Duncan’s smile vanished. His jaw tightened. I thought I heard teeth grinding and invisible wings beating. “You might be surprised at how the MLA would respond to your complaints. We have friends there. I think you’ll find we have friends”—he smiled, but this time without showing his teeth—“everywhere.” He splayed his hands out in the air again. “But I believe in picking my battles. Keep your papers. I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunity to get to know each and every one of your students.”
He held his hands higher. The gesture would have seemed conciliatory but for the shadow they threw on the wall. It resembled nothing so much as giant wings spreading over the room.
CHAPTER THREE
I walked briskly across campus, pouring my anger—and fear—into pumping muscles. It was a beautiful early-September day, cerulean-blue sky, a hint of autumn in the air, a touch of color in the ancient trees: the perfect day to showcase a Northeast college. The old brick buildings basked in a warm, mellow glow, and the faces of the students I passed reflected that same tint in tanned skin, toned bodies, and the white even teeth of privileged youth. It was everything I loved about academia, but everywhere I looked there were signs of darkness lurking below the Arcadian idyll.
Those magenta Alpha Delta Chi flyers were spread over the quad like a virulent mold, the green-jumpsuited security men were arrayed across the campus like an invading army, and those noxious bells were pealing again, driving all rational thought out of one’s head. (Soheila thought they might be a form of brainwashing.) The most glaring atrocity, though, was the one I saw first thing every morning and the one I saw now as I came out of the southeast gate onto Elm Street. Directly across from my house was the lovely old Victorian that was formerly called the Hart Brake Inn. Nailed onto the gingerbread molding above the porch were three giant Greek letters painted a garish gold: Alpha, Delta, Chi. On the porch where Diana had served afternoon tea, bare-chested boys slumped in an assortment of lawn chairs and old broken-down couches, drinking beer and smoking pot—or at least I had thought it was pot at first. The miasma issuing from the house smelled like ashes and cloves, leading me to wonder if young nephilim smoked church incense.
Because that’s what these frat boys undoubtedly were—nephilim, or perhaps the spawn of nephilim.
Two of them, wearing nothing but skimpy gym shorts and flip-flops, were stringing party lights along the porch railing. I recognized Adam Sinclair from class as he looked up and saw me. He whispered something to the other boy, who looked my way and laughed.
Great, now I’d become the butt of frat-boy humor. Adam waved at me. Not wanting to look like the cranky old lady neighbor I suddenly felt like, I waved back.
“Prof,” Adam yelled. “Wanna come to our party tonight?”
I held up the magenta invitation and smiled tightly. “I don’t think I have the right costume, boys.”
Adam grinned. “You could come as a fairy.”
At least he hadn’t suggested I come as a slutty fairy. “I’ll be busy grading your papers,” I replied. “Hopefully the noise won’t put me in a bad mood.”
“No worries, Prof. We’ll keep it down to a dull roar. If we’re keeping you up, though, come on over.”
“You never know,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “I might just do that.”
Several of the boys hooted at that and, as I turned around and walked across the street to Honeysuckle House, I was conscious of many sets of male eyes on my back—or probably a little lower. I was glad I’d worn a demure knee-length skirt for the first day of classes, but still I had to concentrate on not swishing my hips. And if I felt reduced to a sex object by these boys, how must my female students feel?
Stepping onto my porch, I met another pair of accusing eyes. In the fanlight above my door, a face set in stained glass stared dolefully at me. I’d come to recognize my demon lover in those green eyes and full lips. An altercation two months ago had cracked the glass below one green eye, making it look as if the figure were shedding a single tear. Each time I saw it now, I thought of my demon lover. Sometimes I thought of him as the creature made of moonlight and shadow who had made love to me in my dreams. Sometimes I remembered Liam Doyle, the broody Irish poet who had shared my bed last winter until I banished him to the Borderlands, but mostly I pined for Bill Carey. The kind brown-eyed handyman had fixed my house and tended to the damaged pieces inside me. I’d discovered that my parents had warded me in my childhood to hide my powers from my grandmother—and then died before they could remove those wards. The wards had not only restricted my powers, they’d kept me from being able to love. Bill’s love for me—proved by throwing himself in front of Duncan Laird and taking a lethal blow meant for me—had broken the last of those wards. I’d recognized him and realized I loved him at the same moment his blood flowed onto the threshold of the door to Faerie—closing that door forever.
Gazing up into the green glass eyes, I asked the question I asked every time I looked into them: “Are you really gone?”
And always the same silence for an answer.
I sighed and opened the door. The big old Victorian house seemed to return my sigh in sympathy as floorboards creaked and curtains huffed at the windows. But it was only the breeze I’d let in. When I closed the door, the house settled down into its hundred-year silence.
Broken by a diminutive squeak.
I looked down and saw a tiny gray field mouse, white patch on his chest, sitting at my feet. I crouched down and held out my hand.
“Hey, Ralph, have you got a message for me?”
Not that Ralph could talk, even though he was a magical doormouse imbued with a spark of the sacred fire of Muspelheim by his maker, Brock. Still, he could type on laptops and was excellent at carrying messages. He was carrying one now inside the tiny silk pouch he wore around his neck (I’d sewn it from a jewelry pouch). I tipped the pouch over and a tiny origami crane fell out—flapping its paper wings and taking a spin around the foyer.
A message from Soheila, then, I thought, cheered by the crane’s antics, despite my foul mood. I held out my hand and waited for the paper creature to alight. Experience had taught me it was fruitless to chase the little messengers. After a couple of spins around the foyer, it glided gracefully into my palm and obligingly unfolded itself.
Mission Fallen Angel in effect. Meet below Main tonight when the damned bells toll midnight.
I laughed at the dramatic wording. Soheila may have folded the message, but it was written in Frank Delmarco’s handwriting, and the flair for the dramatic was pure Frank, who, it turned out, loved the Hardy Boys and French Resistance movies. I’d accused him more than once of enjoying the nephilim occupation a bit too much.
I read the message one more time and made sure I had it memorized. Then I tossed the paper into the air and cried, “Flagyr!” The paper burst into flames. The ashes formed themselves into tiny gray cranes as they drifted down to the ground.
“I think,” I remarked to Ralph as he batted at one of the sooty cranes, “that Soheila has a little too much time on her hands these days.”
I had a few hours to kill before meeting Frank and Soheila, so I made myself a pot of tea and a fried-egg sandwich for dinner, settling down on the library couch with a stack of student papers to grade. As much as I liked teaching, I’d already learned that a stack of student papers got heavier and thicker the longer they went unread. Especially handwritten ones. Sheesh! I remembered my college professors railing about my generation’s handwriting, but this new crop of freshmen wrote as if they’d penned their essays while driving down a dirt road. I’d seen Linear B tablets that were easier to decipher. Staring at the scrawling lines made me more fatigued than I already was. I was relieved when I got to Nicky’s essay, written in neat dark ink (one of the Cinderella essays had been written in a glitter gel pen) and serviceable syntax. I read through her retelling of Tam Lin again and saw that she’d written another whole page about the variation she’d discovered in Scotland, a ballad called William Duffy.