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 à 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 Hanks and Ann Chase. These days the closest thing I had to a mentor to teach me how to use my powers was Frank Delmarco. I asked Frank to go with me to talk to the remaining witches in Fairwick who hadn’t aligned themselves with the nephilim. We met on a Saturday afternoon in mid-October at Fair Grounds, the town coffee bar. I ordered a pumpkin spice latte and an apple cider donut from Leon Botwin, hipster barista and witch.
“I’m going on break in five minutes,” Leon told us as he steamed the milk for my latte and served Frank an austere espresso. “Moondance should be here soon, but Tara called to say that she can’t make it.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Do you think she’s gone over to the other side?”
“Might have.” Leon shook his head as he wiped down the brass fittings of the espresso machine. “Her husband lost his job and she’s expecting another kid. And her husband nominated two new members for the Lions Club who looked suspiciously nephilitic.”
“You belong to the Lions Club?” I asked, more surprised at that than the possibility that the club had been infiltrated by nephilim. In his skinny black jeans, scruffy goatee, and black Converse high-tops, Leon hardly looked the Lions Club type.
“I bought Fair Grounds when Dory Browne had to leave town this summer. It was either that or let it become a Starbucks. Anyway, now that I’m a small-business owner, I thought I should join. The problem is …” He looked around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear, suspiciously eyeing an old man examining the chalkboard menu, and then leaned over the counter to whisper, “There were so many empty spots after the summer migration that there are a lot of new members. These two guys that Tara’s husband nominated just bought Browne’s Realty. They’ve got that tall Nordic look going on, and one of the first things they did was veto the town’s Halloween parade.”
“But that’s a tradition!” I objected. Every year on the afternoon of Halloween, Main Street was closed to traffic and the stores gave out candy to trick-or-treaters. The elementary school organized a costume parade that ended in the town square, where apple cider and donuts were served.
“I hear that Tara has also organized the town PTA to prohibit the elementary school parade. Haven’t you seen the buttons?”
“Buttons?”
Leon pointed his scraggly goatee toward a tall gray-haired woman. She was dressed in a long burgundy wool coat and a floppy crocheted hat decorated with a button of a jack-o’-lantern with a line drawn across it.
When she caught me looking at her, she pursed her lips and shook her finger at me. “The new pastor at my church gave a most enlightening talk. Do you know that Halloween was originally a satanic mass and that the ancient druids sacrificed children on their bonfires? Here …” She dug into a large crocheted bag and handed me a printed pamphlet entitled “The Devil’s Night.” “That’ll tell you all you need to know. That’s all I’m giving if any children come to my door this year. I’ll have a nonfat decaf latte, young man, and make sure the milk is fresh.”