Frank and I took our coffees to a table while Leon filled the woman’s order. As we waited, I noticed a few other people in the café wearing banned-jack-o’-lantern buttons. I was beginning to think the whole town had turned against Halloween when Moondance came in, wearing a black T-shirt proclaiming BLESSED SAMHAIN in orange lettering beneath a witch silhouetted against an enormous orange moon. Since Moondance was not a small woman, the moon loomed large as she approached us. I felt a moment’s trepidation. Moondance had been sharply critical of my inclusion in the witches’ circle this summer. I was an untrained novice whose erratic energy had thrown off the circle twice, and in the end I hadn’t been able to stop the door from closing. I was expecting at the very least a sharp-tongued drubbing, but instead I got a bone-crushing hug.
“Thank the Goddess you haven’t gone over to the dark side!” Moondance held me out at arm’s length, hands gripped on either forearm, and gave me a shake. Her frizzy orange hair wafted around her head like dried chrysanthemum blooms, and her pale-blue eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “And you …” She let me go and turned to Frank. “I knew a Delmarco would never abandon the cause. Your grandmother would be proud of you.”
“Yours, too, Moser,” Frank said, stepping into Moondance’s embrace and thumping her soundly on the back. “Glad to have you on our team.”
“I’m afraid it’s not much of a team,” Leon said, handing Moondance an algae-colored shake as he sat down at our table. “Four is not enough for a circle.”
“But we need a circle …” I looked around the café to make sure no one was listening, but all the other customers had left. Noticing that, as well, Leon nodded at Moondance.
“Was that an aversion spell?” he asked.
She nodded, her rust-hued hair bobbing cheerfully. “Home-burner spell. The citizens of Fairwick were all suddenly struck with an overwhelming conviction that they’d left something on the stove, forgot to turn off the gas, or didn’t leave water out for their cats. We should be able to talk in peace for half an hour. No time to waste, though. Tell me what you need the circle for.”
I relayed to Leon and Moondance what Nan Stewart had told me about the hallow door.
“Huh,” Leon said, stroking his goatee. “You are the door? How metaphysical.”
“It’s also confusing,” I said. “I’m not sure how to ‘open myself,’ and she says I still need to do it on Halloween.”
“That part makes sense,” Moondance said. “Samhain is the time of the year when the barriers between worlds, between living and dead, between seen and unseen, are thinnest. The hinge of the year, some Wiccans call it.”
“A hinge on which a door may open,” Frank said. “Especially if we have a doorkeeper who’s made a blood bond to the door.”
All three looked at me. “But I can’t do it on my own. Nan Stewart says I need a witches’ circle in the grove and a wider circle of observance in the village. Halloween, she said, is only as powerful as its observance.”
“That’s why the nephilim are trying to shut it down,” Leon said. “They don’t want Callie to open the door.”
“Which, I’d say, is reason enough to open it,” Moondance said, “but if we’re going to summon a circle, I’d like to be clear on why.” Her eyes, no longer cloudy with tears, now sharp as tacks, flicked to me. “So far I’ve heard a lot about the hallow door, Callie, but if you don’t mind me saying, how do we know it’s not just a way for you to get back together with your incubus boyfriend?”
Frank made a sound that I knew was preparation to launch into my defense, but I held my hand up to stop him. “Fair question,” I said. I felt the blood rush to my face at the memory of my erotic dreams. They’d become more urgent as the nights lengthened toward Halloween, as if William Duffy knew he was running out of time. “Nan said that when her village in Scotland was invaded by the nephilim, the doorkeeper was able to use the angel stone to destroy them. And she says the angel stone is still in Ballydoon.” I didn’t mention that Nan had been a little vague on that point, but Moondance sensed my uncertainty and pounced.
“So we’re all supposed to risk our lives on the gamble that you’ll find your way back to a seventeenth-century Scottish village and find this stone that might destroy the nephilim?”
“Risk your lives? I’m not asking—”
“You are,” Leon said. “The nephilim don’t want this door opened. They’ll try to stop you. The circle’s to protect you while you open the door, but the nephilim will try to break through it. If the circle breaks, we’ll be at their mercy. We’d need powerful, experienced witches, and I only see three of them here.”
I began to object, but he stopped me. “You don’t count. You’ll be in the center of the circle. We need at least six to make a circle to protect you. Where are we going to find three seasoned witches by Halloween to risk their lives against the nephilim?”
“Right here.”
We all looked up, startled by the sound of a woman’s voice at the door. We hadn’t heard the door open—or the bell on it jangle—but a woman of average height stood silhouetted against the bright glare of sunlight coming in from the street. There were two more figures behind her. Another triad, I thought, which didn’t bode well, especially when the first woman stepped forward out of the glare and I recognized her as my grandmother.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Adelaide,” I said, getting to my feet. I heard the scrape of chairs as Frank, Moondance, and Leon also got up. A crackling tension in the air raised the hair on the back of my neck. My three companions were marshaling their magical powers to stand against my grandmother. I didn’t blame them. To the uninitiated, my grandmother might appear to be a harmless Upper East Side matron, with her impeccably cut and dyed chin-length blue-black hair, her knit St. John suit, pearl choker, and no-nonsense handmade Swiss shoes, but anyone with an inkling of witchcraft could sense the power rising off her in waves. She was a venerable witch and leader of the Grove, an ancient federation of anti-fey witches who had joined with the nephilim to close the door to Faerie once and for all. Somehow, she must have gotten wind of our attempts to open the hallow door and had come to prevent it.
Adelaide stepped forward and, sniffing the air, said, “Oh, my, I have a sudden urge to go home and check that I turned off the stove. What a quaint aversion spell! Yours?” she asked, looking straight at Moondance, who bristled like an angry cat under Adelaide’s regard. Adelaide lifted her right hand, her heavy gold charm bracelet gleaming in the sunlight. As a child, I’d been fascinated by her charms—the miniature gondola and cuckoo clock with tiny working parts. A miniature fan now winked in the sun as its blades began to move. Instantly I smelled singed copper, leaking gas, and heard the cry of a hundred thirsty house cats—Moondance’s spell amplified and turned on us. I was seized with a nameless dread that I’d forgotten something urgent. I stepped forward to push Adelaide aside so I could run home and … I didn’t know what. I just had to be home. Then Adelaide shook her charm bracelet and a pair of miniature scissors opened and snicked shut. The tension in the air snapped like a sprung rubber band, and my compulsion to go home evaporated.
Adelaide smiled and tilted her head, as she did when I was little and I was expected to kiss her cheek. I felt the same pressure now but resisted it.
“Darling, aren’t you going to invite your old grandmother in and get her a cup of tea? I hear you’ve been visiting the elderly lately.”
So she’d heard of my visit to Nan Stewart.
“I suppose your nephilim friends told you that. Did they send you here to punish me? Is that what you’ve become? A gofer for the nephilim?”