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“I suppose that will be all right until Phoenix’s replacement arrives,” I said uneasily. I didn’t like the idea of letting a student off the hook so readily. But then, she had done more than her share already and it would give the other students a chance to get their work read. And besides, I guiltily admitted to myself, at least now I’d be spared reading about the horrors that she’d lived through.
I didn’t feel so easy about my conference with Mara afterward. I spent that night restlessly prowling through my empty house, haunted by the feeling that something was really wrong with the girl and determined to find her folder if it was still in the house. The fact that I didn’t really want to read it just made me look all the harder to assuage my conscience. I looked everywhere that Phoenix might think to hide papers—through the kitchen cabinets and the china hutches, behind the books in the library, between the stacks of Dahlia LaMotte’s manuscripts, in my own desk (checking again that the one locked drawer was still locked even though it was much too small to hold Mara’s folder) and closets, and, finally, in the attic.
I left the attic until last because I didn’t like going up there alone. I had a feeling that if the incubus were lurking anywhere in the house that’s where he’d be—beneath the steeply pitched roof, among the tea chests and forlorn broken furniture. When I switched on the light and the overhead bulb popped I had to resist the urge to give up, but I made myself go downstairs for one of the battery-operated lanterns Dory Browne had given me in case of any more power outages. I came back holding the lantern over my head, sweeping its light across the dusty floor and into every nook and cranny. I’d covered most of the areawhen the light swept into the far west eave…and a scrap of shadow skittered across the floor.
I nearly dropped the lantern. Instead I swung it in the direction the shadow had sped, sending the shadow-thing scurrying into an open tea chest. My heart hammering, I pounced on the tea chest and slammed the lid. Whatever was inside flung itself up against the lid, making a sickening thump that reverberated inside my own chest.
Shit, what now? Should I lock the chest and bring it to Liz Book?
But then I remembered that the tea chests, built to keep precious tea leaves dry on long ocean voyages, were airtight. If I’d caught something alive in there it would be dead by the time I brought it to Liz’s house.
Which shouldn’t be a problem. If it was the incubus then he couldn’t suffocate…right? And if it was an animal that had taken up residence in my attic then I was best rid of it…right?
Another thump rattled the box. Whatever was inside, it was mad. Or afraid.
Shit.
I balanced the lantern on top of a nearby broken chair so that its light shone onto the lid of the tea chest. Then, crouching on my toes so that I could move fast, I put a hand on either side of the box and lifted the lid.
Two beady black eyes set in a tiny furry face stared up at me. If the creature had moved a centimeter I would have screamed and run, but the mouse sat perfectly still on its haunches holding its tiny pink paws up in front of the white ruff on its chest as if it were praying for leniency—a posture that struck me as familiar. I peered over at the mouse’s tail and saw a short stump instead.
“It’s you!” I said. “The tailless doormouse. You didn’t explode!”
The mouse cocked its head and twitched its small pink ears. It was, I had to admit, kind of cute.
“I’m glad you survived,” I said, feeling a little stupid addressing a mouse, but hey, I’d done stranger things lately. “I’m sorry your little friends didn’t.”
The mouse squeaked and rubbed a tiny paw across its face, as if washing itself…or brushing away a tear.
“Aw, are you crying?” I put my hand into the tea chest, palm up. “Come here, little guy. I won’t hurt you.”
The mouse looked at my hand for a few long seconds, then stretched its neck toward it and sniffed at my fingertips, which were still blistered from when I’d grabbed him during the exorcism. What if it bit me? Could magical-iron-doormice-come-to-life carry rabies? But the mouse didn’t bite me. Instead he licked my blistered fingertips and crawled into my hand. Then he turned around twice and curled up into a ball, tucked the stub of his tail beneath his haunches, rested his pink nose on top of his paws, and looked up at me.
I laughed. “Okay, you’re pretty darn cute. Let’s go get you something to eat.”
I named him Ralph after the mouse in Beverly Cleary’sThe Mouse and the Motorcycle, one of my favorite books when I was growing up. Ralph the Doormouse—it had a nice ring to it. After I fed him some cheese, lettuce, and carrots, I took him back upstairs in a basket lined with a dishtowel. I put him on my desk while I made my nightly call to Paul. He curled up and listened with one eye open as I told Paul about my conference with Mara.
