Casting Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep,” said Joy.

  “Nothing wrong with that. You’re probably worn out. It’s been a long day.” He held one wilted white rose by its stem, and he drew it down her cheek. “A long, wonderful day.”

  In their room at the bed-and-breakfast they lay in bed. Moonlight poured in through the window; they had drawn back the curtains, the better to see each other by its unearthly glow. On the second floor, they had no need to fear prying eyes, even if Billups or one of the other reporters had managed to sniff out their trail amid the decoys.

  “I just don’t want to miss any of the time we have left,” she said.

  “I know. I feel the same way.”

  In spite of herself, her eyes were drifting closed. She felt the cool, tender touch of the rose on her eyelids, first one, then the other. When the caress moved to her lips, then her chin, she opened her eyes again.

  “How did you even know they’d be blooming?” she wondered.

  “I didn’t, not for sure. I had a backup plan.”

  “What?”

  “Throw myself on your mercy.”

  She laughed sleepily. “It probably would have worked, too.”

  He lay propped on one elbow, gazing down at her. In the blank white light his face looked like a marble sculpture, as it had on the first night they had spoken together, in the cemetery. He had been so full of anger and self-loathing then. Now the tension had gone from his jaw, and his generous mouth no longer held the suspicion of a sneer. She reached out and drew a fingertip along the curve of his lower lip. She knew it tickled him, but he was too beautiful not to touch.

  He rested his hand on the swell of her belly. “It’s hard to believe this is the last time I’ll see you like this, with Rose still inside you. The next time we’re together, there’ll be three of us.”

  “I don’t want to be separated from you.” She kept her voice very low so that it wouldn’t shake. She had been able to fend off all the fears and doubts during the celebration of their wedding, but now she couldn’t stop thinking about the shapeshifter, the vanished remains of the succubus, the mysterious project that had caused her father to be banished from campus. And separation from her husband of less than a day. Her eyes found the scar on his chest from the wound left by the succubus’s knife: it was healed, but would probably never disappear altogether. “I don’t know if I can go through with it,” she said.

  “Hey now, that’s no way for my superwoman to talk. You’re the strong one.” His hand lay warm and reassuring against her skin. “I’m the one who goes to pieces. If anyone can handle it, you can.”

  “You’re always saying that I’m the strong one, but we’re both stronger together than we are apart.”

  “Maybe that’s what being married really means: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And you have some very attractive parts, wife.” When she didn’t respond in kind, he drew her close to him and kissed her. “We’ll be okay,” he said softly. “We’ve already been through the worst.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right. Nothing in my life has mattered as much as you and the family we’re making. If we have to live like fugitives for a little while, that’s a small price to pay.” His phone chirped to signal an incoming text message, and he retrieved it from the nightstand. “It’s Bobby,” he said. “Everything’s still go for five o’clock. And he sent some pictures from the wedding.” He held the phone out where they could both see, and scrolled through shot after shot of them together, with Joy’s father, with all of their friends. “I’m glad he took these,” he said. “They’ll keep me company while you’re away.”

  She shut her eyes against the thought. “I wish we could make time speed up until we’re together again.”

  “I’d rather make it slow down now,” he said. “Do you ever think about the first night we spent together, in the rose garden?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I was thinking about it a lot when I first moved in with you and your dad. It seemed like when we were in the garden, everything was as perfect as it ever would be. And I kept wanting to get back to that place, where it was only us, sealed off from the rest of the world by magic.” He sounded far away. “Where nobody could bother us or mess things up.”

  The wistful note in his voice made her reach up to stroke his cheek. “We still have that. That time will always be ours.”

  “I know.” He was silent for a moment, seeking the words, and she let him find them in his own time. Thinking how far he’d come since he ran away from tough conversations. “The thing is, I had this idea that just because that one night was perfect, nothing else would be ever quite as perfect.”

  “And now you know that’s not true, right?”

