The Angel Stone

CHAPTER EIGHT

Anton saw me to my door. I thanked him for letting me know about the creatures in the tunnels. “Have you told Frank and Soheila?” I asked.

“Yes. They offered to convey the information to you, but I said I would tell you myself. I wanted to make sure you didn’t think that these creatures had anything to do with my kind.”

“Liz always said you were a perfect gentleman, and you’ve behaved like one with me.”

He smiled and then leaned down to whisper in my ear. I felt the brush of his lips like cool water on my cheek. “If I didn’t know your heart still belonged to another, I might not behave in such a gentlemanly way.”

Then he was gone, vanished into the night as swiftly as … well, as a bat. I shook the image away and went inside my house. Anton had assured me that vampires could not turn into bats. That was a myth. But there were some batlike creatures living in the tunnels and killing animals. I’d have to talk to Frank and Soheila tomorrow about how to protect the campus from them. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about …

I put on my warmest flannel nightgown and got into bed, but I knew it would be a long time before I could sleep, with the thought of those creatures in the woods, so I opened the old book Nicky had given me. A notecard marked the ballad of William Duffy. I opened it and read the note from Nicky.

A good teacher is a door to other worlds, she had written. Thanks for opening so many doors for me.

Feeling grateful for Nicky’s kind words, I propped the notecard up on my night table and turned to the ballad of William Duffy. The story was much as Nicky had summarized it, until I reached the part where the fairy girl gave half her brooch to William Duffy as a token that she would return for him. Nicky hadn’t described the brooch, but Mary McGowan had.

The brooch was made of two interlocking hearts. Where the two hearts overlapped was a stone. When she broke the brooch in half, the fairy girl kept the half with the stone.

The detail sparked a memory. I got out of bed and rummaged through my jewelry box until I found the silver brooch my mother had given to me. She’d explained that it was an heirloom from my father’s family, passed down through the generations, and was called a Luckenbooth brooch after the shop stalls in Edinburgh where they were once sold. Originally the brooch had been shaped with two interlocking hearts, but at some time it had been broken, leaving a loop where the other heart had overlapped. Could this brooch be the one the fairy girl had broken in half?

I went back to the story, searching for another clue, but the rest was much as Nicky had related it. There was, however, an interesting note from the author at the end of the tale.

I heard this story from an old woman in the village of Ballydoon, who said that William Duffy was her nephew. She told me that after William disappeared, a strange weeping girl appeared in the village, dressed in rags. The villagers thought she’d perhaps been tampered with by reivers in the Greenwood. A local family took her in and nursed her back to health, but she always remained peculiar—she talked but little and was afraid to touch iron and would not go to kirk. Nonetheless, a good man of the village fell in love with her and married her. She gave birth to a girl the following year. All might have been well enough, but around that time the witch hunters came to Ballydoon and sent for her to be brought before them in the kirk. One of the villagers warned her, though, and, rather than be taken by these brutes, the peculiar girl ran into the Greenwood and was never seen again. The old woman who told me the story said she believed the girl had tried to escape back into Faerie but was lost because of the Fairy Queen’s curse. She believed this because she never saw her nephew William again and so she knew the fairy girl had not been able to save him. The old woman told me that although the villagers called her Katy, the girl’s name was Cailleach, and she showed me the half brooch she had left behind for her daughter.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. If Mary McGowan had walked into the room and whispered the news that she had found the origin of my kind, I could not have been more startled. I felt as though she was speaking to me across the centuries. I turned back to the book, but the next page was the ballad of the Lass of Lochroyan, which, as far as I could tell from a quick perusal, was nearly identical to a version that appeared in Scott’s Minstrelsy. I leafed through the rest of the book and found a selection of classic ballads from the Scottish Border Country. In no other ballad had the author added a personal note like the one at the end of William Duffy.

