The Angel Stone: A Novel (33 page)

“Oh, no, Mac, I couldn’t take this. It’s a family heirloom.”

“She said that you
are
family. She said you were married to her nephew … or would be married …” Mac scrunched up his face, confused. “I’m afraid Nan was wandering a bit in her mind … You don’t have a fiancé, do you?”

“I haven’t even got a boyfriend,” I replied.

Mac started to smile but then remembered about his nan and sniffled. I gave him a handkerchief to blow his nose and drew Nan’s shawl into my lap, my eyes filling as I stroked the soft wool. I noticed that there were threads of purple in the weave that reminded me of Ballydoon, and I recalled what Nan had said—that she thought that’s where she would go when she died. Picturing her walking over the heather-covered hills of Ballydoon made me a bit less sad.

Nan’s death released something in me. Who was I to sit around feeling sorry for myself while people had real reason to grieve? I roused myself to finish the semester with more spirit and energy. I even accepted an invitation to Fairwick’s annual solstice party, which this year was to be held at the new Alpha house.

Although Diana could have reclaimed her inn from the Alphas, she had opted instead to move in as their den mother—a role that seemed to suit her perfectly. From my windows I’d watched the restoration of the house—the ratty couches and empty beer cans banished from the porch and replaced with rocking chairs and wicker settees, the shrubbery and rosebushes trimmed, bird feeders filled regularly, garden gnomes and statuary mended and restored, Christmas lights strung up and menorah lit—but I hadn’t been inside. I was surprised to find an oddly cheerful combination of the old twee inn décor and frat-boy paraphernalia: a wide-screen TV decorated with pine swag, a foosball table in the sunflower porch, and a basketball hoop outside in the rose garden. The Alphas themselves were dressed in elfin costumes and carried trays of mini-quiches and non-alcoholic punch. I found Frank drinking a Heineken and having a spirited conversation with Adam Sinclair and Ruby Day on the Jets’ chances in the playoffs. They all greeted me enthusiastically, and after a few minutes
Adam and Ruby exchanged a meaningful look and excused themselves to help Diana in the kitchen. Warily, I watched them go.

“Do you think Ruby’s okay with him?” I asked. “I mean, Adam is—”

“A perfectly normal college guy,” said Frank, “so, within reason, yeah, I think Ruby can take care of herself. Diana gives a talk to the boys once a week on respecting women. She’s got them volunteering at the battered women’s shelter and doing yoga and meditation for anger management.”

“But aren’t they …” I couldn’t think what word to use.
Evil? Doomed? Tainted?
“… like their fathers?”

Frank grimaced. “The nephilim were created because the elves forced themselves on human women and produced sons who were monsters in their eyes. And because they were monstrous to their fathers, they became
monsters
. Generation after generation repeated that awful cycle for … no one knows for how long. They’re not immortal but long-lived. Soheila thinks they stopped breeding for hundreds of years but then started again when they hatched this plan to close the doors to Faerie in revenge against the fey. These boys are more human than not. Some will grow wings, claws, and perhaps an overweening sense of entitlement, but Diana, Liz, and Soheila think that they can be managed with the right nurturing.”

“And what do you think?”

Frank took a swig of his beer and shrugged. “I think if anyone can civilize a bunch of brute males, it’s those three. And, just in case, I’ve got the Stewarts keeping an eye on them.”

I looked around the room. Interspersed among the college students were a dozen plaid-wearing townspeople, including Mac Stewart, who was now captivating Flonia Rugova with a story. “I hope they’re salvageable,” I said, glancing around
the room at all the couples—Diana and Liz, Adam and Ruby, Nicky and Scott. Soheila was standing alone in a corner, looking over at Frank and me. Turning back to Frank, I intercepted a look between them.

“How about you, McFay?” Frank asked.

“Am I salvageable?” I asked, trying to make a joke of it, but Frank didn’t smile. “I honestly don’t know, Frank. You know, I found him.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Frank said. “Other than telling us about your run-in with the nephilim witch hunters, you’ve been pretty quiet about your whole Scottish adventure. I guessed, though, that you found Liam.”

“William,” I corrected automatically. “William Duffy. That’s who he was before he became an incubus.”

