Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles) Read online

  Among the Shadows

  Book Three of the Ash Grove Chronicles

  Copyright © 2013 Amanda DeWees

  Synopsis: Joy and Tanner find themselves trapped in an alternate reality in which their past together has been erased, along with their baby daughter.

  Prologue

  Atlanta, Georgia: Thirty-Five Years Ago

  By the time she was nine, she’d developed sharp instincts about strangers. Which ones were okay to talk to, which ones to avoid, and which ones she should flat-out run away from and tell her parents about.

  This was one of the okay ones, even though he turned up in a weird way. One minute she was alone in the back yard reciting her monologue to the tiger lilies; the next, this man was standing there in the flower bed.

  “My mom’ll kill you if you if you hurt her flowers,” she told him. Not to be bratty, just so he’d be more careful. “My dad mowed over the new winter honeysuckle she just planted, and she just about skinned him alive.”

  The man’s long moustache made him look like a kindly walrus when he smiled. He wore a top hat like a magician, which he tipped to her in greeting, and a long dark coat that was way too heavy for a Georgia summer. He was even wearing gloves. “Thank you for the warning,” he said. He spoke more precisely than she was used to, like an actor, and her interest perked up. “I don’t think I’ll damage your mother’s flowers, however.”

  When he stepped out of the flower bed, she saw that his feet didn’t seem to touch the plants—seemed to move through them. “You’re not really here,” she said, slightly disappointed.

  “Let’s say, rather, that I’m here in a form that only a few people can detect. In a few years you’ll find that you can see people that few other people do.”

  She gave him a withering look. “Please don’t tell me I have the Shining.”

  “I’ve never heard it called that. In any case, it’s an unusual gift.” He smiled. “But then, you are an unusual young lady. What was that you were reciting just now?”

  “Ophelia’s flower speech,” she said. “Miss Gaston told me I could get extra credit for performing it in class.”

  “So you’re an aspiring actress, eh?”

  “It’s what I’ve always wanted to be.”

  “Well, it’s an exciting calling, so I hear. But not for everyone, no matter how talented. Have you thought about being a teacher?”

  She thought about it now. She’d still get to stand up in front of people and recite, but she wouldn’t get to dress in pretty costumes to do it. “Maybe,” she said doubtfully.

  “Or perhaps you’ll do both. There are many different paths your life may take, after all. Many different futures you may choose among.” His voice grew more serious. “But whatever direction you travel, there is a destination that it’s vitally important that you reach.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, expecting him to say Raising A Family, or Being A Good Citizen, or some dumb grown-up thing like that.

  Instead, reaching into his handkerchief pocket, he drew out a small photograph in the brownish color that her mother had told her was called sepia. It showed a short bridge leading to a cluster of funny old-fashioned buildings. Mountains showed in the background—not the pointy snow-covered kind of mountains like Alps, but softer rolling mountains covered with trees. In neat handwriting below the picture were the words Ash Grove School, Brasstown, North Carolina.

  “This is a place that’s very important,” he said. “Not just to me, but to many people. Years from now, you are going to help save it.”

  “From what? Developers?”

  He laughed at that. She liked the crinkles that showed at the corners of his eyes when he laughed. “Not exactly, my dear. It will take a few minutes to explain. But it’s extremely important that you pay attention, because—as ridiculous as this may sound to a sophisticated young lady like yourself—you’re going to help save the world.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but her weirdo radar was silent, so she listened. By the time her mother called her inside to set the table for dinner, her head was full of new ideas, some scary, some exciting.

  “You were really acting up a storm out there,” said her mother, handing her a stack of plates and silverware. “Every time I looked out, you were chatting away just as if someone was there with you. Who were you imagining you were performing for?”

  “His name is Josiah Cavanaugh,” said the little girl. How interesting that her mother hadn’t been able to see him. That made some of the crazier things he’d said seem more likely. “Can we go to North Carolina sometime?”

  “Why?”

  “I may want to live there someday.”

  Her mother gave her a startled look. “You’ll have to ask your father.”

  “About visiting, or about living there?”

  Mrs. Aysgarth smiled. “Both, I suppose. Now fetch your brother for dinner, Eleanor.”

  Chapter 1

  “Such a beautiful girl,” Tanner murmured to the red-faced baby in his arms. “I can’t wait to show her off to everybody when we get home.” His daughter was just hours old, and he was almost lightheaded with happiness. Sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, he leaned over to kiss his wife.

  But the woman staring at him in consternation wasn’t Joy. Instead of the freckled, whimsical face of his wife, he found himself confronted by the smooth oval face and dark shocked eyes of an Asian woman in her twenties.

  He hadn’t found words yet when she demanded, “Who are you?”

  “I’m… I think I must be in the wrong room.” He looked down again at the baby in his arms, and shock jolted through him to see the dark-eyed baby in a blue onesie where moments before had been his blue-eyed daughter.

  “You sure are.” It was a man’s voice. Tanner looked up, shaken, to meet the hostile gaze of another stranger, a man with spiky dark hair and glasses. Tan had never seen these people before in his life.

