The Angel Stone

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 a 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 order 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