“Ah,” Frank said, “and were you in love with him?”

“Not at first,” I said, “but then …” My eyes filled with tears and I closed them. I saw what I always saw when I closed my eyes: William silhouetted against a hill covered with purple heather, making his way home to the cottage. “He told me that I didn’t love him, that I loved the man he would become, but—” I broke off, unable to finish the thought.

“Idiot,” Frank said, but with a fond smile. “Didn’t he know that women always love us for the men we will become? If they didn’t, we’d still be living in caves and conking them over the head with clubs.” He waved his beer bottle at the room and began what would, I’m sure, have been a colorful lecture on the civilizing influences of women, but Soheila came over and informed him that some of the boys had organized a touch-football game in the back that was threatening to destroy Diana’s arbor.

“I’ll go have a talk with them,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes that suggested to me that he’d get in a pass or two before corralling the game. “That is, if you’re okay, McFay?”

“Go,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

Soheila began to say something to me but was summoned to the kitchen to save a burned casserole.

I stood awkwardly by myself for a few minutes after she left, wondering how soon I could politely slip out, but then Nicky, Flonia, and Ruby surrounded me and regaled me with their plans for the winter break. Dean Book had gotten them invited to an IMP conference as student delegates.

“We’re spearheading a campaign for student representatives at the institute,” Nicky said. “We call it Occupy Narnia.”

“And we’re also getting to attend panels on magic and fairies,” Flonia said. “I’m going to one on Romanian folklore with Anton Volkov. It is so exciting. All my life I have listened to the old stories my nana told me, and I thought they were nonsense. Now I know they were true. After I graduate, I am going to work with nocturnals who are having difficulty assimilating into modern society.”

A vampire social worker?
It wasn’t the career path I had imagined for my student, but after all Anton Volkov had done in the fight to save Fairwick, I didn’t doubt that the nocturnals were worth helping. And who knew what other opportunities the new Fairwick would present to my students? It
was
exciting, and for the half hour I stood in my students’ company, listening to their bright, enthusiastic chatter, I felt a little of the gloom lifting off me. When Flonia and Ruby drifted away toward a game of beer pong, I thought I’d be going. Nicky, though, lingered behind, clearly with a question on her mind.

“What is it, Nicky?”

“I just wanted to say …” She blushed and looked awkward. “I just wanted to thank you for lifting the curse off my family. Dean Book told me about it.”

I blushed as red as the punch in my cup. “You don’t have to thank me, Nicky. It was my great-great-grandfather who cursed the Ballards in the first place.”

“But that wasn’t your fault, and Dean Book said you went to a lot of trouble to lift the curse, so I wanted to thank you and to tell you it’s working. My mom is getting herself together, and I feel … Well, it’s like in the William Duffy story, when he says at the end that everyone deserves not just a second chance but a third. You’ve given that to my mom.”

“You’re welcome, Nicky,” I said, trying to keep the tears from my eyes at the mention of William. “He was right.” I paused. “But I don’t remember that part in the story.”

“You know,” Nicky said, tilting her head, “neither did I. But when I reread the story, there it was, right at the end. In fact, the whole ending was different from how I remembered it. I wrote about it in my paper.”

“Which I haven’t read yet,” I said guiltily. “I’m going to go home right now and do that.”

Nicky looked embarrassed all over again. “Oh, Dr. McFay, I didn’t mention the paper because I thought you’d read it already, although I am anxious to know what you think about it. I followed your advice and wrote to the Center for the Book about the folklorist Mary Brodie McGowan—”

“Did you say Mary
Brodie
McGowan?” I asked.

“Yes, Brodie was her maiden name. You were right about her being related to the publisher. She married Alisdair McGowan and published under that name. But here’s another funny thing about her name. Later the family changed its name because of Mary’s fairy stories and because she claimed that she was saved from the plague by a good fairy who spread a magic blanket on her and an old woman in the village told her fairy stories. You’ll never guess what she changed it to …”

“McFay,” I said as if the name was written on the air between us.

“Yes! Your name! Maybe you were related. Is anything wrong, Dr. McFay? You’ve turned white as a ghost.”

