Casting Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “I suppose it’s out of the question for me to call or write to her,” he said.

  On this point he was more in sympathy with Steven. “Neither of us can,” he said. “We agreed that she wouldn’t tell me where she’s going. She deactivated her email accounts, and she left her phone with me.” And it was not making him happy, even though he understood the rationale behind it. He tried to offer some sense of comradeship. “So it looks like you and I are in the same boat,” he said.

  Steven gave him an unpleasant look, not comradely at all. “You forget that ever since Joy was born, it’s been my job to look after her. You can’t expect me to just sit back and leave my little girl to fend for herself.”

  You were fine doing that all last summer when she needed you, he thought. Aloud he said, “It’s what we both have to do, and I just took a vow to stand beside her in times of trouble. It’s for her own safety.”

  “I don’t accept that,” he snapped.

  “Well, you have to,” Tanner retorted. “The cards are in Joy’s hands. If she needs us, she’ll send for us. All we can do in the meantime is try to stay cool.”

  Steven stood glaring at him for a moment. There should have been something comical in the sight of this middle-aged professor with murder in his eye, but Tan suddenly felt sad. They should be on the same side.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, more quietly. “It blows, I know. But she’d hate it if she knew we were sniping at each other.”

  Steven inclined his head and looked down his nose at him. “I have no intention of sniping,” he said haughtily. “I will only point out that until you came into her life, Joy had no need to go into hiding like a fugitive. I’d say your marriage has begun on an enormously successful note.” He stalked out of the room, and there came the sound of his door shutting forcefully behind him.

  Tanner rubbed his temples, trying to fend off the headache that threatened. That hadn’t gone great, but it could have been worse. At least he hadn’t flaked or frozen up. He’d done what Joy needed him to do.

  But the hardest part was still to come: living without her.

  Chapter 24

  Maddie sat cross-legged on her bed, turning the business card over and over as she thought. Usually on a Saturday night she’d be out somewhere, blowing off steam after the week’s hard work or just letting her hair down with other drama students. Tonight she didn’t feel like being around other people.

  It was unnerving how Sheila seemed to be planning William’s future for him—to the altar and beyond. And William might just be easygoing enough to let her do it. He seemed comfortable letting her be the dominant one in the relationship. You shouldn’t be surprised that he likes bossy women, she told herself. After all, he liked you. She wasn’t sure if it would have bothered her any less even if she hadn’t seen Sheila apparently getting ready to fillet him in a vision.

  And if William didn’t want to be saved, there was no way Maddie could save him. Not without more evidence, anyway. He might be laid-back, but he wasn’t a pushover. If she could give him some kind of proof that Sheila meant to put him in harm’s way…

  But there wasn’t any.

  Front to back to front, over and over, she flipped the business card. It had become a worry stone for her to play with while her mind worked on other matters. That Reed was a creepy guy. She would have bet cash money that he hadn’t been in Eric’s room when she came in. It gave her the shivers to think he’d been there the whole time.

  She started flicking the card against her thumbnail, the slight thwip a backdrop for her thoughts.

  But she had no new thoughts; just the same ones on a loop. She sighed and looked at the big initial A in glossy blood-red ink. It was one thing to create a card that was dramatic and memorable, she thought, but this went too far in the other direction; it was too cryptic to be of any use. She flipped it over to the back, and this time a faint gleam caught her eye.

  She took a closer look. Nothing.

  But she’d definitely noticed something. Squinting, she held the card closer to the lamp, moving it so that the light found the surface at different angles. There it was, a flash and now gone again: a gleam as of something reflecting the light.

  Now she saw that the back, instead of being blank, as it at first appeared, actually had a design on it. It was transparent and almost impossible to see, but in some kind of reflective laminate there was an elaborate symbol. The longer she looked at it, the more it looked like the tattoo that had disappeared from Eric’s neck. It was probably just a coincidence, but…

  She picked up her phone and called Dr. Sumner. “Is there any way I could meet with you?” she asked. “There’s something I need to show you.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t see it at all,” he said. “Are you sure it’s there?”

