Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

I walked to the middle of the street to meet the women and inspect the lantern more closely. It looked like an ordinary hurricane lantern, the kind they sold at McGuckin’s Variety, but the flame inside glowed fiercely.

“We kindled it from a needfire,” Jen told me.

“That’s a fire you make by rubbing two sticks together,” Phoenix added. “We did it at a crossroads at dawn while saying a spell to protect the town, and now we’re carrying it through the whole village, lighting everyone’s pumpkins.”

Phoenix herself was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. I wondered what the crash from this high would be, but I reminded myself that the former addict wouldn’t have to worry about that if we didn’t succeed against the nephilim.

“The needfire protects the house where it’s lit,” Jen said more soberly, as she withdrew a long thin piece of wood from her cloak. “We’ll light yours now.”

I walked with Jen to my front porch and watched her light the three warded jack-o’-lanterns, each seeming to leap to life. As we returned to the other two women, I saw that the Alphas were still watching us. “I have an idea,” I told Jen. “Can you give me one of those tapers?”

Jen handed me a long piece of wood, watching me curiously as I lit it from the lantern and then crossed over to the dark side of the street. The flame sputtered and I felt a corresponding shudder inside, as if I’d become a hollow pumpkin and the needfire had been kindled inside me. I cupped my hand around the taper, sheltering the struggling flame, and kept going, feeling the light inside myself growing with each step. The boys on the porch shifted uneasily as I approached. At the foot of the porch steps, I paused, the flame cupped in my palm, and looked up into the face of Adam Sinclair.

“It occurs to me that you probably haven’t had much choice about what side you’re on,” I said.

Adam’s upper lip twisted into a sneer, but his eyes, I noticed, were focused on the flame in my hand, which was burning steadily now.

“We’re on the winning side,” he said.

“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe not. But it’s going to be a long night. Who knows what will wander out of the woods? Why not take what protection you can?”

“We don’t need …” Adam began, but then his eyes widened. I turned to see what he was looking at. The last light had faded from the street. The woods loomed dark behind my house, but not entirely dark. There were small flickering lights in the shadows and, when the wind stirred, the sound of creatures moving through the shadows—a scritch of nails and a heavy leathery thudding of wings. Turning back to Adam, I saw that his face had turned white. Suddenly he looked very young. “Sure, why not?” he said, shrugging. He picked up one of the tiki candles left over from their luau party and carried it down the steps to me. He tilted the glass sideways and water ran out of it, nearly extinguishing the taper. I heard a gasp from one of the boys on the porch. I steadied the taper, which was barely long enough to reach the wick inside the glass. The flame hissed and sputtered when it touched the damp wax. I held it against the wick, waiting for it to light, my fingertips beginning to burn.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass in class,” Adam said, so softly I wondered if I’d heard right. But then the wick caught, and in the glow of the flame I saw a look of contrition on his young face. At the same instant, I felt something click inside myself. What had Nicky said? A good teacher is a door to other worlds . I’d opened up a new world for Adam—a possibility of becoming something other than what the nephilim wanted for him—and in doing so I’d become a doorway. This was how I’d be the hallow door.

“That’s okay, Adam,” I said, feeling grateful to the boy for what he’d unwittingly done for me. “You’ve got plenty of time to make it up to me. Just keep your brothers safe tonight and we’ll get a fresh start tomorrow, okay?”

He nodded and turned away, carrying the lit candle up the stairs. I turned and walked across the street, where the three women waited for me on my front porch. Adelaide was shaking her head at me. “Why did you do that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It felt …” I looked back at Alpha House. Glass tiki candles lined the railing of the front porch, their glow a barrier against the dark. “… right,” I finished. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go check something in Wheelock. I’ll see you in the circle at midnight.”

In Wheelock’s section on teaching magic, I found what I was looking for. When I opened the footnote, I located the spell to become a doorway. It turned out I had already completed the first two steps: make a blood bond to the door you want to open, and empty yourself of all prejudgments. The third step was simply a spell I had to recite at the moment I wanted to open myself. I committed the spell to memory and changed into a long green skirt, body-hugging bodice, and white lace blouse, with a tartan shawl I’d had since childhood wrapped around my shoulders and pinned with the Luckenbooth brooch. A sprig of heather in my hair from the heap of them I found strewn over my bed and, voilà, I was Jennet Carter, off to the Greenwood to rescue Tam Lin. When my doorbell rang, I was ready with a bowl of miniature Kit Kats and Hershey bars.

I swung open the door, ready to greet my first tiny ghouls and goblins, and found a crew of slightly older trick-or-treaters—a rather large Scot in a kilt, with an assortment of fairies.

“Scott!” I said, hardly recognizing my student, with his hair neatly combed back in a ponytail and with a clean white shirt tucked into a plaid kilt. “What are you doing here?”

“Man, Prof, did you forget our folklore party?”

“No, it’s just that I thought …” I turned from Scott to the woman dressed as the Fairy Queen at his side. “Ruby? I thought you were going home?”

Nicky, wearing a Tinker Bell outfit and carrying two large reusable grocery bags, laughed and pushed past Ruby. “You know, we almost did go to New Jersey with Ruby, but then when we all met up at the bus station we realized we didn’t really want to go.”

“Yeah,” Flonia said, carrying more bags over the threshold. “We wanted to be here—you know, with friends.”

At the word friends , a crowd of my students came up the front path. “Is this where the party is?” asked a girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland.

“Yeah,” Scott called back, “this is it. We hope you don’t mind, Prof; we invited a bunch of your students we ran into at the bus station. When they heard there was a party at Professor McFay’s, they all said that sounded better than going home. Hey, cool jack-o’-lanterns, Prof, especially the way you’ve got them wired for sound.”

Scott edged past me to answer Ruby, who was calling him to come in and help, so I didn’t get to tell him I’d done nothing of the kind. Then I was too busy welcoming students to my house to figure out his meaning. I was touched to see how many of my students had come dressed as their favorite fairy tale characters.

“You inspired us,” Tania Lieberman, dressed as Snow White, told me. “We were all planning it, and then we almost forgot and went home. Can you believe that? But then I remembered how much I was looking forward to my first Halloween at college, and … wow, your house is, like, totally cool! It looks like something out of Paranormal Investigations .”

Stephanie Moss, a girl who never spoke in class, thanked me for the comments I’d written on her Beauty and the Beast paper. “I was feeling kind of homesick earlier today, but then I remembered what you said about how the heroines of fairy tales find their real homes in these stories, and that made me think … well, that Fairwick’s my new home. Anyway, I baked you some chocolate chip cookies from my mom’s favorite recipe.”