Incubus

by Carol Goodman

  “Great. I’ll do that the next time I get into the city. Do you have the names of the witches Anton identified?”

  “I did … somewhere around here …” Liz swiveled her chair to face a tall filing cabinet behind her. She pulled open a crowded drawer and fished around in it. She sighed heavily, but then perked up when a book slid off the top of the filing cabinet and into her lap. “Why, here’s your spellbook!” She handed me a nondescript book in a green library binding. “But I can’t seem to find that list. Perhaps you could just go to Anton and ask him for the names. That might be the easiest thing.”

  “Sure,” I said, “only I don’t really know him. I saw him at the faculty party, but I wasn’t introduced. Isn’t he … I mean, Nicky Ballard told me that he and his colleagues live together in town and that there are some strange stories about them …” Like the fact that they were never seen before nightfall, I recalled.

  Liz waved a limp hand to dismiss my concerns. “You mustn’t listen to such gossip. Anton is quite charming. Really, you should go talk to him if you’re concerned about Nicky. He’s made quite a study of her. His office is in Bates Hall. It’s the building up on the hill.”

  “Okay. I guess I will then.”

  “Good.” The dean looked happy to have something settled – and eager to end the meeting. She looked like she could do with a nap. The end of the semester must be a trying time – especially a semester that had included an incubus invasion, a fraud scandal, and an ice storm. It would age anyone and, it suddenly occurred to me, I had no idea how old Elizabeth Book really was. If her magical powers had been keeping her young, perhaps if those powers waned she would grow old very quickly. The idea made me feel suddenly uncomfortable and sad for her.

  I got up to go, clutching my new spellbook. “I’ll go see Professor Volkov right away.”

  “There is one thing I should warn you about.”

  “Oh?”

  “While I applaud your desire to help Nicky Ballard, you must be careful not to burn yourself out. I was just saying this to Mr. Doyle earlier today. Today’s young people – especially the ones we get here at Fairwick – need so much attention. They can suck you dry.”

  The comment startled me. It was not the kind of thing I’d have expected Dean Book – always so poised and gracious – to say. But looking down at her, at the dryness of her skin, the disarray of her hair and the light tremor in her hand, she looked exactly like someone who had been sucked dry.

  I’d never been in Bates Hall, but I’d seen its stone spire in the distance and I knew it housed the Eastern European and Russian Institute—or E.E.R.I. as it was called by the students. It was all by itself on the western edge of campus. I didn’t relish the idea of hiking out there, but I felt I owed it to Nicky. Approaching the building up a steeply ascending path I felt a bit like Jonathan Harker approaching Dracula’s castle in the Carpathians. Maybe that’s why the Eastern European and Russian Institute had chosen it. No one else was on the path. Since it was finals week most of the students were probably holed up in their rooms or in the library studying. The sun was going down behind the western mountains, turning the stone building blood red. With diminishing sunlight the day had turned icy cold, and the gray clouds massing in the north threatened snow. The Weather Channel had been predicting the first snow of the season for days now. I almost turned back, but then I recalled my promise to Nicky’s grandmother. The stone building was cold and quiet inside. My steps echoed as I walked down a long hallway, past yellowing maps of countries that no longer existed and glass cases of pottery shards and broken statuary – relics of some ancient Slavic civilization. I stopped to read a list of course offerings in the department. The classes ranged through the Russian language, nineteenth century Russian literature, Balkan folklore, Byzantine and Ottoman history, and Russian guitar poetry. Pretty impressive for a college of Fairwick’s size, I thought. Usually it was only the big universities – Harvard, the U. of Chicago – that could devote so many classes to a rather obscure subject area. I wondered if some rich Fairwick alum had endowed the department.

  I found Professor Volkov’s office but the door was closed and no one answered my knock. Written in a flowing, old-fashioned script on an ivory card were his winter office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, six to eight in the evening, or by appointment. Great, I thought, Dean Book might have told me that Professor Volkov kept eccentric office hours. I saw by his class schedule that he taught at even stranger hours: 8–9:15 on Mondays and Wednesdays. I was turning to go when I heard a sound coming from behind the closed door. Perhaps Volkov was there after all. I leaned closer to the door and listened. It was a riffling sound – like pages of an old book being flipped, only it went on so long and grew so loud that I began to doubt anyone would flip through a book for so long or so emphatically. No, the longer I listened the more it sounded like wings, as if a large bird had gotten trapped in Professor Volkov’s office.

  I knocked on the door again and the riffling noise stopped. I waited for someone to respond, but no one came to the door and nothing stirred behind it, although I felt sure now that someone – or something – was on the other side of the door. I backed away from the door as quietly as I could and crept back down the hall, with only my own reflection in the glass display cases for company.

  I felt better when I got out of the building and felt the cold air on my face, but then I saw how dark the path was. In the few minutes I had been inside Bates Hall the sun had sunk completely behind the horizon and snow had begun to fall, blurring the edges of the path and filling the woods on either side with cold gray shadows. I walked quickly, chiding myself for the rising panic in my chest. The sound I’d heard in Professor Volkov’s office had only been loose papers blowing in the draft from an open window, I told myself.

