Casting Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles)

by Amanda DeWees

  “Bitch coldcocked me,” she said, somewhat indistinctly.

  Reed did not appear to be overcome with sympathy.

  “Am I to take it that your offering to Amdusias has escaped?”

  “I guess so.” She looked around as she got to her feet. Reed didn’t offer any help. “Damn that Maddie Rosenbaum anyway. I knew she’d be trouble. She’s always tagging along after William.”

  “So you’ve been working with Raven all these weeks,” said Reed, without expression. “I suppose you thought that if he and I found out about your playing both of us, each of us would be too busy defending our territory to trouble with you.”

  She started to toss her hair, then winced at the movement. “Come on, Reed, it was no big deal. I just agreed to try to get close to Joy and find out if there was anything weird about the baby that might help bring Melisande back.” When he didn’t respond, she said persuasively, “You’ve got to see it from my side. I need the backing of someone powerful. I couldn’t know whether that would turn out to be Amdusias or Melisande, if Raven was even able to revive her.”

  The firelight was reflected in Reed’s glasses, making his face even more unreadable than usual. “He has not,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “Well, that gives me a chance to find another vessel, then. Maybe Tanner Lindsey, now that his dumpy little wife is away.” She gave him her biggest smile. “You’re not going to hold this against me, now, are you? I know it may have looked like I was trying to cut you out, but you can’t blame a girl for trying to make a good impression on her new demon lord. I would have shared the credit for landing William. Honest.”

  For answer, Reed’s hand shot out and gripped her by the throat. As William watched, horrified, the inconspicuous man grew taller, his shoulders broader, his hair darkening, the glasses vanishing. It was Raven. His beard drew itself along his jaw as the grey suit blurred and reconfigured into a black shirt and slacks.

  A hallucination. It had to be. But beside him, Maddie stifled a gasp. So she was seeing it too.

  As Sheila clawed ineffectually at his hand, Raven pulled her toward him until her frightened face was just inches from his.

  “You have meddled in matters far bigger than yourself,” he hissed. “Your interference may have set my mistress back for months. And she grows weary of her twilight existence.” He surveyed her, still holding her almost casually with one hand around her throat, as she began to cough, scratching at his hand, his arm, anything her flailing hands could reach. “If you’re thinking that Reed will save you,” he added, “you may relinquish that hope. Even if he were in a position to come to your rescue, I hardly think he’d spare a thought for the brat who tried to edge him out of Amdusias’s favor.”

  They couldn’t just let this thing strangle Sheila. William jostled Maddie’s arm to get her attention, and nodded in Sheila’s direction.

  Maddie drew her eyebrows down in a glower and shook her head so that her hair swung around her face. No way, it meant. Not for Sheila.

  He made an emphatic face at her. We have to try.

  Maddie jutted her chin at him, but she got to her feet.

  Before she could take even a single step out of their hiding place, Raven had pulled Sheila close to the brazier where the small fire still leapt. With his free hand he drew a fingernail down her cheek, opening a scarlet line, and flicked a drop of her blood into the fire.

  A shadow seemed to leap upward from the flames. It loomed along the wall, black as tar, a vaguely human outline with a strange misshapen head and fingers of grotesque length that tapered to points.

  Maddie reflexively flinched backward, one hand clutching William’s shoulder, and William heard himself choke back a startled sound.

  “My lord cousin,” said Raven formally. “Greetings.”

  The shadow moved as if the un-thing was turning its head, a head that in profile was like that of a massive horse. The outline of an ear twitched. It did not speak, but William heard words in his mind, as hollow as wind blowing through a subway tunnel.

  I did not expect it to be you who summoned me, Cousin.

  “No more than I expected to summon you.” Raven took a long look at Sheila, who was whimpering now, her wild eyes fixed on the shadow, and fumbling desperately for a grip on the fingers that held her by the throat. “Is this girl valuable to you?”

  She claimed she could succeed where Reed had failed. She did not. The silhouette of one clawed hand moved up the wall until it touched the shadow cast by Sheila’s head, and Sheila uttered a choked sound as a tress of her hair was lifted for brief consideration, then let fall. It appears I shall be forced to wait until Reed finds another vessel.

  “Reed is dead,” said Raven. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you might want to train your minions a teensy bit better next time.”

  A guttural sound indicated displeasure.

  “No need to be like that,” said Raven appeasingly. “Perhaps we can help each other.”

  Maddie turned a face of agonized indecision to William. He was as torn as she was. How could they hope to save Sheila without putting themselves in danger? He knew he couldn’t make himself go anywhere near that shadow being, and he couldn’t blame Maddie for hanging back.

  Only then did he notice the square metal can lying on the floor, its liquid contents silently streaming across the floor toward the grotesque trio by the fire. It must have been the thing that Maddie had jarred loose minutes ago.

  A harsh smell was beginning to reach him. With his head clouded, it took a few seconds for his brain to decipher it.

  Turpentine.