  He took her hand from where it lay against his face and laced his fingers through hers. “This is perfect,” he said. “Right now, here. And there’ll be lots of different perfect times ahead. We’re going to keep reinventing what perfect is.”

  She knew that if she tried at that moment to tell him all that was in her heart, she wouldn’t be able to. She’d have to find ways to tell him, and show him, in all the years to come. And it would take years. But for now… “Tan?” she said.

  “Mm?”

  “What time is it?”

  He checked. “A little after two.”

  She snuggled closer to him. “So we’ve got almost three hours.”

  “About that, yeah.”

  “I’m thinking,” she said, “there’s a lot of perfection to be had in three hours.”

  His laugh was so loud that it startled an owl out of the tree outside their window. The whirr of wings went disregarded, however. There were more important things to focus on.

  Chapter 22

  Maddie woke up feeling as if a road crew was breaking concrete in her head. Her mouth felt like a wool blanket, and when she managed to get her eyes open, the daylight hit her with the force of a wrecking ball. She whimpered. What the hell had she been up to last night?

  “Ah, you’re awake,” came Gail’s cheerful voice, which unleashed another jackhammer in Maddie’s skull. “Rise and shine, morning glory.”

  “You’re evil,” moaned Maddie. “I feel like something Dr. Frankenstein assembled during an absinthe binge.” She blinked and managed to take in her surroundings: the living room of Gail and Jim’s suite in the dorm. She was on the sofa, with an afghan spread over her. The purple of the afghan suddenly seemed like a very violent color, one that her insides objected to. She looked hastily away.

  “Speaking of binges,” said Gail, sitting on the edge of the sofa, “you had quite a spectacular one last night after the reception ended. Do you remember anything after you got to McCloskey’s?”

  “Ugh, no. Did I—did I embarrass myself?”

  Gail handed her a mug of coffee. “According to all accounts, you didn’t look embarrassed,” she said cheerfully.

  Crap. What had she done? More important, what had she said? If she had blabbed how she felt about William—she reached for the coffee and forced down a few sips. She wasn’t strong enough to face things yet.

  “For example, there was the karaoke,” Gail went on. “Now, I wouldn’t have tackled Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying,’ myself, but evidently I’m not as brave about falsetto as you.”

  Maddie gave her a bleary look of despair and started to sink face down into the sofa. Gail grabbed the coffee before Maddie could spill it. “Luckily Tasha got hold of you after that.”

  Oh, thank the gods. Tasha would have made sure she hadn’t descended into a totally maudlin mess.

  “But then Tasha had to leave, and apparently Clark chose the next song.”

  No. Not Clark. He might have a heart of gold, but his brain was wired for pure mischief.

  “How bad?” she croaked, raising her head from the cushions.

  For answer, Gail held up her smartphone and tapped the screen. A video of Maddie began to play. She was clutching a microphone a
nd wailing: “‘All byeee my-selllf…”

  “Shoot me now,” she moaned, and collapsed again, face first.

  “And this is why,” Gail continued brightly over the sound of Maddie belting out the most humiliating choice in the McCloskey’s karaoke menu, “William called me and had me come fetch you.”

  William? She looked at Gail in horror. “He was there?”

  Gail nodded. “May I suggest,” she said more gently, “that from here on out you refrain from taking the traditional route of drowning your sorrows? You don’t want another bad night preserved on YouTube.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Yeah, I’m joking. I made Sheila take it down. Seriously, Maddie. I don’t want to have to worry about your safety. Please promise me you’ll be more responsible.”

  She mumbled something that seemed to satisfy Gail, who patted her shoulder and went to fetch something for her head. Maddie huddled over her coffee and tried to dredge up some optimism. So she’d made a spectacle of herself in front of William and Sheila. Not so horrible, really. Could have been worse.

  But at the moment, she couldn’t think how.

  When Gail’s phone broke into a Springsteen song, Maddie snatched at it without thinking, just to silence it. But then Mo’s voice said, “Gail? I’ve got bad news,” and she realized her mistake.

