Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “So you deliberately kept all word of your excursions into altered history from us,” said Dr. Aysgarth, when Joy’s father had concluded his account. She didn’t sound as angry as Joy had expected. “Yet now you come to the council to ask for our help.”

  He bowed his head. “I admit that I no longer see a way to repair things myself.”

  “Oh, I think you do,” said Mo, fixing his pale prominent eyes on her father with a look almost of regret. “You just don’t like the solution that presents itself.”

  “What solution?” asked Maddie. She had been uncharacteristically subdued in the formality of the conference room. Joy noticed that she was holding William’s hand, but William seemed numb to it; he had absorbed all of the explanation and discussion without saying a word, and Joy felt a pang of sympathy for him. She wondered if his memory was returning, as hers was, or if he thought they were all insane. And how did he feel about Maddie’s having removed Sheila from existence? She couldn’t read his face well enough to know, but with the part of her heart that wasn’t taken up by longing for her husband and child—and fear for her mother—she pitied both of them.

  “I don’t see why you can’t just try again to bring back Melisande and remove Raven,” Maddie continued. “This time I won’t be making a wish at the same time, so it should work.”

  “I think the situation has become too unstable for that,” said Mo. “In any event, that was a stopgap measure itself, an attempt to partially undo what Steven did the first time he tampered with history.”

  “We need a clean slate,” said Dr. Aysgarth. “I’m afraid that means a complete reboot.”

  “Can you even do that?” asked Joy, amazed.

  Dr. Aysgarth gave a nod. “We can. It’s not something any of us can do singly—it requires at least three of the council—and it’s a drastic measure. The nuclear option, if you will.”

  “You mean,” said Joy’s father heavily, “returning to the time before I brought my wife back. Carrying out a retroactive death sentence. I refuse to believe that’s necessary.”

  “It’s not personal,” said Dr. Aysgarth earnestly, and although Joy’s father made a violent gesture and dropped his head into his hands, her mother nodded to show she understood.

  “As long as I’m here, my presence is disrupting history,” she said. Joy was amazed at how calm she sounded. “In order for things to get back on track, I need to be gone.”

  “But that means this Sheila girl will still be dead,” William said suddenly. “Putting things back on track means that she will still have died in that fire.”

  “I wish I’d wished better,” said Maddie miserably. “If I hadn’t listened to that stupid bartender about Ricardo Montalban and Zoltar machines…”

  “Bartender?” Gail exclaimed. “You made decisions about using magic in life-or-death ways when you were tying one on? I swear, Maddie, sometimes you act like you don’t have the sense of a gnat.”

  “Don’t yell at Maddie,” said William hotly. “She knows she messed up. We’ve all made bad judgment calls.”

  “This is a bit more than that, William,” said Dr. Aysgarth. “What Maddie did was a terrible thing.”

  “She didn’t know her wish would really be granted.”

  “She didn’t know it wouldn’t, either.”

  “Maddie, you mentioned the bartender before,” said Joy’s father suddenly. “It sounded like he had something to do with your decision. Tell us about him.”

  This took Maddie by surprise, but she did her best to cooperate. “Well, he was really cute—sorry, William. Surfer type, early twenties I’d guess, blond highlights, a lot of muscle. Really flirty. Big toothpaste-commercial smile.”

  Now Joy remembered that smile. She’d been so upset that day at McCloskey’s that she hadn’t paid much attention to the bartender, but when she called up the image that had greeted her when she’d come storming out of the ladies’ room, she remembered the predatory quality of that grin, the way he was leaning across the bar into Maddie’s space. “Holy crap,” she breathed. “I think it was Raven.”

  Heads whipped around. “Are you sure?” demanded her father. “How could you tell?”

  “His body language doesn’t ever seem to change,” she recalled. She remembered Raven’s flirtiness, that maddening air of being amused… even when he’d taken on Tan’s appearance to ambush her in the kitchen, he’d been that way. “And who else would have a reason to steer Maddie toward making a wish? He needed to bring back Melisande. He must have known that altering history was a way he could do it. And it must have worked.” She remembered how shaken Tan had been when Raven and the cops came to cart him away to Melisande, and knew Raven had found a way through all the wishes and rituals to come out on top, along with his snake of a mistress. “I don’t think Maddie is to blame for that wish,” she said. “Raven was manipulating her.”

  Maddie looked puzzled. “Not that I’m not grateful for the out, but why did he need me to make the wish?”

  “He probably needed a human to do it, since he isn’t of this world,” said Mo, as if it should have been obvious.

  “Okay,” said Maddie. “I guess I see. So like I said, if Dr. Sumner just redid the ritual, without me getting in the way, maybe everything would work out right without Mrs. Sumner having to, well, die.”

  After an endless moment, the principal shook her head. “It’s not for us to declare that Anna’s death was a mistake,” she said slowly. She was finding it difficult to look Joy’s mother in the face. “It was a tragedy; nobody’s saying otherwise. But none of us is qualified to pick and choose what parts of the past we can change or restore. That way we end up with unstable paradoxes and long-term ripple effects that can have consequences far beyond our power to imagine.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not seeing that,” said Ms. Ansley. “Right now, it looks like the only problem is that Tanner has been deleted, and so has his child with Joy. I’m not saying that’s not a terrible consequence,” she added to conciliate Joy, who was already opening her mouth to protest. “But it seems relatively minor in the scheme of things. Maybe it’s worth the risk of leaving things as they are.”

