The Angel Stone

CHAPTER FIVE

“That’s … that’s …” I stuttered, unable to come up with the words to describe my disgust. Frank had no such trouble.

“Loathsome, despicable, and subhuman.”

“Savages!” Soheila hissed, her breath singeing the corners of the papers. I’d felt her breath warm the air, but I’d never before seen it burn. “We must alert the witch communities and remaining fey about what the nephilim are planning.”

“But who can we trust?” Frank asked, scowling. “The nephilim are using their Aelvesgold to bribe fey and witch alike. It’s not just the trows. The fenoderee and the pixies have signed oaths of allegiance to the nephilim.” Frank held up two documents with heavy wax seals affixed to them.

“We must do something,” Soheila insisted. “We can’t stand by and let these evil bastards prey on innocent young women.”

“As long as the nephilim have the only source of Aelvesgold, we won’t be able to trust anyone who depends on the stuff—” A look from Soheila cut him off. “I don’t mean you, of course.”

“How do you know, Frank? How do you know I won’t turn you both in to Duncan Laird for a bit of Aelvesgold?” Soheila asked bitterly. “I need it as much as any creature of the otherworld.”

“I trust you because I know you,” Frank said, looking into her eyes. His hand moved toward hers but she snatched it away, sparks flying from her fingertips. Soheila’s eyes glittered like gold coins, and Frank looked away, embarrassed. “And McFay’s too young to have developed a dependency, right, McFay?”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said, guiltily recalling my brief flirtation with Aelvesgold two months ago, especially a brief interlude in Faerie when Liam had used the elixir to enhance our lovemaking. I had other, less pleasant memories of the substance. Although it increased magical power and sexual prowess, it also brought nightmares and strange delusions. I’d almost drowned in my bathtub once after using the stuff. I hadn’t touched it since, but I’d caught myself thinking about it once or twice. Now, though, at the thought of the nephilim preying on my students, my blood was racing and my skin prickling without any need for Aelvesgold.

“But many witches have grown dependent on it,” Soheila said. “We’ve lost two of the circle in Fairwick.”

“Two?” I asked. I knew about Ann Chase, a longtime member of the Fairwick witches’ circle and respected member of the community. She had been bribed by Duncan Laird to vouch for him as my tutor. She claimed that she’d thought he was my incubus, but we learned later that she’d known all along that he was a nephilim. Ann had a daughter with Down syndrome, whose all-too-short life span had been prolonged with Aelvesgold. The nephilim had promised to give her enough Aelvesgold to live forever. “Who else has defected?”

“Lester Hanks,” Soheila replied. “I saw him performing at Fair Grounds last night. He had enough Aelvesgold in him to light up a city, and he sang and played like Kenny Rogers. The Aelvesgold is giving him a chance to realize his wildest dreams. How long before everyone in the circle defects?”

“We should call a circle to discuss Aelvesgold use,” I said. “If everyone understood the side effects—”

“Yeah, that worked so well keeping kids off drugs,” Frank cut me off. “What we need is to find the other door, the one Bill told you about in his note. It’s not in any one place. Bill told me something that morning …” He paused at a warning glance from Soheila. “He told me that there’s a door to Faerie that you, and only you, could open anywhere—but also that opening it would put you in great danger. See …” He turned back to Soheila. “That’s what I meant about him being a good guy. Even if he was an incubus, he was capable of selfless love.”

I swallowed the sob I felt rising in my throat. “Did he say anything else about this door?”

“Only what it was called,” Frank said. “He said it was known as the hallow door.”

“That’s a myth,” Soheila said.

I stifled a laugh. “You’re a myth, Soheila. Everything I’ve encountered since I came to Fairwick is a myth or fairy tale. I’ve heard something about a hallow door”—I didn’t want to say that I’d heard about it in a dream, because then I’d have to admit I’d started having dreams about my demon lover again—“um … in an old Scottish ballad.” That was half true. The dream figure who’d told me about it had come out of a Scottish ballad.

“Then why don’t you research it?” Soheila said, in an unusually clipped tone that produced a noticeable chill in the air. “I’m going to find out more about what the nephilim are planning. What about you, Frank? Why don’t you help Callie with her research.”

“McFay knows her way around a Scottish ballad. I’ve still got contacts in IMP who may be able to help.”

“Good. In the meantime, I’ll do some research on the angel stone, and we should all keep a vigilant eye on our female students—”

“The frat party!” I cried. “I tried to get Duncan to cancel it, but he refused. It’s the perfect setup for preying on girls.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Frank growled. “Let’s get over there.”

“Excellent idea,” Soheila said briskly, sweeping the papers on the desk into a neat stack with a spell that reordered them as we’d found them. When the pages had slid themselves into their envelope, she returned the package to the filing cabinet and closed the drawer with a gusty shove. “You two go to the party. We’d better leave now. We can’t expect Ralph to keep that security guard busy forever.”

