The Angel Stone

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I drifted off, I was back in the Greenwood. I knew William Duffy was there with me, but which William Duffy? The tender lover of my dreams, or the one Duncan Laird had shown me? I was afraid that if I saw the monstrously hideous version, I wouldn’t be able to go through with the ceremony and open the door, so I stayed up with my Wheelock’s Spellcraft, LaFleur’s History of Magic, and half a dozen other magic books. Ralph pored over the pages of the books with me as I studied all the spells I could possibly need to become the hallow door. I was running out of time. It was time to cram, as I had for my PhD orals. I’d stayed up three days straight then, and my life hadn’t literally depended on a thorough knowledge of English literature.

It turned out, though, that my body had different needs than it had three years earlier. I made it halfway through Saturday night before I started to crash. I brewed more coffee and combed Wheelock for stay-awake spells. There was one for keeping sleep at bay for forty-eight hours, but it came with a host of dire warnings that ranged from mood disorders to a weakened immune system to hyperanimation (whatever the hell that was!). But what choice did I have? I needed to stay up until I found the door spell. I mixed the ingredients for the stay-awake spell in the kitchen while Ralph ransacked the cabinets for a snack.

“Sorry, guy,” I told him. “I promise that once this is over I’ll go shopping.”

My bare cupboards reminded me that I needed to buy candy for Halloween night. And decorate. Everything I read insisted that the observance of Halloween was crucial to the success of opening the hallow door. Besides, maybe doing something other than reading Wheelock would unlock my brain enough to figure out a strategy, so I spent the early hours of Sunday morning up to my elbows in raw pumpkin gunk.

I carved three jack-o’-lanterns. Having read in Wheelock that properly made jack-o’-lanterns were threshold guardians for your house, I uttered the words of a warding spell while I carved. First was a traditional jack-o’-lantern with triangle eyes and a snaggletooth smile. Protect my home, I asked him. Getting into the mood, I made the second pumpkin into a warty-faced witch. Watch over all who are in it, I asked her. I was amazed at how well it came out. On the third I carved a scary cat so realistic that, when I showed it to Ralph, his fur stood on end and he ran away.

“Scaredy-cat,” I yelled after him. But when I turned the pumpkin back around, even I was surprised at how lifelike the cat appeared. I took the three jack-o’-lanterns out onto the front porch. As I arranged them on the steps, I spotted Evangeline Sprague, my nonagenarian neighbor, retrieving the Sunday paper from her front lawn.

“Happy Halloween!” she shouted, waving to me.

She had tied white cloth ghosts to the branches of an old apple tree by her front porch and had her own little family of jack-o’-lanterns on her stoop. Inspired by her example, I went back in to get more decorating supplies. I found an old pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, which I stuffed with the straw I’d picked up last week to use as mulch. I arranged the makeshift limbs of my scarecrow in a rocking chair and placed the snaggletooth jack-o’-lantern on top. Then I found a black dress and leggings, stuffed them with straw, and propped them under the witch-head pumpkin. I just needed a witch’s hat …

I ended up going downtown to McGuckin’s Variety Store and buying a slew of decorations and candy. I spent most of the day decorating my yard and front porch, hoping some inspiration for the door spell would come to me while I warded my home. As I draped spiderwebs over my front porch, I wove in another protection spell. And as I attached plastic ghosts to pulleys, I called on the spirits of my ancestors to watch over me. My efforts inspired my neighbors. Cheryl Lindisfarne from two doors down dropped by to say she was glad to see I was getting in the spirit.

“With all the fuss, I felt a little funny putting out decorations this year, but now that I see you doing it, I’m going to tell Harald to pull out all the stops. He’s got a coffin with a zombie in it whose eyes bug out when it opens.”

“Ooh,” I said, jealous. “I’ll come by later to see it.”

By five o’clock, my house looked like it belonged to the Addams Family. Standing back to admire it, I noticed that all my neighbors had followed my lead and decorated their homes with the trappings of Halloween. Down the street, a troop of diminutive fairies, ghosts, and goblins was shrieking with delight at Harald Lindisfarne, who was dressed as Herman Munster.

Yikes! There were already trick-or-treaters. I’d forgotten that parents took their little kids out before dark—and dark was not so far off now.

In fact, it was just that moment when day slid into evening. The sun setting behind the mountains in the west lit up the east side of the street but cast the west side, where Alpha House stood, into shadow. It looked as if the street were divided down the middle. Where the two sides met, the air shimmered and crackled with energy. I could feel it from my toes to my fingertips—the turning. This was the moment when the year turned from light toward dark, the hinge of the year, as Moondance had called it, a liminal time when boundaries—between light and dark, seen and unseen, death and life—could be crossed. I felt the weight of a world teetering on the edge. Would I be able to become the hallow door and cross over to Faerie and into seventeenth-century Ballydoon?