  He got to his feet, looking wildly from the baby to the parents. “Where’s Joy?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but give me my baby,” snapped the mother. He hesitated, but the child was so clearly not his that he didn’t protest when the father stepped around the hospital bed to take the child from him.

  “What room is this?” he asked. Even to his own ears his voice sounded strange. He supposed he must look crazy or high. He couldn’t understand it. Just seconds ago—

  “Two fifty-three.”

  It was the right room number. But there was no sign that Joy had ever been here. “Do you mind if I just—” He reached over to turn the baby’s wristlet so that he could read the name: Geoffrey Kim.

  “Please get out of our room,” said the woman. “I don’t know why you’re even in here.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” said Tanner. “My wife and daughter were here just moments ago. Did you see them?”

  “I’ll call security,” said the husband, and Tanner held up his hands quickly in a conciliatory gesture.

  “I’m leaving.” He must have had a brain blip or something—maybe he had gone down the hall to get coffee and had wandered into the wrong room. But the room number is right. Had he fallen asleep and forgotten it? Had Joy and Rose been moved to another room while he dozed, leaving him there? It made no sense.

  On his way to the nurses’ station he opened the door of every room he passed and peered in. He got some irritated looks, but there was no sign of his family. Something’s not right.

  “I seem to have lost my wife and daughter,” he told the nurse who sat behind the counter. “Did they get moved to another room?”

  “I can look. What’s the
name?”

  “Sumner.”

  He waited as she tapped at the keyboard and scanned the screen. She was a light-skinned African-American woman with short hair and a gentle voice. Her name tag read Shirley Harding, RN. She wasn’t familiar to him, but maybe the shift had changed since he had arrived. “I don’t see her,” she said, and then finally took a good look at him. Her eyes widened in pleasure. “I know you! You’re that model, Tristan.”

  He nodded briefly. He’d quit the business and no longer used his professional name, but a lot of his ads were still circulating, and he was used to being recognized. The nurse had popped up from her chair to grab a colleague and drag her over to see him, but he didn’t have time now to sign autographs or pose for photos. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to find my wife. Joy Sumner. Can you check again? Is there any chance she might not be in the computer?”

  “I doubt it, but I can ask her doctor. Who was looking after her?”

  He dredged up the doctor’s name and waited in increasing anxiety as Shirley spoke on the phone. One hand fidgeted with the rowan pendant he wore on a silver chain around his neck. It had been a gift from Joy, handed down from her mother as a protective talisman. He dragged the fingers of his other hand through his hair when Shirley put down the phone and offered a regretful shake of her head. “I’m sorry, but Dr. Long doesn’t remember her. Are you sure you have the right clinic? There’s the Pomona Center just a couple of miles away; maybe that’s where she was taken.”

  “No, she was here. I was with her, in her room, holding my daughter—” His voice was getting louder in frustration and anxiety, and he saw the second nurse move closer to the desk phone, perhaps thinking to summon security.

  “Have you tried calling her?” she asked in a soothing voice.

  “She doesn’t have her phone with her.” She had left it in North Carolina to avoid the temptation of calling him and possibly giving her location away to anyone who might be searching for her. Panic was beginning to rise in him, tightening his throat. “Can you page her, maybe? Please?”

  The two women exchanged uncertain looks, and he resorted to a cheap move. He leaned over the counter, looked deeply into Shirley’s eyes, and dropped his voice into an intimate murmur. “Please,” he repeated, softly. “I’d be so grateful.”

  Color rose in her cheeks, and she reached again for the phone. He didn’t often pull out the soulful seducer act, but apparently it still worked. Resonating through the hallway came the request, “Would Joy Sumner please report to the nurses’ station on the second floor. Joy Sumner.”

  Minutes passed, but there was no sign of Joy. He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to think. What could have happened for all signs of her to have been erased?

  There had to be a sensible explanation—something that didn’t involve the supernatural factors that had driven Joy to hide out in Atlanta in the first place. So many people (and things other than people) had thought that their then-unborn baby had been corrupted by the succubus Melisande when they had defeated her that they had decided she’d be safer going off the grid until Rose’s birth.

  “Thanks for your trouble,” he said finally, when ten empty minutes had passed, and stalked back down the hallway to room 253. The Asian couple was still in residence, and their inquiring expressions turned to hostility when he strode through the door.

  “I’ll get out of your hair in a minute,” he said before either could speak. “Just please, tell me, did you see my wife and baby? They were in this room just a little while ago. Joy’s seventeen, about yay high—hold on, I’ll show you.” He had been taking pictures of them less than an hour ago.

  But he couldn’t find the pictures on his phone now. Nor could he find the photos from their wedding, earlier that month. There were no pictures of Joy or Rose at all.

  Maybe something was going on with the phone’s memory; he’d figure that out later. “Joy has dark-blonde hair and freckles,” he told the couple. “And kind of a button nose. Rose is—” He had to swallow hard. “Rose is our newborn. She’s got brown hair and she’s wearing a yellow onesie with ducks on it.”

