The Demon Lover

by Juliet Dark

  “If it’s meant to work out it will,” I said, wishing I could think of less lame advice to offer Nicky. But she nodded as if I’d said something sage.

  “Thanks, Professor McFay. It’s nice of you to spend the time talking to me. I know you must be busy.”

  Guiltily I thought about the stack of ungraded papers lying on my desk at home and the ones weighing down the messenger bag strapped across my chest. I’d been feeling so despondent that I’d let myself get behind in my work.

  “I do have your last essays to grade,” I said, patting my bag. “I’d better be going … but, please, if you need to talk …”

  “Thanks, professor. I will.”

  Nicky went back into class and I headed across campus. Although it was only the last week in October, most of the leaves had fallen from the trees already and it was cold enough for a winter coat—but I hadn’t worn one. I was wearing the Armani tweed blazer, turtleneck, skinny jeans, and thigh-high boots that were my favorite fall outfit. Back in the city it got me through the season to Christmas, but here I saw I was going to have to put on a down coat and long underwear by Thanksgiving. I was so cold crossing the quad that I decided to pop into the library and do some work there. Every time I tried to grade papers at home I ended up in the spare room reading a Dahlia LaMotte novel. Maybe working in the library would give me the discipline I needed to finish grading these papers.

  In the library I set myself to grading essays, managing only marginally better to concentrate on what my students had to say about The Mysteries of Udolpho and Northanger Abbey than I had at the house. Every few sentences I would look up and stare out the window at the bare trees on the quad and feel a pang of sadness, as if someone I’d loved had just died. What was wrong with me? I wondered, forcing myself to stare back down at a paper. I’d never been so unfocused. Was I really going through some kind of withdrawal from the demon lover? Or was I coming down with something? I read the next paper with a head full of imagined ailments: swine flu, Lyme disease, and early-onset Alzheimer’s danced through my head. Maybe the demon lover visitations were a symptom of a brain tumor.

  As if to confirm my worst fears, when I looked back down at the paper in front of me the print doubled and swam. Blurry vision—wasn’t that a symptom of stroke? I closed my eyes and laid my head down on the table. The polished wood felt cool on my forehead. No wonder that student had been sleeping here the last time I came; it was a perfect place to sleep, quiet but for a low, barely audible hum that must have been the ventilation system but sounded like a swarm of insects …

  I must have fallen asleep. I was in a crowd walking across an endless, rolling meadow. My legs and feet hurt as if I’d been walking for miles. I looked down and saw that my feet were bare in the wet grass. My legs were scratched and bleeding, my dress torn to tatters around my knees. I was alarmed at the sight. I shouldn’t be bleeding; my flesh shouldn’t tear. I began to fall … as if the awareness of my flesh’s vulnerability had robbed me of the last vestige of my strength and will. I would lie down right here in the dew-damp grass and sleep. No matter if the horde stampeded over me; let them trample me into the ground until I was dust beneath their feet and I seeped into the earth. As I fell I could hear horses—the Riders—and knew I’d be ground to dust all the sooner beneath their hooves. Fine, let me go back to the earth … But then a shadow fell across me and I looked up. A figure on a white horse was leaning down toward me, reaching out his hands. I took his hands and he pulled me up into the saddle in front of him. He wrapped his arms around me, chafing my bare, cold skin. My dress, drenched and shredded, barely covered me. He pulled me back against him and I felt him harden with desire for me. I knew we had to go … that there wasn’t time … but our desire for each other was too strong. He steered his mount into the woods, deep into a glade that was covered by intertwining branches … like a chapel.

  “I’d have married you in a church,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me from the horse and laid me on the soft grass, “but this will have to do.”

  He traced the line of my jaw with one finger and pressed it between my lips. “You are mine,” he said, sliding his finger down my throat to my left breast. He drew circles around the nipple, the wetness tingling in the misty air, inscribing a spiral pattern over my heart, all the while keeping his eyes locked on mine.

  “Yes,” I moaned, arching my hips against him while he hovered a tantalizing inch above me. “We belong to each other. We always have and always will.”