  “Positive. It’s just a little tricky.”

  They were in Dr. Sumner’s rented office quarters on the second floor of the old courthouse on the square in old Hayesville. The building was being renovated from the bottom up, he had told her, so he only paid minimal rent with the understanding that he might have to vacate suddenly. It looked as if he’d taken that to heart, or else had never finished unpacking, because everywhere were boxes half filled with books and accordion files.

  On every surface were scattered sheets of paper with handwritten notes scrawled on them. Folders and notebooks spilled forth more papers. If anything, it looked even more chaotic than his office on campus had been. She moved a stack of books off a folding chair so she could sit down at the wobbly card table that served as his desk.

  “Maybe there’s a glare on your glasses,” she suggested.

  He removed his bifocals and held the card again in the pool of light shed by the banker’s lamp on the table. She couldn’t help noticing that he looked tired, with the lines around his eyes more deeply grooved than she remembered. Maybe he hadn’t entirely recovered from being sick, or from the treatment.

  “I’m just not getting anything.” He put his glasses back on and sighed. “Maybe it’s adult-proof.”

  Did he mean that as a joke? Sometimes Dr. Sumner’s sense of humor was on the dry side. “It would help if we had more light.”

  “Ah, yes, I’m sorry about that. The overhead burned out a few weeks ago. I keep forgetting to get a new bulb.”

  For weeks? He really must be absentminded. Chemo brain, she’d heard it called. Apparently all the drugs that killed the cancer also made you forgetful and dopey.

  “Maddie,” he said now, “how good an artist are you? Can you draw what you see on the card?”

  “Of course. I should have thought of that.” She grabbed a piece of paper at random and turned the unwritten-on side up. Dr. Sumner handed her a pencil. It only took her a few minutes to copy the symbol from the back of the card. Not perfect, but close enough to give the general idea.

  He studied the final product for a moment. “It does look rather primitive,” he said. “And this is the same symbol that you saw tattooed on Eric’s neck?”

  “I think so. I’m not positive, but it’s definitely similar. Do you know what it is?”

  He drummed his fingers against the table, then pushed his chair back and went to search one of the boxes. “It reminds me of the symbols used in the Ars Goetia,” he said with his back to her. “Unfortunately the only way to be sure is to go through the entire list looking at all of the symbols. But if it’s there—yes, that will certainly be of significance.”

  He seemed to think this was progress, but she didn’t know anything more than before. “Dr. Sumner? What’s the Arse Whatsit?”

  He turned from his examination of another box and gave her a startled look over the top of his bifocals. “Oh, you didn’t know?” She shook her head, fighting back exasperation. “It’s a directory of demons,” he said. “Part of the Lesser Key of Solomon.”

  “Still needing footnotes here.”

  “The Lesser Key is a guide to summoning up angels and demons. Written in the seventeenth cen
tury, but based on earlier works. The demons listed in the Ars Goetia were supposedly summoned up and imprisoned by King Solomon and made to do his bidding. The Ars Goetia provides instructions and incantations for any magician—or idiot—to try to do the same. It’s one of the most popular books on demonology.”

  “Okay, that helps. What will it mean if the symbol is in the book?”

  “If it’s the seal for a demon, it’s sort of like an official signature. On the business card—I really don’t know. It may mean that signing with the agency is literally making a deal with the devil. As a tattoo? It could mean that Eric was trying to summon the demon, or it could be that he made a pact with the demon and this is the contractual signature. Or maybe he just thought it looked, er, badass.”

  That sounded like Eric. She could just hear him saying, “Hardcore!” But that wouldn’t explain why it had disappeared.

  For another thing: “How would Eric have gotten his hands on this book?” she wondered. “It sounds awfully rare. Seventeenth-century and all.” A sudden thought made her sit up. “Could he have stolen your copy before you moved off campus? Is that why you can’t find it now?”

