Incubus

by Carol Goodman

  “It sounds like a reasonable plan,” I said. “You were lucky to have a girlfriend who believed in your promise and didn’t begrudge you a chance in the world.”

  “Yes,” he replied, downing the last of his bourbon. “I was lucky. I just didn’t realize it. And I didn’t realize how I’d change. I was so excited to be in the big city, surrounded by brilliant people … my professors, sure, but also the other students. Folks who had grown up with books and educated conversation. There was a particular set of Anglo-Irish students who’d gone to boarding school together that I fell in with: Robin Allsworthy and his pal Dugan Scott and Robin’s cousin, Moira. I thought they were very glamorous. Everyone in our year looked up to them and talked about them. When they befriended me I couldn’t believe my luck. I think I was in love with all three of them, but of course Jeannie didn’t see it that way.”

  “How did she find out about Moira?”

  “She came in the last week before Christmas break – this time of year, come to think of it. It was meant to be a surprise. She’d gotten a room at a fancy hotel …” He blushed. “We hadn’t … you know, been together like that and I think she was afraid that’s why I’d become distant from her. But when she came I was out in the pubs with Robin, Dugan and Moira celebrating the end of finals. Poor Jeannie went from pub to pub, following our trail. When at last she found us she saw me with Moira. It was only a drunken snog … I can’t even remember how it happened, but I’ll never forget Jeannie’s face.”

  He fell silent, staring into the fire as if he could see his childhood sweetheart’s face in the flames.

  “Did you try to explain?” I asked after a few moments.

  He shook his head. “She ran away. The streets were crowded around the pubs and I lost her. I looked everywhere for her, but finally Robin, Dugan and Moira convinced me I should go back to my room and call the hotel. When the hotel said she’d checked out my friends convinced me that she must have gone home and I could put things right when I went home for the holidays.”

  He lapsed into silence again, staring now into the empty bottom of his glass. I didn’t prompt him this time. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing the end of this story.

  “But she hadn’t gone home. Three days after she disappeared they found her body in the River Liffey,” he said at last.

  “Do you think she …?”

  He looked up before I could finish the question. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “Did she kill herself? Did she fall? Did someone push her? I’ll never know. But what does it matter? It might as well have been me who pushed her into the river. It was my fault she died.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He grimaced. “That’s what Moira said. She told me that Jeannie had been weak.”

  I winced, and he nodded at my reaction. “Yes, I know, how craven was I to listen to her? But I did because I wanted desperately to forget Jeannie. I spent the next three and a half years with Moira, learning to drink and indulge in other inebriants, and acquiring expensive and dangerous tastes. In my worst moments I found myself thinking I’d been lucky that Jeannie had died … and then I would drink to forget I’d ever had that thought. It’s a miracle I finished college. Somehow I managed to keep writing. I had one teacher who believed in me despite my debauchery and he got me the fellowship to Oxford. I thought Moira would be thrilled. She was always talking about getting out of Ireland, but then it turned out she’d made other plans. She and Dugan were going to Paris together to study painting. She told me not to worry, that we’d see each other on holidays, that we’d figure something out.”

  It was just what I’d said a moment ago about Paul and me.

  “Instead I figured out that I didn’t mean anything to her. I’d just been an amusement. I sobered up then – literally and figuratively – and started writing about Jeannie, always hoping, I think, to find her again in my poetry.”

  “And you haven’t … been with anyone since?”

  He put his empty glass down on the table and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked up at me. Despite all he’d drunk, his eyes were clear. “Not seriously. I’d had enough of girls like Moira and when I meet someone who reminds me of Jeannie … well, I remember what I did to her. I see her face … so, my relationships don’t usually last too long.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that there are more than two kinds of women? That not every woman is an innocent like Jeannie – or a bitch like Moira.”

  He laughed at that. “You make a good point. Perhaps …” He leaned farther forward, his hands braced on his knees.

  For the second time tonight I thought he was going to try to kiss me … but he was just getting to his feet.

