Diana Hart among a herd of deer—and one bear, whom I recognized as Liz’s familiar, Ursuline—Casper Van der Aart and his partner, Oliver, with a contingent of gnomes, and many other townspeople whom I recognized and who now crowded around me, clapping me on the back and hugging me. I let the tears that had been brimming in my eyes fall, the loss of William mingling with the joy of this reunion.
“You found a way to open the door!” Liz cried. The dean had changed since I’d seen her last. Her gray hair had turned into a shimmering silver. Her skin was unlined and glowed like rose-tinted porcelain. She wore a long gown of glittering material that changed color as she moved from mauve to violet and she looked at least ten years younger than when I’d seen her last. Even Ursuline looked sleeker and shinier. Dwelling in Faerie agreed with them.
“It turns out I
“I knew Callie would figure out a way!” Diana crowed, hugging both Liz and me at the same time. Diana had also been transformed during her time in Faerie. The demure innkeeper who had collected animal figurines and run the Fairwick Spinning Circle and Knitting Club had reverted to a wilder self. Her chestnut hair stood up in spikes around a wreath of twisted rowan branches and russet leaves. Her freckles had bred and multiplied, turning her skin into the dappled hide of a young fawn. She wore a skimpy green tunic over coltish brindled legs, looking a bit like a feral Peter Pan. I found it difficult to imagine her and Liz fitting back into their respective innkeeping and administrative roles. But apparently they didn’t.
“So we can return now?” Liz asked.
“She’s been worried about the college,” Diana told me.
“No more than you’ve been worried about your inn,” Liz countered. “How are they? The inn and the college, I mean. And Fairwick, of course. Did you drive out the nephilim?”
I stared at Liz and Diana, wondering how I could describe the awful changes the nephilim had wrought— Diana’s inn turned into a frat house, the college ruled by nephilim and patrolled by trows …
“Things are pretty bad back there,” I admitted. “I came to Faerie to get this”—I held out the angel-stone brooch—“but I had to go back in time to get it.” I blinked away tears, thinking of William. Liz and Diana gave each other a worried look, then I felt a sympathetic hand on my shoulder. I turned to find Brock Olsen, my old handyman and Norse divinity, towering over me. Was it possible he had gotten taller in Faerie? He’d certainly grown more imposing. He was dressed in a leather tunic and boots and a fur cloak, his scarred but handsome face both graver and stronger. Beside him was Dory Browne, in a homespun dress and peaked cap, looking tiny but no less fierce. Brock cradled my hand in his and looked at the angel stone. “You had to give up William to get it, didn’t you?” he said softly.
“How did you know?”
“It was a story Dolly told me once.” Dolly was Dahlia LaMotte, the romance novelist who’d lived in Honeysuckle House and drawn her inspiration from my incubus. “She said it was the one story she couldn’t write down, because it hadn’t happened yet.” He smiled. “I never quite understood that.”
“Dolly could be a little cryptic,” Dory said, with just a hint of jealousy for the woman Brock had once been sweet on.
Brock squeezed my shoulder before lifting my arm, displaying for all to see the hand that held the angel stone. The crowd gasped at the sight. The golden light of Faerie was filling the stone, making it glow like a beacon.
“Callie has sacrificed much to get this stone,” Brock roared. “Are you ready to fight by her side to take back our town?”
A great shout swelled from the crowd. I looked around at the faces of my friends and felt a corresponding swelling in my heart. This was what William had given me. I couldn’t let that sacrifice be in vain. As my heart swelled, I felt the door opening within and around me.
“Let’s go,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
From Faerie we stepped straight into a firestorm. For a moment I thought I’d gone back to Castle Coldclough and was fated to be burned at the stake. The sky above was a roiling mass of red sparked with blue and yellow, the air filled with smoke and shouting. Great black shapes bulged through sheets of flame, roaring like fire-breathing dragons. Through the smoke I glimpsed dark-robed figures shooting bolts of light at the swooping monsters. The monsters responded as if stung by mosquitoes—annoyed but undeterred. One dived down and landed on a black-robed figure, who screamed and flailed at the creature. The figure’s hood fell away and I recognized Jen Davies. I ran to help her, but before I could reach her, a large woman stepped between the monster and me, aimed a shotgun at the creature, and fired.
“Touched by an angel, my ass!” roared the woman, whom I recognized despite the ash covering her face: Moondance. “I’ll touch you, asshole!” She fired again. The nephilim fell off Jen and hissed at Moondance with a mouth full of sharp teeth. It dug its claws into the ground and tensed its leg muscles to spring. I aimed the angel stone at it, directed my will, and unleashed my ire. A white beam shot from the stone with so much force that I staggered backward, but I stayed on my feet long enough to watch the nephilim explode in a burst of black ash.
“Holy shit!” Moondance swung around, her face now streaked with the ashy remains of the nephilim, her eyes wide at the sight of me. “Callie’s back, and she brought a laser gun!”
“Sort of,” I admitted. “I’ve got recruits, too.”
Diana knelt beside Jen, healing a gash on her arm. Liz was hugging Ann Chase. All around the circle, the people I’d brought back from Faerie were greeting their friends. “How many have you got in the circle?” I asked Moondance.
“Nine, including myself. Two recruits joined us, and there are the Stewarts outside still holding back the nephilim, but the bastards have been picking off the Stewarts to weaken the field—”
“Is that McFay?” a hoarse voice croaked behind me. I turned and found myself crushed in a bear hug by a man in tattered burned clothing and a blackened face. Only by his voice did I recognize him as Frank. “Damn it, McFay, where’d ya get the light saber? Have you got an army of Wookiees, too?”
“Sorry, just me,” I told Frank, holding him at arm’s length. His face was covered with soot, and it appeared as if his eyebrows and half his hair had burned off. Blood trickled down from a cut over his eye, and when he stepped back I saw he moved with a limp. But otherwise he seemed okay, nearly recovered from his run-in with Duncan Laird. “How many nephilim are there?” I asked, looking up. I saw now that the roiling red dome was made up of the Stewarts’ tartan field. They must have thrown the tartan around the glade to protect me when I came back through the door, but they were being attacked mercilessly.
“Soheila counted thirteen before she went back up there,” said Frank.
“Soheila’s up there?”
“She assumed her bird shape. She’s like this super-owl!” Frank grinned. “It’s awesome, but I don’t think she can kill them, just distract them. If we don’t get rid of them soon—”
A hair-raising shriek cut off his words. Above us, silhouetted black against the tartan field, two winged creatures fought like shadow puppets in a play. An enormous owl creature dug its talons into the neck of a nephilim. It was the nephilim who had shrieked. I raised the angel stone and tried to aim it at the nephilim but couldn’t get a fix on it without the risk of hitting Soheila.
“Can I see that thing for a minute?”
I handed the angel stone over to Frank. He turned it over, held it up to the light, then closed his eyes and stroked its surface with his fingertips.
“Are you going to taste it next?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and grinned. “This is a very powerful gewgaw you’ve got here, McFay, but essentially it’s a focusing device, a kind of prism that collects magical power and concentrates it.”
“That’s what I did with the Stewards in Ballydoon,” I said. “If I use the energy of our Stewarts now, the field will collapse.”
