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“Oh.” Phoenix looked disappointed, then brightened. “But I sleep on the couch a lot.”
“It’s Callie he wants!” Elizabeth Book said, slapping the table. The sound was echoed by the wind knocking against the shutters. “But we can’t let him have you. You’re too important to us. Now I know you probably have lots more questions, but I believe we should leave them till later—after we’ve banished this demon from your house.”
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Yes, together the three of us can—as long as you truly want him gone. Are you sure you’re not harboring any hidden…um, affection for this creature?”
I considered the question. I’d certainly been infatuated with him—besotted, a voice inside my head mocked,a sex slave—and I’d felt some sympathy for him after hearing that he’d once been human. When I recalled the gentle creature who had appeared in my dreams after my parents died I felt a pang of loyalty, but either this wasn’t the same creature who had appeared to me or he had changed. I hadn’t liked the high-handed approach he’d taken upstairs. He’d been arrogant and imperious. The nerve of him saying I didn’t love Paul because I’d been waiting for him! No way was I going to fall in love with a guy like that.
“Not at all,” I said. “Let’s show him the door.”
Once we had gathered fresh supplies—salt, spices, a new covered dish (an iron blue enamel Le Creuset casserole with a heavy lid), fresh candles, a broom and dustpan—we started up the stairs. Dean Book and I went first, Soheila next, Diana and Phoenix bringing up the rear.
“Is it really such a good idea to include Phoenix?” I lowered my voice even though the wind was so loud I doubted she could have heard me if I shouted.
“We don’t have any other choice,” she replied. “She’s saferinthe circle than outside of it.”
That gave me a little chill, but I told myself that these women knew what they were doing and that I was safer now with company than I’d been alone. When I put my hand on the doorknob and Diana called “Wait” from the end of the hall, though, I half hoped she meant to call the whole thing off. She was standing outside the closed door to the spare bedroom in which I’d been keeping Dahlia LaMotte’s papers, her eyes wide.
“We need some iron to keep the circle grounded,” she said. “I can tell there’s iron in here, but I can’t get it. Neither can Soheila.” She turned to Phoenix. “Can you?”
Phoenix opened the door and gave a little squeak. “Oh look, it’s like they’re waiting for us!”
I came down the hall and looked into the room. The five iron doormice, which I was quite sure I’d left weighing down stacks of manuscript pages, were standing in a line, their little paws held out like toddlers’, waiting to be picked up.
“Perfect,” Diana said. “Phoenix, could you …?”
Phoenix was already kneeling to pick up the doormice. I didn’t see how she could carry more than three so I stooped to pick up the last two—including the one with the paint splotch and broken tail.
“My little wounded soldier,” I said. “Called back into the fray.”
Diana gave me a quizzical look and whispered something in Elizabeth’s ear.
“Maybe,” the dean said, giving me a curious look.
“What?” I asked, my voice shrill against the moaning wind outside.
“You’re part fey so you shouldn’t like touching iron, but it doesn’t seem to bother you at all,” Diana said.
“Your body has found a way to neutralize the iron’s power,” the dean said. “Which might be why the iron didn’t work to keep the incubus out.”
“Fascinating,” Soheila said. “Casper will want to write a paper on it.”
“Well, we can tell him about it in the morning,” Elizabeth said with a rueful smile. “If we’re all still here in the morning.”
I thought she must be exaggerating the danger until I opened my bedroom door. In the light from the hallway (all the lightbulbs in the bedroom had been shattered), the room looked as if it had been ravaged by a wild animal. Salt, melted wax, and broken glass were strewn across the floor. The sheets had been torn from the bed. The mattress had been ripped to shreds. On the wooden headboard were five long gashes that looked like the mark of a clawed beast.
“You certainly made him angry,” Soheila said, examining the claw mark. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice. “What did you say to him?”
I tried to remember our little dialogue, but like most lovers’ spats it was hard to unwind its logic, if any. Somehow it had gone rather quickly from him asking my name to me getting pissed off at him. Oh yeah, now I remembered.
“I told him that there was more to love than being good in the sack.”
Soheila’s eyes widened. Diana clapped a hand over hermouth to stifle a laugh and glanced over toward Elizabeth Book, but the dean was staring at something on the floor.
“I think this is his reply,” she said.
I came around the bed and looked at the floor. Written in the salt were two words:What more?