  “Perhaps I should consider that when I haven’t had quite this much to drink. Thanks for telling me about Nicky Ballard,” he said, walking to the door. I followed him. “I think it’ll help in dealing with her. Maybe between the two of us we can keep her from going the way of her mother and grandmother.”

  “That’s why you worry so much about your students,” I said when we reached the door. “Because of what happened to Jeannie.”

  “I’d like to think I’d care even if Jeannie were still alive. Look at you. You care about your students and nothing so awful happened. You’ve still got your Paul.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, opening the door for him. He rocked forward unsteadily on his heels, but this time I had no illusion that he was going to kiss me. He was just drunk. I gave him a little push out the door. “Think you can make it across the street?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” he assured me. “I just hope I can make it upstairs without breaking any ornaments or dragging down the holly swags on the banister.”

  I wished him good luck as he turned to go. He staggered a bit at the foot of the porch steps, but then I saw that he was just looking at one of the frozen ornaments Brock had made for me – the one with the fairy stone embedded in the ice. After a moment of studying it, he weaved across my front lawn, leaving a meandering trail of footprints in the new snow. I watched until he made it across the street up to the porch. Then he turned and waved as if he’d known all along that I’d been watching him.

  I got out my phone to call Paul when I went back in, guilty that I’d missed our midnight call, but I didn’t want to call right away. While I was feeding Ralph – he’d stayed hidden when Liam was here – I wondered if I should tell Paul that I’d spent the evening with the new Irish heartthrob writer-in-residence. I’d already told him all the girls had crushes on him. Or maybe I should just tell him I’d been busy grading term papers.

  “What do you think, Ralph?” I asked the little mouse as I scooped him up in my hand and carried him upstairs. “A little white lie? Or maybe it wouldn’t hurt to make Paul a teensy bit jealous just so he doesn’t take me for granted.”

  Ralph’s cheeks were bulging with cheese so he didn’t answer. Not that he’d shown any talent for communication so far, magic doormouse or not.

  But Paul had spared me the choice between lying and teasing. When I got upstairs and flipped open my phone I saw that there was a text message from him.

  Missed your call tonight and have to GT bed early. Change of plans: I’m coming to NYC for interview and have booked room at Ritz-Carlton Battery Park and cancelled your flight to LA. I’ll explain when I see you. < 3 Paul.

  I texted back asking him who the interview was with. It was unusual for a university to interview over the winter break – and even more unusual for Paul to stay at a hotel as pricey as the Ritz-Carlton. But since he didn’t reply to my text I’d just have to wait until tomorrow to find out what was going on.

  I fell asleep quickly, no doubt aided by all the bourbon I’d drunk, but then woke with a start in the middle of the night. What if Paul had booked the fancy hotel because he was planning to surprise me with the news that he’d finally gotten a job in New York? And what if he was planning to celebrate by asking me to ma
rry him? It had long been understood between us (I couldn’t remember who had first broached the subject) that we’d get married as soon as he got a job in New York and we could live together. Why else would he pay for such a fancy hotel? And why, I asked myself with my hand clamped over my left breast, was my heart beating so hard? I sat up in bed and looked toward the window. No moonlight poured in tonight, no shadow branches fell on the floor. I got up and walked to the window, my bare feet cold on the uncarpeted floor, and saw why. It was snowing again – a soft, feathery snow that absorbed the moonlight and cast a hushed pall over the outside world. I sat on the windowsill and looked up at the flakes spinning out of the black sky. They looked like an unwinding spiral staircase. Ralph crawled out of his basket and curled up in my lap. I sat watching the snow for a long time, wondering why I didn’t feel happier.

  The next few days were consumed with finals, grades and student conferences. I tried calling Paul but my calls always went to voice mail. When I texted him he texted back that he’d explain everything when we saw each other in the city on the 22nd. Paul was lousy at keeping secrets. He probably knew that if we talked I’d get him to tell me where he was interviewing and why he’d booked the room at the Ritz-Carlton. When I found myself hoping that he wouldn’t get the job I knew I had a problem, but I pushed the thought away and focused on my last conference of the semester – the one with Nicky Ballard.

