The Angel Stone: A Novel (8 page)

She smiled slyly, and this time I was the one to blush, as if Nicky somehow knew of my dreamlike dalliances with William Duffy.

Thanking her, I kept the book in my hand as we walked together out of Fraser Hall. I was surprised to see that it was dark already.

“It’s getting dark early already and cold!” I shivered in my light corduroy blazer. “It feels like it was summer five minutes ago.”

“Winter comes on quickly up here,” Nicky said, giving me the rueful look the natives reserved for city people. I noticed she had on a heavy red-and-black-checked fleece jacket. “You should dress warmer,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, rolling my eyes. It made me happy to see Nicky feeling confident enough to hand out advice to her teacher—and I was touched that she would care. A year ago Nicky was nervous and unsure of herself, fearful that she very well might end up like her mother—a teenage mother with a drinking problem—and she would have if I hadn’t been able to avert the curse my ancestor had placed on her. “But speaking of motherly advice, I don’t think you should walk around the campus by yourself. I’ll walk you to your dorm.”

“No need, Professor McFay. I already called Night Owl.”

“Night Owl?”

“Yeah, didn’t you get the email from the new campus safety committee? They brought in a security outfit from town called Night Owl to escort students at night.”

I recalled receiving a half a dozen emails from the new committee Frank had formed with the Eastern European
Studies professors, but, caught up in my own concerns, I’d ignored them all. Could the Night Owls be the vampires? But they weren’t from town …

“Here’s my Night Owl now,” Nicky said, pointing behind me.

I turned quickly, afraid that one of the vampires would be behind me, but found instead the wide, cheerful face of Mac Stewart. He blushed when he saw me.

“Professor McFay, I didn’t know the call was for you. I’d’ve been here sooner. Where can I escort you? If it’s off campus, I can go get my car.”

“The call’s from Nicky here,” I said, glancing at Nicky, whose eyes were flicking between Mac and me with undisguised curiosity. “But it’s nice to see you again, Mac. You and your family were so helpful this summer, looking for those missing fishermen.”

In truth, the Stewarts, who were an ancient clan of stewards pledged to guard the woods, had helped to apprehend an undine who was seducing fishermen.

“It was the most exciting time of my life!” Mac declared. “That’s why I convinced my dad and grandpa to start this security company to watch after people in the town and on the campus. See …” He patted the owl emblem stitched on the pocket of his plaid flannel shirt. “I named it after you.”

“Huh? I don’t get it,” Nicky said. “What does an owl have to do with Professor McFay?”

“Um, it’s sort of a private joke …” I said, glaring at Mac. I’d run into Mac one night when I was patrolling the woods after shapeshifting into an owl. When an undine tried to drown him, I transformed back into a human to save him. Unfortunately, when he woke to see a naked woman with owl feathers in her hair, he decided I was an owl princess and declared his undying love for me. “… Um, because I stay up so
late … um, grading papers, which I have to go do now. You make sure Nicky gets back to her dorm safely, Mac.”

“But what about you, Professor?” Nicky objected. “You shouldn’t be walking alone on campus, either.”

“That’s right,” Mac eagerly concurred. “Why don’t you walk with us to the dorm and then I’ll walk you home?”

The last thing I wanted was to be alone with Mac Stewart, but what kind of a role model would I be if I walked around the campus by myself at night when I was urging my students not to?

“It will be my pleasure to escort Professor McFay home.”

The voice, silky and urbane, came from the shadows beneath a nearby pine tree. A tall man-shaped figure detached itself and glided forward. It wasn’t a man, though; it was Anton Volkov, Eastern European Studies professor and vampire.

“Mr. Stewart.” He acknowledged Mac with a nod and a slight quiver of his long patrician nose. Mac tended to smell like chewing tobacco and hay. “Miss Ballard, I enjoyed your paper on
The Master and Margarita
. Such an original take on the devil.” And then, turning his glittering eyes on me, he bowed. His blond hair looked silver in the moonlight. “Professor McFay, I’ve missed your company at our security meetings.”