  But then why had the sound stopped when I knocked?

  And why did Professor Volkov have such strange office hours and only teach at night?

  I recalled again the town gossip that Nicky had relayed to me about Professor Volkov and his associates. They never went out before dark, there were lights on at their house at all hours … Could they be vampires?

  The sound of wings overhead cut short my reasoning – and the next beat of my heart. I looked behind me and saw, silhouetted against the last red streak in the western sky, a black, winged shape bearing down on me.

  I turned and ran down the steep path. The sound of wings grew louder and I ran faster. At the bottom of the path was a security light above a red campus emergency phone. I wasn’t sure how much good a phone call was going to do me right now, but it was the only goal I had. I made for the light as if it could banish the shadowy thing behind me – a thing that I instinctively felt wasn’t just a bird. Stories about vampires turning into bats were running through my mind as I reached for the phone … and felt my feet slipping in the slick, freshly fallen snow. As I fell the spellbook slipped from my hands and landed open and face up in the snow inches from my nose.

  To halt an attack from above, I read, pronounce the following words while picturing an empty blue sky and waving a feather.

  Great, I thought, as the sound of wings came closer, where was I going to find a feather on such short notice? But I was wearing a down coat, an old one that sometimes leaked …

  I patted my coat until I felt something prickly … and pulled. I waived the tiny feather in my hand while picturing an empty blue sky and pronouncing (correctly I hoped) the three prescribed words:

  Vacuefaca naddel nem!

  Something thumped my back. So much for having magical talents. I turned over, raising my hands to cover my face for protection … and found myself looking up at Liam Doyle.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded, his voice hoarse with concern. “I saw you running down the path as if something were after you.”

  I looked up for the winged creature, but there was nothing but clear blue sky. Snowflakes clung to Liam’s dark hair like stars in a night sky, but the sky itself was rinsed clean
of the storm clouds that had been there a moment ago.

  “I heard something following me.” I didn’t tell him that the sound had come from the sky. He helped me up and we both turned and looked at the path leading up to Bates Hall. Only one set of footprints stood out in the newly fallen snow. “I suppose it could have been my imagination,” I said, feeling foolish.

  “Or it could have been someone in the woods,” Liam said. “A student smoking pot or drinking beer who didn’t want to get caught by a teacher.” I had a feeling he was humoring me, but I didn’t care. I also didn’t care that he was still holding my arm. I was glad to see him.

  “I suppose so, or it could have been an animal.” As we turned to walk toward the main part of campus, he tucked my arm under his elbow. “I hadn’t realized how isolated this part of campus was. What are you doing here?”

  “I was heading to Bates Hall to talk to Professor Demisovski about an independent project for Flonia Rugova. Flonia is writing some lovely poetry in Albanian and I thought if she could read some of the poetry of her homeland it would help her find her voice. I hear that Rea Demisovski is one of the world’s leading experts in Slavic poetry.”

  “You’re certainly very dedicated to your students,” I said.

  He glanced at me, his lips quirking up in a sideways smile. “I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me.”

  I sighed. “I don’t blame you after hearing me mocking your poetry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I don’t know what came over me. I like that poem. Especially the last two lines: And summer once more will make winter liar, but I won’t warm. You’re all I’ll ever desire.”

  He stopped on the path – we had reached the center of the quad where four Japanese maples marked the corners of two diagonally intersecting paths. Their bare branches arched above us, shielding us from the snow. Liam took his glasses off to wipe the snow from the lenses and shook his head, scattering snowflakes from his hair.

  “You memorized lines of my poem. I’m flattered. Unless you memorized them to make fun of it with Frank Delmarco.”

  “No!” I said, touching his arm. He looked up, surprised at the urgency in my voice, and our eyes met for the first time without the barrier of his glasses. They were dark, but there was a light in them, a white spark that gleamed like one of the snowflakes once again spinning out of the night sky. Looking into them made me feel a little dizzy. “I memorized those lines because when I read them for the first time I had to read it again immediately … and then again and again. I couldn’t help but learn it by heart.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. I supposed he was wondering if he could trust me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he decided I was making fun of him again and walked away in disgust.

  “By heart?” he asked, placing his hand over his own heart. “I like that phrase. I suppose that makes more sense than memorizing poetry to make fun of it. Thank you.” He reached his hand toward my face and moved a step closer. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me – I might have leaned a quarter inch closer – but he only brushed some snow from my hair. I shivered as his hand touched my face.

  “Come on, you’d better get home before you turn into one of those ice maidens in Nicky Ballard’s poems.”

  We turned and walked briskly to the southeast gate, our arms no longer linked. “I’ve only read a few of them,” I said, desperate to cover my embarrassment at leaning into an imaginary kiss. Had he noticed? “They’re quite good, aren’t they?”

  “They’re brilliant! She’s invented a whole mythology of these frozen women who live inside the walls of an ice palace. In order for the intrepid heroine to free herself she has to listen to the story of each one of the ice wardens. Telling their stories makes them thaw, but each story forms an ice crystal in the heroine’s heart. The question is whether she frees herself before her heart freezes.”

