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The mist rippled and the wind roared. It took me a moment to realize he—it—was laughing. “That’swhy you called me? I don’t think so, Cailleach McFay. I think you called me because you wantmoreof me.” The mist unfurled through the air and wrapped itself around me. The air had gotten very cold in the room but the mist touching my face was warm. The warmth seeped through me, spreading like a warm liqueur through my bloodstream and coiling into my pelvis and, God help me, landing right between my legs.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “You’re a phantom, an incubus. You’d suck me dry and leave me dead…”
“Not if you loved me,” he whispered, his voice a warm wave that lapped at my ear and filled me with longing.
“That’s a bigif,” I replied. “Love comes and goes in my experience. I wouldn’t bet my life on it.” Images of my parents appeared in my mind—of my mother caressing the love letters my father had sent her, of my father’s face as he lovingly gazed at my mother—but I quickly banished them.
The coil that had been wrapping itself around me paused. I felt his…its…hesitation. When he spoke again his voice sounded different—less silky, morereal…andladen with the soft burr of a Scottish accent. It made me realize he’d been acting up until now. “That’s been your experience?” he asked. “Poor lass…” And then the silky voice was back. “Perhaps that’s how you feel with yourhumanlover because you’ve been waiting for me. Have no doubt. Your experience with me will be vastly different.”
Maybe it was my loyalty to Paul (I still had some, didn’t I?) or maybe it was the disdain in his voice when he saidhuman, or maybe it was just the cocky attitude that he knew what I wanted, but I was suddenly disenchanted with this creature.
“You’ve got a lot to learn about women, pal. There’s more to love than being good in the sack,” I said, tensing my muscles and trying hard not to think abouthowgood he was in bed. “Or maybe it’s been too long since you were human to know that.”
I thrashed my arms out, breaking the coils of mist into tattered shreds. Then, before he could regroup and whisper his sweet nothings into my ear, I dropped the lid over the sugar bowl and recited the three lines I’d memorized from Angus Fraser’s book
“Begone, incubus!
“I send you away, demon!
“I cast you into darkness, Ganconer!”
In the strangely quiet pause that followed, the scattered mist tried to reassemble itself into a face. Outside the wind had stopped as if it were waiting for a cue from its master. I suddenly knew I couldn’t let him take shape again and speak. I knew what I had to do. It wasn’t in Angus Fraser’s book, but it had worked at a bar in the Bowery with an obnoxious bond salesman. I picked up the sugar bowl and, just as a face was appearing again in the air, dashed the hot water into it. For a split second the incubus’s face had the exact same expression that the bond salesman’s had had when I threw my mojito into it—and then there was no face. The mist was sucked out the window in a gust so strong it knocked me flat on my back. My right hand hit one of the candles, spilling hot wax over my knuckles. I scrambled to my knees and crawled through spilled wax and salt to the window with the idea of closing it, but when I pulled myself up to the windowsill what I saw there froze me in place.
The trees, which had been thrashing a moment ago, were still now, but they weren’t upright. They were leaning east, every twig and leaf pulled taut as though by an irresistible magnetic force away from the house. The only movements outside were of animals running across the yard…raccoons andsquirrels and even deer…all of them fleeing the forest as if it were on fire. I felt a tingling on my scalp and, looking down, saw my hair rising in the air, pulling in the same direction. It was perfectly still outside, as if the world were holding its breath…
It reminded me of something…a description I’d read from a survivor of the Indonesian tsunami several years ago, how the moment before the tidal wave hit all the water was dragged off the beach…
I heard it coming before I saw it. A sound like a freight train bearing down on the house. Then I saw it, a tidal wave of air mowing down the forest, snapping hundred-year-old oaks like toothpicks. I ducked a split second before it hit the house. Glass shattered above me and rained down into my hair. I pasted myself on the floor and covered my head with my hands. Something hit my head—one of the candles from the smell of it. For some reason that pissed me off. I raised myself up onto my elbows and shouted at the wind.
“If this is how you act when a girl says no, I’m glad I sent you away. I sure as hell wasn’t going to fall in love with you.”
A clap of thunder shook the house, followed by a flash of lightning that lit up the room. It occurred to me that I’d better get away from the window and leave the room. I got gingerly to my feet and duck-walked across the floor, glass and salt crackling under my boots. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get the door open, but the moment I touched the iron doorknob the door swung open. “Thank you, Brock,” I whispered under my breath. The minute I stepped through the door it slammed behind me. The sound was echoed by another crash, this one coming from downstairs.Shit, I thought. I’d forgotten all about Phoenix.
When I got downstairs I found Phoenix sitting up on the couch, her eyes wide with fright, her hair standing up like an Andy Warhol wig, but otherwise okay. All the windows downstairshad been closed and miraculously they’d all held against the wind. The banging was coming from the front door.
“Shouldn’t we get that?” Phoenix asked.
Could a disanimate creature knock at the front door? Maybe, but it was far too polite for my incubus.
I went to the door, wishing it had a peephole. I could have asked who was there, but I doubted I would have been able to hear any response over the lashing wind and rain outside. I opened the door.
The three figures standing in the light of my front porch were so muffled and wrapped in layers of wool, down, and fur that I didn’t recognize them at first. They might have been the three magi—or the three witches inMacbeth. Only when the middle one turned down the collar of her fur coat and spoke did I recognize my boss, Elizabeth Book.
“Hello, Callie, dear. Won’t you invite us in?”
I looked from her to Diana Hart, zipped up to her wide-open eyes in a bright red down parka, and then to Soheila Lilly, muffled in a burgundy wool cloak.
“It’s a little early for Thanksgiving dinner,” I said.
“We’re not here for Thanksgiving, dear,” Dean Book said with a sigh. “We’re here for an intervention.”
