, but his voice was amiable. “You have a new set of wheels, I see.”

  He had to remind himself not to get defensive. “This will be a lot more useful for driving the family around.”

  “Oh, undoubtedly. Speaking of which, may I congratulate you on your wedding? I hope that you and the delightful Joy will enjoy a long and felicitous life together.”

  “Thanks,” said Tanner, only half listening as he forced himself up the front steps with an effort of will. His legs wanted to run in the other direction. He couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that he was walking back into a prison.

  “Come through, won’t you?” Raven continued. “I’ve asked Etienne to bring us canapés on the back patio, since it’s such a temperate day.”

  “He’s still working here?”

  “I’m keeping on most of Melisande’s staff, at least until they can find new positions. They have far too little to do, though. Etienne jumped at the chance to prepare something more challenging than crepes for one.” Raven was leading him through the foyer into the great room, so familiar to Tanner. It was empty of people and had the feeling of an unlived-in house, even though the furnishings were still intact: all the white-upholstered divans and chairs, the bleached fur rugs, the enormous paintings and photographs of Melisande. Her sea-green eyes were staring at him no matter where he looked: knowing, amused, triumphant. She might be gone, but her presence was everywhere.

 
He broke his gaze from the beautiful, evil face, and looked around the room. There were some bare spots in the decor that he hadn’t noticed at first.

  “The ivory Astarte figurine is gone,” he observed. “And the Aphrodite bust.”

  “Yes, the Ash Grove council wished to examine them. They went through the whole place from coal cellar to dovecote last month after your defeat of Melisande.” His voice remained neutral on defeat. If he resented what had happened to Melisande, he gave no sign of it. “They took a number of items into custody to be scrutinized for extranormal properties.” He opened the sliding glass door to the patio. “Her clothes, also.”

  In a sudden shock of recollection, Tanner saw in his mind’s eye the pale silken things she used to wear. Slippery and clingy or vapor-light, all seemingly created with the intent of pleasing the touch, and of doing as little as possible to conceal the tantalizing body beneath. He jerked his thoughts back into the present. “I’m surprised you haven’t moved out. You’re not weirded out by having her staring at you everywhere you look?”

  Raven settled into a chaise longue next to a low table as a maid in a blue uniform brought a tray of finger foods as ornamental as Fabergé eggs. “I’ve grown so accustomed to the pictures that I never really notice them anymore. And I have to admit that my sybaritic side enjoys the amenities,” he added, selecting a tiny canapé and popping it into his mouth. “Especially since I know I’m free to leave whenever I wish. And until I finish working out the legalities of her business holdings, it’s just as convenient to remain where all the partners know to reach me.”

  “Speaking of business holdings, has anything come through regarding my money?” Tan chose a straight chair, wanting to stay alert and on his guard, which he couldn’t see managing in a reclining position. “Or are things still all hung up?”