“I can understand that. It may take some time for that to pass. May I make a suggestion? Our Ms. Ansley is experienced in grief counseling. I think it might help you to talk to her.”
That was something he hadn’t thought of, and it sounded like it was worth checking out. “Sure, I’ll make an appointment with her.”
“Excellent. Meanwhile, how’s the music going? No more freezing up?”
“No, none,” said William, brightening. “I guess the New Year’s Eve concert was just me and my issues, not Amdusias trying to get back at me.”
“Fortunately, Amdusias is still bottled up in the underworld, from all I’ve been able to ascertain. You should have nothing left to fear from that quarter.” Mo glanced at his watch and then heaved himself up out of his chair. “I’m afraid we’ll have to pick this up another time, though. It’s time we got to morning assembly. I believe Principal Fellowes has some important news to share.”
William stared. “Principal who?”
“Dr. Fellowes. Let’s get going; we don’t want to be late.”
Snatching up his bookbag, William followed the teacher into the hallway. “Mo, since when is Dr. Fellowes the principal?”
The teacher gave him a quizzical look as he set a brisk pace for the elevator. “Only for the last quarter century. He keeps saying he’s going to retire, but he shows no signs of it. Why?”
William thought furiously, but he could find no recollection of a time when Dr. Fellowes was principal. “I guess my memories didn’t all come through after all,” he said, dismayed. “The only principal I remember is Dr. Aysgarth.”
“You don’t mean Eleanor? She quit teaching years ago. I wouldn’t have thought you’d even know her.”
William strained back with his mind, but the only image of the Ash Grove principal he could call up was Dr. Aysgarth, brisk and commanding in a power suit, gesturing with her tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. How could he have gotten that wrong? He didn’t have a chance to ask Mo, though, because the teacher had to go sit on stage with the rest of the faculty.
Maddie had saved William a seat in the audience, and Clark was sitting on her other side, but there was no sign of Blake. So he and Clark must not have gotten back together yet. Their breakup had caught William by surprise, but maybe that was just because he’d been too absorbed in his own concerns to be tuned in to anyone else’s problems.
As if to drive that home, the tentative hopeful look Maddie turned toward him as he sat down made his conscience sting. It wasn’t natural for headstrong, headlong Maddie to be so subdued, and he knew it was his fault. He leaned over and kissed her, the first time he’d done that since the reboot. Maddie responded with such enthusiasm that Clark said loudly, “Lord, where’s a fire hose when you need one?”
“Don’t be such a prude, Clark,” said Maddie, when she finally released William. Her eyes had some of their sparkle back. “I guess you’re feeling better about things,” she said to William. “Did Mo help you sort stuff out?”
“Kind of. I’ve still got a ways to go, Maddie. I’m sorry. But I really hope you’ll wait for me.”
She laced her fingers through his and gave him a smile that went straight to his heart. “I’m not going anywhere. Just let me know if there’s any way I can help, okay?”
There was a tender side to her that he had never seen before—or that maybe hadn’t existed before. But before he let himself get completely mushy and sentimental… “Mo said something really weird,” he told her, lowering his voice even further so that Clark wouldn’t hear. “He said that Dr. Fellowes is the principal now. Is that how you remember it?”
The look on her face told him she was as startled to hear that as he had been. “No, that’s not right at all. Dr. Aysgarth was still principal yesterday. Where has she gone?”
He was wondering the same thing himself, but before he could answer, there came the amplified sound of a finger tapping a microphone, the unofficial opening of morning assembly. A silver-haired man with the look of an aging movie star stood smiling at the lectern. “Good morning, Ash Grove,” he said. “Let’s come to order. Today is a special assembly—I might even say, a momentous one.”
William looked a question at Maddie, and she gave a baffled shrug. Evidently she’d never seen this dude before either.
