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“I always knew I had some fairy blood in me,” she crowedonce we were all seated around the kitchen table with tea and donuts, the wind howling outside.
“Sorry, dear,” Diana said, patting Phoenix’s hand. “I’m pretty sure you haven’t a drop. But Callie here…I had my suspicions from the start, but I wasn’t sure until she rescued that bird from the thicket…”
“Well, then I can be a witch, right? I’ve long been a follower of Wicca. Can you train me?”
“That’s not a good idea given your mental health profile,” Soheila said—a bit too brusquely, I thought. She was clearly the most impatient of the three to get on with banishing the incubus. Maybe it took a demon to know what one was capable of, but I had a bunch of questions of my own.
“Is the whole faculty made up of fairies and witches and”—I still felt a little uncomfortable calling Soheila a demon—“other supernatural creatures?”
“Oh no, not at all!” Elizabeth cried. “Imagine the trouble we’d get in with the MLA! But we do keep an eye out for hires who might have fey ancestry or hidden necromantic talents. Not that we can always tell right away, especially with those who don’t know they are descended from witches or the fey. You, for instance. Given your interest in fairy tales and folklore I suspected there might be something there, but I didn’t sense any witch’s power in you…” She paused, a troubled look on her face. “But when you told Diana that you’d released a bird from the thicket we realized you must have a fey ancestor—and a very particular kind of fairy—one who is able to open and close the door to the world of Faerie. A doorkeeper.”
“There’s a door to Faerie here…” Diana said, cutting her eyes toward the back of the house. “…in the woods. After the fey departed the Old World for Faerie some found their way though this door back into the human world.”
“There was another door east of here on the Hudson River, but that closed almost a hundred years ago.” Dean Book’s voice trembled and Diana patted her hand.
“As far as we know,” Soheila added, “this is the last door to Faerie.”
“The humans we found here,” Diana continued, “the Native Americans, were happy to share their land with us. And then the first Colonial settlers who came into the area were witches exiled from Salem and other colonies inhospitable to the old religion.”
“You see,” Elizabeth said, taking up Diana’s narrative like picking up a stitch she had dropped, “the old world witches worshipped the old gods, the horned god…”
“Cernunnos,” Diana whispered.
“Mithra,” Soheila breathed.
“And the Triple Goddess,” Elizabeth continued.
“Morrigan,” Diana said.
“Anahita,” Soheila echoed.
“And so the two groups formed the town,” Dean Book continued, “and named it Fair-Wick to celebrate the union of the fair folk and the witches.”
“The witches were helpful to the fey when they came through the door,” Diana said. “New arrivals are often weak and confused.”
“And the fey taught the witches many secrets of their craft,” Elizabeth added, “just as they had in the Old World. The first witches were humans who mingled with the fey and learned how to use the powers of nature from them—”
“But then,” Diana interrupted, “during the Middle Ages the Old World witches were persecuted because they worshipped the Old Gods. Some of the witches renounced their connection with the fey…”
“But others came here and reestablished their connection with the fey,” Elizabeth continued. “It was decided that a college should be formed to store the knowledge that was accumulated. But as more people came to the area it also became important to safeguard the door…”
“Because not every being that comes through the door is harmless,” Soheila said. “The incubus you’ve encountered, forinstance. He came through more than a century ago and latched on to Dahlia LaMotte. I tried myself to get him to go back…”
“A century ago?” I asked. “So you’re…”
“Older than I look,” Soheila finished for me. “By quite a bit. But even I couldn’t make this creature go back into Faerie. He’s very powerful. It was Angus Fraser who was able finally to drive him into the thicket…into the Borderlands, but he couldn’t drive him though the door back to Faerie. He died before he could do that.” She paused and looked away. Dean Book laid her hand over hers. After a moment Soheila took a deep breath and continued. “After the incubus was driven into the Borderlands we asked Brock—” She saw me about to interrupt and added, “Yes, he’s one of the Norse daevas, once blacksmith to the gods. He and his brother have been here for more than a hundred years. We asked Brock to fit the windows and doors with iron locks to keep the incubus out. We believe Dahlia still let him in, though, from time to time.”
“But she lived a long life,” I said. “I thought the incubi drained their victims until they died.”
Soheila and Elizabeth Book exchanged a worried look. The dean nodded to Soheila to go on. “This incubus seems to know how to keep his victims alive for a long time. If the story about him is true he once was mortal and believes that he’ll regain his mortality when a human falls in love with him. We think that Dahlia found a way to coexist with him. He fed her creativity—but if she grew too weak she could banish him back to the Borderlands for a little while.”
“Sounds a little mean,” I said, wondering if it was Dahlia’s treatment of him that had left him with such a chip on his shoulder.
Soheila clucked her tongue. “You’re thinking he’s the way he is because he’s been treated badly. But you read Angus’s letter. This demon killed his sister. Please don’t underestimate him. And don’t try to make nice to him. Dahlia may have lived a long life, but she had no energy for anything but her books.She couldn’t have a normal relationship, even though I know Brock loved her very much.”
I was about to ask what kind of a normal relationship she could have had with an ancient Norse divinity, but Phoenix spoke up. She’d been following the conversation goggle-eyed, sipping eagerly from her teacup (which I suspected from the smell had been spiked with whiskey). “I’ve been feeling very tired lately. Maybe the incubus has been draining me.”
“I don’t think so,” Diana said, pouring more tea into Phoenix’s cup. “You’ve been sleeping downstairs in Matilda’s cast-iron bed. Iron keeps him away.”