  Still keeping his eyes locked on mine he pushed the last tatters of my dress up around my hips and pushed himself against me. His face, backlit by the sun-tangled branches, glowed gold, his eyes glowing the same green as the deep woods that surrounded us. As he came inside me it was as if the woods were entering me … The gold sunlight exploding through the green branches obliterating everything else … even his flesh and, I saw as I reached for him, my flesh as well. I could see the sun and the branches right through my hand. We were dissolving into each other …

  I startled awake, my face pressed against a damp patch on the wooden table, and sat up, swiping at my mouth, hoping no one had seen me drooling in my sleep. But that hope was dashed. Elizabeth Book was sitting across from me, her cool elegance making me feel even more bedraggled and embarrassed.

  She smiled but her eyes looked sad. “You were dreaming,” she said.

  “I fell asleep while grading papers.” I swept together the pile of papers that were strewn across the table. I must have scattered them as I reached for him … Dear God, had Dean Book heard me moan or call out a name? Only I hadn’t called his name … although I was sure I’d have known it in the dream. I had known him. As well as I knew myself. Only how well was that? Who had I been in the dream?

  “Have you been having disturbing dreams?” Liz asked.

  I looked up from the papers and met her cool blue gaze. I felt the blood surge in my face at the thought that she somehow knew exactly what kind of dreams I’d been having. Dreams in which I made love until my flesh melted. “No,” I said. “Not unless you count dreaming about ungraded papers as disturbing. I’m afraid I’ve fallen a bit behind.” I smiled ruefully and hoped she thought my embarrassment was from being caught literally sleeping on the job and not from having a depraved sex life with a demonic being. “But I promise I’ll catch up and be more on the ball in the future.”

  Elizabeth Book reached across the table and laid her hand on mine. “I’m not worried about your performance, dear Callie. I’m worried about you. Not everyone makes the adjustment to Fairwick easily. Being here sometimes brings up … issues. And I have to admit I’ve had concerns with you living all alone in that house …”

  “I’m not all alone,” I interrupted her. “Phoenix is living with me.”

  “Ah, yes. Phoenix is turning out to be quite a … galvanizing addition to our community, but she is perhaps not the most restful of roommates. Nor do I think she would notice if anything were wrong.”

  “There’s nothing wrong, Dean Book. I’m just …” Obsessed with a phantom lover? Sorry I chased him away? “Getting used to the routine. I promise you don’t have to worry about me. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to take these home to grade. The library hasn’t turned out to be the best work environment after all.”

  TWELVE

  I forced myself to finish grading all my students’ papers that night, determined not to give Dean Book any reason to complain of my performance in the future. Although she had seemed sympathetic and concerned, I didn’t doubt that if I failed to live up to her expectations I wouldn’t last long here at Fairwick College.

  I was a diligent and attentive teacher for the next few weeks, with the added incentive of Paul’s Thanksgiving visit to work toward. I didn’t need a demon lover, I told myself while correcting midterms, I had a human one, one who deserved more of my attention. Even if the demon lover was … not quite imaginary, it was better that I’d gotten rid of him. The desire I�
�d felt in the dream I’d had in the library hadn’t just been for sex, it had been a desire to merge myself with him. And that surely couldn’t be healthy.

  When I wasn’t prepping for classes or grading I threw myself into getting the house in shape for Paul’s arrival and planning a Thanksgiving dinner. Since my grandmother had moved to Santa Fe, I’d gone to Annie’s in Brooklyn for Thanksgiving dinner. Before that my grandmother and I would always have Thanksgiving at her club in the pristine formal dining room. I’d never made a turkey myself, and I wouldn’t have been able to cook more than a microwaveable turkey dinner in my apartment. But now I had a beautiful big house that looked like a house in holiday TV ads—the kind with Pachelbel playing in the background. Not only could I give Paul some reasonable facsimile of a Thanksgiving dinner, but I could invite a few of my new colleagues as well. Maybe I could even invite Dean Book (whom I had learned was unmarried and lived alone). That would show her I was adjusting well to Fairwick.