“As you know, I’ve been principal here at Ash Grove for twenty-five years now.” William waited for sounds of confusion or skepticism from the other students, but they sat silent and attentive. “And some of you have probably wondered if I was ever going to retire and make way for new blood.” Polite laughter. “Well, that time has come. I feel that Ash Grove deserves a principal who can take the school into the future and serve as an inspiration to students and faculty alike. And when I met that person, I was so certain she was perfect for the job that I’ve taken the unprecedented step of appointing my own successor.”
“Maybe he means Dr. Aysgarth,” whispered Maddie.
That still didn’t explain why they both remembered her as their principal before now, though.
Dr. Fellowes was reaching the big reveal. “Students and colleagues,” he said into the mike, “I give you your new principal. I give you… Melisande!”
William sat in shock as a slender figure in white emerged from the wings and crossed the stage to shake Dr. Fellowes’s hand. White-blonde hair streamed down her back, and when she turned to survey the audience of applauding students, her smile was that of a queen accepting the adoration of her subjects.
Maddie’s eyes were so big they seemed to swallow her face. “This is bad,” she said, under cover of the clapping and whistles of everyone around them. “This is definitely bad.”
“It’s weird, that’s for sure.”
“It’s so much worse than that.” She had taken out her phone and was texting as she spoke. “She’s a succubus.”
“She’s what?”
“A succubus. A kind of demon, who gets her power from—”
“I know what a succubus is. But how do you know she’s one?” It would explain her unreal beauty, though, and that magnetism that was bringing everyone to their feet in a standing ovation, even though she hadn’t said a word.
“She almost killed Tanner—he was one of her victims. He and Joy need to know about this.”
“Will you two hush?” said Clark irritably. “I’m trying to listen.”
Melisande had begun to speak. Her voice was relaxed and silkily inviting. “Thank you for your very warm welcome,” she said. “I’m thrilled to be chosen as Ash Grove’s new principal. I’m looking forward to getting to know each and every one of you.” Her smile was intimate enough to suggest an inappropriate level of knowledge. “I hope that the well-deserved devotion you have given Dr. Fellowes can be extended to me, once I’ve proved myself.”
“We love you, Melisande!” came a shout from one of the students. William was staggered to realize that it was Jeremiah.
A soft chuckle came from the figure at the lectern, and Melisande blew Jeremiah a kiss. There were more shouts, and on the other side of Maddie Clark gave a low whistle. “That is one stone-cold fox,” he declared.
William couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Clark, you’re gay.”
Clark craned around to stare at him. “Since when?”
“Since… as long as I’ve known you,” William stammered, and Maddie looked up from her texting with something close to fear in her eyes.
“Seriously, William?” Clark was staring at William the way he’d have stared at something he found on the sole of his shoe. “After all this time being friends, I can’t believe you’d stereotype me like that. Just because I like to dress well and take proper care of my hair does not make me gay.”
William and Maddie’s eyes met in consternation. How much more was reality going to keep shifting around them? Maddie said faintly, “But you and Blake…?”
Clark glared at her. “Et tu, Maddie? Honestly, you two have some serious issues if two guys going to a Bitchkri
eg concert together makes us gay.” But his attention was wandering back to Melisande, and he said dreamily, “Man, I would so tap that. Will you look at how her legs go al-l-l the way up to her—”
“Are you out of your freaking mind?” William burst out. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be, and Melisande was unbalancing things even more.
Even the girls were falling under her spell. “She’s amazing,” sighed Grace in the row behind them, and when William turned to stare, he saw Grace and Alissa gazing at the new principal in what looked like a daze of devotion. “Maybe I’ll go platinum blonde,” said Alissa raptly. “Do you think if I bleached my hair and got a boob job I’d look like her?”
The prospect of a campus filled with mini-Melisandes creeped him out. Was this what lay ahead?
The succubus was speaking again. “I hope you’ll look to me to help you achieve your artistic dreams,” she said. “I’m privileged to be in a position where I can serve as teacher, guardian, parent… even, if you wish, your muse. It’s my dearest goal to inspire you.”