  “Part of the difficulty is that Joy already encountered her daughter in the future,” said Steven heavily. “Undoing that could have unknowable consequences.”

  “You’re not going to make me choose,” Joy burst out. “I’m not going to choose between my mother’s life and Tan’s and Rose’s.”

  “Nobody is expecting you to,” said the principal gently. “That is exactly the kind of decision that we are all unqualified to make. We aren’t trying to rewrite history here; we’re trying to restore it, trusting that everything was unfolding as it should.”

  “That’s a lot to take on trust,” said Steven coldly, “when you’re talking about Anna’s life. As a wife, a mother, and a friend she’s been missed beyond measure; as a musician, how much more will she be able to contribute to the world if she isn’t killed in some idiotic, senseless accident?”

  “Steven, hush.” Anna slipped a hand into his. “Think about Rose—about other children Joy and Tanner may have. What Joy and her husband themselves may contribute to the world with each other as inspiration—performing, teaching, composing, writing. Nobody can say whether my life is worth undoing theirs.”

  “I don’t want you to go.” Joy almost hated the council. “Why isn’t there some better way to fix things? Dad’s right, it makes no sense for you to—to die. There’s got to be a better solution than just going back.”

  “We’re not ruling out a better solution,” said Mo in a voice that discouraged argument. “We’re just saying that it’s not in our power right now. If we find one later, you can bet we’ll be on it like a duck on a june bug. But trying to go back in time and select which bits you want to keep and which you want to change is—sorry, Steven—unforgivably stupid.”

  “I don’t see why,” said Maddie. “Bad things happening at random can’t possibly be better than us try
ing to make things better. Prove to me that it is.”

  “If you want proof,” came the unexpected voice of Ms. Ansley, “come take a look at this.”

  She was seated near one of the windows overlooking the school grounds, and was gazing out of it. With varying degrees of curiosity and reluctance, the others left their seats and clustered by the windows.

  In most ways the scene was a normal one for a weekday at the end of January. Students were darting from building to building, as the cold discouraged dawdling. A school shuttle van pulled up in front of the classroom building, and half a dozen drama students piled in, talking excitedly; although they couldn’t be heard, their breath emerged into the chilly air in smoky puffs. Everything looked as it should… except for the fifteen-foot stone wall topped with razor wire that encircled the campus, and the two armed guards in military camo stationed at the bridge where the river flowed past.

  Into the shocked silence came Dr. Aysgarth’s voice.

  “Judging by the pattern we’ve seen, sooner or later our memories will catch up with this. We’ll all know why it’s here, and it won’t seem like something wrong. But I for one don’t want to speculate on what this level of security means. It’s bad enough that such a dramatic change is visible.”

  “And this is just right now. What kinds of changes will unfold in a week, or a year?” added another council member, a silver-haired man whose face rang a dim bell in Joy’s memory. “This is why we need to reset, as quickly as we can. This instability will only get worse.”

  Joy’s father was looking as sick as he ever had during his chemotherapy. “I won’t let you take Anna,” he said. “I won’t.”

  Her eyes were stricken. “Steven, it’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right.” Joy hadn’t meant to speak, but the words forced themselves out of her. “Gail, please. Do something.”

  “Joy, honey. Don’t put this on her. Or any of the council.” Her mother took her face between her hands and smiled. “They’ll figure out the answer one of these days, and then they’ll bring me back. But I know in my bones that Dr. Aysgarth is right about this. My being here is throwing everything out of whack. And that’s too much responsibility for me to—to live with.”

  “I won’t lose you again.” Steven held her by the shoulders, and though she smiled at him, she shook her head.

  “Sweetheart, I’m as sure as I’ve ever been about anything that this isn’t right. Remember my graduation day, when I told you that we belonged together? I knew without a doubt that we were going to be married. And that’s how certain I am now that you’ve got to let me go.”

  They argued, of course.

  All of them, for what felt like hours. Joy’s mother, pale but smiling, insisted calmly until calm insistence proved futile. Then she said: “Steven, I’ll take myself out of the timeline if I have to. I’ll drive my car into Tallulah Gorge.” And he yielded, as he had to.

  “This is how we do this,” said Mo heavily. He’d been very quiet during the argument, perhaps because as Anna’s mentor in years past he couldn’t be impartial. Joy remembered that her mother had grown up without a father, and wondered for the first time if Mo had filled that place in her life during her years at Ash Grove.

  She wondered it with a kind of detached curiosity. The day felt less real than anything she could remember. She knew this was her heart’s way of protecting her from the pain of it, and yet it seemed monstrously unfair to her mother. She should be protesting this with every ounce of strength, and yet she couldn’t seem to quite comprehend it.

  “The process needs three of us,” Mo continued. “Eleanor, Michael, and I will leave now and set things in motion. Come nightfall, assuming all goes well, everything should be back in place.”