  The mother darted a troubled look toward her husband. “I wish we could help, but we’ve been in this room since yesterday afternoon. I haven’t seen anybody like that.”

  What was going on? Before they could stop him he stepped over to the closet and flung it open. Joy’s purse and suitcase were gone, replaced by the strange woman’s things. Even his own leather jacket, which he remembered hanging up, had disappeared. The bathroom was likewise empty of all signs of Joy.

  “Sorry, I’m going,” he muttered to the couple, and strode back down the hall to the nurses’ station. “Maybe she’s unconscious somewhere,” he said quickly, before they could forestall him. “Can you have security do a sweep for her?” He described her again, and paced for a frustrating half hour until the head of security came to report that the search hadn’t turned anything up.

  “There’s no sign of her,” said the man in the uniform. “Are you worried that someone may have abducted her?”

  “It’s a possibility.” Joy had been so certain when Rose was born and they found her completely normal that no one would pursue her and their child. The shapeshifter Raven had settled on other means of trying to revive his succubus mistress; he had no motive now for seizing Joy and Rose. Did he? And even if he had, how could he have erased all signs of them?

  “Maybe you’d better file a police report,” suggested the officer.

  God, what had happened to her? He thanked the man without knowing what he said, and with no other ideas he headed toward the parking deck. Maybe, just maybe, she had gone to the minivan for some reason.

  But the minivan wasn’t where he had parked it. For half a second he thought that perhaps somehow she had found the strength to drive somewhere, and then the image in front of him clicked into place and he realized he was staring at his Kawasaki Ninja, parked in the place where he’d left the minivan.

  The bike he had traded in weeks ago. The bike that should have been in North Carolina, with a new owner.

  He shut his eyes hard, breathed in and out a few times, then slowly opened his eyes again. The bike was still there. The minivan was still not.

  A chill dread began to pool in his stomach. Some magic was at work. And Joy and Rose were caught up in it.

  He reached into his pocket, and the key ring he drew out brought a fresh wave of cold horror. His keys to the minivan and the Sumner house were gone. And the Ninja key he had handed over to the dealer weeks ago was lying on his palm.

  He got out his phone and checked the time and date. No surprises there, at least. So he hadn’t pulled a Rip Van Winkle. He scrolled through the list of numbers, thinking to call Joy’s father, but Steven wasn’t in his list of contacts. Neither was Joy. Or Tanner’s bandmates, William, Jeremiah, Blake, Ace. It was as if the last nine months had never happened. He keyed in the Sumner land line number from memory and waited as it rang and rang on the other end. After twenty rings he ended the call.

  Slowly, warily, he mounted the bike and flicked his eyes over the gauges. His helmet was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t gone without one since… since meeting Joy.

  His hands were shaking so that it took a few tries to get the key into the ignition. He knew he wasn’t in safe condition to ride. But it was the only thing left to him.

  He steered the bike in the direction of North Carolina, praying that Joy and Rose would be waiting for him there.

  * * *

  “Have they found her yet?” William asked Mo.

  The teacher hesitated, looking at William’s pale face as he lay in the hospital bed. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “They need to hurry. She could still be alive, but if they don’t find her—” He struggled to sit up. As if he was in any condition to do anything.

  “What you need right now is rest,” Maddie told him, pushing him back down and pulling the bedclothes up to his chin. “If you don’t stop
it I’m going to ask the nurse to give you a sedative. Knock it off. You’ve got a concussion, for god’s sake.”

  William gave her a mutinous look, but he was too weak after the night’s events to fight her. “I can’t rest when I know Sheila could still be trapped in that basement.”

  “There’s nothing you can do from here,” Mo told him firmly. “We’ll wake you up as soon as we hear anything.”

  “And I’ll be right outside your room,” Maddie promised. “If you need anything, just yell.”

  William’s eyes lingered on hers for a moment, and he must have been reassured, because he sighed and relaxed. Presently his eyes drifted closed. Maddie’s heart constricted. He looked so vulnerable, lying there. She removed his glasses and placed them on the bedside table, and in a flash of memory she saw the last time she had done that for him: right before they had made love for the first—the only—time.

  Well, calling it that was kind of prettying it up. She’d just wanted a quick tumble for stress relief. It wasn’t William’s fault that he’d thought it meant something more. That miscommunication had almost ended their friendship for good, but nearly losing him had shown Maddie how much he meant to her.

  Next time it’ll be different, she promised him silently, brushing soot from his cheek. And there’ll be lots of next times.

  “Let’s leave him to his rest,” said Mo under his breath, steering her toward the door. “He won’t be able to sleep with us in the room.” When the door had shut behind them, he finally took a good look at Maddie. “You’re a mess. Have you gotten the medical attention you need?”

  “They put some stuff on the burns on my hands and doped me up. I’m fine.”

  “They didn’t tape up your ribs?”

  “Apparently they don’t do that anymore.” The fire and explosion that had brought the night’s festivities to a close had done remarkably little damage to her and William, but she knew she looked pretty bad. Mo confirmed this when he said, “You might want to get cleaned up, then. You’ll give your parents a scare.”