My mind, like the planet, seemed to be turning toward the dark, but then I noticed an odd assortment of trick-or-treaters heading my way. Three women dressed in long black robes, the middle one carrying a lantern, were walking down the middle of the street, along the dividing line. The lantern carried by the middle figure swayed back and forth, casting an orange glow that pushed away the edges of the dark just a little and lit up their faces. I recognized Adelaide, Phoenix, and Jen.

They stopped opposite the Lindisfarnes’ house. Jen took a long taper from beneath her robe and lit it from the lantern. She walked slowly, cupping the flame with her hand, into the Lindisfarnes’ yard and spoke to Cheryl, who was dressed as Lily Munster. Cheryl nodded yes to whatever she had been asked. Jen walked up to the front-porch steps, knelt beside the jack-o’-lanterns, and lit each of them with the taper. As each flame was kindled, a warm glow spread outward from the pumpkin. It lit up the faces of my ordinary, down-to-earth neighbors with something decidedly extraordinary. I felt the warmth of that glow two doors down.

Jen rose to her feet, rejoining Phoenix and Adelaide, and they proceeded to Evangeline Sprague’s house, repeating the same ritual. I saw Evangeline’s old face suffused with that otherworldly glow.

As the three women approached my house, I noticed that the brothers of Alpha Delta Chi had come out to their porch to watch the procession. They stood with arms crossed over their broad chests, expressions inscrutable in the shadows. For the first time, I thought about who these boys really were. Their fathers were nephilim, but presumably they had human mothers. Were they all completely unreachable?

I walked to the middle of the street to meet the women and inspect the lantern more closely. It looked like an ordinary hurricane lantern, the kind they sold at McGuckin’s Variety, but the flame inside glowed fiercely.

“We kindled it from a needfire,” Jen told me.

“That’s a fire you make by rubbing two sticks together,” Phoenix added. “We did it at a crossroads at dawn while saying a spell to protect the town, and now we’re carrying it through the whole village, lighting everyone’s pumpkins.”

Phoenix herself was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. I wondered what the crash from this high would be, but I reminded myself that the former addict wouldn’t have to worry about that if we didn’t succeed against the nephilim.

“The needfire protects the house where it’s lit,” Jen said more soberly, as she withdrew a long thin piece of wood from her cloak. “We’ll light yours now.”

I walked with Jen to my front porch and watched her light the three warded jack-o’-lanterns, each seeming to leap to life. As we returned to the other two women, I saw that the Alphas were still watching us. “I have an idea,” I told Jen. “Can you give me one of those tapers?”

Jen handed me a long piece of wood, watching me curiously as I lit it from the lantern and then crossed over to the dark side of the street. The flame sputtered and I felt a corresponding shudder inside, as if I’d become a hollow pumpkin and the needfire had been kindled inside me. I cupped my hand around the taper, sheltering the struggling flame, and kept going, feeling the light inside myself growing with each step. The boys on the porch shifted uneasily as I approached. At the foot of the porch steps, I paused, the flame cupped in my palm, and looked up into the face of Adam Sinclair.

“It occurs to me that you probably haven’t had much choice about what side you’re on,” I said.

Adam’s upper lip twisted into a sneer, but his eyes, I noticed, were focused on the flame in my hand, which was burning steadily now.

“We’re on the winning side,” he said.

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe not. But it’s going to be a long night. Who knows what will wander out of the woods? Why not take what protection you can?”

“We don’t need …” Adam began, but then his eyes widened. I turned to see what he was looking at. The last light had faded from the street. The woods loomed dark behind my house, but not entirely dark. There were small flickering lights in the shadows and, when the wind stirred, the sound of creatures moving through the shadows—a scritch of nails and a heavy leathery thudding of wings. Turning back to Adam, I saw that his face had turned white. Suddenly he looked very young. “Sure, why not?” he said, shrugging. He picked up one of the tiki candles left over from their luau party and carried it down the steps to me. He tilted the glass sideways and water ran out of it, nearly extinguishing the taper. I heard a gasp from one of the boys on the porch. I steadied the taper, which was barely long enough to reach the wick inside the glass. The flame hissed and sputtered when it touched the damp wax. I held it against the wick, waiting for it to light, my fingertips beginning to burn.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass in class,” Adam said, so softly I wondered if I’d heard right. But then the wick caught, and in the glow of the flame I saw a look of contrition on his young face. At the same instant, I felt something click inside myself. What had Nicky said? A good teacher is a door to other worlds. I’d opened up a new world for Adam—a possibility of becoming something other than what the nephilim wanted for him—and in doing so I’d become a doorway. This was how I’d be the hallow door.

“That’s okay, Adam,” I said, feeling grateful to the boy for what he’d unwittingly done for me. “You’ve got plenty of time to make it up to me. Just keep your brothers safe tonight and we’ll get a fresh start tomorrow, okay?”

