The Angel Stone

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

We went straight into Faerie, finding ourselves in a flower-bedecked meadow under a lilac sky. Lambent gold light lapped over everything, but there was no visible source for it—no sun, no moon. It may have been dawn or twilight. It was peaceful and beautiful, but I knew that appearances here could deceive.

“William, what were you thinking? The Fairy Queen said she’d kill you if you came through Faerie again.” I anxiously looked around for Fiona, wondering if I could get William through Faerie and into Fairwick. The last time I’d gone through the door, I hadn’t paused in Faerie. That hope was destroyed, though, when I saw a procession climbing the hill toward us. It was too late.

The procession was led by Fiona the Fairy Queen and King Fionn on horseback. Behind them was a host made up of myriad creatures: satyrs and centaurs; winged blond Valkyries; a great stag with gold-tipped horns, a herd of deer in his wake; women with feathered legs and the faces of owls; short white-bearded men with red caps, looking like an army of garden gnomes. Even more frightening creatures lurked on the edges of the crowd and in the woods bordering the meadow. Rat-faced goblins and pointy-eared imps chattered and hissed but scared me less than the Fairy Queen, whose emerald-green eyes were fastened on William. I moved to stand in front of him, but he tightened his grip on my arm and held me back. “It’s all right, lass,” he hissed under his breath. “I know what I’m doing.”

But no whisper was low enough to escape the Fairy Queen’s ears. In an instant she was upon us, swooping down from her horse and over the grass with the preternatural speed of a hawk, a long sharp-nailed finger an inch from William’s throat.

“Didn’t I tell you, boy, that if you came back to Faerie I’d pluck out your eyes and heart?”

“Fiona,” I said, the anger pulsing in my voice with the same force as the blue vein that throbbed beneath William’s skin just where the Fairy Queen’s nail was poised. “Let him go.”

Her green eyes slid toward me with the malevolent stealth of a snake. I’d known the Fairy Queen in Fairwick and had found her formidable, but I’d never thought she was evil. Perhaps she’d gained civility in her long years living among mortals. This Fairy Queen, though, looked very much as if she would pluck out William’s eyes, eat his heart, and then happily dine on my spleen.

“Who are you to address me by my name and make demands of me? I cursed you, too!”

“I’m the doorkeeper,” I said, “and I have this.” I held up the Luckenbooth brooch.

The green eyes widened as they took in the angel stone. She took her finger away from William’s throat and made a grab for it, but I swept it out of her grasp, stepping back to get her farther from William. Instead of running away, though, he moved to my side and addressed the Fairy Queen. “Aye, Cailleach found a way to destroy those bastards.”

While William’s pride in me was heartening, I hoped he wouldn’t make the Fairy Queen even angrier.

“And did she destroy them all?” Fiona asked nastily.

“No,” I admitted. “Some got away. But the rest are in Fairwick, back in my time. Let William pass and we’ll destroy them there. You won’t ever have to pay a tithe again. I’ll restore the door. You’ll be able to pass between the worlds …” I hesitated, not entirely sure that I wanted to let Fiona back into my world after what I’d learned she’d done to William and other unfortunate young men before him.

“You think to dictate terms to me?” she thundered.

“Are you so reluctant to give up your human boys?” The question came from golden-haired King Fionn. He stood even taller than Fiona and had the same fiercely green eyes.

Fiona turned to him, her emerald eyes sparking. “As if you haven’t had your own human lovers!” Although she snarled the words, they lacked the conviction she’d had when addressing William and me. She was either afraid of the king or in love with him, I couldn’t tell which. Either way, I didn’t want to be in the middle of their lovers’ spat.

“We want to return to my time and get rid of the nephilim. Surely that is in your interest, as well.”

“But it’s not his time,” Fionn pointed out, glaring at William. “We can’t let humans use Faerie to move through time. It frays the fabric of both worlds.”

I looked at William, who was glaring at Fionn. “Then let him go back to his time,” I said, my voice cracking. It didn’t seem fair that I’d have to make this sacrifice twice, but I had to return to Fairwick and I couldn’t bear to see William trapped again by the Fairy Queen.

“No!”

At first I thought the word came from King Fionn, it was so loud and authoritative. But it was William who had bellowed it. I turned to him, confused.

“No,” he said more softly, returning my look with a sad but level gaze. “I won’t go back. If I do, then I’ll never become your incubus, or Liam, or Bill, the man you fell in love with.”

I stared at him, desperately trying to untangle the threads of time and refute his logic. “We don’t know that’s how time works,” I said finally. “The Stewarts had the plaid in my time, but I still hadn’t gone back to give it to them.”

“As doorkeeper, you are not bound by the rules of time,” Fionn said. “But William is. Unless he stays in Faerie and becomes the incubus, you will never meet him and never fall in love with him.”

The thought of never meeting Liam or Bill made me feel faint, as if I were standing at the edge of a vertiginous drop. I was. The maw of time was opening up to swallow me. It was one thing to give up William and another to give up ever having known him. But if it meant sparing him hundreds of years in slavery, I would have to make that sacrifice. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he placed a finger on my lips.

“No,” he said again, with the same firmness as before but a shade more gentleness. “No, Callie. This is why I came with you. I knew what it meant. I had to come back so I could become the man you fall in love with. Knowing that you’re waiting for me at the end, it will be worth it.” He slid his fingers from my lips to my cheek and placed his lips where his fingers had been. His kiss tasted like heather and honeysuckle. Like the first breath of summer that had brought Liam to me and the last smoky sigh of fall. It tasted like eternity, but it was over too soon. He pulled back from me and looked into my eyes. “I will see you again,” he said. Then he looked past me and strode toward Fiona and Fionn.