  “Brrr.” I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. “It makes me cold just thinking about it. Poor Nicky. She shouldn’t have to deal with this at her age.”

  “Deal with what?” Liam asked as we passed through the southeast gate.

  Too late I realized I couldn’t tell him about the curse but I could, however, tell him about Nicky’s family. We stopped in the middle of the road – equidistant between my house and the inn. Glancing behind him at the gaily decorated Hart Brake Inn – Diana had gone all out with colored lights, swags of holly and pine, and an entire team of illuminated reindeer – I felt a pang that I’d condemned him to spending Christmas in Toyland.

  “It’s a long story. Would you like to come in for a drink?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound casual. “Perhaps something not cocoa – or nog-based?”

  He laughed. “Yes, I’d like that very much.” And then, leaning close enough that I could feel his warm breath tickling my frozen earlobe, he whispered conspiratorially, “But you have to promise not to serve any cookies or brownies with it. I’m beginning to feel like Hansel being fattened for the oven by the Wicked Witch.”

  I laughingly promised not to serve any baked goods and then assured him that Diana, at least, was not a witch. I didn’t tell him that after my first successful spell I was wondering whether I was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LUCKILY, I STILL had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s left over from Phoenix’s stash. I poured us two glasses while Liam lit a fire in the library fireplace.

  “What a great room!” he enthused. “I’ve never lived long enough anywhere to have my books in one place.”

  “Oh?” I remarked casually, determined not to reveal how much I knew about his peripatetic lifestyle from my internet searches. “I suppose a writer-in-residence must move around a lot.”

  “Yeah, that’s my excuse,” he said, smiling ruefully and saluting me with his glass of bourbon. “But sometimes I wonder if I don’t use the job as an excuse to move on. Like I’m under a curse that keeps me from staying in any one place for too long. Maybe that’s why I’m so touched by Nicky Ballard’s poems. They sound like they’re written by a girl who thinks she’s doomed.”

  I stared at him, wondering if he did know something about the Ballard curse, but then I realized that he’d just cleverly deflected the subject from his own history to Nicky’s. Well, talking about Nicky was the reason I’d asked him in. Wasn’t it?

  “It is almost like she’s cursed,” I said, carefully navigating around the couch and sitting down in the armchair by the fire. He took the opposite chair and I proceeded to tell him what I’d heard about the Ballard family, avoiding any supernatural elements and focusing instead on the legacy of dwindling fortunes, disappointed women, teenage pregnancy, and alcoholism.

  “Poor Nicky,” he said when I’d finished. “I’ve passed by that house. You can guess the family’s blighted from the street. She must feel it’s inevitable that she’s going to wind up like her mother and grandmother. We have to keep her from making their mistakes.”

  “We?”

  “Don’t you know how much Nicky admires you, Cailleach?” It was the first time he’d said my name in full and it caught me by surprise. Most people didn’t pronounce it right on the first try.

  “I think it’s you she admires … Liam. Come on, surely you know that every girl in your class has a crush on you.”

  “Now you’re teasing me again, and I’m dead serious. Nicky talks about you all the time. She thinks the sun rises and sets on you. She especially admires how independent you are, you being a woman on her own and all.”

  “Oh, well … actually, you know, I do have a boyfriend.”

  Liam’s mouth twitched and he looked away. The reflection of the firelight flashed across the lenses of his glasses, so I couldn’t see his expression. “No, actually I didn’t know. Brilliant. What’s his name? And where is he?” He looked around the room as if I had a man hiding under the couch.

  “Paul. He’s finishing up his doctorate in economics at U.C.L.A. I’m going to California to visit him next week. Hopefully he’ll get a j
ob on the East Coast next year.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll figure something out. What about you? It must be hard maintaining a relationship with all the traveling you do.” I lifted my glass to take another sip of bourbon but found the glass was empty.

  Liam picked up the bottle and leaned across to fill my glass. “Yes, I think that may be why I do it. I haven’t … well, something happened to me in college and I haven’t really wanted to ‘get involved,’ as you Americans say, since then.”

  “Bad break up?”

  He grimaced. “Not exactly,” he replied. “It’s …”

  “Complicated?” I suggested when it looked like he wasn’t going to finish his sentence. I was only trying to lighten the mood, but when he turned away from the fire and took his glasses off to wipe his eyes I was sorry.

  “I suppose you could say that. You see, she … Jeannie, my childhood sweetheart … she died.”

  “It was my first year at Trinity,” Liam began after I refilled our glasses. “I came from a little town in the west. My father was a horse-trainer and Jeannie’s family ran the drapery shop – in Ireland that means a shop that sells just about anything made out of cloth. We’d known each other since we were children. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t already planning to spend my life with her. But I also loved reading and writing … and I was good at them. I started winning poetry contests when I was ten. Jeannie was so proud of me. It was she who talked me into trying for the scholarship to Trinity … and she who told me I had to go when I got it. She told me we’d be together on holidays and when we’d saved up enough money she’d come join me in Dublin.”