by Juliet Dark
Mac came to the kitchen door just as I was transferring the hot bannocks into a basket. He was wearing an ill-fitting sports jacket over a fancier-than-his-everyday plaid shirt (cotton instead of flannel) and dress slacks instead of jeans. When he saw what I was wearing—and smelled the bannocks—he burst into a wide smile.
“My nan is going to love you!”
I instantly felt guilty because I’d gone to all this trouble to get information out of the old lady and not because I wanted to marry her great-grandson. But at least I’d made Mac happy. He grinned all the way to Shady Pines, which was a short drive away, near the edge of the downtown area. I’d passed the nondescript two-story brick building before without really noticing it. There was a large, shaded patio in front, on which elderly people often congregated. Today it was festooned with balloons that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA! A large multigenerational group was gathered around a tiny elderly woman wearing a pointed party hat. Mac stopped by on our way in to wish Mrs. Rappaport a happy birthday and ask how her new hip was. I stood in my nice plaid skirt, holding my basket of fragrant bannocks, while the entire Rappaport family scrutinized me as a potential fiancée for Mac. By the time we left here today, the whole town would think we were engaged.
The cheerful exterior and pleasant staff inside couldn’t quite disguise the antiseptic smell of an institution—or the fact that many of the residents were not as spry or as well attended as Mrs. Rappaport. We passed a lounge where an elderly group slumped in front of a television set, their wrinkled faces slack and colorless. I was aware of eyes tracking us as we passed the residential rooms, and I felt strangely as I had looking toward the woods this morning. A woman in a pink tracksuit, making her laborious way down the hall with her walker, raised her head as we went by and lifted a shaking hand to stop us.
“Is there something I can do?” I asked her.
“You can get me the hell outta here!” she cried. “There are monsters here!”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Goldstein,” Mac said in a soothing voice. “I’ll call an aide to help you.”
“Traitor!” Mrs. Goldstein hissed. “Collaborator!”
Mac only smiled and nodded at Mrs. Goldstein’s accusations and pulled me away. “Don’t worry about Mrs. Goldstein. She’s a Holocaust survivor, and now she thinks she’s back in the camps.”
“That’s horrible!” I said. “The poor woman!”
Mac nodded, but we’d arrived at his nan’s room, and he was too busy slicking down his hair and straightening his tie to worry about Mrs. Goldstein’s delusions. He took my arm and led me into a comfortable bedroom that included a small sitting area, toward a wizened old lady in a powder-blue velour tracksuit with a plaid wool shawl draped over her shoulders. I recognized the wide Stewart face beneath crisply waved white hair, and she had the same blue eyes, only hers were slightly clouded by cataracts. When she lifted those eyes, though, they fastened on me with a keenness I’d never seen in Mac’s face.
“Ah, Cailleach McFay,” the old woman said in a surprisingly strong, steady voice. “At last. I’ve been waiting a long time to see you.”
I looked uncertainly at Mac, wondering if Nan hadn’t slipped back into dementia. Mac shrugged and looked embarrassed, then said in a loud voice, “You told me to bring her at teatime, remember? And, look, Callie’s made you some bannocks.”
I put the basket on the table, which was set with a brown glazed teapot, three flowered teacups, a bowl of brown-sugar cubes, a jug of milk, and little pots of jam and what looked like clotted cream. Mac and I sat down on the two comfortable chairs opposite the couch. He poured tea and filled his grandmother in on the latest news—how the crops had come in, the quantities of jams and pickles put up by his mother and aunts, the purchase of a new tractor, the health and activities of a dozen or so grandchildren and twice again as many farm animals. Mrs. Stewart maintained the regal poise of a queen listening to the assizes, her eyes, the same Wedgwood blue as the teacups, all the while focused on me. When Mac had finished his report on the state of the Stewart clan, he took a gulp of tea and crammed a bannock into his mouth. His eyes widened.
“Why, Callie!” he exclaimed with a full mouth. “These are just like the ones Nan makes. How did you get the recipe? Nan always says it’s a family secret!”