  Although I hadn’t seen Liam Doyle since the night of the first snow, he had emailed me. I’ve got an idea about Nicky Ballard, he had written and then gone on to explain a plan he had for keeping Nicky on the straight and narrow. I was supposed to implement the first part of the plan on the last day of the semester. Most of the students had already left for their homes, but Nicky, since she lived in town, had volunteered for the last conference slot. Since there was a faculty holiday party that started at sunset, I came to our meeting dressed up.

  “Wow!” Nicky cried when I took my coat off, “You look great!”

  “Thanks, Nicky.” I was wearing a silver dress that I’d bought last Christmas at Barney’s and the diamond studs my aunt had given me for my 21st birthday. “I do plan to change my shoes.” I held up a pair of silver heels over the sheepskin boots I had on.

  “It’s a good thing you’re wearing the boots,” Nicky said. “It’s supposed to go down into the teens tonight.”

  I shammed a shiver. “Brrr, do you ever get used to the cold here?”

  Nicky laughed. “Truthfully? No. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere warm.”

  “You should try it sometime. Take your junior year abroad in Spain, or do a semester archeology dig in Mexico, or do your postgraduate work at UT Austin. They have a great writing program.”

  Nicky’s eyes shone at each suggestion I made, but the lights quickly went out. “I couldn’t,” she said. “My grandmother needs me and I’m pretty sure my scholarship only covers tuition here.”

  “Hmm … I’ll ask Dean Book about that. In the meantime, I wanted to talk to you about an idea for an independent study class – actually, it was Professor Doyle’s idea.”

  “Really? You’ve talked to Professor Doyle about me?”

  “Yes, he’s very impressed with the poems you’ve been writing.”

  “He’s been awfully nice about them … he’s awfully nice. Don’t you think so?”

  “Um, yes, he is very nice, but that isn’t the reason he likes your poems. Your poetry is very good—”

  “And so handsome! Don’t you think he’s handsome?” Nicky asked, a dreamy expression on her face.

  “I suppose so,” I answered as tersely as I could. “But Professor Doyle’s looks are not what I want to talk to you about. He – we – had an idea for an independent class that would combine the poetry you’re writing with research into the themes of your poetry. For instance, you use the motif of the captive maiden, a motif that appears in fairy tales such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty, and in Gothic fiction …”

  “Oh, like the way Emily St. Aubert is trapped in the castle of Udolpho,” Nicky volunteered. “Or Bertha Rochester is locked up in the attic of Thornfield Hall.”

  “Exactly,” I replied, although I hadn’t been thinking of Bertha Rochester, who dies at the end of Jane Eyre. The idea was to have Nicky identify with the captive maidens of myth and literature who escape in the end. Liam thought that if Nicky could plot an escape for her fictional alter ego, she might not fall victim to the fate of all the Ballard women before her. Of course, Liam didn’t know about the curse, but when I’d run the idea by Soheila she had thought it couldn’t hurt. At least it was something to do. I’d read through the spell lexicon looking for ways to avert a curse but they all required knowing who had cast it. Anton Volkov had been away at a conference for the last few days so I hadn’t been able to find out the names of the two witches who might have cursed the Ballards. For now, this was the best I could do. “So do you like the idea?”

  “Yes. Would I be working with both of you together, or one at a time?”

  “Oh, we hadn’t discussed that. I suppose we could each meet individually with you or we could all three meet together. Which would you prefer?”

  “I’d like to meet all together,” Nicky replied immediately. “I really like Professor Doyle, but whenever I’m alone with him I get so nervous I can hardly speak. It will be better if you’re there.”

  I smiled indulgently at Nicky, as if it had been years since I’d experienced such nerves. “Good, it’s settled then. I’ll talk to Professor Doyle about a time that will work for all of us when I see him at the party this evening.” I looked at my watch. “Which I’d better be getting to.”

  “Oh yes, you don’t want to be late for the holiday party. It’s a tradition at Fairwick. Of course, students don’t get to go to it. We’re all supposed to be off the campus by sunset today. They lock the gates an hour after dusk.”

