Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“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.”

Mac blushed for the third time in ten minutes, and I glared at Frank.

“I’d be delighted to meet your nan,” I said to Mac. “Is there anything I can bring her?”

Mac looked down at the pile of crumbs that was all that was left of the oatcakes. “I don’t suppose you know how to make those?” he asked doubtfully. “I forgot that Ma said I was to save some for Nan’s tea.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Really?” Mac gave me an adoring look, and I realized that if I hadn’t had it already, I’d just secured his eternal devotion. Mac said he’d better get his farm chores done then and got up to go.

Soheila and Frank walked with me to the front porch to see him off. As I watched Mac get into his shiny new pickup truck, I thought that I could probably do worse than to marry a man who did all his chores and visited his ancient granny every week at the nursing home even when she didn’t remember who he was.

“You’d go crazy in a month,” Soheila said, divining my thought.

“Yeah,” Frank said, walking ahead to his car. “I don’t see you as a farmer’s wife, McFay.”

Soheila lingered behind for a moment. “But he’d certainly be a better choice than the incubus you’re dreaming about,” she said in a low whisper.

So she could sense my dreams. “But it’s not really my incubus,” I objected. “He’s … different.”

Soheila exhaled a world-weary sigh that gusted autumn leaves off my porch. “Of course he’s different; that’s why my kind are so seductive. We change with you, shifting ourselves to fit every mood and whim. But remember, Callie, the incubus died in his last incarnation. He can’t come back again. You’ll never be able to be together in the flesh.”

“Then there’s no danger in dreaming about him, is there?” I countered, lifting my chin defiantly.

Soheila shook her head, and the leaves in my yard spun into a small whirlwind. “Just because he can’t have you in the flesh doesn’t mean he won’t still try to have you in your dreams. He’ll make you unfit for loving anyone else. Don’t let him, Callie. Use him to find the door and the stone if you have to, but then let him go. Or someday you’ll find you’re not able to.”

I spent the afternoon making bannocks. I did, in fact, have a recipe for the traditional Scottish oatcakes, from my father, who had made them for my childhood tea parties when he and my mother weren’t off on an archaeological dig. When I was ten, he’d taught me how to make them, explaining how he’d learned from his grandmother, who had learned from her grandmother. Every family had their own recipe, he’d explained, and the McFay bannocks were known as the lightest and sweetest cakes in all of Scotland. As I kneaded the dough, I could almost feel his hands over mine, showing me how it was done. I had to stop to wipe my eyes on the apron I’d put over the nice Sunday visiting clothes I was wearing.