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“Ah, Callie. I thought I might have the pleasure of your company today,” she said, turning from the window to look at me. She smiled but her eyes remained distant and sad. “Would you like a cup of tea?” She gestured to a steaming silver samovar on top of an oak filing cabinet.
“Sure,” I said, sitting down in the carved chair in front of her desk. Its back looked too delicate to support the weight of my messenger bag, so I placed it on my lap. “If it’s no trouble. I want to ask you a few questions about that story you told me at the faculty reception…the one about the demon lover who was stolen by the Fairy Queen?”
Soheila sighed as she poured dark toffee-colored tea into a silver-rimmed glass. She held the half-filled glass up to the window, where its color transformed from toffee to gold, and then added a squirt of boiling water from the samovar. She brought me the glass on a silver tray with a crystal bowl of sugar cubes on it and then went through the same process for herself. When she was seated behind her desk with her own cup of tea I took a polite sip of mine. It tasted like cardamom and cloves and some other unnamable spice.
“Delicious,” I said, putting down the hot glass. “And so civilized.” For the first time since I’d found the spiral brand on my breast I felt warm. “So about this Ganconer…”
“I find the ritual of drinking tea puts my students at ease…” She tilted her head and narrowed her lovely golden eyes. “But it’s not working with you, is it? You are anxious about these questions you have for me.”
I laughed, a little too shrilly, and plucked at the neck of my sweater even though I knew the mark was hidden. “Do you have a degree in psychology as well as Middle Eastern studies?” I asked. It came out sounding a little cattier than I meant it to. When I’m nervous I can sound a little…well, snooty. Sometimes I think I picked up the habit from my grandmother,who became even more aloof whenever anything displeased her. But Soheila Lilly was too well-bred to take offense.
“Yes, actually. I studied with Jung…”
She faltered at my surprised expression. She’d have had to have been in her eighties to have studied with Carl Jung himself and even though Soheila’s eyes looked that old today, the rest of her certainly did not.
“I mean, of course, that I studied at the Jung Institute in Zurich.”
“How fascinating. I bet Jung had some interesting things to say about demon lovers.”
“He did, but I don’t think you came here to talk about Jung.”
“No, I guess not. You see, I’ve been trying to find a reference for that story you told about the demon lover who was kidnapped by the Fairy Queen…I think you called him Ganconer. It’s for a book I’m writing. I haven’t been able to find anything on that particular myth on the Internet or in the library, which seems to have just about everything on folklore ever written. So I was wondering if you could tell me the source for the story.”
“It was an oral source,” she replied. “I don’t think anything’s ever been written on it.”
“Oh,” I said, trying not to sound as disappointed as I felt. No matter how keen their scholarly interest, academics usually don’t weep over missing sources. “That’s too bad…or maybe not…” I brightened. “It could be an opportunity for an article. We could collaborate. Are you still in contact with the source?”
“No. He died years ago.” Her eyes clouded and she turned toward the window, although I had the feeling she was no longer seeing the green grass of the quad and the falling autumn leaves.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories. It’s really not important.” I started to get up but she turned back to me, pinning me with her suddenly focused stare.
“But itisimportant to you, isn’t it? Why do you want to know about this demon in particular?”
I sat back down again and tried to find an answer for her question that didn’t involve telling her that I thought the demon lover was real. No matter how sympathetic she seemed, I was sure she’d tell the dean that I needed psychiatric help if I did that. “Well, I’ve done a lot of research on demon lovers, but I’ve never come across a story like this one. It provides a history for the incubus—an explanation for why he seduces women. It makes him more…well, more human. It’s like inJane Eyrewhen we learn how Rochester was tricked into marrying Bertha, or when we find out that the Beast is under a curse. It explains their behavior and makes them…” I was going to say loveable, but instead I said, “redeemable.”
“It seems you have all the fairytale rationales you need,” she said, her voice, for the first time since I’d met her, cold.
Stung, I retreated into the pose of a chilly academic. “But not a genuine folklore source for the phenomenon. Your Ganconer story could be a link between the incubi of folklore and the Byronic heroes of Gothic fiction. But if you don’t recall enough about the source…”
“I remembereverything,” she said, getting to her feet and shrugging the caramel shawl from her shoulders impatiently. She crossed the few feet to the door beside the filing cabinet and swung it open, revealing a walk-in closet lined with more oak cabinets. “Please,” she said, turning to me with a strained smile on her caramel-colored lips. “Drink your tea. This will only take a minute.”
I heard her boot heels reverberating against hardwood as she vanished into the closet, which must have been much bigger than my puny office closet. I took a sip of the cooling tea and looked up at the bookshelf next to me. Many of the books were in Farsi, but there were also ones in German, French, Russian, and a few languages I couldn’t identify. One that caught my interest, however, was in English. Printed in goldlettering on its red leather binding was a single word:DEMONOLOGY.
I slid it off the shelf, noting that the pages were tipped with gold leaf, and turned to the table of contents. My eyes fell on the title of chapter three:How to Invoke and Banish an Incubus. Exactly what I needed.
I looked toward the closet door, but Soheila was still invisible. I could hear a file drawer opening. I looked back at the book in my lap. It lay on top of my bookbag. It only took the slightest motion to slide it inside.
“Here it is,” Soheila said, coming out of the closet holding a small blue envelope. “It’s my only copy, so please don’t lose it.”
“I’ll take very good care of it,” I said, sliding the envelope into my bag in between the pages of the stolen book. I got to my feet, anxious to be gone before Soheila noticed the gap on her bookshelf. “Thank you very much.”
“You’re very welcome. I hope it helps,” she said. “The source paid dearly for the information there. Use it wisely.”