The applause that broke out at that point was so loud and sustained that she had to stop speaking, and she stood there basking in the cheering and clapping with a serene smile until Dr. Fellowes stepped forward again.
“I’ve planned a little surprise to help Melisande feel at home in her new position,” he announced. “Let’s reconvene in front of the dining hall, shall we?”
In the commotion of everyone leaving, Maddie and William could talk more freely.
“We’ve got to stop this,” Maddie said as they made their way to the auditorium doors. “If succubi feed on love, Melisande’s got a full-time buffet at Ash Grove.”
“I thought succubi fed off, you know, sex.”
“Any kind of love makes her strong, I think. Just being near people who adore her, even if they’re not actually touching her, can fill her tank.”
William’s scalp tightened. If the Ash Grove population took to heart her wish to be their muse, he could see the drama students putting on plays about her, the musicians dedicating new songs and concertos to her. The Beltane festival would become the Melisande festival. How much power would she gain with so much adoration poured out for her?
“How did you come to know so much about it?” he asked.
“From Joy and Tanner. And Dr. Sumner. And Mo.”
He couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. “Am I the only one who wasn’t in on what’s been going on?”
She gave an apologetic shrug. “You were, well, kind of caught up in your own stuff. It didn’t seem important enough to fill you in—we didn’t think she’d be coming back.”
Had he really been that checked out lately? If he’d been thinking so much about the loss of Sheila that he was losing touch with the people who mattered most to him, he deserved a kick in the rear. She wasn’t worth that.
Now he needed to get caught up. “So what does it mean when a succubus goes on a love binge?” he wondered. “Does she just store up the extra like body fat?”
“I don’t know. It might be something worse. Joy and Tanner may know, if they’ll just text me ba… whoa.”
She halted abruptly. They had been mindlessly moving along with the tide of students toward the dining hall, and now William found that they had drawn up in front of the statue of Josiah Cavanaugh.
Correction: what had been the statue of Josiah Cavanaugh. Now only the granite base was there. Even the metal plaque identifying the founder had been removed; there was a lighter patch on the granite that showed where it had been.
Dr. Fellowes waved his arms to quiet the milling students and get their attention. “As soon as we can find a sculptor gifted enough to craft a likeness of our new principal,” he announced, “a new statue of Melisande will be placed where our founder once stood. Josiah Cavanaugh was the soul of Ash Grove, but from now on Melisande is the figurehead, the face, and the soul of our school!”
If he’d planned to say anything more, it was drowned out by the cheering and whistles. William and Maddie caught each other’s eye in horror as several of the students boosted the radiant new principal up to the pedestal, where she stood with as much composure as if she had attained her rightful place.
When she finally dismissed them, William took Maddie’s arm and guided her out of the crowd. Maddie was texting too furiously now to look where she was going.
“Anything from Joy yet?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I wonder why we’re immune to Melisande,” she said. “Does it have something to do with us knowing about the reboot, I wonder?”
“I’ll bet Mo can tell us, if we can just convince him that his memory’s been screwed up.” He was already leading her back to the music building and toward Mo’s office. “Now that I know I’m not mixed up…”
He trailed off as they drew up in front of Mo’s door. The plastic strip bearing his name wasn’t there anymore. Instead was a brass plaque that read Dr. A.L. Webber, Department Chair.
“Or maybe I am mixed up,” he said blankly.
“If you are, then so am I,” said Maddie, and rapped on the door. When an English-accented voice called, “Come in,” she pushed it open.
The first thing that struck him was that the office was pristine in its tidiness. That would have been a bizarre enough change by itself, but the room was also bright with sunlight: the strangling ivy had been clipped away from the small, high windows, and overhead was a huge old-fashioned crystal chandelier.
A middle-aged man with a puckish face and fierce eyebrows looked up from the computer on his desk and smiled a welcome. “William, Maddie, come in,” he said in that accent that was so out of place. “I was just looking at the download numbers for ‘She Says Yes,’ William. It’s going to be another record breaker for Aerosol Cheese.”