  “It’s Maddie Rosenbaum,” she said. “I’ll get Gail for you.”

  She tottered to the kitchen, where she gave up the phone in exchange for a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a kitchen towel. She leaned against the counter and held it to her head as she listened to Gail deliver a series of increasingly serious “uh huhs” into the phone. There was a sharp intake of breath. “Good lord,” said Gail. “That’s terrible. Have his parents been notified?… And do they know what caused it?… I see… Thanks for calling, Mo. I’ll get things moving on this end.”

  “Well, what is it?” demanded Maddie, when Gail just stood there in silence.

  “Maddie,” said Gail, “you used to go out with Eric Nash, didn’t you?”

  Maddie lowered the improvised ice pack to get a better look at her. “Yeah. Why?”

  Gail hesitated. “You may want to sit down.” When Maddie obediently did so, she said quietly, “There was a—an incident last night. You may have known that Eric was headlining a concert in Franklin? Well, he… he had a collapse during the performance. They think it was a brain aneurism or a stroke. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”

  Her thoughts, already moving painfully slowly thanks to her hangover, couldn’t quite grasp this. “How could that happen? He’s never had any health problems that I know of.”

  “It could have been an undiagnosed condition. But Mo suspects drugs were involved.”

  Maddie shook her head, then winced and reapplied the frozen peas. “Eric doesn’t do drugs,” she said.

  “No?”

  “He doesn’t even smoke. He’s a real fanatic about keeping his bloodstream free of pollutants. My body is my temple, all that.” He tended to get pretty tiresome on the subject, actually. He was always in the gym when he wasn’t practicing his guitar or singing; in some ways he was a real health nut. The more she thought about it, the more shocked she was to think of him in a coma.

  “Really.” Gail reached for her phone again. “I’d better let Mo know that.”

  Clutching the frozen peas, Maddie retreated to the living room and lay down on the sofa. She pulled the purple afghan all the way over her head. Maybe the next time she opened her eyes the world wouldn’t be quite so bewildering.

  * * *

  At a special assembly, Dr. Aysgarth informed them of Eric’s collapse. He still had not regained consciousness, but visitors were permitted. “This is an unfortunate reminder of why drug abuse is so dangerous,” she added gravely, and William and Jeremiah exchanged WTH looks. Eric wasn’t a user, so why was Dr. Aysgarth turning his accident into an after-school special?

  They conferred briefly after the assembly and agreed to visit Eric in the hospital after rehearsal. Blake declined to join them, saying he was no fonder of Eric now than ever, so they were on their own when they arrived in Eric’s room that afternoon and found Maddie there. She was standing at the foot of the bed, holding a potted plant. When she saw them she said, “I was just leaving.”

  “Don’t go on our account,” said Jeremiah. “Oh, hey, I totally forgot to get that gift basket like we talked about, William.” They hadn’t talked about any such thing. “I’m gonna run down to the gift shop and get one now.”

  Now William got it. “I can go,” he said, hoping to stop him. “I don’t mind.”

  “Nah, I’m on it.” Jeremiah was already heading down the hallway, and William was alone with Maddie.

  It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But all in all, he was really wishing Jeremiah had stayed as backup.

  “He doesn’t look too good, does he?” he asked, looking at the IV feeding fluids into Eric’s arm, the monitor tracking his breathing and heart rate. Eric looked smaller in the hospital bed, the cotton gown draping loosely over skin that had taken on a gray tinge. “If I didn’t know better, I’d guess he was fifty at least.”

  “I know,” said Maddie. “It’s scary to think he might have been even worse off if he wasn’t such a health freak. He might not have survived at all.”

  “Yeah, that’s what makes it so weird. How could a guy in such great shape collapse like that? Maybe that’s why they assume it had to be drugs.”

  “I told Gail it wasn’t,” she said. “I don’t know why they’re sticking to that story.”