  “That’s very tactful of you, Maddie, but I’m just disorganized. As for his finding the symbol—” He mimed smacking himself on the forehead, then sat down at the table again and tapped briefly at his computer keyboard. “The whole book’s on the web,” he said simply, and turned the laptop around so that she could see. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that right away. Old habits, I guess.”

  “Oh.” Dismayed, she scanned the page of images he’d pulled up. Some of them did resemble the one on the card. “So anybody could find that symbol and decide it would make a cool tattoo, or business logo, or what have you. It might not have any magical significance at all.”

  “That is a possibility. And I’m only hypothesizing that it’s from the Lesser Key. I don’t recognize it offhand. What did you say the A on that card stood for again?”

  She couldn’t remember the name exactly. “It was Ann something. Ann Douches? No, that can’t be right. But it wasn’t anyone I’d ever heard of.”

  “Ann,” he repeated. “Doesn’t sound much like a demon.” The tone of his voice reminded her that that was just one letter away from his wife’s name, and she felt awkward that she’d made him sad.

  He glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid I’ll have to kick you out,” he said, taking his blazer from the back of his chair and standing to put it on. “I’ve got an appointment. But I’d recommend that you look through all the demon seals and see if one of them lines up with the one you saw.”

  “How long will that take?” she asked in dismay.

  “Don’t worry. There are only seventy-two.” He turned out the desk lamp and held open the door for her. The landing was dimly lit, with a low-watt incandescent bulb revealing the worn wooden floorboards and the dingy paint on the walls. He locked the door behind them; the shiny new lock was the only new thing about his strange quarters. “Give me a call if you find it. I’m intrigued.”

  She followed him downstairs and outside, where he used another key to lock the front door behind them. In the chilly twilight the memorial statues in the square took on an eerie impression of half-life: not quite alive, but definitely not cold bronze. A breeze whisked dry leaves across the floorboards of the old-fashioned bandstand just a few yards away. Despite the unwelcoming surroundings, Maddie was too impatient to wait until she got back to her room to start researching the symbol, so she flopped onto a bench under one of the antique reproduction streetlamps and dug her smartphone out of her purse. She was trying to recall the spelling of the book’s title when she remembered the other thing she had meant to ask him. “Dr. Sumner?” she called after his retreating figure. He was at the farthest edge of the brick walkway that stretched to the edge of the square.

  He turned back. “Yes?”

  “How’s Joy?”

  There was a second before his reply. “I’d be the last person to know,” he said, and walked away.

  What a strange thing to say. But Maddie didn’t puzzle over it, being more interested in the symbol.

  It didn’t take her long to find it. Dr. Sumner had been right: the almost invisible symbol on Reed’s business card was the seal of the demon Amdusias. Once she had found her way around all the goth-metal and RPG associations with the name, Maddie hit on the information she needed.

  Amdusias was the supreme musician of the underworld, in charge of creating the cacophonous music of hell. Sources disagreed on his appearance: according to some, he was a unicorn; others said he was a man with the head of a horse or unicorn and claws for his hands and feet; and others said that when he appeared before a magician who controlled him he took the form of a dark-haired man with rough, long-fingered hands. He held high rank among demons—Maddie pictured a horse-headed man in a military uniform with lots of braid—and governed from twenty-nine to forty legions of devils, which sounded impressive. Invisible trumpets were said to be heard in his presence, and trees would bend to his will or topple to the ground. The guy packed some serious mojo.

  Maddie suddenly remembered the day of the storm. When Mr. Dudley had shepherded the drama class back to the surface and out of the theater building, they had found several trees torn out of the ground and lying across the devastated lawns with their roots bare. The school had had to call in a tree service to come cut them up and cart them off the next day. Some of the trees had been there since before the founding of the school, Gail told her: she had actually had tears in her eyes, she was such a nature nut. At the time they had all just figured that the force of the wind had torn the trees down after the rain had soaked and loosened the earth.

