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THIRTEEN
Iwalked home quickly, expecting every moment to be stopped by campus security demanding I return Professor Lilly’s property. I was relieved when I left the campus, but unhappy to see Diana Hart hailing me from her driveway. She was standing next to a bright yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser, which must belong to a guest. Even if Diana did drive I didn’t think she’d ever buy so flashy a vehicle.
“Callie, do you have a minute? I was just telling this young woman from the city about you.”
All I could see of the “young woman from the city” was a toned bottom sticking out of the hatchback.Yoga bum, Annie would have said appreciatively. The woman undoubtedly did do yoga; she was showing off its fruits in snug leggings emblazoned with the Sanskrit symbol fornamaste. When she turned around I saw that every inch of her was toned and encased in skintight Lycra and fleece. Even her long black braid, which she flipped back over her shoulder, looked muscular. Just standing two feet from her made me miss sixA.M.Jivamukti practice and soy chai lattes…made me miss the city. I’d only been up here for three months and already I had turned into a crazy Wiccan lady casting spells and wearing baggy sweats…Okay, I wasn’t actually wearing baggy sweats, but next to this woman’s tights—and after the weight I’d lost—my jeans did feel baggy.
“Cheers,” Miss Yoga Bum said in a gravelly Australian accent. “Diana told me you wrote that book on sexy vampires,which I thought was totally brilliant. I do some freelance for theTimesstyle section and I thought maybe you could give me an interview. Jen Davies, by the way.” She held out a hand and I shook it, not at all surprised to encounter a grip as tight as a Moola Bandha lock. I was already beaming at her, though, as always turned to putty at the thought that a total stranger had read and liked my book.
“Sure,” I replied. “Are you up for the holiday visiting family?”
“Nah, my family’s all on the other side of the globe. Just thought I’d take some pics of the local flora and fauna.” She held up an expensive and complicated-looking camera.
“Jen’s planning on hiking in the woods behind your house,” Diana said in a strained chipper voice. I noticed now that something about this guest had gotten her wound up. I thought I knew what it was. Diana had counted on all her guests for the holiday having plans for Thanksgiving dinner. She must be worried about abandoning this one to come to my house tomorrow. Maybe I could help out there. While Diana nervously told Jen about how I’d fallen in the woods, I mentally counted out table places. If we scrunched up a bit…
“…and you can get lost in there. Tell her, Callie,” Diana concluded, her voice even more high-pitched than usual.
“The woods are overgrown,” I said mildly to Jen. She was wearing Timberland hiking boots and had a small compass attached to the zipper of her fleece vest; she looked like she could take care of herself. “And you can’t spend the whole day hiking. Why don’t you come have Thanksgiving with us? No family, just colleagues and new friends.”
Jen put her hands together in prayer position and bowed her head namaste-style. “That’s very kind of you,” she said with a dazzling toothy smile. “I’d love to.”
I hurried across the street hoping that news of the extra guest would throw Phoenix into enough of a panic that she’d be toobusy to notice me disappearing upstairs. I needn’t have worried. Phoenix was passed out on the library couch snoring loudly. In the kitchen I found three punch bowls filled with three different types of punch. I dipped a mug into one and took a sip. It burned my throat going down but spread an agreeable warmth in my belly. I took some more and sat down at the kitchen table with the purloined book. If the spell required anything esoteric—eye of newt, for instance—I’d be out of luck. I almost hoped it would. I’d grabbed the book on impulse and had been too busy worrying I’d get caught to really think about what I was going to do with it until now. Was I really planning toinvoke a demon? Because the chapter title I’d glimpsed in Soheila’s office suggested you had to invoke one before banishing one.
Skimming the chapter I found that the ingredients necessary for casting the spell were all readily available in the house. I gathered them all into one of the decorative baskets Phoenix had bought at Pier 1 and, adding an electric water kettle and an empty covered sugar bowl, went upstairs to my bedroom.
The demonology book said to summon the demon to a place “where it was wont to appear.” Well, it waswontto appear in my bedroom—in my bed, actually, but I didn’t want to do this in my bed. Aside from the risk of setting the sheets on fire, I thought it sent the wrong message. Just looking at the bed reminded me of the long nights of lovemaking…the way he kissed my breasts, the way he looked at me as he slid inside me…
No, I should definitely stay away from the bed. I wasn’t invoking the demon lover to have sex, nor was I inviting him to stay. As I arranged a circle of candles on the floor I said aloud what it was I wanted to do.Set your intention, my yoga teacher always told us at the beginning of class. If there were ever a time to be clear about my intentions this was it.
