The Demon Lover (23 page)

His lips twisted as if I’d said something funny. “Is that what she called it—confronting one’s demons? It seems to me she was courting demons. Some of my students said that her breath smelled like alcohol during class and she hadn’t returned a paper since September.”

“Well, yes, that
is
bad …”

“It’s worse than that; it’s a crime. These young people were willing to bare their souls for that woman and what did they get for it? A drunken teacher who lied her way to fame and fortune.” He shook his head sadly. “I only hope I can gain their trust after that.”

“You looked like you were well on your way with Flonia Rugova,” I snipped, instantly regretting my tone. The man was right. Phoenix’s behavior had been abysmal, but still it irked me to have him walk in and pass judgment on someone he’d never met after an hour of listening to her students. He was regarding me curiously, his head tilted to one side, his eyes narrowed.

“Miss Rugova was telling me about how her family got out of Albania. She left a sister there whom she hasn’t heard from in three years. I was offering her a contact in Amnesty International to help find her.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling the blood rise to my face. “That was … good of you. Flonia hasn’t written much, but what I’ve read is beautiful. Here.” I handed him the stack of student papers. “You’re completely right, of course. They all deserve a better teacher than Phoenix was. She got distracted … which reminds me, the only student whose papers aren’t here is Mara Marinca. I can’t find them anywhere. I guess Phoenix lost them.”

I was expecting another diatribe against Phoenix, but instead Doyle sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Mara told me today that she was withdrawing from the class.”

“Oh, really? I’m surprised. We talked yesterday and she didn’t mention she was dropping.”

Liam Doyle shrugged. “I think she was disappointed to see that she wasn’t going to be the focus of attention anymore. I’m afraid that too much attention can be just as harmful as too little. At any rate, Ms. Marinca expressed an aversion to writing poetry, which is what I plan to do with the class for the two weeks remaining in the semester.”

“It’s a shame, though, that she won’t get credit for the class after all the work she did. I’ve looked all over for her papers …”

“I’m sure you have … which reminds me. I gather you were renting out your spare room to Ms. Middlefield. I’m staying right across the street at the Hart Brake Inn—” He grimaced at the name. “Which is fine for a day or two, but if I have to stay there much longer I might go into diabetic shock, from the décor if not the food.”

“Diana
does
have a sweet tooth,” I concurred, “and a fondness for tchotchkes.”

“I didn’t mean to insult another of your friends, Dr. McFay. Ms. Hart is a gracious innkeeper, but the rooms are … well, a tad feminine for my taste and the food
is
a little on the sugary side. What I wondered is … well, I don’t know if you’d be uncomfortable taking on a male lodger.”

“You want to rent Phoenix’s room?”

“Yes. Dean Book mentioned it had a separate entrance and access to a kitchen. I like to cook. In fact, I took a course at the Cordon Bleu when I lived in Paris.”

I was about to wonder aloud why he didn’t list that accomplishment along with lute playing and speaking Albanian on his Facebook page, but caught myself before revealing my cyber-stalking activities. I smiled regretfully instead. “I’d love to help you out, Mr. Doyle, but Phoenix left her things there and I want her to feel welcome to come back.”

“That’s very loyal of you,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything that made you uncomfortable. But if Ms. Middlefield sends for her things …”

“Well, then you’ll be the first on my prospective lodger list,” I replied, confident that Phoenix was in no shape to send for her things. I returned Liam Doyle’s brilliant smile, glad that this time I’d had a ready excuse for not taking on an unwanted roommate.

When I left Fraser Hall, though, I felt unsettled. Why, I asked myself, had I taken such an immediate dislike to Liam Doyle? Was I jealous of his easy success with his students when I had spent all weekend reading their papers and all day yesterday conferencing with them? Or his exotic travels and philanthropic activities? Or his Oxford degree? Okay, there was something annoyingly pretentious about the guy. Lute playing, for heaven’s sake, and that shirt! I couldn’t be the only one to see it, could I?

I turned around and headed back toward Fraser Hall, choosing the back entrance to avoid running into Doyle. If there really was something off about Liam Doyle, Soheila Lilly would be the one to notice it. There were no students waiting outside her office, but there were voices coming from inside. I was going to leave when I heard one of those voices—a deep, rumbly male one—say: “And did you get a good look at his shirt? It looked like he ordered it from the J. Peterman catalog!”