Maddie hissed to William, “Is that really—?”
“I think so.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“Search me.”
“What are you two lovebirds whispering about?” inquired the man who was apparently Dr. Webber.
“Sorry to disturb you,” stammered William. “We were looking for Mo.”
That brought a look of perplexity to the Englishman’s face. “Mo?”
“Dr. Marzavan,” said William, even though his heart was sinking down into his toes. “Maurice Marzavan.”
Dr. Webber chuckled. “What a splendid name. No, I’d remember if I had met anyone with that colorful a moniker. Anything else I can do for you two?”
“We are so hosed,” said Maddie under her breath.
William barely had the presence of mind to say, “By the way, I loved Phantom of the Opera,” as he and Maddie backed out the way they’d come and shut the door behind themselves.
“What do we do now?” he said blankly. “Talk to Dr. Sumner?”
“Let’s leave him for a last resort. He hasn’t really been the same since Mrs. Sumner, you know… left. Let me hunt around online and see if Mo ended up someplace else—wait, here’s a text from Joy.”
“What does she say?”
“She’s with Gail… and Gail says Mo is a retired Marine who grows roses? What the hell? But she has an address.” Maddie began to thumb in a reply. “We should go talk to him. Joy says she and Gail are heading out to find Dr. Aysgarth, because she’s living some alternate life in south Georgia.”
This all seemed pretty flimsy to William. “How can we be sure they’re the same people?”
“Well, they kind of aren’t. Apparently their lives took them in different directions, so they turned out different from the people we knew.” She saw the worry in his face, and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m not all that confident either,” she admitted. “But it’s the best lead we’ve got.”
“If things are changing so fast, what’s to prevent this other Mo from just popping out of existence?” William wondered.
“Maybe nothing,” said Maddie. “Which means we need to get a move on.”
Chapter 19
Earlier that morning, Joy had arrived at the Brodys’ suite in the dorm. The door was open, but neither Gail nor Jim was to be seen. “Anyone home?” called Joy, and Gail’s voice called in answer, “Be with you in a second,” so Joy went in and sat down on the sofa to wait for her.
The suite looked subtly different from what she remembered, and she was trying to figure out what had changed when she heard the sound of high heels on hardwood and Gail walked in wearing dressy new teaching clothes: a silk blouse and pencil skirt. “Well, this is a nice surprise,” she said, putting in a pearl earring. Joy couldn’t remember ever having seen her so formally dressed before. “I’ve got to leave in a minute for morning assembly, though, so I don’t have much time to visit. Where’s Rose?”
“Dad’s watching her at home, since it’s his study day. I wanted to talk to Dr. Aysgarth, but I haven’t been able to get hold of her by phone. So I figured I’d come by in person, but she wasn’t in her office.” She dwindled to a stop because Gail’s expression was uncomprehending. “Is something wrong?”
Gail frowned. “Who is Dr. Aysgarth?” she asked.
Joy’s stomach seemed to plummet. “Eleanor Aysgarth,” she said, trying not to panic yet. “Ash Grove’s principal for the last several years. Head of the council. Gail, please tell me you haven’t forgotten her.”
Worry lines were showing in Gail’s forehead now. Joy didn’t remember her having them before—maybe the stress of the reboot was getting to her. “Dr. Fellowes is principal,” she said gently, as if afraid Joy would freak out on her. “He has been for more than twenty years.”
A cold tide rushed through Joy. “No,” she said. “Dr. Fellowes retired, and Dr. Aysgarth became principal. And then Dr. Fellowes fell into Melisande’s thrall and helped her get through campus security on Halloween. The last I saw before he got carted away, Jim was keeping him immobilized.”
Gail’s expression went from confused to stricken. “Jim?” she repeated. “You know perfectly well that’s impossible, Joy. I can’t believe you’d be so cruel as to say he was here.”
Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles) Page 22