“I’m calling him to tell him to go away and leave me alone,” I said, plugging the kettle into a wall socket. “Because I don’twant him,” I said, pouring a circle of salt outside the circle of candles. A pang of longing shot through me. The spiral brand on my breast tingled.
“Okay, maybe I want him, but don’twantto want him.”
I sprinkled cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon into the sugar bowl and set it by the kettle. I needed one more object to take with me into the circle. The demonology book said to have a “gift” for the demon—some object that meant something to the invoker of the spell. I went to my desk and began opening up the little drawers…I had put it in one of them.… When I found the object I was looking for I slipped it into my pocket along with a book of matches from Sapphire, Paul’s favorite restaurant in L.A.
Paul. I hadn’t forgotten he was coming. He was the main reason I had to do this now. I had a feeling that Paul might not be safe in the house with the demon lover still lurking about. Once I had banished the incubus, I’d be ready to be with Paul again fully. At least that’s what I was hoping.
I looked at my watch. It was 4:20, ten minutes to sunset according to timeanddate.com, 1:20 in California. Paul would still be at home. He was taking the red-eye to JFK after his last class tonight and then driving here tomorrow morning. I took out my cell phone and hit his number.
“Hey,” he said, “I was just packing. According to my weather app it’s in the fifties in Binghamton—that’s about the same weather as you, right?”
“Uh, actually we’re about ten degrees colder,” I told him. In truth, Fairwick was in an oddly cold pocket that was about twenty degrees colder than any of the surrounding upstate cities on any weather map, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that.
“Sheesh, sure you don’t want to come here? It’s eighty-three and sunny today.”
I knew he was only kidding, but for a moment I considered his question seriously. Was I sure that I’d be able to banish thedemon lover once I summoned it? If I couldn’t, might it feel threatened by Paul? But the idea of the creature I’d encountered in my bed being threatened by Paul was more ridiculous than the notion that he existed in the first place.
“If it’s really cold we can just stay in bed the whole time,” I said, making my voice sultry.
“Sure,” Paul replied coolly, “while your dean is downstairs eating Thanksgiving dinner. Well, at least the weather forecast is clear. No storms in sight. I shouldn’t have any trouble flying.”
“No,” I said, looking out my bedroom window. “Not a cloud in the sky here.” The mountains to the east were sharply etched against a clear blue horizon. Not a breeze stirred the tips of the pines or the bare branches of the maples and the oaks. I suddenly found myself wishing for dark rain clouds and gusty winds, rain and sleet and snow—anything to keep Paul from coming. What if I got the invoking part of the spell right, but not the banishing part? Paul could be in danger here. I was about to warn him not to come, but he was saying he had to get to class.
“See you tomorrow morning. I lo—” The connection broke before we could exchange I-love-yous. The words might have become commonplaces lately, but I still missed them. I could only hope that after I banished the demon lover forever I’d be able to say them to Paul and mean them again.
The water had come to a roiling boil in the electric kettle. I poured it into the sugar bowl over the spices and then covered it. Then, with the demonology book tucked under my arm, holding the warm bowl in two hands, I stepped into the circle and sat down cross-legged in the center. I placed the sugar bowl in front of me and opened the demonology book to the chapter on invoking and banishing incubi, which I’d marked with the envelope that Soheila had given me. I hesitated for a moment, anxious to start the spell, but if Soheila’s “source” had anything useful to tell me about this creature I’d better find outnow. I opened the envelope and took out the folded pages. They were the thin blue paper that people used to use for airmail letters in the days before faxes and emails. My mother had had a trove of letters on this stationery—“from the olden days,” she had told me when I’d found the ribbon-bound packet of letters. I’d been eleven at the time, an age when most girls gave up fairy tales for teen romances, but I, still bewitched by the fairy tales my parents told me every night, believed she meant from the days of the knights and dragons and fairy princesses, not just the 1970s when she and my father had corresponded the summer after they met at St. Andrew’s.
“He courted me by letter,” I still recalled my mother saying. “Just like in an old romantic novel.”