“I’ve been b-busy with my classes,” I stammered.

“Of course. But there are some matters that have come up that you should be aware of. I can catch you up on the walk to your house. Mr. Stewart and Ms. Ballard are right that you shouldn’t walk alone after dark. You never know who—or what—may be lurking in the shadows.”

Like you
, I thought. But he was right that I needed to know what was going on. Giving Mac and Nicky a brave smile, I joined Volkov on the path leading off campus.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said as soon as we were out of earshot of Nicky and Mac.

“No! I’ve been busy with the semester start-up and … a research project. I’m trying to find another door to Faerie.”

I hoped that mentioning the door to Faerie would distract him and change the subject, but he remained quiet; his face, when I glanced over at him, was as impassive as that of a marble statue. We were walking on the path to the southeast gate, a heavily wooded and isolated spot where I’d once been attacked by a giant winged creature. I shivered at the memory.

Quick as a bird’s wings, Volkov’s jacket was off and around my shoulders. The silk lining was cool, holding no hint of warmth from its previous wearer, but it soon made me feel warm.

“Okay,” I admitted as we reached the gate. “I have been avoiding you. I haven’t forgotten our deal.” Volkov had given me the name of the witch who had cursed Nicky Ballard’s family, and he’d told me he would ask a favor in return. I’d been afraid he would ask for my blood, but he had only requested that I speak to the Grove on behalf of the nocturnals. Then the Grove had turned on Fairwick and I hadn’t been able to carry out my end of the bargain. “I know I still owe you … a favor.”

Volkov stopped past the gate and laid an icy hand on my arm to halt me. Once before he had used his touch to paralyze me, but I didn’t feel unable to move this time, just
unwilling
, held by the magnetism of his gaze. “That’s why you’ve been avoiding me?” he asked, his eyes holding mine. “Because you think I will ask for payment in some other kind?” He stroked a finger along my throat, from the base of my jaw to the rise of my clavicle. Although his skin was cold, his touch stirred a sensation of warmth under my skin, as if the blood in my veins were attracted by it, as if my blood were magnetically
drawn to him. He’d said to me once that he would never demand anything of me that I didn’t desire, but, if he sensed my desire, would he take what he wanted without asking?

“I know with the supply of Aelvesgold dwindling in this world, you must be …” I tried to think of a polite way of saying
hungry
, but he finished the sentence for me even more alarmingly.

“Starving?”

I nodded.

He smiled. “It’s true that when my ancestors were banished from Faerie and cursed to drink the blood of the creatures we loved best, some of us tried to use Aelvesgold to stanch our hunger, but we have learned other ways to control our appetites over the centuries. Other creatures are not so … well equipped with alternatives. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We’ve been finding animals in the woods that have been savaged and drained of blood as if by some kind of beast.”

“Drained of blood?” I asked, feeling suddenly woozy. “Could it be one of your kind?”

“No!” he growled, so fiercely I had to keep myself from bolting. “There are talon marks on the victims. My kind”—he held up his long, elegant hands and twirled them in the moonlight—“are monsters in many ways, but we do not have claws. But something
with
claws is roaming the woods and feeding on animals. I thought you should know since you live nearby.”

He lifted his eyes to Honeysuckle House and then to the woods behind it. The moon, just risen above the tips of the trees, cast long, branching shadows across my back lawn. It looked as though the woods were advancing on my back door.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be careful. I’ve only been going into the woods to take the tunnels—”

“You might want to reconsider that path,” Anton told me. “The blood-drained creatures we’ve found have been near the entrance to the tunnels, and we’ve found smears of blood that seem to vanish inside them, as if …”

“As if what?” I asked when he paused.

“As if these predators are clinging to the roofs of the tunnels like—”

“Like bats,” I finished for him, remembering the stir of wings I often heard when I was inside the tunnel.

“Yes,” Anton agreed reluctantly. “Giant bloodsucking bats.”

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 …