Frustrated, I closed my eyes, which stung from staring at the small, faded print of the old book, and tried to work out what Mary McGowan’s note meant for me. I’d guessed that my ancestor had a connection with the incubus, but now I knew for sure. I wondered what had happened to the stone that had once been in the brooch …

My head swirling with the details of the story and the hundreds of years between its telling and my birth, I fell into a fitful sleep and a dream as restless as my thoughts.

I was running across a meadow, searching for someone. Following in my footsteps were my fairy companions. We were all in danger. I kept looking back over my shoulder to see if we were being pursued. The woods on either side of the meadow were full of shadows. I heard the skitter of claws scraping bark and the heavy thunk of leathery wings crashing through the branches. I had to open a door into Faerie to save my companions and myself, but how? The air shimmered in front of me and I saw him: William, my Greenwood lover, mounted on a giant white steed. He had come to find me, even though it wasn’t yet All Hallows’ Eve. And I didn’t have the stone! Still, he reached for me. I reached for him but could see my arms fading. I tried to hold on to William’s arms, but they passed right through me. I was vanishing into thin air …

I awoke, arms flailing, grasping for something solid to hold on to, to keep from fading into nothingness. My hand hit the edge of the night table, hard enough to bring me fully awake and send something skittering across the floor … claws scraping bark …

I jumped to my feet, scanning the predawn shadows of my bedroom for the winged creatures in my dream. But then I saw a glint of silver on the floor beneath the window and padded cautiously over to it, keeping my eyes on the window for winged monsters. I knelt and picked up the silvery object, which turned out to be the Luckenbooth brooch. The half brooch. I traced the heart with my fingers and noticed that along the inside rim of the heart were little bumps. I’d seen them before and always thought they were part of the design, but now, looking more closely at them, I saw that they were prongs that had been worn down by time. Prongs that had once held a stone. I held the brooch up to the window. The milky light of dawn filled the loop inside the heart and glowed there like an opal—like a tear-shaped opal. An angel’s tear. At some time, my brooch had held the angel stone.

Although it was only five in the morning, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore. Pulling a warm fleece hoodie over T-shirt and leggings, I slipped the brooch into the pocket to keep it close by me. Then I went downstairs, made coffee, and spent the next few hours searching for more information on the angel stone or the hallow door—and finding nothing. I emailed Frank and Soheila, telling them I’d like to talk to them both later about a research topic for this winter’s MLA conference. We’d agreed that MLA would be code for need to talk. The code worked.

It was barely light out when I heard a knock at my door and opened it to find Frank, Soheila, and, more surprising, Mac Stewart on my front porch.

“Frank was worried by your email,” Soheila said, giving me a meaningful look.

“I was worried, too,” Mac said, slapping his flannel-covered chest. “You shouldn’t have gone into the woods with that man, Callie. He’s a”—Mac lowered his voice and leaned in to whisper—“vampire!”

“I know, Mac,” I said, “but he’s a perfectly well-behaved one. He wanted to warn me about some blood-drained creatures he’s found in the woods …” I looked past the porch to the trees on the edge of my property. Even in the morning light, the woods had taken on a menacing look.

“Yes, we need to talk about that, too,” said Soheila, “but right now Mac has something he needs to tell you. May we come in?”

“Of course!” I said quickly, embarrassed I’d kept them standing on the porch so long—not that I had anything in particular to hide in my house, but I felt that, with her acute senses, Soheila might pick up some residue of the dreams I’d been having. As I opened the door, I found myself sniffing the air, as if erotic dreams would have a particular scent, but all I smelled was a delicious aroma wafting out of a bag Mac carried.

“Oatcakes!” Mac said. “My mom made them for you!”

“Thank her for me,” I said, hoping that Mac’s mother hadn’t somehow gotten the idea I was a potential wife for Mac. “I’ll brew some more coffee to go with them.” I steered my guests toward the living room, but they all followed me into the kitchen. Mac sat at the kitchen table and folded his hands in his lap like a boy waiting for his afternoon snack. Soheila went to the cupboard to take out the Franciscan Rose teacups left there last fall by my erstwhile roommate, Phoenix. Frank sat down next to Mac and leaned so far back I was afraid he’d break my spindly kitchen chair. I turned my back on them and busied myself at the coffeemaker and arranging the oatcakes on a plate. The rich buttery smell instantly brought me back to childhood and made me feel calmer. I brought the plate over and Mac eagerly tucked into the warm oatcakes, slathering them with the strawberry jam I’d also provided.