  “Do they?” I’d never seen the southeast gate closed, let alone locked. “Well then, you’d best be going. I wouldn’t want you to get locked into the campus the whole break.” Nicky and I both laughed at the idea, but it occurred to me that it would be just the kind of thing that would happen in the Gothic novels we’d been reading.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WHEN I GOT to Briggs Hall I stopped in the coatroom in the lobby to shuck off my long down coat and swap my boots for party shoes. While I was trying to tighten the buckle on my right shoe I heard whispering coming from the back of the coatroom. I froze, poised awkwardly on one leg, and listened.

  “You would tell me if there was something really wrong, wouldn’t you?” a woman’s plaintive voice pleaded. I hated to be eavesdropping on what sounded like a lover’s quarrel, but I was afraid that if I moved I would give away my presence. So I listened, waiting for a response, but none came.

  “After all, you’ve known her longer than I have and I know how much you care for her.”

  “Hmm … not a lovers’ quarrel then. Perhaps a ménage a trois? I had to admit I was curious now. I stealthily pushed aside a layer of heavy winter coats … and uncovered Diana Hart standing alone beside Liz Book’s fur coat.

  “Diana?” I asked, too startled to worry about keeping my presence secret. “Are you okay?”

  Diana looked up guiltily, her eyes bloodshot and bleary. “I’m fi-ine,” she warbled, her chin quivering. “It’s Lizzie I’m worried about. She’s fading away and I can’t figure out why. I thought I’d ask Ursuline, but she won’t tell me.”

  I glanced at the fur coat, which I had seen move to protect its owner when Phoenix had flown at her. The coat hung still on a padded hanger now, its sheen faded.

  “And look!” Diana stroked her hand down the lapel of the coat and then held it up to me. Long brown hairs clung to her palm. “She’s shedding in the middle of the winter. She must be sick, too.”

  “Could that be why Liz is ill? If her familiar is sick, could it make her sick?”

  Diana furrowed her freckled b
row and pressed her face against the dull fur. “I don’t know. A witch and her familiar are interconnected. Usually the familiar grows weak because the witch is sick, but I suppose it could happen the other way around. But then what is making Ursuline sick?”

  I touched the fur coat gingerly. I remembered when I had held the coat the night of the ice storm it had bristled with static electricity, but now it lay limp and inert under my hand. Something was wrong with it.

  “Gosh, I have no idea. Are there vets for familiars? I don’t suppose you could take it to the Goodnoughs.”

  “Oh my no! Abby and Russell have a Humane Society sticker on their car – I’m sure they would disapprove of fur coats! I’d have to coax Ursuline into taking bear-shape.” We both looked at the coat dubiously. Diana may have been trying to figure out how to turn the coat back into a bear, but I was remembering how large and fierce the creature on the porch had been, and planning my retreat.

  “Well, you let me know how that goes,” I said, backing out of the coatroom. “I guess I’ll go into the party now.”

  “You do that, dear,” Diana said absently. “I’ll be along in a moment. I’m just going to spend a few more minutes with Ursuline.”

  I left Diana murmuring to the coat and walked toward the Main Parlor, brushing brown hairs off my silver dress. My head was down looking for stray hairs, so it wasn’t until I was in the doorway that I looked up and saw how the room had been transformed. I’d admired the stately hall the last time I’d been in it, but the heavy drapes had been drawn over the windows then. Today the drapes had been pushed back, revealing a wall of glass facing the western mountains. The sun hovered just inches above the highest, turning the sky a brilliant fiery red and the mountains a deep violet. Swaths of russet light poured in through the glass, deepening the colors of the Persian rug and turning the oak beams and panels a rich honey gold. It was the painted triptych, though, that was most affected by the light; it seemed to bring the figures to life. The gilt on the horses’ bridles and saddles gleamed like real gold, the grass and leaves sparkled as if freshly dewed, and the faces of the men and women glowed as though blood flowed through their veins – all but the Fairy Queen, whose face, untouched by the sunlight, remained pale and icy. I was so busy looking at the painting that I hardly noticed the human inhabitants of the party until Soheila Lilly appeared at my side with a glass of champagne for me.