Soheila led the way out of the office to the back stairs. Frank followed, trying to catch up to her, but when he saw that she was determined not to talk to him, he fell back next to me.

“What did I say?” he asked, an unaccustomed look of confusion on his face.

“That part about an incubus being capable of selfless love. Soheila doesn’t believe it. She thinks her kind will always take advantage of a human. It’s why—”

Frank cut me off by holding up his hand. We’d reached the lobby. A great lumpy-looking figure was sprawled across the floor in front of the janitor’s closet—our entrance to the tunnels. I stepped closer and saw that it was the security guard. For a moment I thought that Ralph had somehow killed him, but then I heard him snoring. Ralph was sitting beside his head, cleaning fluorescent Cheetos crumbs out of his whiskers.

“Wow, you exhausted him!” I said, crouching down and holding out my hand for Ralph. “You must be tired, too.”

Ralph yawned, climbed into my hand, curled up, and promptly fell asleep. I tucked him into my backpack.

“Did he have to pass out right in front of our entrance to the tunnels?” Frank asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Soheila responded. “It’s late enough that we should be able to find our ways back across the campus. I’m going to the library to look up matters related to the angel stone. You and Callie go to the Alpha party, and then you should make sure Callie gets home safely. If Callie is the only one who can open this hallow door, then she’s in grave danger from the nephilim. You have to protect her as well as the students.” She gave Frank a look to impress upon him the gravity of this responsibility, but it was so full of longing that the air between them literally steamed up. She quickly turned and fled through the back door of Main, trailing fog behind her.

“Sheesh, McFay, I will never understand women. Come on, let’s get to the Alpha House before Soheila unleashes a hurricane on us.”

We followed Soheila out the back door—onto a campus wreathed in mist. It might have been a natural weather front, but I was betting that Soheila’s conflicting emotions for Frank had collided to form the fog bank. At least it provided cover for us as we walked toward the southeast gate and I summoned up the nerve to ask Frank if Bill had said anything else that morning the door closed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. I thought maybe it would be better if you forgot him if he’s really gone.”

“But he told you about a door that only I could open.”

“He said you had the power to open something called the hallow door but that doing it might kill you. He wanted me to promise to keep you from trying to open it.”

“And did you promise?” I peered through the fog at Frank. With his beret pulled low over his eyes, it was hard to make out his expression.

“I told him you were too stubborn to listen to anyone. He laughed and said he’d noticed that, but he thought that if anyone could talk some sense into you it would be me. After all, I’d talked you into letting me look down your shirt to check for vampire bites.”

I blushed at the memory. “Liam was furious when he came upon us that day. Was Bill?”

“Bill looked like he still wouldn’t mind clocking me one about that, but he was more concerned that I watch out for you. So I told him I would.”

“I’m not the one who needs watching out for right now,” I said, pointing at the Alpha Delta Chi house, which glowed like a malevolent Christmas tree. Pounding music, raucous shouts, and high-pitched giggles drifted toward us on the fog. “I can’t believe that any of our female students were stupid enough to go to this thing.”

“Let’s have a closer look,” Frank said.

In the fog, we sneaked around the garage and into the backyard. There was a two-story gazebo; its top floor would afford us a good view of the party. In Diana’s time, the gazebo had been covered with climbing roses and night-blooming jasmine that scented the inn. Now the roses hung dead on their vines, and the gazebo smelled like beer and that noxious clove incense that permeated everything the Alphas touched.

“I’m getting an uncomfortable flashback to my days as an altar boy,” Frank whispered as we climbed up into the second story of the gazebo. “Stop me if I start confessing.”

I started to laugh at the notion of Frank as an altar boy, but my amusement was cut short by the crack of a gunshot, followed by a high-pitched female shriek. Frank pulled back a handful of dead vines and we looked into the yard. Adam Sinclair, in a flowing toga and nothing else—I could tell from the way the house light shone through the flimsy fabric—was standing in the middle of the backyard, aiming a pistol at the fence. A throng of young women dressed in skimpy costumes stood around him. Toga-clad boys and more girls in skimpy costumes sat on the back porch, egging him on.

“Do Bambi next!” one of the girls, dressed in a slutty-vampire costume, shrieked.

I looked toward the fence and breathed out a sigh of relief when I saw there wasn’t a live deer, but, still, what I saw was macabre enough. Arranged across the top of Diana’s white picket fence was her beloved collection of ceramic figurines: deer, rabbits, foxes, and an entire family of red-capped gnomes.

“Bambi it is,” Adam said, cocking the trigger of the gun.

There was a sharp crack, and a ceramic deer exploded in plaster dust. Slutty Vampire and her friend Slutty Nurse shrieked with laughter, but a girl in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit didn’t. I thought I recognized her from my Intro to Fairy Tales class.