  Unless Amdusias had done it.

  But that was ridiculous. This obscure little pocket of land in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains was too sleepy a place for infernal activity. Why would a demon surface here, of all places? If a demon wanted a soul, there were plenty of locations crammed with people ready to make desperate bargains. Las Vegas, or Hollywood, or Washington, D.C.

  Maybe, though, some demons were more choosy. Looking through the Ars Goetia even briefly had shown her how, well, specialized some of these characters were. Just as it seemed that Catholics had a saint for everything from TV to selling a house, according to this school of thought there were demons for every little thing as well. Could it be—assuming for the moment that demons truly existed—that they were drawn to humans who had the same specialization?

  The possibility chilled her. Maybe the Ash Grove music department’s reputation for excellence had drawn Amdusias here. After all, Eric was linked with Amdusias by the symbol, and Eric was one of the most talented musicians she knew.

  The other was William. And Reed and Sheila seemed to be trying to push him into some kind of contract with Amdusias.

  Tasha agreed with surprisingly little fuss to send William an email about the symbol. Even though Maddie felt she was on better footing with William than in the past, she wasn’t positive he’d read any email or text she sent him—and she wouldn’t put it past Sheila to screen his mail anyway. Maddie could have easily created a new dummy email account, but mail from Tasha would probably stand a better chance of reaching him.

  “So this is some kind of musicians’ cult?” Tasha asked.

  That had seemed like the best story. “Yeah, it looks like,” said Maddie. “Eric was mixed up in it, and we know what happened to him. I don’t want William to get involved in it as well.”

  Tasha looked like she wanted to brush off the idea, but couldn’t. “I guess weirder things have happened. Okay, I’ll scan the thing and send it to him.” She took the piece of notebook paper from Maddie. “What’s all this about time rending and restoring the negated reality? Is that part of the cult bylaws, or something?”

  “Huh? Let me see that.” Scribblings in what must have been Dr. Sumner’s handwriting reminded her that she had grabbed one of his notes to draw on. “Oh, tha
t’s something of Dr. Sumner’s. It must be the research project he’s been working on. The drawing of the symbol is what I want you to send William. And put in that stuff I told you about Amdusias.”

  “I still think William’s got better sense than to join a cult. He’s too smart to go drinking the Kool-Aid.”

  “If he knows what he’s getting into, sure,” said Maddie. “But what cult ever comes right out and says that’s what it is? It’s probably more like ‘join our exclusive networking organization.’ We’ve got to make sure he has the whole story. Especially since I think Sheila is mixed up in it.”

  Tasha nodded. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll make sure he knows what the deal is. But, Maddie… I think now you need to move on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This thing with William is just making you miserable. First the dream about Sheila hurting him, now this. And frankly, the night of Joy’s wedding you were a hot mess.”

  Maddie grimaced. “Yeah, I realize now that drunken self-pity karaoke is not that attractive. Who knew, right?”

  Tasha’s expression said she wasn’t going to be so easily diverted. “I don’t mean you getting wasted,” she said patiently. “Maybe you should, you know, go out with someone new. Stop thinking about William all the time. You’re getting a little obsessed.”

  Maddie got up to leave. “Tasha, you know the deal. If I try to stop thinking about elephants, that’s all I will think about. Sexy, hazel-eyed elephants. Anyway, thanks for taking care of this.”

  “No problem. But do you think we should tell Gail so she can tell campus security to watch out for this Reed person?”

  “It can’t hurt. Thanks, Tash, I’ll get on that.”

  Gail seemed to take her concerns seriously, and gave campus security a description of Reed—for what that was worth. It was like describing a cement block. But aside from that, all Maddie could do was wait and maintain a Sheila Wardrobe Watch. Not the way she wanted to spend Christmas-shopping season, but it wasn’t like she had a choice. This year the holiday season was about stalking, not stockings.