Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

I drew the needle from my hair, a thread of glowing red wool still clinging to it, and leapt over Dean Book’s Louis XVI desk and plunged it into Duncan’s back, just below his left rib cage. He wheeled around to face me, his fingers flailing to grab the knitting needle. He pulled it out, trailing a long red thread.

His lip curled in a sneer. “Did you really think you could kill me with a knitting needle?”

“No, but I thought this might work.” I touched my hand to his chest and pulled the thread lodged beneath his ribs up and forward. Straight through his heart. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open. I yanked harder and he gasped, black gore rising from his throat and dribbling over his lips. He fell to one knee, his wings sagging behind him. He would have fallen flat on his face if I hadn’t held him up by the thread. His eyes rolled back in his head, staring up at me.

“That’s for killing Bill,” I said, tying the knot that cut off his heart.

Frank told me later that as soon as I killed Duncan, it was as if the strings holding the gargoyles up in the air were cut. The monstrous creatures tumbled out of the air, slack and dead-eyed. A few were killed in this passive state, but once Soheila realized what had happened, she ordered a cease-fire, organizing the trows to form a cordon around the gargoyles. A few, coming to their senses, took wing and escaped, flying into the Catskills, but the rest seemed resigned to being prisoners. From the window above, I stood watching Duncan’s ashes scatter in the wind until the last speck of him vanished. By then the sun had risen high over the mountains and bathed the village of Fairwick in a rose-gold glow. Smoke still wafted from Main Street and the woods, but the fires had all been extinguished, and already the townspeople were out putting the town to rights and helping one another. Fairwick and Fairwick College would survive and, with the nephilim banished, prosper again. As long as I lived, I could serve as the door between Faerie and Fairwick and so the fey would be free to come and go, bringing the balm of Aelvesgold into this world to heal the wounds we had suffered.

But not all wounds. As I walked out of Main Hall, I felt a tug in my chest. It was as if I’d wrapped the magic thread around my own heart and pulled until I cut off the flow of blood, leaving a lifeless stone in my chest instead of a living, pumping organ. That weight grew heavier as I saw the devastation wrought by the battle. The trows, spurred by the death of their comrade, had rushed headlong into battle and suffered the worst casualties. The survivors stood around their fallen comrades, singing haunting dirges. Brownies and witches, gnomes and Fairwick students sang with them. Scott Wilder stood arm in arm with two trows, swaying as they sang. I searched the crowds for the rest of my students: I spotted Nicky and Flonia administering first aid to a wounded gnome, and Ruby Day and two other girls I recognized from the fairy-tales class were helping Ann and Jessica Chase set up a triage center. I felt a lightening of the weight in my chest when I saw that all my students had survived, and I began to look for my friends. I spotted Frank, Soheila, and Diana crouching on the ground beneath the four red maples that marked the center of the quad. As I approached, I saw that Liz was there, too, as well as Brock, Dory, Phoenix, and Jen. I put my hand over my heart and told myself that all these people were alive because William had sacrificed himself. I was lucky, I told myself, but then Soheila lifted her head and met my gaze and I felt a sirocco of grief pour off her. I hurried toward the four maples, scared to see who was at the center of the circle.

It was my grandmother. She lay on the ground on a blanket of red, which at first I thought were the leaves of the Japanese maples but then realized was her blood. Her head was cradled in Jen Davies’s lap. Liz, Diana, and Dory had spread their arms over her, forming a triangle of Aelvesgold that poured over the wound in her chest, but the color of Adelaide’s face told me that the Aelvesgold wasn’t penetrating her skin. As I knelt beside her, Adelaide’s pale-gray eyes fastened on mine, and her hand fluttered weakly in the air. I took it, alarmed at how cold she was.

“What happened?” I cried.

“A gargoyle was headed straight for Nicky Ballard,” Frank answered. “Adelaide threw a repulsion spell at him, but it wasn’t strong enough. She took the blow that would have killed Nicky.”

A garbled sound came from Adelaide’s lips. I leaned closer to hear her better.

“… make up … curse …” she gasped.

“You were making up for the curse you put on the Ballards?” I asked.

She nodded and I squeezed her hand. “Thank you,” I said, and then, turning to Diana, “Can’t you help her?”

Diana lifted her doe eyes to me and shook her head. “She isn’t absorbing the Aelvesgold. It sometimes happens when a witch has used too much Aelvesgold in her lifetime.”

Adelaide squeezed my hand and made a sound. I leaned my ear down to her lips again and heard her say, “It’s my time. I’m so glad you’re here and all … right.” Her eyes scanned the faces surrounding her—all my friends who had rushed to Adelaide’s aid, even though she had once been their enemy, because she was my grandmother. She mouthed two more words, and then her eyes fluttered closed and her hand went slack in mine. I held on to her hand while my friends, one by one, got up, touching my back and murmuring soft words of condolence, then leaving me alone with Adelaide under the red maples. I sat, looking at her face, red leaves falling over her broken body like a gentle blanket. My grandmother had shown me little kindness in the years when I had needed it the most, but she had taken me in, and I was glad that we had patched up our differences before she died. Still, I wished I could feel more. Her last words, I thought, had been meant as a consolation for leaving me.

Good neighbors , she had said, meaning the family I’d found in Fairwick.

She had also meant to say, I was sure, that she had put away the anger she’d felt when my mother fell in love with one of the fey. Looking at her face, I watched the years of anger and resentment falling away, leaving her far more peaceful and younger than I’d ever known her. Most powerfully, more than I’d ever known, she resembled my mother. For a moment the likeness was so strong that I thought my mother was here with me. I felt her presence as strongly as I had the time I went on a spirit quest and met her inside the spiral labyrinth. My mother’s features were momentarily laid over Adelaide’s, like a thin, gauzy cloth. Like a benediction. I felt tears well in my eyes and cried for both of them. Together now.

In the coming weeks, as autumn turned toward winter, I saw what good neighbors the townspeople of Fairwick—human and fey—truly were. Although Honeysuckle House had been spared from the fire, others were not so lucky. The Lindisfarnes’ house was badly damaged, and the Goodnoughs’ animal clinic had burned to the ground. Luckily, Nicky Ballard’s mother had noticed the fire in the animal clinic as she was coming home from an A.A. meeting. She’d run back to the church, where half a dozen participants were still chatting over coffee and donuts, and organized them into a rescue team and saved all the animals. The Goodnoughs were so grateful that they gave her a job at the clinic, and she had enrolled in the vet tech program at the community college. In the weeks following the fire, I heard a lot of stories that reconfirmed my faith in the resilience of the community. Newly returned from Faerie, the Esta family reopened their pizzeria and organized a Meals On Wheels for people who had lost their homes. While Shady Pines was being rebuilt, families volunteered to take in residents. I heard that Mrs. Goldstein was staying with the Chases and that she and Jessica played cards every afternoon.