Oh good, I thought spitefully, I am not the only one. I knocked on the half-ajar door and poked my head in. Soheila was behind her desk in a lovely toffee-colored sweater and long amber beads that matched the color of the tea she was drinking. The last person I would have pegged as her tea-drinking partner was Frank Delmarco, but there he was, leaning back precariously on a delicately carved chair, holding a steaming glass of spiced tea.

“Am I interrupting anything?” I asked.

“We were just talking about Phoenix’s replacement,” Soheila responded, getting up to pour me a glass of tea from the samovar. “Have you met him yet?”

“Yes,” I answered, taking the chair next to Frank’s. “He seems very … dedicated,” I ventured cautiously.

“Ha!” Frank snorted, and rocked forward in his chair so roughly I thought the fragile wood would crack. “All you women have been completely bamboozled by him.”

“Not at all,” I said, annoyed to be lumped in with the infatuated students. “Actually, I thought he was a little presumptuous. He asked if he could have Phoenix’s room.”

“See!” Frank crowed. “The poor woman’s bed isn’t even cold and he’s trying to take it from her. I hope you told him no.”

“I did,” I said, then smiling slyly, added, “Although I might regret it. He told me he studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu.”

Frank leaned back in his chair again and roared with laughter—as I’d known he would. I felt a little spiteful thrill.

“Maybe he also sews—you could have gotten some curtains out of him! Have you read his poetry yet?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to admit to that, but Frank didn’t wait for my answer. He quoted a line from the poem I’d read in the library in a mocking falsetto. I’d thought the line was lovely when I read it, but now something malicious made me laugh and ask, “Do you think he really believes that nonsense?”

I heard a step behind me.

Soheila cleared her throat and glanced over my head. I looked over my shoulder and there, filling the doorway with his broad shoulders, was Liam Doyle. The late-afternoon sun was in his eyes, so I couldn’t read his expression, but his voice was cool as ice water.

“Yes, in fact I do,” he said. Before I could apologize, he was gone.

TWENTY-TWO

I
spent the next week (the last week of classes before finals) trying to avoid Liam Doyle, so embarrassed was I to have been caught talking about him behind his back. Making fun of his poetry, no less. I didn’t know what had come over me. Why had I taken such a dislike to the man just because he wore foppish shirts and had gone to Oxford?

Nearly everyone else certainly liked him. Soheila Lilly served me Irish Breakfast tea the next time I was in her office—“a present from that nice Irish writer!”—and confided to me that he reminded her of Angus Fraser. I saw him eating lunch with Elizabeth Book in the student union twice and heard the dean laughing like a schoolgirl. Even Frank Delmarco grudgingly admitted to me that the new hire wasn’t all bad—and then he showed me the Jets tickets Doyle had gotten for him for the weekend after Christmas. His students raved about the workshop and told me how he took them on hikes through the woods and recited poetry to them.

Nicky Ballard, especially, had been galvanized by him to write. She was working on a series of poems developing the theme of the ice maiden. When she showed me a few of the poems, I immediately saw that Nicky was working out her fear of being trapped by the legacy of her family history through the poems. I thought it was a good emotional strategy but wondered if it would really help combat a century-old curse. Of course, Nicky didn’t know she was under a curse, so it fell to me do what I could to avert it.

I had started the painstaking work of looking up each casualty of the Ulster & Clare train crash, but it was going slowly. Even when I was able to find out something about a victim or their family I had no way of telling whether the person was a witch. There had to be some better way of going about this. At the beginning of finals week I decided to go by Liz Book’s office to ask if she had any ideas on how to track down the perpetrator of the curse. As soon as I mentioned the curse a pall fell over Liz’s face, making her look older and tired. In fact, I noticed that she was looking distinctly untidy. Strands of graying hair had escaped her usually immaculate chignon and her knit St. John’s jacket was missing a brass button.

“The Ballard curse has been documented by my predecessors for generations. When I took this job ten years ago I made it one of my missions to avert the curse. First I thought that if we could find out the origins of the curse we could undo it, so I asked Anton Volkov to go through the very long list of people who had reason to hate Bertram Ballard.”

“Why Anton Volkov?” I asked. She looked confused by the question, so I added, “Isn’t he in the Eastern European and Russian Institute?”

“Of course … Oh, I see what you mean. I guess I haven’t given you your orientation packet to IMP—the Institute of Magical Professionals, that is. Anton has been working on an online registry of witches, fairies, and demons that he’s calling BOGGART. It will be an invaluable resource when it’s done because some magical beings aren’t completely upfront about their … um,
natures
, which is understandable after centuries of persecution, but the prevailing trend is toward inclusion and full disclosure.”