“It’s how my father made them,” I replied. “He said he learned from his grandmother.”
“Mmph.” Mrs. Stewart made an enigmatic sound. Then, turning to Mac, she said, “Be a dear and go talk to Mrs. Gulliver about putting me into the Friday afternoon bridge game, and don’t let her tell you it’s full just because Babs Meriweather swooped in and took my seat while I was indisposed. I’m back now.”
“Sure, Nan, only I could go after our visit—”
“You’ll want to catch her now before she leaves, lad, and this will give the lass and me time for a little girl talk.”
“Oh!” Mac said, turning bright red at the thought of what girl talk might entail. He gave me a wary smile and hurried out before he might accidentally overhear some embarrassing female detail.
“Mrs. Stewart—” I began when he had gone.
“Call me Nan, lass. I feel as though I’ve known you for centuries.”
I sighed. “Nan, I know Mac’s told you a lot about me, but I hope that hasn’t given you the wrong impression about our relationship … not that Mac isn’t a fine young man.”
“Tsk, tsk,” Nan Stewart clicked her tongue at me. “I know you’re not sweet on my boy, lass—ye could do worse, mind ye, but he’s no’ the man of your dreams, is he?”
I met those sharp blue eyes. “What do you know about my dreams, Nan?”
She leaned forward, and her thin, arthritic hand grasped mine with surprising force. “That the man who comes in them is as sweet as heathered honey.” She sniffed as though she could smell the heather strewn all over my bed after my dreams. “And I know ye willna let go of him, even though ye should. But when do we ever do what we should when it comes to love, eh?” Her eyes clouded, as if a mist had washed over them, and the years fell away from her face. I glimpsed a young woman in front of me, her eyes burning with love. I returned the pressure of her grip on my hand.
“Not often,” I replied. “But I want to do what’s right for Fairwick. Not for … him, but to fix things here. I know you’ve been … indisposed, so you may not know that something awful’s happening.”
“Not know it, lass? Who do ye think indisposed me? Those bastards, that’s who! They knew I’d never let them take my village, and so they struck me down and scrambled my senses. If I hadn’t had the plaid to protect me, they would have killed me.”
I guessed that she meant the magic tartan the Stewarts used as a force field, not the plaid shawl around her shoulders.
“The plaid has many powers,” she said. “We used it to banish the nephilim in Ballydoon when they tried to round up the old folk and the wisewomen.”
She let go of my hands and leaned back against the sofa cushions. Lines of strain had appeared on her face, and I worried that dredging up these painful memories might be too much for her. I held her teacup up to her lips, but she waved it away. “They came to my village many years ago, hunting down the old folk and those who believed in them.”
“The old folk? Do you mean …”
“You know who I mean, lass. The good people. The fairies. You’ve got more than a touch of the fey in you. Enough to open the door between worlds. The McFays came from the same village as us Stewarts. It were a McFay who charged the Stewarts with protectin’ folks from the wrong sort of sprite—and from those evil winged bastards.”
I blinked at the old woman’s ferocity.
“They rounded up the last of the fairies and all who sheltered them. Called them witches and burned them at the stake. ’Twas a fairy that drove them out.”
“Do you know how she did it?” I asked. “Did she have a stone?”
Nan shook her head, and her keen eyes seemed to grow a little dimmer. “When I thi
nk on it, I get a little confused, like. But, aye, I think there was a stone … and I think it’s still back there.”
“Back where?” I asked, beginning to worry that Nan hadn’t completely recovered from her dementia.
“In Ballydoon,” Nan snapped, as if I were the one whose faculties were in question.
“Ballydoon, Scotland?” I asked. “You want me to go to Scotland?”
Nan sighed. “You’ll no’ find the stone in Ballydoon now. You have to go through the hallow door and go back to Ballydoon then.”
“You mean go back to the time of the witch hunts? To the 1600s?”
“Aye, thereabouts. You wear that brooch you’ve got on now”—she stabbed her finger at the brooch pinned to my blouse—“and the hallow door will take you to the right place.”
“But where do I find the hallow door?” I asked.
