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FORTY
It took a long time to get out of the woods that day. Frank couldn’t put any weight on his right leg (it would turn out to be broken in two places) and he wouldn’t leave his baseball bat behind.
“Are you kidding? It’s signed by Bucky Dent!”
“Okay,” I said, lifting the bat in my left hand while using the right to support his weight. “How did you get it, anyway?”
I meant how did he happen to get it before chasing Mara and me into the woods, but he responded by telling me a long story about how the bat had been signed by Bucky Dent outside Fenway Park after he hit his famous three-run home run to beat the Red Sox in a one game playoff to end the 1978 season.
“Jeez, Frank, you being a witch and all, couldn’t you have brought somethingmagicto save me?”
“Magic? Weren’t you listening, woman? The bat’s signed by Bucky fucking Dent. Itismagic!”
He continued to splutter about the magical properties of sports memorabilia, distracting himself (as I’d hoped) from the pain. Only when we were in sight of the house and Brock, Dory, and Diana were running toward us did he add: “The Bucky Dent bat was in my trunk. I carry it in case I run into any crazies on the road. I grabbed it when I saw that giant bird chase you into the woods.”
His remark was loud enough to be overheard by the others and he repeated it as Diana drove us to the hospital. Frank repeated it so many times that I thought he might be going intoshock, but then I realized he was just trying to preserve his cover by adamantly denying that he’d witnessed anything supernatural. When he was wheeled into surgery he winked at me and made me promise I’d make sure his Bucky Dent bat was safe.
I stayed at the hospital until Soheila showed up. “Tell Frank I went back to make sure Bucky Dent was safe,” I said, getting up to leave.
She looked at me strangely but settled in to wait for Frank to regain consciousness.
Everyone looked at me strangely for the next few days. I think they were afraid I was in shock and would soon lapse into the depression I’d wallowed in after I’d banished Liam. When I told Liz and Diana what had happened they both looked guilty. “So it wasn’t Liam who was feeding on the students,” Diana said. “Or on Liz.”
“I should have realized that I was always more tired after Mara had been with me,” Liz said. “Ishouldhave realized what she was.”
When I paid a visit to Soheila after break, she told me she felt badly that she hadn’t recognized Mara for what she was.
“You shouldn’t feel bad,” I told her. “She told me herself that even Liam hadn’t recognized what she was. What exactly was she, anyway?”
“A liderc,” she told me, taking down Fraser’sDemonologyfrom the shelf and opening it to an illustration of a chicken with a woman’s head. “It’s a sort of Hungarian succubus, distantly related to us lilitu. They shapeshift into birds—chickens, usually, but sometimes crows—in order to hunt their prey and then feed on the life force of their victims through close contact. Not through sex, as a rule.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” I hadn’t liked the idea of Mara having sex with all her victims. “So she could have been the one making me weak, not Liam.”
“That could be, but the fact remains that Liam was an incubusand you were having sex with him. Sooner or later he would have drained you.”
How much later?I wondered, but didn’t ask aloud. I knew Soheila—as well as Diana, Brock, Dory, and Liz—were afraid I’d have some sort of breakdown if I thought that I’d banished Liam for nothing. But I wasn’t going to have a breakdown. At least not if I kept busy.
As the days grew longer and warmer I subjected Honeysuckle House to an orgy of spring cleaning. I packed up Liam’s clothes and books and stored them in the attic. I dusted and scrubbed and washed all the windows. While dusting my desk I found a key that fit the locked drawer. Inside was another key—an iron key identical to the one Brock had made for me to send Liam back to the Borderlands. So he’d been sent there before—and then released. I wondered why and when.
While cleaning out the pantry I dislodged a shadowy lump with the mop and quickly recognized it as the shadow-crab. I poured a bucket of bleach over it and it shriveled up into a gray film that I briskly mopped up. Then I ran upstairs and found Ralph sitting up in his basket, cleaning himself.
“You’re back!” I ran down and got a whole mini Bonbel for him to eat. While I was gone he found his way onto my laptop and typed,Is the incubus gone?
So Ralph had known all along.Andhe knew how to type! No wonder he’d always been trying to hop on my laptop. I told him the whole story while he ate enough cheese to bloat his stomach. Then he typed a single word on the screen.
Sorry!
I rubbed his little bloated belly. “It’s okay, fella, at least I’ve got you back. I don’t suppose you would have liked sharing the house with an incubus.” But Ralph was already asleep, snoring loudly enough to reassure me that he hadn’t lapsed into another coma.
After I scoured the house and made a list of more substantial outdoor repairs that I would need to tackle in the summer, Iturned my attention to my students. I’d taken over the creative writing class again, so I had plenty to keep me busy. I was afraid they’d spend all their time bemoaning Liam’s absence, but the first time Scott Wilder (back from his medical leave looking drowsy as ever) mentioned Liam’s name, Nicky shot him an icy stare and no one ever brought him up again. Still, I saw Liam’s influence in their writing—in a new openness and sensitivity to language I hadn’t seen when I’d taught the class in the fall. He’d given them the confidence to experiment and find their own voices. Especially Nicky.
She had written a beautiful series of poems on the theme of a young girl trapped in an ice palace populated by frozen guardians. Each one had a story to tell. I recognized in each story a bit of Nicky’s family history, a bit of the Romantic heroines we’d read about in class, and more than a bit of Nicky’s fears about her future.
When I see how their dreams have gone awry, she wrote,I wonder how I will my fate mollify.
May 2, Nicky’s birthday, was fast approaching, and I was no closer to averting the Ballard curse. To keep her close to me I hired her to take Mara’s place as my assistant. I showed her the charts that Mara had been keeping on Dahlia’s notebooks and she laughed when I explained Mara’s asterisk system.
“She was a strange one,” Nicky said, shaking her head. “Kind of a prude. She was always so shocked when I stayed at Ben’s, but then she’d always sit too close—you know what I mean?—and ask the most embarrassing questions. I figured she was trying to understand our culture, but sometimes it felt like she was trying to suck up all my experiences. Anyway, it’s too bad her visa expired. Do you think she’ll come back?”
