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In the library I set myself to grading essays, managing only marginally better to concentrate on what my students had to say aboutThe Mysteries of UdolphoandNorthanger Abbeythan I had at the house. Every few sentences I would look up and stare out the window at the bare trees on the quad and feel a pang of sadness, as if someone I’d loved had just died. What was wrong with me? I wondered, forcing myself to stare backdown at a paper. I’d never been so unfocused. Was I really going through some kind of withdrawal from the demon lover? Or was I coming down with something? I read the next paper with a head full of imagined ailments: swine flu, Lyme disease, and early-onset Alzheimer’s danced through my head. Maybe the demon lover visitations were a symptom of a brain tumor.
As if to confirm my worst fears, when I looked back down at the paper in front of me the print doubled and swam. Blurry vision—wasn’t that a symptom of stroke? I closed my eyes and laid my head down on the table. The polished wood felt cool on my forehead. No wonder that student had been sleeping here the last time I came; it was a perfect place to sleep, quiet but for a low, barely audible hum that must have been the ventilation system but sounded like a swarm of insects…
I must have fallen asleep. I was in a crowd walking across an endless, rolling meadow. My legs and feet hurt as if I’d been walking for miles. I looked down and saw that my feet were bare in the wet grass. My legs were scratched and bleeding, my dress torn to tatters around my knees. I was alarmed at the sight. I shouldn’t be bleeding; my flesh shouldn’t tear. I began to fall…as if the awareness of my flesh’s vulnerability had robbed me of the last vestige of my strength and will. I would lie down right here in the dew-damp grass and sleep. No matter if the horde stampeded over me; let them trample me into the ground until I was dust beneath their feet and I seeped into the earth. As I fell I could hear horses—the Riders—and knew I’d be ground to dust all the sooner beneath their hooves.Fine, let me go back to the earth…But then a shadow fell across me and I looked up. A figure on a white horse was leaning down toward me, reaching out his hands. I took his hands and he pulled me up into the saddle in front of him. He wrapped his arms around me, chafing my bare, cold skin. My dress, drenched and shredded, barely covered me. He pulled me back against him and I felt him harden with desire for me. I knew we had to go…that there wasn’t time…but our desire for eachother was too strong. He steered his mount into the woods, deep into a glade that was covered by intertwining branches…like a chapel.
“I’d have married you in a church,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me from the horse and laid me on the soft grass, “but this will have to do.”
He traced the line of my jaw with one finger and pressed it between my lips. “You are mine,” he said, sliding his finger down my throat to my left breast. He drew circles around the nipple, the wetness tingling in the misty air, inscribing a spiral pattern over my heart, all the while keeping his eyes locked on mine.
“Yes,” I moaned, arching my hips against him while he hovered a tantalizing inch above me. “We belong to each other. We always have and always will.”
Still keeping his eyes locked on mine he pushed the last tatters of my dress up around my hips and pushed himself against me. His face, backlit by the sun-tangled branches, glowed gold, his eyes glowing the same green as the deep woods that surrounded us. As he came inside me it was as if the woods were entering me…The gold sunlight exploding through the green branches obliterating everything else…even his flesh and, I saw as I reached for him, my flesh as well. I could see the sun and the branches right through my hand. We were dissolving into each other…
I startled awake, my face pressed against a damp patch on the wooden table, and sat up, swiping at my mouth, hoping no one had seen me drooling in my sleep. But that hope was dashed. Elizabeth Book was sitting across from me, her cool elegance making me feel even more bedraggled and embarrassed.
She smiled but her eyes looked sad. “You were dreaming,” she said.
“I fell asleep while grading papers.” I swept together the pile of papers that were strewn across the table. I must have scatteredthem as I reached for him…Dear God, had Dean Book heard me moan or call out a name? Only I hadn’t called his name…although I was sure I’d have known it in the dream. I hadknownhim. As well as I knew myself. Only how well was that? Who had I been in the dream?
“Have you been having disturbing dreams?” Liz asked.
I looked up from the papers and met her cool blue gaze. I felt the blood surge in my face at the thought that she somehow knew exactly what kind of dreams I’d been having. Dreams in which I made love until my flesh melted. “No,” I said. “Not unless you count dreaming about ungraded papers as disturbing. I’m afraid I’ve fallen a bit behind.” I smiled ruefully and hoped she thought my embarrassment was from being caught literally sleeping on the job and not from having a depraved sex life with a demonic being. “But I promise I’ll catch up and be more on the ball in the future.”
Elizabeth Book reached across the table and laid her hand on mine. “I’m not worried about your performance, dear Callie. I’m worried about you. Not everyone makes the adjustment to Fairwick easily. Being here sometimes brings up…issues. And I have to admit I’ve had concerns with you living all alone in that house…”
“I’m not all alone,” I interrupted her. “Phoenix is living with me.”
“Ah, yes. Phoenix is turning out to be quite a…galvanizing addition to our community, but she is perhaps not the most restful of roommates. Nor do I think she would notice if anything were wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong, Dean Book. I’m just…” Obsessed with a phantom lover? Sorry I chased him away? “Getting used to the routine. I promise you don’t have to worry about me. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to take these home to grade. The library hasn’t turned out to be the best work environment after all.”