  I told Phoenix about my plan, hoping both that she’d help and that the project would distract her from her obsession with Mara Marinca’s writing. She was enthusiastic and drew up a menu and shopping list right away. We made a date to go to the farmer’s market that weekend to scope out the local produce.

  Since she had the food under control I decided to concentrate on nesting. I’d lived in Honeysuckle House for three months now but the place still reverberated like a hollow drum. The sparsely furnished look had felt airy in the warm weather, but with winter bearing down I longed for a cozier environment. I drove to the mall out on the highway and at Pottery Barn I bought a pair of loveseats upholstered in forest green velour for the parlor. Then I bought a rug, throw pillows, and velveteen drapes, all in rich shades of ocher, rust, and emerald. I picked up glassware and serving platters for the table, and guest towels and a bathmat for the downstairs powder room. On an impulse I bought matching fuzzy bathrobes and slippers for me and Paul.

  On the way home I passed a garden and landscaping center called Valhalla and realized that this must be the store Brock and his brother Ike ran. I stopped and soon had a wheelbarrow filled with pots of chrysanthemums and asters, beautiful handmade wreaths woven from maple leaves and bittersweet vines, and a basket of dried flowers I thought would make a pretty centerpiece for the table. I noticed that among the plants and flowers were many decorative cast-iron items—plant hooks, hat racks, small shelves, and a menagerie of cast-iron animals like the mice doorstops. Of course, I realized. Brock had said his great-uncles had been blacksmiths before they’d gone into the landscaping business. No wonder all the locks he’d put on at my house were cast iron. No doubt he’d also made the mice doorstops.

  Phoenix was so excited by my purchases that she started outfitting the house herself. Over the next few weeks the downstairs rooms magically filled with embroidered throw pillows, soft alpaca throws, scented candles, dishes of potpourri, and crystal bowls brimming with hard candies and chocolate. The house filled with cooking smells again, too, as Phoenix tested out recipes for stuffing, pies, candied yams, puddings, gravies, cranberry sauces, and all the wines to go with them.

  “Try this cava,” she would say when I came down to dinner. “I thought we’d start with this and then have a nice pinot noir with the soup.”

  By the time I’d finished sampling wines I’d be half-crocked, but Phoenix, who had started drinking earlier than me, would be sparkling with energy. She was still staying up half the night reading Mara’s work, but now I’d find empty bottles littered among the red-marked papers—some of those red marks looking suspiciously more like Bordeaux than ink. I remembered what she had said about her “little drinking problem” and wondered if I should say anything. A week before Thanksgiving I decided to broach the subject by asking if she thought the stress of reading Mara’s work was getting to her, but before I could suggest that it might be leading to her drinking more, she interrupted me to ask if it was okay to invite Mara for Thanksgiving.

  “She doesn’t have any family and Nicky Ballard hasn’t invited her to her house. We can’t let her be all alone on the holiday.”

  I thought I knew why Nicky Ballard hadn’t invited Mara home. The week before I’d seen Nicky coming out of a decaying Victorian pile—its sagging wraparound porch filled with broken appliances and sprung couches—three blocks over on Elm Street. A shrill female voice had followed Nicky out of the house demanding “… and don’t forget my Pall Malls!” If that was Nicky’s home I didn’t blame her for not wanting anyone else to share the holiday with her. Maybe she didn’t want to spend it there either.

  “Okay,” I agreed, “but only if we can invite Nicky, too.”

  “The more the merrier,” Phoenix said, clinking her wine glass full of Puligny-Montrachet against my glass of seltzer.

  Although I was still worried about Phoenix’s drinking, I had to admit it looked like it would be a merry gathering. I invited Soheila Lilly, Casper van der Aart, and his partner, Oliver, who ran an antiques store in town, and, just to show him I wasn’t hoarding my big house all to myself, Frank Delmarco, all of whom said yes. Dean Book also accepted and suggested I invite Diana Hart who, she said, was always too busy with her guests to sit down to a real meal. I told her I was happy to find a way to repay Diana for all the care packages of baked goods I’d received.

