The Angel Stone

CHAPTER TWO

I paused for a moment outside the door to the dean’s office to collect myself. The conversation with Nicky had unnerved me a bit. It was one thing to watch my college taken over by evil forces and another to see the effects of that takeover on the students I cared most about. The students had no way of knowing why the college was so different. They didn’t know that the Grove—a club for ultra-conservative witches, to which my grandmother happened to belong—had conspired to close the door to Faerie with a mysterious all-male British club that turned out to be run by nephilim. I hadn’t even known about nephilim a couple of months ago. My specialty was fairy tales, not Bible studies. Truthfully, I’d never had much interest in angels, fallen or not. They always seemed much less interesting to me than fairies, pixies, elves, and goblins.

But the nephilim weren’t even fallen angels, as much as they liked to think they were. According to Soheila Lilly, they were elves who had been kicked out of Faerie because they couldn’t keep their hands off human women. For hundreds of years they had nursed their resentment of the fey—and the human witches who aligned themselves with the fey—and conspired with the Grove to close the door to Faerie. Once the fairies—and a number of humans, including Dean Elizabeth Book, who had gone to Faerie with her partner, Diana Hart—were gone, the nephilim had free rein to take over Fairwick. Duncan Laird, their leader, had taken over as dean. I wondered if Liz would have left if she had known what would happen to her beloved college. She would be furious to see the changes that had been made …

“Are you going to come in, Professor McFay?” A voice came from behind the door. “Or stand out there in the hall all day?”

I’d forgotten the nephilim had such good ears …

I opened the door.

… and such big teeth.

Duncan Laird, DMA (Doctor of Magical Arts) Oxford, wizard of the Ninth Order, and nephilim, sat behind a large desk, grinning. Even from across the room, those teeth looked too white and shiny, reminding me of the long, sharp fangs he’d revealed when he’d been unmasked and assumed his true shape. I glanced at his hands, folded over a thick folder on top of the desk. They were smooth and manicured, giving no hint of the claws with which he’d nearly slashed my throat—nor was there any sign of the wings that he could extend at will. As I crossed the room, though, I could sense a disturbance in the air, a fluttering … I studied the wall behind Duncan, but all I saw were an array of framed diplomas. Perhaps the sound was my heart pounding with fear.

“Have a seat, Professor McFay. I won’t bite.”

“You tried to rip my throat out,” I reminded him as I sat on the edge of a leather chair in front of the desk.

Laird pursed his lips and made a tutting sound, as if recalling some minor social faux pas. “Oh, Callie,” he said, leaning forward, “if I had tried to rip your throat out, you wouldn’t be here right now. I only needed a drop of your blood mixed with the blood of your beloved incubus to close the door. Of course I never intended to harm you.”

“You killed Bill,” I said.

“An incubus who had been preying on you!” he exclaimed, spreading his hands out in a gesture of appeasement. The motion had the fluid grace of wings opening, and once again I had the impression of invisible wings beating the air. Was that part of the nephilim’s power? I wondered. Did they use their wings to move and affect the air around them? “Do you really believe you two had a future together?”

“I loved him,” I answered. “He had just become human.”

Duncan shook his head. He looked down, noticed the folder on the desk—which I saw was actually a thick envelope with many foreign stamps affixed to it—and turned to put it in the file cabinet behind his desk. “Ah, that was unfortunate timing, then. I had no idea you felt that way about Handyman Bill.”

“That was only the incarnation he took,” I said defensively. Then, realizing I’d sounded snobbish, I added, “Not that I wouldn’t love a handyman if he was as kind and goodhearted as Bill Carey.” I blinked back tears, determined not to reveal weakness in front of Duncan Laird. I’d worked out why my incubus lover, who’d materialized once as a hunky poetry teacher, had chosen to come to me the second time as a taciturn handyman. He’d inadvertently knocked my own handyman, Brock, from the roof when he arrived from Faerie, so he’d taken the shape I needed most. It had also given him the opportunity to fix some things he’d broken during his incubus rages. In the two months since Bill had died, I’d had ample time to notice all the little things he’d fixed in the house and to appreciate a man who fixed things rather than broke them.