Nan made an exasperated sound. “Find it? Why, lass, don’t you know? You are the hallow door.”
I opened my mouth but found I had no words. It didn’t make sense. How could I be a door?
“Did you not know a doorkeeper may become the door? Of course, you need to have made a blood bond with the last door before it closed.”
“But I did that,” I told her. “I used a heart-binding spell from Wheelock, but then when Bill died”—I took a breath to keep away the sadness that always rose when I thought of that moment—“the door exploded.”
“Aye,” Nan said, patting my hand. “It was because your heart was broken. Never you worry, lass, it will mend. And ye still have the bond to the door. You’ll be able to open a passage anytime, anywhere, but for the first time you’ll need to do it on All Hallows’ Eve, and you’ll need help. You’ll need, as that Clinton woman so wisely said, a village.”
“A village?”
“Aye. Hallows’ Eve is only as powerful as its observance. That’s why the nephilim always try to stamp out the old ways wherever they go. You watch: they’ll try to keep the town and college from observing Halloween this year.”
“They’ve already prohibited parties,” I said.
“See! Next it’ll be trick-or-treating and costumes and decorations.”
“Do those things really make a difference?” I asked skeptically.
“Yes,” she assured me, “they do. But they’re not all you’ll need. You’ll need a witches’ circle. At midnight, go to the spot where the door was opened before. They’ll try to stop you, mind. You’ll need my boys to keep out the nephilim and the circle to focus your power. At the stroke of midnight, you’ll become the door.”
“But how?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Nan snapped. “You’re the doorkeeper—and a witch. Look through your book of spells.”
“Okay,” I said, wishing Nan could be more specific. “Once I’ve opened … or, er, become the door, what then?” I asked. “How can I get rid of the nephilim?”
“Why, find the angel stone, of course,” she said. “And bring it back.”
“But where exactly—” I began, but I saw a rictus of pain distort Nan’s face. I’d exhausted her.
“You’ll find it just as ye did before,” she said.
“I will,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure what she meant. Perhaps she was confusing me with my ancestor.
Mac came back then and Nan changed the subject, asking him to tell her all the details of his cousin Isobel’s wedding, which she’d had to miss when she was not herself. Mac happily obliged, exhibiting a remarkable memory for bridesmaids’ dresses and place settings that drove home to me how much the young man was looking forward to his own nuptials. I caught him giving me moon eyes while describing the wedding cake. He talked until we both noticed that Nan had fallen asleep.
“We’d best leave her,” Mac said, getting up and tucking the shawl around the old woman’s shoulders. “I’ll go tell her aide to look in on her.”
He went ahead of me as I bent down to pick up the tea tray. I adjusted a stray edge of the shawl and carried the tray down the hall to the kitchen. When I came out, I met Mrs. Goldstein standing in front of the elevator. “You have to help me get out!” she wailed plaintively. “The monsters are back.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Goldstein,” someone murmured, coming up behind me. I turned and found Adam Sinclair.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“It’s part of my community service,” he said, smiling as he walked past me and put his arm around Mrs. Goldstein’s frail, trembling shoulders. Mrs. Goldstein lifted pleading eyes to mine as Adam steered her walker around and guided her back down the hall.
CHAPTER TEN
Nan Stewart was right about the nephilim lockdown of Halloween. In the next few weeks, as the leaves changed and the air sharpened and the local stores put out displays of Halloween candy and children’s costumes and my neighbors decorated their doorways with jack-o’-lanterns and leering skeletons, my in-box was peppered with emails from our dean, prohibiting Halloween parties on campus. The emails cited incidents at other colleges of razor-spiked apples and rampant vandalism and studies linking campus violence to the watching of horror movies.
My students grumbled and complained, but no one wanted to risk getting summoned to the dean’s office. The students who had been called in—for breaking curfew or missing classes—came out cowed and nervous. It seemed that Dean Laird had a way of targeting a student’s weakness, whether that meant a call home, a threat to financial aid, or the refusal of a recommendation to law school. Most disturbing, some students formed a group to back up the dean’s recommendations—the Committee for Positive Change at Fairwick. Unsurprisingly, it was led by Adam Sinclair, but it also included plenty of other students, even, I was shocked to see, Scott Wilder. When I asked Scott about it, he shrugged and said there was really good food at the meetings, which he needed because the food at the cafeteria was worse than ever this year.