He nodded and turned away, carrying the lit candle up the stairs. I turned and walked across the street, where the three women waited for me on my front porch. Adelaide was shaking her head at me. “Why did you do that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It felt …” I looked back at Alpha House. Glass tiki candles lined the railing of the front porch, their glow a barrier against the dark. “… right,” I finished. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go check something in Wheelock. I’ll see you in the circle at midnight.”

In Wheelock’s section on teaching magic, I found what I was looking for. When I opened the footnote, I located the spell to become a doorway. It turned out I had already completed the first two steps: make a blood bond to the door you want to open, and empty yourself of all prejudgments. The third step was simply a spell I had to recite at the moment I wanted to open myself. I committed the spell to memory and changed into a long green skirt, body-hugging bodice, and white lace blouse, with a tartan shawl I’d had since childhood wrapped around my shoulders and pinned with the Luckenbooth brooch. A sprig of heather in my hair from the heap of them I found strewn over my bed and, voilà, I was Jennet Carter, off to the Greenwood to rescue Tam Lin. When my doorbell rang, I was ready with a bowl of miniature Kit Kats and Hershey bars.

I swung open the door, ready to greet my first tiny ghouls and goblins, and found a crew of slightly older trick-or-treaters—a rather large Scot in a kilt, with an assortment of fairies.

“Scott!” I said, hardly recognizing my student, with his hair neatly combed back in a ponytail and with a clean white shirt tucked into a plaid kilt. “What are you doing here?”

“Man, Prof, did you forget our folklore party?”

“No, it’s just that I thought …” I turned from Scott to the woman dressed as the Fairy Queen at his side. “Ruby? I thought you were going home?”

Nicky, wearing a Tinker Bell outfit and carrying two large reusable grocery bags, laughed and pushed past Ruby. “You know, we almost did go to New Jersey with Ruby, but then when we all met up at the bus station we realized we didn’t really want to go.”

“Yeah,” Flonia said, carrying more bags over the threshold. “We wanted to be here—you know, with friends.”

At the word friends, a crowd of my students came up the front path. “Is this where the party is?” asked a girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland.

“Yeah,” Scott called back, “this is it. We hope you don’t mind, Prof; we invited a bunch of your students we ran into at the bus station. When they heard there was a party at Professor McFay’s, they all said that sounded better than going home. Hey, cool jack-o’-lanterns, Prof, especially the way you’ve got them wired for sound.”

Scott edged past me to answer Ruby, who was calling him to come in and help, so I didn’t get to tell him I’d done nothing of the kind. Then I was too busy welcoming students to my house to figure out his meaning. I was touched to see how many of my students had come dressed as their favorite fairy tale characters.

“You inspired us,” Tania Lieberman, dressed as Snow White, told me. “We were all planning it, and then we almost forgot and went home. Can you believe that? But then I remembered how much I was looking forward to my first Halloween at college, and … wow, your house is, like, totally cool! It looks like something out of Paranormal Investigations.”

Stephanie Moss, a girl who never spoke in class, thanked me for the comments I’d written on her Beauty and the Beast paper. “I was feeling kind of homesick earlier today, but then I remembered what you said about how the heroines of fairy tales find their real homes in these stories, and that made me think … well, that Fairwick’s my new home. Anyway, I baked you some chocolate chip cookies from my mom’s favorite recipe.”

About twenty of my students had resisted my homesickness spell and stayed—or, rather, they hadn’t had to resist the spell, because they had found a new home with their friends here at college. As they filled my house with laughter and loud voices, the smells of apple cider and fresh-baked goodies, I realized they’d turned my house into a home, too. I didn’t want to leave it, but as it drew closer to midnight I knew I had to. I waited until they were all in the living room playing a game of fishbowl (a version of charades that allowed talking—or at the moment some kind of wolfish howling), and I slipped out the front door.

A chill wind bit into my skin as I left the warmth of the house. I wrapped my wool tartan shawl tighter around my shoulders and hurried down the steps before I could change my mind and turn back. The howling and laughter from inside already sounded far away and from a different world. I was alone in the cold and dark …

Or not quite alone.

Something squeaked at my feet. I knelt and picked up Ralph. Someone had tied an orange ribbon around his neck. “Thanks, little guy. But are you sure you don’t want to stay here and cadge some caramel apples?”

But as I looked up at the house, I saw that neither of us was going back. Three sentries stood on the front porch—an ancient stooped woman in a black dress, a tall redheaded man in patched jeans and a flannel shirt, and a black cat grown to the size of a panther—my jack-o’-lanterns kindled into life.

“You’ll watch over them?” I asked, worried about my unsuspecting students.

The witch, scarecrow, and cat inclined their heads in assent.

“All right, then,” I said, slipping Ralph into my skirt pocket.

I started to go, but the scarecrow stepped forward and handed me a lit lantern like the one Adelaide had held.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the light from his hand. Then I turned and headed into the woods.