Duncan Laird canted his head to one side and studied me with sharp blue eyes. I felt a fizzle of electricity at his gaze. It was a sensation I’d mistaken for attraction when I first met him, but now, although I could recognize in the abstract that he was handsome, I knew the sparks between us were warning signs. Still, when he purred, “Is that what you really need most, dear Callie?” I felt a flash of heat course through my body. The nephilim, I’d learned through intensive research these last two months, produced their own Aelvesgold—the magical elixir of Faerie—and could transmit it through the air as an aphrodisiac. Over the millennia, they’d used their powers to seduce human women. I suspected that some of our new freshman class might be the offspring of such unions. Which reminded me …

“What I really need right now,” I said, slapping the magenta flyer on the desk, “is a campus where women aren’t denigrated and exploited. This flyer is lewd and insulting. I can only imagine what will happen to any hapless girl fool enough to go to this thing. What are you going to do about it?” I demanded, glad to have a channel for the heat in my body.

Duncan Laird picked up the flyer and examined it, his face grave. If his lip had so much as twitched, I would have accused him of sanctioning the fraternity’s misogynistic language, but his expression remained suitably serious. When he looked up at me, a crease had appeared between his eyebrows.

“You’re absolutely right. This is unacceptable. I’ll talk to the president of Alpha Delta Chi immediately and demand he issue an apology to the female student body.”

“Okay …” I said tentatively, thrown off guard by his compliance. “And what about the party?”

“I’ll send security to monitor it,” he said. “I don’t want anything going wrong there any more than you do, Callie. Especially when it’s so close to your house.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” I snapped, although of course it did. It had broken my heart to see frat boys move in to the Hart Brake Inn, not only because the inn was across the street from where I lived but because it profaned the memory of my dear friend Diana Hart. “Why not cancel the party as a consequence of this offensive flyer?”

“That would be an overreaction and initiate a chain of bad feeling throughout the campus. Better that the new students learn to play by the rules and assimilate into the campus culture.”

“If anything does go wrong …”

“You have my assurance that nothing will.” He learned forward and smiled. I heard that rustling again and felt a sizzle in my veins. I summoned all my power to resist the pull of Duncan Laird’s charisma. “I would like us to be friends, Callie—”

I snorted.

“—but if that’s not possible, can we not be congenial colleagues? I welcome your input and suggestions and will be happy to work with you for the good of the college. Isn’t that what we both want?”

The sizzle in my veins chilled as I realized what Laird was proposing. I could prevent harm to the students if I collaborated with the administration. And, in truth, wasn’t that why I had stayed at Fairwick? After the door to Faerie had closed, with most of my friends trapped behind it, I considered leaving. The academic job market wasn’t in great shape, but I could have gone back to the city, kicked out my subletter, and taken adjunct jobs until I got something better. I could have turned my back on Fairwick and the world of fairies and witches and returned to the life I’d left only a year ago. But then there was Bill’s last note to me.

There’s another door.

If there was another door to Faerie and there was any chance of freeing my friends—and any remote chance that Bill was still alive there—I absolutely had to stay in Fairwick and look for that door.

“We don’t want the same things at all,” I said. “I want you out of here and my college back.”

Duncan smiled—or maybe he was baring his teeth. “Fair enough, Professor McFay. I appreciate your honesty. Now, if you’ll just give me the diagnostic essays your class did this morning—”

“No,” I replied.

“No?”

“No. I’ll read them and respond to them.”

“Didn’t you get the memo specifying that all English faculty were to hand in their students’ essays for review by the administration?”

“Yes, I got that memo and the ninety-six other memos your office has issued in the last week, but I have no intention of handing over my students’ papers. If you persist in the request, I’ll go to the MLA and complain. Fairwick College won’t be as useful to you if you lose your accreditation.”

Duncan’s smile vanished. His jaw tightened. I thought I heard teeth grinding and invisible wings beating. “You might be surprised at how the MLA would respond to your complaints. We have friends there. I think you’ll find we have friends”—he smiled, but this time without showing his teeth—“everywhere.” He splayed his hands out in the air again. “But I believe in picking my battles. Keep your papers. I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunity to get to know each and every one of your students.”

He held his hands higher. The gesture would have seemed conciliatory but for the shadow they threw on the wall. It resembled nothing so much as giant wings spreading over the room.