I felt as if I’d just encountered one. The Mary Brodie McGowan she was describing must have been Mairi, and the old woman who told her fairy stories must have been Nan.

“You said the ending of William Duffy was different from how you remembered it?” I asked urgently.

Nicky shrugged. “I must have misremembered it. I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep at that point in the semester, what with all those bells ringing all the time. Maybe I confused it with another story, although I don’t know how. I’ve never read a fairy story that reads quite like this one. Are you sure you’re all right, Dr. McFay? Maybe you should sit down?”

“I’m perfectly fine, I just have to go home
right now
. Thanks for telling me about the story … and giving me the book … and writing your paper on it … and just—thank you!” I gave Nicky an impetuous hug and fled the room, dodging colleagues and students wishing me a Happy Solstice and a Merry Christmas.

“Merry Christmas!” I shouted back at them as I escaped out into the frigid air. It had started snowing. “Merry Christmas!” I shouted as I ran across the street, like Jimmy Stewart in
It’s a Wonderful Life
, running down the main street of Bedford Falls, greeting his restored world. I felt the same excitement bubbling in my chest, fizzing around my heart, which I’d thought would never fizz again.

William appeared to Nan after he’d gone back to Faerie, and he told her a story. Nan had told that story to Mairi—Mary Brodie McGowan—and she’d written it down in a book that Nicky had found in Edinburgh. That story had changed from the story I’d read before Halloween. Maybe William
had only sent a final goodbye across time, but even that—one more word from him—would be better than nothing.

I ran up my porch steps, slipping on a light coating of snow and dropping the keys onto the floor. As I bent to retrieve them, I found myself looking into emerald-green eyes. I had forgotten to leave the outside light on, but the light from my foyer shone through the fanlight, casting a reflection of the stained-glass face on the porch floorboards. Liam’s face, then Bill’s, then William’s, looking at me as though across an ocean of time.
Hurry
, those eyes said,
I am waiting for you
.

I retrieved my keys and opened the door. Without taking my coat off or closing the door behind me, I crossed the foyer into the library. I went to find the book on the shelves, but where I’d last seen it there was an empty slot—or not exactly empty. Ralph was curled up napping where the book had been. I looked down and saw the book lying open on the floor. I knelt and picked it up. It was open to the story of William Duffy. Still kneeling, melting snow dripping from my hair, I read.

It was the same story I remembered, until I got to the part where the Fairy Queen rides out with her captive. Now a girl named Katy (which I remembered was what the villagers had called the first Cailleach) is waiting at the crossroads to pull William from his horse. He changes into a lion, a snake, and a burning brand, but she holds on to him until he’s human again. The Fairy Queen tells them that if either of them steps into Faerie again, she will pluck out their eyes and hearts and replace them with eyes and heart of wood—the same curse the Fairy Queen had placed on William and me! The story in the book had changed because I had gone back in time. The page shimmered in my hands like moving water, as if it were caught in the flow of time and it might vanish at any moment, but then I saw it was only because my hands were shaking
and my vision was blurred by tears. I wiped them away and read on.

Unlike Tam Lin, the story didn’t end with the hero and heroine reunited. Monsters descend on William Duffy’s village, and he and Katy defeat them with a magic plaid. But they still can’t be together, because Katy must return to her own village to fight their enemies. To buy her passage through Faerie, William sacrifices himself to the Fairy Queen.

My hands were shaking so badly, the tears flowing so freely by this part of the story, that I was forced to sit on the floor and lean on the bookshelf. I let the book fall in my lap and my head drop into my hands. My poor William! What really broke my heart was that he must have come back to Nan to tell her this story, as if he’d had to explain it to someone to justify the choice he’d made—to willingly become a monster so his beloved could become a heroine. Or perhaps William had told it to Nan so I would understand.

I looked back down at the book. William says his farewell to Katy, but before he goes, he whispers something in the Fairy Queen’s ear, a condition of his deal.
His beloved could not hear what he asked and mayhap she would never know, but I heard this tale from my gran, who heard it from Old Nan Stewart of Ballydoon, who said she had it from …

“For the love of Mike, Mary Brodie McGowan, spit it out!” I cried, turning the last page so fast I nearly ripped it from its binding.