Soheila and I went to the cafeteria one day to make sure that the students weren’t being poisoned. We were served a bland assortment of overcooked and oversauced food—chicken à la king with soggy green beans, mayonnaise-drenched lettuce, orange Jell-O, and watered-down fruit punch.
“It’s not poisoned,” Soheila said, making a face as she sampled the fare, “but it’s as though all the flavor and life has been sucked out of the food. The body might be sustained by eating this … swill, but not the spirit. No wonder they all go to the Alpha House dinners.”
When I walked past Alpha House, I could smell the intoxicating aromas wafting out of it. Not only had the Alphas managed to clear out my stink bomb, but they had also erected a layer of wards protecting the house from any of my spells. I watched helplessly as students trooped into the nephilim’s stronghold, but I stayed out on my porch—no matter how cold or how late it got—until each and every girl who went into Alpha House came out. I even tried calling up Duncan’s office and complaining that they were breaking the no-gathering rule.
“Didn’t you read the email? Meetings approved by my office as sanctioned college activities may meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays between the hours of six and ten P.M.”
“I guess I missed that one,” I said. “Can I get approved to hold student meetings at my house?”
“Of course,” he replied magnanimously. “What kind of meeting do you want to hold?”
“I’ve been thinking of starting a folklore club,” I said, making it up on the spot. “To explore local traditions and the folklore of other cultures. We could have food from the different cultures we were studying …” As I spooled off more activities, I started to think it was actually a good idea. I must have talked long enough that Duncan Laird got tired of hearing my voice.
“Fine,” he said abruptly. “That sounds harmless enough. You have my permission.”
I thanked him and got off the phone before he could change his mind. Half an hour later I had sent out emails to all my students, announcing the first meeting of the Fairwick Folklore Society for the following week. First orde
r of business—exploring the folklore and traditions of Halloween.
Once I’d launched the folklore club (Nicky Ballard and Flonia Rugova volunteered to run it), I concentrated on the next order of business—gathering a witches’ circle. I’d been introduced to the witches of Fairwick this past summer, but since then Liz Book had gone to Faerie and the circle had disbanded with the defections of Lester Hanks and Ann Chase. These days the closest thing I had to a mentor to teach me how to use my powers was Frank Delmarco. I asked Frank to go with me to talk to the remaining witches in Fairwick who hadn’t aligned themselves with the nephilim. We met on a Saturday afternoon in mid-October at Fair Grounds, the town coffee bar. I ordered a pumpkin spice latte and an apple cider donut from Leon Botwin, hipster barista and witch.
“I’m going on break in five minutes,” Leon told us as he steamed the milk for my latte and served Frank an austere espresso. “Moondance should be here soon, but Tara called to say that she can’t make it.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Do you think she’s gone over to the other side?”
“Might have.” Leon shook his head as he wiped down the brass fittings of the espresso machine. “Her husband lost his job and she’s expecting another kid. And her husband nominated two new members for the Lions Club who looked suspiciously nephilitic.”
“You belong to the Lions Club?” I asked, more surprised at that than the possibility that the club had been infiltrated by nephilim. In his skinny black jeans, scruffy goatee, and black Converse high-tops, Leon hardly looked the Lions Club type.
“I bought Fair Grounds when Dory Browne had to leave town this summer. It was either that or let it become a Starbucks. Anyway, now that I’m a small-business owner, I thought I should join. The problem is …” He looked around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear, suspiciously eyeing an old man examining the chalkboard menu, and then leaned over the counter to whisper, “There were so many empty spots after the summer migration that there are a lot of new members. These two guys that Tara’s husband nominated just bought Browne’s Realty. They’ve got that tall Nordic look going on, and one of the first things they did was veto the town’s Halloween parade.”