“But has he been able to identify the witch who cursed Nicky’s family?” I interrupted. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was afraid I could be here all day listening to the dean explain the workings of magical academia which, fascinating as it might have been, wasn’t going to help Nicky.

“Actually he was able to identify at least two witches who would have had cause and opportunity to curse the Ballards, but he hasn’t been able to locate the descendants of either. I know he’s been meaning to go down to the city and look at the Central Registry of Supernatural Beings—or CROSBy, as we call it—at the main branch of the library, but he hasn’t had a chance …”

“There’s a Central Registry of Supernatural Beings at the main branch of the New York Public Library?” I asked, amazed. I’d used the main branch a million times. I’d certainly never come across anything like that.

“Yes, but you need your IMP card to access it. Once you found out all about us I sent in the paperwork in order for you to join IMP. I think I have your membership card here somewhere …” She sifted through a pile of papers on her usually neat desk. Several sheets drifted to the floor. I picked up a drop/add form and a bill for four cases of champagne and handed them to her. “Ah, here it is!” She produced a laminated card with a symbol of two crescent moons flanking an orb with the letters IMP inscribed in it. “Just present this at the front desk and you’ll be shown to the special collections. It also entitles you to use the library during hours when it’s normally closed.”

“Great. I’ll do that the next time I get into the city. Do you have the names of the witches Anton identified?”

“I did … somewhere around here …” Liz swiveled her chair to face a tall filing cabinet behind her. She pulled open a crowded drawer and fished around in it. She sighed heavily, but then perked up when a book slid off the top of the filing cabinet and into her lap. “Why, here’s your spellbook!” She handed me a nondescript book in a green library binding. “But I can’t seem to find that list. Perhaps you could just go to Anton and ask him for the names. That might be the easiest thing.”

“Sure,” I said, “only I don’t really know him. I saw him at the faculty party, but I wasn’t introduced. Isn’t he … I mean, Nicky Ballard told me that he and his colleagues live together in town and that there are some strange stories about them …” Like the fact that they were never seen before nightfall, I recalled.

Liz waved a limp hand to dismiss my concerns. “You mustn’t listen to such gossip. Anton is quite charming. Really, you should go talk to him if you’re concerned about Nicky. He’s made quite a study of her. His office is in Bates Hall. It’s the building up on the hill.”

“Okay. I guess I will then.”

“Good.” The dean looked happy to have something settled—and eager to end the meeting. She looked like she could do with a nap. The end of the semester must be a trying time—especially a semester that had included an incubus invasion, a fraud scandal, and an ice storm. It would age anyone and, it suddenly occurred to me, I had no idea how old Elizabeth Book really was. If her magical powers had been keeping her young, perhaps if those powers waned she would grow old very quickly. The idea made me feel suddenly uncomfortable and sad for her.

I got up to go, clutching my new spellbook. “I’ll go see Professor Volkov right away.”

“There is one thing I should warn you about.”

“Oh?”

“While I applaud your desire to help Nicky Ballard, you must be careful not to burn yourself out. I was just saying this to Mr. Doyle earlier today. Today’s young people—especially the ones we get here at Fairwick—need so much attention. They can suck you dry.”

The comment startled me. It was not the kind of thing I’d have expected Dean Book—always so poised and gracious—to say. But looking down at her, at the dryness of her skin, the disarray of her hair and the light tremor in her hand, she looked exactly like someone who had been sucked dry. I’d never been in Bates Hall, but I’d seen its stone spire in the distance and I knew it housed the Eastern European and Russian Institute, or EERIe as it was called by the students. It was all by itself on the western edge of campus. I didn’t relish the idea of hiking out there, but I felt I owed it to Nicky. Approaching the building up a steeply ascending path I felt a bit like Jonathan Harker approaching Dracula’s castle in the Carpathians. Maybe that’s why the Eastern European and Russian Institute had chosen it.

No one else was on the path. Since it was finals week most of the students were probably holed up in their rooms or in the library studying. The sun was going down behind the western mountains, turning the stone building bloodred. With diminishing sunlight the day had turned icy cold, and the gray clouds massing in the north threatened snow. The Weather Channel had been predicting the first snow of the season for days now. I almost turned back, but then I recalled my promise to Nicky’s grandmother.