I watched as he stopped before the king and queen of Faerie. He straightened his back, legs apart in a stance I’d seen him take when faced with a balky ram. “If I stay, you’ll let Callie pass through Faerie,” he said—not a question but a demand. The queen glared at me, but at a look from King Fionn she agreed to William’s terms.

“I have one more condition,” William said. Then he crooked his finger to indicate they should bend their heads to hear what he had to say.

I watched in awe as the royal couple inclined their heads as one to listen to William’s whisper. What could his condition be? I wondered, jealously hoping it involved not having to have sex with Fiona. But that couldn’t be it, because both Fiona and Fionn nodded. Fiona looked up and smiled.

“Very well,” Fiona said.

“It will be so,” King Fionn proclaimed with all the majesty of royalty.

“We’ve agreed to your lover’s terms, doorkeeper,” Fiona said. “You are free to return to your time. You have only to walk over that hill and you will find yourself back in your time among your Fairwick friends.”

She pointed behind me, but I didn’t turn. I was waiting for one last glimpse of William, but as he turned my way he began to fade. Fiona and Fionn were dissolving, too, but I kept my eyes on William. I heard voices behind me, some that I recognized, but still I didn’t turn. I held William’s eyes until their green-gold had dissolved into the green flower-filled meadows of Faerie. I will see you again, he’d said. And he would. But would I ever see him again?

“Callie? Cailleach McFay?” The voices came closer and called my name. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I turned to face my friends—and a future without William.

All my dear friends who had gone back to Faerie when the door was closing last summer were coming over the hill. I saw Brock Olsen and Dory Browne walking hand in hand with a troop of brownies, Elizabeth Book and Diana Hart among a herd of deer—and one bear, whom I recognized as Liz’s familiar, Ursuline—Casper Van der Aart and his partner, Oliver, with a contingent of gnomes, and many other townspeople whom I recognized and who now crowded around me, clapping me on the back and hugging me. I let the tears that had been brimming in my eyes fall, the loss of William mingling with the joy of this reunion.

“You found a way to open the door!” Liz cried. The dean had changed since I’d seen her last. Her gray hair had turned into a shimmering silver. Her skin was unlined and glowed like rose-tinted porcelain. She wore a long gown of glittering material that changed color as she moved from mauve to violet and she looked at least ten years younger than when I’d seen her last. Even Ursuline looked sleeker and shinier. Dwelling in Faerie agreed with them.

“It turns out I am the door,” I said. “Forging a blood bond to the door last summer was the first step in becoming the door.”

“I knew Callie would figure out a way!” Diana crowed, hugging both Liz and me at the same time. Diana had also been transformed during her time in Faerie. The demure innkeeper who had collected animal figurines and run the Fairwick Spinning Circle and Knitting Club had reverted to a wilder self. Her chestnut hair stood up in spikes around a wreath of twisted rowan branches and russet leaves. Her freckles had bred and multiplied, turning her skin into the dappled hide of a young fawn. She wore a skimpy green tunic over coltish brindled legs, looking a bit like a feral Peter Pan. I found it difficult to imagine her and Liz fitting back into their respective innkeeping and administrative roles. But apparently they didn’t.

“So we can return now?” Liz asked.

“She’s been worried about the college,” Diana told me.

“No more than you’ve been worried about your inn,” Liz countered. “How are they? The inn and the college, I mean. And Fairwick, of course. Did you drive out the nephilim?”

I stared at Liz and Diana, wondering how I could describe the awful changes the nephilim had wrought—Diana’s inn turned into a frat house, the college ruled by nephilim and patrolled by trows …

“Things are pretty bad back there,” I admitted. “I came to Faerie to get this”—I held out the angel-stone brooch—“but I had to go back in time to get it.” I blinked away tears, thinking of William. Liz and Diana gave each other a worried look, then I felt a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Brock Olsen, my old handyman and Norse divinity, towering over me. Was it possible he had gotten taller in Faerie? He’d certainly grown more imposing. He was dressed in a leather tunic and boots and a fur cloak, his scarred but handsome face both graver and stronger. Beside him was Dory Browne, in a homespun dress and peaked cap, looking tiny but no less fierce. Brock cradled my hand in his and looked at the angel stone. “You had to give up William to get it, didn’t you?” he said softly.

“How did you know?”

“It was a story Dolly told me once.” Dolly was Dahlia LaMotte, the romance novelist who’d lived in Honeysuckle House and drawn her inspiration from my incubus. “She said it was the one story she couldn’t write down, because it hadn’t happened yet.” He smiled. “I never quite understood that.”

“Dolly could be a little cryptic,” Dory said, with just a hint of jealousy for the woman Brock had once been sweet on.

Brock squeezed my shoulder before lifting my arm, displaying for all to see the hand that held the angel stone. The crowd gasped at the sight. The golden light of Faerie was filling the stone, making it glow like a beacon.

“Callie has sacrificed much to get this stone,” Brock roared. “Are you ready to fight by her side to take back our town?”

A great shout swelled from the crowd. I looked around at the faces of my friends and felt a corresponding swelling in my heart. This was what William had given me. I couldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain. As my heart swelled, I felt the door opening within and around me.

“Let’s go,” I said.