“I liked Bambi,” she said. “This is stupid.” She downed the rest of her beer, burped, and started weaving her way toward the back gate. One of the toga-clad boys detached himself from the crowd and followed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. I switched sides so I could keep track of Red Riding Hood, who was walking now in the narrow alley between the garage and the gazebo. She’d reached the gate but was having trouble working the clasp.

“Let me help you with that,” said the boy who had followed her, coming up behind her.

“Thankth,” she slurred.

The boy reached his arm around her as if to open the latch but instead grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed himself against her, pinning her against the gate.

“Hey!” she cried. “Get off!”

“I’m going down there,” I said, turning to Frank, but he was gone, already in the alley. He tapped the frat boy on the shoulder. When the boy turned, Frank punched him in the face and he slumped to the ground. I hurried down into the alley, not sure whose rescue I was coming to—Frank’s or the repellent Alpha’s. I wanted to wallop the frat boy myself but didn’t think it would help either of our professional careers if we murdered him.

Frank was going in for a second punch when I reached him. I grabbed his arm. “Whoa there, Delmarco. I don’t think this one is going to be bothering anyone else tonight.”

Frank glared at me, but he pulled back his arm. “Yeah, but what about the others?”

“I have an idea. I thought of it earlier today.”

I rummaged in my backpack and drew out a round pomander ball and Ralph, who was, amazingly, still asleep.

“Aw.” Red Riding Hood, who had barely reacted to Frank pummeling her attacker, revived herself to coo at Ralph. “A little mouse! He’s adorable!”

“He’s got a job to do. Wake up, Ralph!” I poked his fat, Cheetos-filled belly. Ralph yawned and stretched, evoking another chorus of oohs and ahs from Red, and looked up at me expectantly. “Take this into the yard,” I said, holding the pomander ball up by its ribbon. It had originally been a Christmas gift from Diana. She had filled it with potpourri. I had filled it with something else. “Then drop it and run—and be careful. They’re taking potshots at ceramic animals.”

Ralph took the ribbon in his mouth and jumped onto the fence. He ran along the top railing. When he vanished into the yard, I motioned for Frank and Red to follow me into the gazebo. We climbed to the top and observed Ralph’s progress. He was creeping along the fence.

“I’d have thrown it, but I was afraid the contents might explode,” I explained to Frank when Red slumped on the gazebo bench and started snoring.

“Good to know you’ve been carrying unstable explosives all night, McFay,” Frank said. “How are you going to activate it from here?”

“I planted a correlative fuse inside. It’s magically connected to this one.” I held up half a shoelace—the only thing I could find to use. “I just have to light it when Ralph drops the ball.”

I peered into the yard and saw Ralph drop the ball at the feet of Adam Sinclair. He was beginning to run back when Slutty Vampire shrieked, “A mouse! A mouse! A real mouse! Shoot it!”

Adam wheeled around in a circle, one foot crunching the pomander, and spotted Ralph, clearly visible by the white patch on his chest. He lowered the gun and aimed it at Ralph.

I lit the fuse. Just as Adam pulled the trigger, the pomander exploded in a cloud of smoke, throwing him off balance. He fell backward, right into Slutty Vampire and Slutty Nurse. The girls giggled and shrieked at the sudden closeness of a half-naked frat boy, but when the smoke from my pomander reached them, they both pushed him away.

“Ew,” Slutty Vampire said, wrinkling her nose. “You’re kind of gross.”

“Yeah,” Slutty Nurse agreed. “When was the last time you showered?”

Both girls rearranged their costumes to cover a few extra inches of skin. The other girls at the party extricated themselves from the arms of the frat boys, with similar comments on personal hygiene.

Frank wrinkled his nose. “What was that, McFay?”

“An anti-aphrodisiac,” I said. “It makes any male within a hundred-yard radius repellent to any female. The Alphas won’t be luring any girls to their parties anytime soon.”

Red Riding Hood murmured in her sleep, “Boys stink!”

“I’ll get Red back to my house,” I said. “You’d better go home and take a shower.” Frank shot me an accusing look. “I just mean that you’ll want to get rid of any traces of the spell. I’m not sure how long it lasts.”

“Thanks, McFay. Like I wasn’t having a hard enough time in my love life.”

We half-carried Red Riding Hood out of the gazebo and across the street to my house. The Alphas were too busy fanning smoke out of their yard to notice us. I took the opportunity to grab a couple of Diana’s gnomes off the back fence. I knew she was fond of them and that she’d be devastated to see them serving as target practice—especially since I was pretty sure they were partly sentient.

Frank helped me get Red into my house and then excused himself when she woke up enough to tell him that he reeked. I watched Frank walk down Elm Street toward his downtown apartment, then I got Little Red Riding Hood settled on my library couch, tucking my afghan over her. Asleep, she looked as young and innocent as the girl in the fairy tale. As I turned off the lights in the library, I reflected that the big bad wolves had been smoked out of their house and Red was safe and sound. Kind of a mixed-up fairy tale, but, I would have told Adam Sinclair, the kind I believed in.