  “Just don’t tell her you’re ‘repaying her.’ She’s a little touchy that way. And don’t be surprised if she insists on bringing some pies—and don’t turn her down! She would be hurt … and well, I would imagine you could use the help. You look like you’ve been working very hard. Are you sleeping well?”

  “Oh yes,” I lied. “It just took a while to get used to a strange house.”

  But the truth was that for all my frenetic daytime activity I was barely sleeping at all. Since that day in the library I’d been having dreams—not the erotic visitations of before, these felt … even weaker than dreams, more like half-forgotten memories.

  Always the same memory. It would start with the march across the desolate heath under a half-lit dawn sky with a crowd of travelers, their faces obscured by mist. In the distance the procession entered through the arch and vanished into the thick brambles. My heart contracted with fear at the sight. Where were they going? Where were we going? Those woods were thick and dark and led who knew where. I heard my fears echoed in the whispers around me: the door was narrower than it used to be. No one knew if it still led back to Faerie. It was easy to lose your way among the brambles and then you could wander for eternity in the Borderlands. I could tell from the way those words were uttered what a nightmare that would be. But if we stayed here any longer we would fade into nothingness.

  Then he would arrive on his fine white steed, which was already transparent in the morning sun. But I could still make out his face, his wide brow, his almond-shaped eyes, his full lips curving at the sight of me. He reached down for me and swung me up before him and we rode for the woods where he laid me down in the honeysuckle chapel and we sealed our vows to each other just as our flesh began to fade …

  And I’d awake, my hands grasping handfuls of empty air, my lips forming a name I’d forget at the moment of waking, my body aching with frustrated desire.

  Until the morning before Thanksgiving. The dream was the same until the moment he pressed his finger to my lips and drew the spiral pattern on my breast, but this time I felt his touch burning into my flesh, branding me …

  I startled awake, a fiery pain in my chest. I ran to the mirror and held my nightgown away. There on my left breast was an intricate coiling spiral, like something out of the Book of Kells, seared into my skin.

  Not only was the demon lover real, he was still here. And he had branded me. Like a piece of property.

  And part of me had enjoyed it. That was the part that filled me with shame: not all the wild sex I’d enjoyed with this phantom, but the fact that I desired him so much that I was willing to give up everything—my job, friends, Paul,
this world, my very flesh—to be with him.

  Me, who had based my one adult relationship on the principle of neither of us giving up anything.

  This just wasn’t like me. I had to fight it—and him.

  But how? I’d already read all the books on incubi that were in the library. I needed an expert … and the person who had known the history of the demon lover—at least the one in the painting called Ganconer—was Soheila Lilly.

  After my last class I went looking for Soheila Lilly’s office in the maze of narrow hallways on the first floor of Fraser Hall. This part of Fraser had been the home of Angus Fraser when he taught at the college at the turn of the last century, and retained its labyrinthine floor plan. I wandered for several minutes before finding a door with Soheila Lilly’s name above a poster from the British Museum that featured a terra-cotta plaque of a winged woman standing astride two crouching lions and flanked by two enormous owls. I lifted my hand to knock, but I paused to read the legend under the poster. THE QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, it read, OLD BABYLONIAN 1800–1750 BC. Looking closer at the woman I noticed that her shapely legs ended in curved talons, identical to the talons of the owls standing on either side of her. Something about that detail made me shiver, but I shook off the chill that had passed through me and knocked on the door.

  A melodious voice bade me enter. When I opened the door I thought I had been transported to a Near Eastern bazaar. Persian rugs lined the floor and bright multicolored tapestries hung from the walls and ceiling. Instead of the fluorescent bulbs that wanly lit my office, three glass lanterns—one sapphire blue, one emerald green, one amber yellow—cast warm pools of jeweled light. The polished desk was bare save for an old leatherbound book and a glass teacup. Soheila, dressed all in shades of caramel from her cashmere shawl to her suede boots to her lipstick, was leaning back in her chair, looking out her window at the last autumn leaves drifting from the nearly bare trees on the quad. Or at least that’s what I assumed she was looking at. There was nothing else to see. The campus was nearly deserted. Everyone had cleared out for the holiday.