“Just like my nan always served them,” Mac mumbled, spewing crumbs.

Soheila and Frank exchanged a look across Mac, as if he were their overgrown child who was refusing to perform for their guests.

“Your nan’s culinary preferences are very interesting, but you told us that she had something to tell Callie,” Frank said impatiently. He looked up at me. “Mac said you were the only one she could tell.”

“That’s what Nan told me. She said Callie was the only one she could tell about the hallow door.”

“Your nan knows how to find the hallow door?” Now I was the one impatient with Mac. “Why didn’t she mention this earlier?”

Poor Mac’s eyes widened. I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but hours of fruitless search had left me frustrated.

Frank cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. “Mrs. Stewart hasn’t been well …” he began.

“She fell last summer,” Mac said. “Hit her head and broke her hip. She needed surgery, and when she came out of it she wasn’t right in the head. She’s always been sharp as a tack, but after the surgery she didn’t even know me.” Mac’s voice betrayed the hurt of a favorite grandson. “We thought she’d be senile for the rest of her life, but then yesterday when I was there for my weekly visit she sat up in bed, her old self again, and asked me to send for Cailleach McFay.”

“She knew my name? But I’ve never met her.”

“Um … I may have mentioned you to her,” Frank said. “I went to her the morning of the solstice to ask if she knew any way to unmask a nephilim. She was friends with my grandmother and I knew she had spells for unmasking predators, but it never occurred to me she knew anything about opening a door to Faerie …” A terrible look came over Frank’s face, and he slapped his hand down on the table. “Damn! It was right after that she had her fall. I must have drawn their attention to her.”

“You mean to say that those nephilim creeps hurt my nan?” I’d never seen Mac Stewart look so angry. His bland innocent face turned the color of his flannel shirt, and his bee-stung lips drew back in a grimace.

“But why?” I said. “Just because she knows something about another door …”

“She knows more than that,” Mac said. “Nan used to tell us stories about how the Stewarts had destroyed evil monsters back in Scotland.”

Frank pounded the table again. “I should have protected her!”

“Don’t blame yourself, Frank,” Soheila said, laying her hand over Frank’s.

Instantly I saw a change come over Frank. His anger poured off him like water moving over a rock. He lifted startled eyes to Soheila, and she removed her hand.

“That’s right, Mr. Delmarco, it’s not your fault. It’s those … those bastards! What kind of monster would pick on a sweet old lady? Well, they’ll be sorry they did. She’s herself now and is fit to be tied. When my nan gets her temper up—well, you don’t want to be on her bad side. I once let my brother Ham fall off a ladder when I was supposed to be watching him, and I couldn’t sit for a week.”

“Your grandmother sounds like a formidable woman, Mac,” I said, repressing a smile at the thought that a good spanking might defeat the nephilim. “But I wouldn’t want to put her in more danger by involving her.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Soheila said. “All my research into the angel stone indicates it was last seen in Scotland in the seventeenth century.”

“That coincides with what I read in the story Nicky gave me.” I told them about the ballad of William Duffy and the broken brooch.

“You have half of the brooch?” Frank asked.

I took the piece of jewelry out of my pocket and laid it on the table. The empty tear-shaped loop seemed to shimmer against the white enamel surface. “My mother said it was an heirloom passed down through generations of my father’s family,” I said.

“Then your ancestors must have once had the stone,” Soheila said. “That makes sense. I found a reference that said that only a doorkeeper could wield the power of the stone.”

