The Angel Stone

sat on the back porch, egging him on.

“Do Bambi next!” one of the girls, dressed in a slutty-vampire costume, shrieked.

I looked toward the fence and breathed out a sigh of relief when I saw there wasn’t a live deer, but, still, what I saw was macabre enough. Arranged across the top of Diana’s white picket fence was her beloved collection of ceramic figurines: deer, rabbits, foxes, and an entire family of red-capped gnomes.

“Bambi it is,” Adam said, cocking the trigger of the gun.

There was a sharp crack, and a ceramic deer exploded in plaster dust. Slutty Vampire and her friend Slutty Nurse shrieked with laughter, but a girl in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit didn’t. I thought I recognized her from my Intro to Fairy Tales class.

“I liked Bambi,” she said. “This is stupid.” She downed the rest of her beer, burped, and started weaving her way toward the back gate. One of the toga-clad boys detached himself from the crowd and followed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. I switched sides so I could keep track of Red Riding Hood, who was walking now in the narrow alley between the garage and the gazebo. She’d reached the gate but was having trouble working the clasp.

“Let me help you with that,” said the boy who had followed her, coming up behind her.

“Thankth,” she slurred.

The boy reached his arm around her as if to open the latch but instead grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed himself against her, pinning her against the gate.

“Hey!” she cried. “Get off!”

“I’m going down there,” I said, turning to Frank, but he was gone, already in the alley. He tapped the frat boy on the shoulder. When the boy turned, Frank punched him in the face and he slumped to the ground. I hurried down into the alley, not sure whose rescue I was coming to—Frank’s or the repellent Alpha’s. I wanted to wallop the frat boy myself but didn’t think it would help either of our professional careers if we murdered him.

Frank was going in for a second punch when I reached him. I grabbed his arm. “Whoa there, Delmarco. I don’t think this one is going to be bothering anyone else tonight.”

Frank glared at me, but he pulled back his arm. “Yeah, but what about the others?”

“I have an idea. I thought of it earlier today.”

I rummaged in my backpack and drew out a round pomander ball and Ralph, who was, amazingly, still asleep.

“Aw.” Red Riding Hood, who had barely reacted to Frank pummeling her attacker, revived herself to coo at Ralph. “A little mouse! He’s adorable!”

“He’s got a job to do. Wake up, Ralph!” I poked his fat, Cheetos-filled belly. Ralph yawned and stretched, evoking another chorus of oohs and ahs from Red, and looked up at me expectantly. “Take this into the yard,” I said, holding the pomander ball up by its ribbon. It had originally been a Christmas gift from Diana. She had filled it with potpourri. I had filled it with something else. “Then drop it and run—and be careful. They’re taking potshots at ceramic animals.”

Ralph took the ribbon in his mouth and jumped onto the fence. He ran along the top railing. When he vanished into the yard, I motioned for Frank and Red to follow me into the gazebo. We climbed to the top and observed Ralph’s progress. He was creeping along the fence.

“I’d have thrown it, but I was afraid the contents might explode,” I explained to Frank when Red slumped on the gazebo bench and started snoring.

“Good to know you’ve been carrying unstable explosives all night, McFay,” Frank said. “How are you going to activate it from here?”

“I planted a correlative fuse inside. It’s magically connected to this one.” I held up half a shoelace—the only thing I could find to use. “I just have to light it when Ralph drops the ball.”

I peered into the yard and saw Ralph drop the ball at the feet of Adam Sinclair. He was beginning to run back when Slutty Vampire shrieked, “A mouse! A mouse! A real mouse! Shoot it!”

Adam wheeled around in a circle, one foot crunching the pomander, and spotted Ralph, clearly visible by the white patch on his chest. He lowered the gun and aimed it at Ralph.

I lit the fuse. Just as Adam pulled the trigger, the pomander exploded in a cloud of smoke, throwing him off balance. He fell backward, right into Slutty Vampire and Slutty Nurse. The girls giggled and shrieked at the sudden closeness of a half-naked frat boy, but when the smoke from my pomander reached them, they both pushed him away.

“Ew,” Slutty Vampire said, wrinkling her nose. “You’re kind of gross.”

“Yeah,” Slutty Nurse agreed. “When was the last time you showered?”

Both girls rearranged their costumes to cover a few extra inches of skin. The other girls at the party extricated themselves from the arms of the frat boys, with similar comments on personal hygiene.

Frank wrinkled his nose. “What was that, McFay?”

“An anti-aphrodisiac,” I said. “It makes any male within a hundred-yard radius repellent to any female. The Alphas won’t be luring any girls to their parties anytime soon.”

Red Riding Hood murmured in her sleep, “Boys stink!”

“I’ll get Red back to my house,” I said. “You’d better go home and take a shower.” Frank shot me an accusing look. “I just mean that you’ll want to get rid of any traces of the spell. I’m not sure how long it lasts.”

“Thanks, McFay. Like I wasn’t having a hard enough time in my love life.”

We half-carried Red Riding Hood out of the gazebo and across the street to my house. The Alphas were too busy fanning smoke out of their yard to notice us. I took the opportunity to grab a couple of Diana’s gnomes off the back fence. I knew she was fond of them and that she’d be devastated to see them serving as target practice— especially since I was pretty sure they were partly sentient.

Frank helped me get Red into my house and then excused himself when she woke up enough to tell him that he reeked. I watched Frank walk down Elm Street toward his downtown apartment, then I got Little Red Riding Hood settled on my library couch, tucking my afghan over her. Asleep, she looked as young and innocent as the girl in the fairy tale. As I turned off the lights in the library, I reflected that the big bad wolves had been smoked out of their house and Red was safe and sound. Kind of a mixed-up fairy tale, but, I would have told Adam Sinclair, the kind I believed in.

CHAPTER SIX

I was in the Greenwood, stretched out on a bed of heather beneath the beech trees. The ruins of the vine- covered stone gate framed one side of the glade; deep, impenetrable woods bordered the other. I had the uneasy feeling there were presences in those woods—boggles and haunts.

“Ye never want to stray in there, lass.”

I turned to look at the man who lay stretched out beside me. He was wearing slim brown trousers of heavy sueded cotton and a soft white shirt opened to reveal smooth, tawny skin dappled a golden green by the beech light. Sunlight and leaf shadow tangled in his hair. His face was in shadow.

“Bill?” I asked. “Liam?”

He laughed. The sound seemed to shake the leaves in the trees. I felt its vibration deep in my belly.

“Most men would no’ like their lover not to ken their name, lass.”

“Since when do you have a Scottish accent?” I asked dubiously, squinting through the glare at his face. I saw Liam, then Bill, then my demon lover, and then a young man whose face was both utterly familiar and startlingly new. “You’re William Duffy,” I said. “Is that who you were first?”

“First, last—I’ve been so long in Faerie I hardly ken myself anymore. But you, lass …” He touched my face and moved closer, his eyes filling with the emerald light of the Greenwood. “I’d know you anywhere. I’ve been waiting for you to come and save me.” He stroked his hand along my cheek and then down my neck, his touch making me tremble like the leaves in the beech trees. He lowered his head and pressed his lips