  Dr. Michael Fellowes. That, she remembered now, was the name of the dignified silver-haired man sitting down the table. Joy felt a twinge of uncertainty as she looked at him. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t pinpoint it.

  Then she gave herself a mental shake. Plenty was wrong, and the reason she couldn’t figure it out was the same reason the council was doing the reboot: everything was shifting too much.

  If only it didn’t have to shift her mother out of existence.

  * * *

  Maddie and William sat unmoving at the conference table as the council and the Sumners filed out of the room. The silence grew until Maddie said, “Say something.”

  He shook his head helplessly. “I’m still getting my head around all this.” Out of all the things that he was supposed to remember and couldn’t, one kept circling back into the front of his mind. “We really slept together?”

  That brought a wry smile. “It doesn’t say much for me that you can’t remember it.”

  “I’m sure I would, if it wasn’t for, you know, magic.” He felt awkward saying the word. Part of him still had a sneaking feeling that he was being pranked with all this serious talk of supernatural stuff. “So, can you fill in one of the blanks for me?”

  She looked taken aback. “Sure, I guess, but I’m honestly better at doing it than talking about it.”

  “No, I don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “This Sheila… if she was this ball-busting, demon-summoning harpy, what did I see in her?”

  “Oh.” Maddie took a second to change gears. “Well, I know you’ll say it doesn’t matter, but she was gorgeous. And she could turn on the charm when she wanted to.” She saw that that wasn’t enough. “She was a great dancer, better than just about anyone here except maybe Tasha. And she really believed in you, in your talent.”

  “Which is why she singled me out for demon dinner, right?”

  “That, and because you—don’t take this the wrong way—but you tend to only see the best in people. You don’t automatically look for hidden motives.”

  “In other words, I’m a sucker.” He shoved his chair back from the table and went to stand by a window so he’d have an excuse not to look at her and see pity in her eyes.

  “That’s not what I mean at all. Besides, you were vulnerable. Because of me and what I did.”

  He stared out the window, but his mind was so far away he couldn’t have said whether the scary new security features were still there or had changed to something else. “I sound like a flake,” he said. “Easy pickings. Sheila must have known she could manipulate me without any trouble.”

  “William, no!” She jumped up from her chair and came over to stand close to him, putting a hand over the one he was resting on the windowsill. “You’re a wonderful guy. And Sheila saw that. She wasn’t a good enough actress that she could have been so close to you for all those weeks unless she really liked you.” She hesitated, then said awkwardly, “The thing is, I can’t fill you in on everything because I think you saw a side of Sheila I never did. And you and I weren’t really talking, so I don’t know what all happened between you two.”

  He found that he was staring at her hand where it lay on his. Her fingernails were shaped into smooth ovals, and her cobalt-blue nail polish was unchipped. She had gone into town for a manicure a few days ago and met him afterward for dinner. He had wanted to hold her hand on the way back to campus, and she had told him laughingly that he’d have to wait until the polish set. Everything had been so simple then. No Sheila, no magic, no demons. No second life that he had to try to get his head around before he was plunged back into the middle of it.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said finally. “I mean, until the change happens. If it happens. Do you think everything will come through okay? I don’t know whether we should assume crash positions or just be business as usual.”

  “I don’t know either,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine going to class and doing the usual everyday stuff.”

  He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her toward him. “Maybe we shouldn’t take anything for granted,” he said, smoothing the glossy black wing of her hair back behind her ear. “If these could be our last hours together like this, maybe we should, you know,
make the most of them.”

  Kissing her was miraculous, as it always was. Inhaling her spicy perfume, feeling the softness of her lips. But she didn’t put her arms around him, and all too soon she drew back. Her eyes were sad and solemn.

  “In a few hours,” she said, “if everything goes through right, you’re going to feel pretty different about me. Best-case scenario, you’ll feel conflicted. And I don’t want you to look back on this afternoon and be mad at yourself, or me.”

  “Why would I be mad? It’s not like the other time, not from what you’ve told me. We’re actually a couple now.”

  “But in a few hours you won’t be the same William,” she said. “Please, just trust me. It would complicate things even more.”

  “You like the other me better,” he said. “That’s what it is.”

  “No! That’s not it at all.” This time she did put her arms around him, and she kissed him with a force that made his head spin. Whatever else she was feeling, it wasn’t ambivalence.

  “I love you, dumbass,” she told him. “Whatever happens to your other memories, don’t forget that.” While he was still collecting his wits she caught up her handbag and backed to the door. “See you on the other side,” she said, and fled.

  * * *

  For the rest of the afternoon Joy’s father and mother were shut in their room. She could hear their voices through the wall: her mother’s soft but firm, her father’s pleading or insistent. She finally turned on her mp3 player and put her earbuds in. She was curled up on her bed trying to let Aerosol Cheese blot out the world when a knock came.

  “Your dad and I have said our goodbyes,” said her mother. Her eyes were red, but she was calm. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  Joy sat up and made room for her on the bed. That feeling of unreality was still with her, but so was a painful tightness in her throat that made her wonder if she’d even be able to talk.