  He touched her arm to get her attention, and pointed.

  Her lips formed a silent curse as she took in what was happening. Quickly she helped him to his feet. He could hear the wail of sirens now, or at least he thought he did; maybe that was just his mind playing more tricks on him. None of this could be real, he told himself. Nothing except Maddie, drawing his arm over her shoulders and half carrying him as they started to make their way past the rows of shelves and toward the far side of the room as silently as they could. Raven was saying something, but he couldn’t make out what it was, and getting out of that room was the only thing concerning William now.

  A sudden foomp told him that the turpentine had met the fire. He knew the flame would race back across that track to the fallen can, to the shelves full of more flammable chemicals. He felt for the concrete wall with his free hand, seeking leverage to move faster.

  The sound of sirens was joined by the crackling of flames. There were loud metallic sounds as the metal shelves contracted in the sudden heat, crumps and hollow booms as cans of chemicals burst. Bright leaping light was filling the chamber now as the flames spread. He couldn’t hear whether Raven and the shadow thing were still talking. Or if Sheila was still there. He sent a brief hope out into the universe that she had gotten away somehow, up the ladder to the trap door. Because otherwise—

  “Watch out!” shouted Maddie, and threw herself against him. As he fell hard against the concrete floor he could see the metal shelves toppling like giant dominoes. He flung his arm up to protect his face as a tower of steel loomed into his sight and fell toward them.

  Chapter 28

  When he opened his eyes next, he was still lying down, but on something more comfortable than concrete. He was in a moving vehicle—an ambulance, maybe? There was important-looking equipment everywhere, jouncing with the motion of the vehicle, and a blonde woman in a uniform watching him. She said, “Glad to have you back. I was starting to worry.”

  “Not as much as I was,” said Maddie. She was sitting next to him, holding his hand so tightly that it ached. Actually, now that he was awake, he realized he ached pretty much everywhere. He tried to talk and realized that an oxygen mask was strapped to his face. The paramedic saw that he wanted to speak and removed it.

  “What happened?” His voice came out raspy. “Did the building come down?”

  The paramedic, if that was
what she was, shook her head. “Fortunately that basement room contained the blast. That meant you two got more of it, though.”

  Maddie’s face and clothes were dark with soot, and her eyebrows were half singed off. The knuckles on the hand that held his were red and blistered. “How did we get out?” he asked.

  “Fire rescue,” she said. “They were in the building already and saw the fireball come up out of the trap door in the stage. Lucky for us they came to check things out and found us.”

  “I can’t believe we survived that,” he said. Those last seconds had looked like the end of the world.

  The paramedic detached Maddie’s hand from his so she could check his pulse. “Y’all were incredibly lucky,” she said. “Those shelves fell just at the right angle to shield you from the worst of the blast. As it is, neither of you got out completely unscathed.”

  Maddie waved that away. “Bruised ribs are nothing next to concussion.”

  “Concussion? Me?”

  The medic nodded. “Looks likely.” He remembered falling from the ladder and coming to with that miserable headache. “Still and all,” she continued, “you two had odds of about one in a thousand of coming through that intact, maybe less. With that kind of luck, I’d run out and buy lottery tickets as soon as the docs release you.”

  Maddie grinned, her teeth showing very white in her sooty face. “I owe old Josiah Cavanaugh one. Looks like he came through for us after all.”

  “What about Raven and the…” He didn’t want to say too much in front of the ambulance attendant. Maddie knew what he meant, though.

  “I think we’re in the clear. I don’t think they had a chance to, uh, arrange for Horseface’s visit.”

  “And Sheila?” asked William.

  That made her hesitate. “They haven’t found her yet. It… it doesn’t look good, William.”

  She meant Sheila was probably dead. It didn’t seem possible. It was only minutes ago that she had been ordering him around in the way he’d become so accustomed to. Had even become fond of. She was one of the most vivid people he’d ever known. To try to imagine all that snuffed out… He thought of her smile, how it combined exasperation with affection, and knew that it couldn’t have all been an act. She had cared about him, and he—

  Then he noticed how anxiously Maddie was watching his face. He reached out to smooth the frizzled hair that fell against her cheek. Her lovely burgundy hair was a singed, tortured mess. But she was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her.

  “I didn’t thank you for coming after me,” he said. “I’m glad you did.”

  She reached for his hand again and held on as if it would take machinery to detach her. “I’m not that easy to get rid of,” she said. “Especially where you’re concerned.”

  * * *

  Tanner gazed down at his daughter’s red, scrunched-up face, and said, “She’s gorgeous.”

  Joy laughed. “She looks like Mickey Rooney. Or do I mean Andy Rooney?” She was sitting up in the hospital bed, weary yet wired after her labor.

  “No, she’s absolutely beautiful. Is it okay if I call her that?” he added, looking up from the bundle in his arms, and the question gave her a pang. He shouldn’t need permission to call his daughter beautiful.