“That’s great,” I said, “but my mother never mentioned a stone that went with the brooch. I think the fairy girl—my ancestor—must have lost it or had it taken from her …” I remembered the moment in the dream when I—or the first Cailleach, I supposed—was running through the meadow. I knew in the dream that she didn’t have the stone with her, but I didn’t know why not or what had happened to it. “In Mary McGowan’s note, she says witch hunters had come to the village—”

“They might have been nephilim,” Soheila interrupted. “Many witch hunters were.”

“Maybe. But why would she run away if she had something to destroy them?”

“Maybe the stone didn’t work without the whole brooch,” Frank said. “What was the name of the village?”

“Ballydoon,” I said.

“That’s where the Stewarts come from!” Mac exclaimed, his features freed from anger with the elasticity of youth. “Callie, that means our people come from the same village. It’s like we’re fated to … meet,” Mac finished bashfully. I was afraid he’d been about to say fated to marry.

“It might even mean you’re related,” Frank added teasingly.

Mac’s smile vanished. “Related? But that would mean …”

“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “You’d be distant cousins at most—kissing cousins.”

I kicked Frank under the table. “Let’s focus on learning where the stone is and how to get it. When can I visit your grandmother, Mac?”

“Oh, she’s my great-grandmother, at least! No one even knows how old she is. We can’t find a birth certificate for her and she says she can’t remember the year, although she does say she remembers Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration, so I guess she’s pretty old. We Stewarts are long-lived.” He puffed out his chest, as if he’d come up with a selling point that was sure to convince me to marry him even if we were distantly related. “I’ll take you there to meet her later. The doctors wanted to have a look at her this morning, so she suggested that we come around teatime.”

I couldn’t suppress a smile. The woman had been in a state of dementia for three months and now she was ready to conduct a high tea. “Okay. We can all go at four.”

Mac’s face fell at the inclusion of Frank and Soheila.

“It’s better you go yourself, Callie,” Soheila said. “Mrs. Stewart asked specifically for you. She won’t want a crowd—and she’s more likely to tell you about the hallow door since you’re a doorkeeper.”

“And,” Frank added with a mischievous smile, “if she thinks you’re her future granddaughter-in-law.”

Mac blushed for the third time in ten minutes, and I glared at Frank.

“I’d be delighted to meet your nan,” I said to Mac. “Is there anything I can bring her?”

Mac looked down at the pile of crumbs that was all that was left of the oatcakes. “I don’t suppose you know how to make those?” he asked doubtfully. “I forgot that Ma said I was to save some for Nan’s tea.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Really?” Mac gave me an adoring look, and I realized that if I hadn’t had it already, I’d just secured his eternal devotion. Mac said he’d better get his farm chores done then and got up to go.

Soheila and Frank walked with me to the front porch to see him off. As I watched Mac get into his shiny new pickup truck, I thought that I could probably do worse than to marry a man who did all his chores and visited his ancient granny every week at the nursing home even when she didn’t remember who he was.

“You’d go crazy in a month,” Soheila said, divining my thought.

“Yeah,” Frank said, walking ahead to his car. “I don’t see you as a farmer’s wife, McFay.”

Soheila lingered behind for a moment. “But he’d certainly be a better choice than the incubus you’re dreaming about,” she said in a low whisper.

So she could sense my dreams. “But it’s not really my incubus,” I objected. “He’s … different.”

Soheila exhaled a world-weary sigh that gusted autumn leaves off my porch. “Of course he’s different; that’s why my kind are so seductive. We change with you, shifting ourselves to fit every mood and whim. But remember, Callie, the incubus died in his last incarnation. He can’t come back again. You’ll never be able to be together in the flesh.”

“Then there’s no danger in dreaming about him, is there?” I countered, lifting my chin defiantly.

Soheila shook her head, and the leaves in my yard spun into a small whirlwind. “Just because he can’t have you in the flesh doesn’t mean he won’t still try to have you in your dreams. He’ll make you unfit for loving anyone else. Don’t let him, Callie. Use him to find the door and the stone if you have to, but then let him go. Or someday you’ll find you’re not able to.”