Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“Your mother’s right,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Isn’t it too dangerous to let these bad men bully everybody in town?” Jessica asked, looking from me to her mother. “Besides, Mommy only told them she wouldn’t be part of your circle. She never said I wouldn’t,” Jessica concluded with a sly, proud smile.

“Ann,” I said, “I didn’t come here to involve Jessica.”

“I know,” Ann said with a sigh. “But, as usual, Jessica’s right. It’s always more dangerous to give in to bullies. Jessica and I will both join your circle on Halloween night.”

I didn’t sleep that night. Every time I drifted off, I was back in the Greenwood. I knew William Duffy was there with me, but which William Duffy? The tender lover of my dreams, or the one Duncan Laird had shown me? I was afraid that if I saw the monstrously hideous version, I wouldn’t be able to go through with the ceremony and open the door, so I stayed up with my Wheelock’s Spellcraft , LaFleur’s History of Magic , and half a dozen other magic books. Ralph pored over the pages of the books with me as I studied all the spells I could possibly need to become the hallow door. I was running out of time. It was time to cram, as I had for my PhD orals. I’d stayed up three days straight then, and my life hadn’t literally depended on a thorough knowledge of English literature.

It turned out, though, that my body had different needs than it had three years earlier. I made it halfway through Saturday night before I started to crash. I brewed more coffee and combed Wheelock for stay-awake spells. There was one for keeping sleep at bay for forty-eight hours, but it came with a host of dire warnings that ranged from mood disorders to a weakened immune system to hyperanimation (whatever the hell that was!). But what choice did I have? I needed to stay up until I found the door spell. I mixed the ingredients for the stay-awake spell in the kitchen while Ralph ransacked the cabinets for a snack.

“Sorry, guy,” I told him. “I promise that once this is over I’ll go shopping.”

My bare cupboards reminded me that I needed to buy candy for Halloween night. And decorate. Everything I read insisted that the observance of Halloween was crucial to the success of opening the hallow door. Besides, maybe doing something other than reading Wheelock would unlock my brain enough to figure out a strategy, so I spent the early hours of Sunday morning up to my elbows in raw pumpkin gunk.

I carved three jack-o’-lanterns. Having read in Wheelock that properly made jack-o’-lanterns were threshold guardians for your house, I uttered the words of a warding spell while I carved. First was a traditional jack-o’-lantern with triangle eyes and a snaggletooth smile. Protect my home , I asked him. Getting into the mood, I made the second pumpkin into a warty-faced witch. Watch over all who are in it , I asked her. I was amazed at how well it came out. On the third I carved a scary cat so realistic that, when I showed it to Ralph, his fur stood on end and he ran away.

“Scaredy-cat,” I yelled after him. But when I turned the pumpkin back around, even I was surprised at how lifelike the cat appeared. I took the three jack-o’-lanterns out onto the front porch. As I arranged them on the steps, I spotted Evangeline Sprague, my nonagenarian neighbor, retrieving the Sunday paper from her front lawn.

“Happy Halloween!” she shouted, waving to me.

She had tied white cloth ghosts to the branches of an old apple tree by her front porch and had her own little family of jack-o’-lanterns on her stoop. Inspired by her example, I went back in to get more decorating supplies. I found an old pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, which I stuffed with the straw I’d picked up last week to use as mulch. I arranged the makeshift limbs of my scarecrow in a rocking chair and placed the snaggletooth jack-o’-lantern on top. Then I found a black dress and leggings, stuffed them with straw, and propped them under the witch-head pumpkin. I just needed a witch’s hat …

I ended up going downtown to McGuckin’s Variety Store and buying a slew of decorations and candy. I spent most of the day decorating my yard and front porch, hoping some inspiration for the door spell would come to me while I warded my home. As I draped spiderwebs over my front porch, I wove in another protection spell. And as I attached plastic ghosts to pulleys, I called on the spirits of my ancestors to watch over me. My efforts inspired my neighbors. Cheryl Lindisfarne from two doors down dropped by to say she was glad to see I was getting in the spirit.

“With all the fuss, I felt a little funny putting out decorations this year, but now that I see you doing it, I’m going to tell Harald to pull out all the stops. He’s got a coffin with a zombie in it whose eyes bug out when it opens.”

“Ooh,” I said, jealous. “I’ll come by later to see it.”

By five o’clock, my house looked like it belonged to the Addams Family. Standing back to admire it, I noticed that all my neighbors had followed my lead and decorated their homes with the trappings of Halloween. Down the street, a troop of diminutive fairies, ghosts, and goblins was shrieking with delight at Harald Lindisfarne, who was dressed as Herman Munster.

Yikes! There were already trick-or-treaters. I’d forgotten that parents took their little kids out before dark—and dark was not so far off now.

In fact, it was just that moment when day slid into evening. The sun setting behind the mountains in the west lit up the east side of the street but cast the west side, where Alpha House stood, into shadow. It looked as if the street were divided down the middle. Where the two sides met, the air shimmered and crackled with energy. I could feel it from my toes to my fingertips—the turning . This was the moment when the year turned from light toward dark, the hinge of the year, as Moondance had called it, a liminal time when boundaries—between light and dark, seen and unseen, death and life—could be crossed. I felt the weight of a world teetering on the edge. Would I be able to become the hallow door and cross over to Faerie and into seventeenth-century Ballydoon?

My mind, like the planet, seemed to be turning toward the dark, but then I noticed an odd assortment of trick-or-treaters heading my way. Three women dressed in long black robes, the middle one carrying a lantern, were walking down the middle of the street, along the dividing line. The lantern carried by the middle figure swayed back and forth, casting an orange glow that pushed away the edges of the dark just a little and lit up their faces. I recognized Adelaide, Phoenix, and Jen.

They stopped opposite the Lindisfarnes’ house. Jen took a long taper from beneath her robe and lit it from the lantern. She walked slowly, cupping the flame with her hand, into the Lindisfarnes’ yard and spoke to Cheryl, who was dressed as Lily Munster. Cheryl nodded yes to whatever she had been asked. Jen walked up to the front-porch steps, knelt beside the jack-o’-lanterns, and lit each of them with the taper. As each flame was kindled, a warm glow spread outward from the pumpkin. It lit up the faces of my ordinary, down-to-earth neighbors with something decidedly extra ordinary. I felt the warmth of that glow two doors down.

Jen rose to her feet, rejoining Phoenix and Adelaide, and they proceeded to Evangeline Sprague’s house, repeating the same ritual. I saw Evangeline’s old face suffused with that otherworldly glow.

As the three women approached my house, I noticed that the brothers of Alpha Delta Chi had come out to their porch to watch the procession. They stood with arms crossed over their broad chests, expressions inscrutable in the shadows. For the first time, I thought about who these boys really were . Their fathers were nephilim, but presumably they had human mothers. Were they all completely unreachable?