  “Actually, I think I’m going to lift my ban on that word,” she said. “You can use it as much as you want.”

  “Good.” He sat down next to her on the bed and leaned in to kiss her. “Because the two of you are the most beautiful women in the world.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder and touched her daughter’s soft, dimpled hand. The tiny fingers reflexively closed around her fingertip. “You sound like a dad who’s going to spoil his daughter completely.”

  “That’s the grandparents’ job, isn’t it? Speaking of, I’d better try your dad again.”

  She took the baby from him so that he could get out his phone. She couldn’t stop marveling over Rose, her perfect little features, her miniature fists that she waved as she screwed up her eyes. Her fine angled eyebrows that were tiny replicas of her father’s. Joy couldn’t help wondering if some last remnants of magic had aided the delivery, because it hadn’t been as long or as unpleasant as she’d expected. Very considerate of little Rose, she thought, smiling at her daughter, to make her arrival as pleasant as possible.

  “Still no answer,” Tan said presently. “I don’t want to just leave a voicemail.”

  Normally she wouldn’t have worried that her dad wasn’t answering his phone at this time of night, but after numerous attempts to reach him she was starting to wonder what was up. She had called him right after Tanner to let him know she was in labor, but he hadn’t picked up then either. “I guess all we can do is keep trying,” she said.

  When Tan’s ringtone went off he actually jumped. He was probably frazzled too. He had made the trip from North Carolina so much faster than expected that Joy had to wonder what feats of speed he had coaxed from the minivan. He had actually arrived a good hour before Rose herself, and had been there to cheer Joy on in the last stretch.

  “Mo! I’m glad to hear from you. What’s the story?” His face went through rapid changes as she watched. “An explosion? Was anyone hurt?… I see… Oh, they’re both doing fantastic. Yeah, we’ve tried Rose with silver and salt already, and she’s perfectly normal—except for being the best baby in the world… Hold on, I’ll put her on.” He held the phone to Joy’s ear so she wouldn’t have to put Rose down. “Mo wants to say hi.”

  “Congratulations,” said her erstwhile teacher warmly. “I’m delighted everything went well for you.”

  “We’re really happy too. But Mo, we haven’t been able to get ahold of Dad. Do you know if he’s all right?”

  A pause. “I haven’t spoken to Steven in the last few days. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  At least she wouldn’t have to keep worrying about that. Then, after Tanner had hung up, she asked, “What was that about an explosion?”

  “I told you about the fire that knocked out the power, right? Somehow it spread to the old scenery storage space below the theater and set off some chemicals stored there. The building didn’t have too much damage, but William had to go to the hospital. He seems okay,” he added quickly, “it’s mainly for observation. Maddie’s with him.”

  That was interesting. And promising. “Maybe they made up,” she whispered to Rose, who blew bubbles in agreement.

  “Mo said there’s a lot more to tell but it can wait til tomorrow. Or later today, I should say.”

  “That’s good. I don’t think I’m up to a long story just now.” The adrenaline was ebbing, and she was starting to feel very drowsy. “Oh shoot, I meant to get Donna to get a picture of the three of us before she left. I wanted to send it to Dad, for when he finally checks his phone.”

  “I can take care of that.” Tanner put his arm around her and held his phone out to take a picture of the three of them. Joy didn’t have to remind herself to smile. She was pretty sure a smile was permanently affixed to her face.

  “Our first family photo,” said Tanner, and there was a quiet satisfaction in the words that told Joy, once and for all, that this was exactly where he wanted to be: with her and Rose, now and always.

  * * *

  Steven’s phone buzzed again. He glanced over his shoulder at the card table where it lay. He wondered if it was important, but he couldn’t afford any interruptions now. It was almost dawn.

  Possibly it was Joy with news of the baby. It wouldn’t surprise him if her child was born on the solstice. But he knew that she would understand and forgive him for not answering her call once she found out what he was attempting—especially if it worked. And he prayed it would work.

  He returned to the task of filling in the rest of the symbols in the chalk circle he had drawn on the floorboards. The old courthouse was entirely silent at this time of the night; he knew he was the only person in the building.

  For now.

  He sat back on his heels
, his knees creaking a bit, one hand going to his lower back to massage the stiffness there as he surveyed his work. This crawling around on the floor was a young man’s game. Everything seemed to be complete: the formulae, the symbols, the runes. And the photograph of his wife. Her mischievous expression seemed to say that she was conspiring with him on this venture tonight. Eagerness rose so quickly that it almost choked him.

  Not long now, he reminded himself. His heart beat faster with excitement. He was so close.

  Methodically he lit the candles and set aside the lighter. All was in place.

  He cleared his throat and began to speak aloud the words that would bring Anna Merridew Sumner back from the dead.

  The End

  ***Keep reading for an excerpt from Among the Shadows, the thrilling sequel to Casting Shadows.***

  Copyright © 2012 Amanda DeWees

  Bonus: Excerpt From Among the Shadows

  “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.