  “Me either.”

  In a small voice she said, “I feel like I did this to him.”

  “What? Don’t be ridiculous.” How pinched her face looked.

  “When he called me out in that song I hated him so much, I wanted him to die. And now he almost has.”

  He wondered if she’d wished him dead as well. After all, Eric hadn’t written the song; all he’d done was finger Maddie as its subject. It was the first time he’d really let himself think about how much the song must have hurt her, and he shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other as the idea reproached him.

  She sniffled, and he realized she was crying. For the moment all the drama that had happened between them seemed trivial, and he put his arm around her and gave her a sideways hug.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said. “And, uh, I have to admit there were times when I wished he was dead too.”

  “You’re just being nice.”

  “No, it’s true. And I’m going to feel like a real jerk if he does die.”

  She groped in her pockets for a tissue and wiped her eyes. “I’d better leave this stupid plant and get out of here. Knowing Eric, if he wakes up and finds me in his room, he’ll think I’m here to act out his sexy-nurse fantasies.” She went to the window and put the plant on the sill where it would be in Eric’s line of sight when he woke up. If he woke up.

  “Can I ask you something? Why did you go out with him?”

  She considered for a moment. “Well, he was good-looking, and really talented, and that’s a turn-on. And he was so confident. He had that kind of don’t-give-a-damn swagger.” She was speaking of him in the past tense, William noticed. “It was pretty sexy until I found out it was just arrogance.”

  William came around the side of the bed for a closer look at Eric. Something had been nagging at him, and he finally identified it. “He’s got a new tatt,” he said. The side of his neck had been inked recently enough that the skin was still angry and red.

  Maddie came to see. It was a strange combination of circles, triangles, crosses, and other squiggles, somewhat like pre-Columbian art. “It looks like those shapes people carve into crops when they want it to look like aliens.”

  “But Eric was as rabid about tattoos as everything else. Naught should sully his perfect skin.” He realized he was using the past tense too.

  “Maybe neither of us knew him that well after all,�
� she said.

  A cough came from behind them, and they both jumped. William would have sworn there was nobody else in the room with them, but behind them was an armchair he hadn’t noticed, and in it sat the man he remembered from the day of the storm.

  “We meet again,” said the man, and rose to shake hands. He was dressed in a bland suit, as before—perhaps the same suit—and his voice was mild and low, paying deference to the sober setting. He offered his hand to Maddie as well, and after a moment of uncertainty she shook. “The name is Reed. How convenient to see you here, William. I had been planning to get in touch with you.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if you’ve reconsidered signing with my employer. Unfortunately,” and he indicated Eric with a nod, “his last protégé seems to be out of the running. Which means there is a vacancy on my employer’s roster. We’d love to have you aboard.”

  That seemed pretty cold, negotiating with a new client in the same room where the previous one lay in a coma.

  The same thought seemed to have occurred to Maddie, because she asked incredulously, “Who do you work for?”

  Reed drew a business card from his breast pocket and presented it to her. “Are you also in the music field?”

  “No.” She turned the card over to look at both sides. Like the one he had pressed on William on the day of the storm, it had only a red capital letter A and a phone number. “Your boss is Hester Prynne?”

  Reed gave a polite chuckle. Behind the reflection of light on his glasses, his eyes were impossible to read. “William, I was just speaking with your girlfriend, the young lady with the fiery hair, and she thought you might be more open to signing a contract with us than before.”

  “You’ve spoken with Sheila?” And why would she have given this guy reason to hope?

  “I have indeed. She knows how serious you are about your music, about wanting to advance in your career. She suggested that I approach you again.”

  “Really.”

  “There’s no need to bridle. She only has your best interests at heart.”

  “And I suppose that means signing with a sponsor that, I’m guessing, is based out of New York?” If Sheila had tried to do an end run around him and line up his future to conform to her plan, he was going to be ticked off.