“It sounds like she’s trying to get out of doing any more work for the semester. You can’t be so easy on your students, Cal. They’ll walk all over you.”
We’d had this argument before. Paul had only been teaching for a couple of years, but already he seemed burned out by the emotional demands his students made on him. I had to agree that in this era of email and texting, the self-esteem generationcould be demanding and annoying to deal with (I’d actually had students at Columbia who wanted to know why I didn’t buy an iPhone or BlackBerry so I could answer their emails immediately), but it was really only a handful of students who acted as if they were entitled to their professor’s undivided attention. Paul treated every student as a potential threat to his time and tenure opportunities. Sometimes I wondered if he’d be happier in a line of work that didn’t involve teaching.
When I said good night to Paul, I saw that Ralph had fallen asleep. I left his basket on the desk and went to bed. I suppose it was an indicator of how lonely I’d felt since Phoenix left that having a mouse sleeping in my room made me feel better.
I reached for a student paper to read before going to sleep but picked up instead one of Dahlia LaMotte’s notebooks. I wasn’t sure that reading erotica was what I needed right now, but I just couldn’t bear to read another student paper—and I was pretty hooked onThe Viking Raider. It was the only manuscript I’d read so far in which the sex with a human character was as exciting as the sex with the incubus. I had just gotten to the part where the Viking raider realizes that his captive Irish lass is being visited nightly by anight-mare.
“You aremareitt,lass, ridden nightly by the demon mare. I can see it in your eyes and…” He reached under my tunic and roughly clasped the tender engorged flesh between my legs. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was elsewhere. “Aye, your sex is swollen with him. Your maidenhood I’ve been saving for your intended. If he’s broken it…”
Swearing in his own language he slipped his finger into me and my knees went weak. I bit my lip to keep from moaning and giving him the idea that what he did pleasured me. It was just that I was tender there from the visitations of this thing he called a night-mare.
“Ah, you’re still a maiden, lass, thank Odin. I’ll still have my ransom price off ye—but we’ve got a wee problem.”
He had removed his hand from inside me but now he wasstroking my buttocks, squeezing the flesh with his big calloused hands. He pushed himself against me until my back was pressed up against the hard stone ledge of my cell’s only window and I could feel the equally stone hard ridge of his manhood straining against my belly. He lifted my hips up onto the ledge, pressing me against the iron bars and spreading my thighs. Now I felt the tip of his manhood prodding against my sex, which throbbed in answer to his thrusts. I whimpered with the effort not to moan and clenched my thighs to keep from arching up to enclose him inside me. Traitor flesh! Even when the nightmare rode me I hadn’t longed to be filled as I did now.
I opened my eyes and saw he was studying my face.
“Aye, lass, I want it, too. I want to come inside you and fill you to the brim. I want you to ride my cock as the night-mare rides you.” He caressed my face and it was that tenderness that broke me. I wrapped my arms around him and slid my hands down to his iron-hard haunches, which were straining with the effort not to impale me. I pulled him toward me, arching my hips to meet his thrusts. I felt his hot flesh touch mine, the head of his engorged rod grazing my swollen sex…and then I felt the cold slap of air as he stepped back. A mocking smile spread on his lips.
“Not this time, lass. I must protect my investment. But let’s see what we can do for ye so you no longer need the night-mare’s attentions.”
He knelt down on his knees and buried that cruel mocking smile between my legs. His lips met my nether lips in a deep kiss. His tongue probed where his manhood wanted to go and could not. He sucked on my flesh as a boy sucks a ripe peach down to the pit…He reached into the very pit of my dark yearning. His tongue rammed hard against the weir that dammed my deepest, darkest longings and broke it, releasing the sweet wild flood. When I’d spilled myself into his mouth he stood and wiped his face with the back of his hand.
“I think the night-mare will leave you alone now, lass.” Andthen he left me, drained and empty as a rind when the fruit has been sucked dry.
I put down Dahlia’s notebook and turned out the light. Moonlight spilled into the room as if it had been held back by a dam and was now released, but it was barren cold moonlight and the shadows stood rigid and still, as cold and unmoving as iron bars. I shivered and burrowed deeper under the covers, feeling as discarded as Dahlia’s Irish lass.
