“Oatcakes!” Mac said. “My mom made them for you!”
“Thank her for me,” I said, hoping that Mac’s mother hadn’t somehow gotten the idea I was a potential wife for Mac. “I’ll brew some more coffee to go with them.” I steered my guests toward the living room, but they all followed me into the kitchen. Mac sat at the kitchen table and folded his hands in his lap like a boy waiting for his afternoon snack. Soheila went to the cupboard to take out the Franciscan Rose teacups left there last fall by my erstwhile roommate, Phoenix. Frank sat down next to Mac and leaned so far back I was afraid he’d break my spindly kitchen chair. I turned my back on them and busied myself at the coffeemaker and arranging the oatcakes on a plate. The rich buttery smell instantly brought me back to childhood and made me feel calmer. I brought the plate over and Mac eagerly tucked into the warm oatcakes, slathering them with the strawberry jam I’d also provided.
“Just like my nan always served them,” Mac mumbled, spewing crumbs.
Soheila and Frank exchanged a look across Mac, as if he were their overgrown child who was refusing to perform for their guests.
“Your nan’s culinary preferences are very interesting, but you told us that she had something to tell Callie,” Frank said impatiently. He looked up at me. “Mac said you were the only one she could tell.”
“That’s what Nan told me. She said Callie was the only one she could tell about the hallow door.”
“Your nan knows how to find the hallow door?” Now I was the one impatient with Mac. “Why didn’t she mention this earlier?”
Poor Mac’s eyes widened. I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but hours of fruitless search had left me frustrated.
Frank cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. “Mrs. Stewart hasn’t been well …” he began.
“She fell last summer,” Mac said. “Hit her head and broke her hip. She needed surgery, and when she came out of it she wasn’t right in the head. She’s always been sharp as a tack, but after the surgery she didn’t even know me.” Mac’s voice betrayed the hurt of a favorite grandson. “We thought she’d be senile for the rest of her life, but then yesterday when I was there for my weekly visit she sat up in bed, her old self again, and asked me to send for Cailleach McFay.”
“She knew my name? But I’ve never met her.”
“Um … I may have mentioned you to her,” Frank said. “I went to her the morning of the solstice to ask if she knew any way to unmask a nephilim. She was friends with my grandmother and I knew she had spells for unmasking predators, but it never occurred to me she knew anything about opening a door to Faerie …” A terrible look came over Frank’s face, and he slapped his hand down on the table. “Damn! It was right after that she had her fall. I must have drawn their attention to her.”
“You mean to say that those nephilim creeps hurt my nan?” I’d never seen Mac Stewart look so angry. His bland innocent face turned the color of his flannel shirt, and his bee-stung lips drew back in a grimace.
“But why?” I said. “Just because she knows something about another door …”
“She knows more than that,” Mac said. “Nan used to tell us stories about how the Stewarts had destroyed evil monsters back in Scotland.”
Frank pounded the table again. “I should have protected her!”
“Don’t blame yourself, Frank,” Soheila said, laying her hand over Frank’s.
Instantly I saw a change come over Frank. His anger poured off him like water moving over a rock. He lifted startled eyes to Soheila, and she removed her hand.
“That’s right, Mr. Delmarco, it’s not your fault. It’s those … those bastards! What kind of monster would pick on a sweet old lady? Well, they’ll be sorry they did. She’s herself now and is fit to be tied. When my nan gets her temper up—well, you don’t want to be on her bad side. I once let my brother Ham fall off a ladder when I was supposed to be watching him, and I couldn’t sit for a week.”
“Your grandmother sounds like a formidable woman, Mac,” I said, repressing a smile at the thought that a good spanking might defeat the nephilim. “But I wouldn’t want to put her in more danger by involving her.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Soheila said. “All my research into the angel stone indicates it was last seen in Scotland in the seventeenth century.”
“That coincides with what I read in the story Nicky gave me.” I told them about the ballad of William Duffy and the broken brooch.
“You have half of the brooch?” Frank asked.
I took the piece of jewelry out of my pocket and laid it on the table. The empty tear-shaped loop seemed to shimmer against the white enamel surface. “My mother said it was an heirloom passed down through generations of my father’s family,” I said.
“Then your ancestors must have once had the stone,” Soheila said. “That makes sense. I found a reference that said that only a doorkeeper could wield the power of the stone.”
“That’s great,” I said, “but my mother never mentioned a stone that went with the brooch. I think the fairy girl—my ancestor—must have lost it or had it taken from her …” I remembered the moment in the dream when I—or the first Cailleach, I supposed—was running through the meadow. I knew in the dream that she didn’t have the stone with her, but I didn’t know why not or what had happened to it. “In Mary McGowan’s note, she says witch hunters had come to the village—”
“They might have been nephilim,” Soheila interrupted. “Many witch hunters were.”
“Maybe. But why would she run away if she had something to destroy them?”
“Maybe the stone didn’t work without the whole brooch,” Frank said. “What was the name of the village?”
“Ballydoon,” I said.
“That’s where the Stewarts come from!” Mac exclaimed, his features freed from anger with the elasticity of youth. “Callie, that means our people come from the same village. It’s like we’re fated to … meet,” Mac finished bashfully. I was afraid he’d been about to say fated to marry.
“It might even mean you’re related,” Frank added teasingly.
Mac’s smile vanished. “Related? But that would mean …”
“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “You’d be distant cousins at most—kissing cousins.”
I kicked Frank under the table. “Let’s focus on learning where the stone is and how to get it. When can I visit your grandmother, Mac?”
“Oh, she’s my great-grandmother, at least! No one even knows how old she is. We can’t find a birth certificate for her and she says she can’t remember the year, although she does say she remembers Calvin Coolidge’s inauguration, so I guess she’s pretty old. We Stewarts are long-lived.” He puffed out his chest, as if he’d come up with a selling point that was sure to convince me to marry him even if we were distantly related. “I’ll take you there to meet her later. The doctors wanted to have a look at her this morning, so she suggested that we come around teatime.”
I couldn’t suppress a smile. The woman had been in a state of dementia for three months and now she was ready to conduct a high tea. “Okay. We can all go at four.”
Mac’s face fell at the inclusion of Frank and Soheila.
“It’s better you go yourself, Callie,” Soheila said. “Mrs. Stewart asked specifically for you. She won’t want a crowd—and she’s more likely to tell you about the hallow door since you’re a doorkeeper.”
“And,” Frank added with a mischievous smile, “if she thinks you’re her future granddaughter-in-law.”