The stone building was cold and quiet inside. My steps echoed as I walked down a long hallway, past yellowing maps of countries that no longer existed and glass cases of pottery shards and broken statuary—relics of some ancient Slavic civilization. I stopped to read a list of course offerings in the department. The classes ranged through the Russian language, nineteenth-century Russian literature, Balkan folklore, Byzantine and Ottoman history, and Russian guitar poetry. Pretty impressive for a college of Fairwick’s size, I thought. Usually it was only the big universities—Harvard, the U. of Chicago—that could devote so many classes to a rather obscure subject area. I wondered if some rich Fairwick alum had endowed the department.

I found Professor Volkov’s office but the door was closed and no one answered my knock. Written in a flowing, old-fashioned script on an ivory card were his winter office hours:
Mondays and Wednesdays, six to eight in the evening, or by appointment
. Great, I thought, Dean Book might have told me that Professor Volkov kept eccentric office hours. I saw by his class schedule that he taught at even stranger hours: 8–9:15 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. I was turning to go when I heard a sound coming from behind the closed door. Perhaps Volkov was there after all. I leaned closer to the door and listened. It was a riffling sound—like pages of an old book being flipped, only it went on so long and grew so loud that I began to doubt anyone would flip through a book for so long or so emphatically. No, the longer I listened the more it sounded like wings, as if a large bird had gotten trapped in Professor Volkov’s office.

I knocked on the door again and the riffling noise stopped. I waited for someone to respond, but no one came to the door and nothing stirred behind it, although I felt sure now that someone—or
something
—was on the other side of the door. I backed away as quietly as I could and crept back down the hall, with only my own reflection in the glass display cases for company.

I felt better when I got out of the building and felt the cold air on my face, but then I saw how dark the path was. In the few minutes I had been inside Bates Hall the sun had sunk completely behind the horizon and snow had begun to fall, blurring the edges of the path and filling the woods on either side with cold gray shadows. I walked quickly, chiding myself for the rising panic in my chest. The sound I’d heard in Professor Volkov’s office had only been loose papers blowing in the draft from an open window, I told myself.

But then why had the sound stopped when I knocked?

And why did Professor Volkov have such strange office hours and only teach at night?

I recalled again the town gossip that Nicky had relayed to me about Professor Volkov and his associates. They never went out before dark, there were lights on at their house at all hours … Could they be vampires?

The sound of wings overhead cut short my reasoning—and the next beat of my heart. I looked behind me and saw, silhouetted against the last red streak in the western sky, a black, winged shape bearing down on me.

I turned and ran down the steep path. The sound of wings grew louder and I ran faster. At the bottom of the path was a security light above a red campus emergency phone. I wasn’t sure how much good a phone call was going to do me right now, but it was the only goal I had. I made for the light as if it could banish the shadowy thing behind me—a thing that I instinctively felt wasn’t just a bird. Stories about vampires turning into bats were running through my mind as I reached for the phone … and felt my feet slipping in the slick, freshly fallen snow. As I fell the spellbook slipped from my hands and landed open and faceup in the snow inches from my nose.

To halt an attack from above
, I read,
pronounce the following words while picturing an empty blue sky and waving a feather
.

Great, I thought, as the sound of wings came closer, where was I going to find a feather on such short notice? But I
was
wearing a down coat, an old one that sometimes leaked …

I patted my coat until I felt something prickly … and pulled. I waved the tiny feather in my hand while picturing an empty blue sky and pronouncing (correctly I hoped) the three prescribed words:

“Vacuefaca naddel nem!”

Something thumped my back. So much for having magical talents. I turned over, raising my hands to cover my face for protection … and found myself looking up at Liam Doyle.

“Are you all right?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with concern. “I saw you running down the path as if something were after you.”

I looked up for the winged creature, but there was nothing but clear blue sky. Snowflakes clung to Liam’s dark hair like stars in a night sky, but the sky itself was rinsed clean of the storm clouds that had been there a moment ago.

“I heard something following me.” I didn’t tell him that the sound had come from the sky. He helped me up and we both turned and looked at the path leading up to Bates Hall. Only one set of footprints stood out in the newly fallen snow. “I suppose it could have been my imagination,” I said, feeling foolish.

“Or it could have been someone in the woods,” Liam said. “A student smoking pot or drinking beer who didn’t want to get caught by a teacher.” I had a feeling he was humoring me, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care that he was still holding my arm. I was glad to see him.

“I suppose so, or it could have been an animal.” As we turned to walk toward the main part of campus, he tucked my arm under his elbow. “I hadn’t realized how isolated this part of campus was. What are you doing here?”