Dark Possession

by Carol Goodman

  But the nephilim weren’t even fallen angels, as much as they liked to think they were. According to Soheila Lilly, they were elves who had been kicked out of Faerie because they couldn’t keep their hands off human women. For hundreds of years they had nursed their resentment of the fey—and the human witches who aligned themselves with the fey—and conspired with the Grove to close the door to Faerie. Once the fairies—and a number of humans, including Dean Elizabeth Book, who had gone to Faerie with her partner, Diana Hart—were gone, the nephilim had free rein to take over Fairwick. Duncan Laird, their leader, had taken over as dean. I wondered if Liz would have left if she had known what would happen to her beloved college. She would be furious to see the changes that had been made …

  “Are you going to come in, Professor McFay?” A voice came from behind the door. “Or stand out there in the hall all day?”

  I’d forgotten the nephilim had such good ears …

  I opened the door.

  … and such big teeth.

  Duncan Laird, DMA (Doctor of Magical Arts) Oxford, wizard of the Ninth Order, and nephilim, sat behind a large desk, grinning. Even from across the room, those teeth looked too white and shiny, reminding me of the long, sharp fangs he’d revealed when he’d been unmasked and assumed his true shape. I glanced at his hands, folded over a thick folder on top of the desk. They were smooth and manicured, giving no hint of the claws with which he’d nearly slashed my throat—nor was there any sign of the wings that he could extend at will. As I crossed the room, though, I could sense a disturbance in the air, a fluttering … I studied the wall behind Duncan, but all I saw were an array of framed diplomas. Perhaps the sound was my heart pounding with fear.

  “Have a seat, Professor McFay. I won’t bite.”

  “You tried to rip my throat out,” I reminded him as I sat on the edge of a leather chair in front of the desk.

  Laird pursed his lips and made a tutting sound, as if recalling some minor social faux pas. “Oh, Callie,” he said, leaning forward, “if I had tried to rip your throat out, you wouldn’t be here right now. I only needed a drop of your blood mixed with the blood of your beloved incubus to close the door. Of course I never intended to harm you.”

  “You killed Bill,” I said.

  “An incubus who had been preying on you!” he exclaimed, spreading his hands out in a gesture of appeasement. The motion had the fluid grace of wings opening, and once again I had the impression of invisible wings beating the air. Was that part of the nephilim’s power? I wondered. Did they use their wings to move and affect the air around them? “Do you really believe you two had a future together?”

  “I loved him,” I answered. “He had just become human.”

  Duncan shook his head. He looked down, noticed the folder on the desk—which I saw was actually a thick envelope with many foreign stamps affixed to it—and turned to put it in the file cabinet behind his desk. “Ah, that was unfortunate timing, then. I had no idea you felt that way about Handyman Bill.”

  “That was only the incarnation he took,” I said defensively. Then, realizing I’d sounded snobbish, I added, “Not that I wouldn’t love a handyman if he was as kind and goodhearted as Bill Carey.” I blinked back tears, determined not to reveal weakness in front of Duncan Laird. I’d worked out why my incubus lover, who’d materialized once as a hunky poetry teacher, had chosen to come to me the second time as a taciturn handyman. He’d inadvertently knocked my own handyman, Brock, from the roof when he arrived from Faerie, so he’d taken the shape I needed most. It had also given him the opportunity to fix some things he’d broken during his incubus rages. In the two months since Bill had died, I’d had ample time to notice all the little things he’d fixed in the house and to appreciate a man who fixed things rather than broke them.

  Duncan Laird canted his head to one side and studied me with sharp blue eyes. I felt a fizzle of electricity at his gaze. It was a sensation I’d mistaken for attraction when I first met him, but now, although I could recognize in the abstract that he was handsome, I knew the sparks between us were warning signs. Still, when he purred, “Is that what you really need most, dear Callie?” I felt a flash of heat course through my body. The nephilim, I’d learned through intensive research these last two months, produced their own Aelvesgold—the magical elixir of Faerie—and could transmit it through the air as an aphrodisiac. Over the millennia, they’d used their powers to seduce human women. I suspected that some of our new freshman class might be the offspring of such unions. Which reminded me …

  “What I really need right now,” I said, slapping the magenta flyer on the desk, “is a campus where women aren’t denigrated and exploited. This flyer is lewd and insulting. I can only imagine what will happen to any hapless girl fool enough to go to this thing. What are you going to do about it?” I demanded, glad to have a channel for the heat in my body.

  Duncan Laird picked up the flyer and examined it, his face grave. If his lip had so much as twitched, I would have accused him of sanctioning the fraternity’s misogynistic language, but his expression remained suitably serious. When he looked up at me, a crease had appeared between his eyebrows.

  “You’re absolutely right. This is unacceptable. I’ll talk to the president of Alpha Delta Chi immediately and demand he issue an apology to the female student body.”

  “Okay …” I said tentatively, thrown off guard by his compliance. “And what about the party?”

  “I’ll send security to monitor it,” he said. “I don’t want anything going wrong there any more than you do, Callie. Especially when it’s so close to your house.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” I snapped, although of course it did. It had broken my heart to see frat boys move in to the Hart Brake Inn, not only because the inn was across the street from where I lived but because it profaned the memory of my dear friend Diana Hart. “Why not cancel the party as a consequence of this offensive flyer?”

  “That would be an overreaction and initiate a chain of bad feeling throughout the campus. Better that the new students learn to play by the rules and assimilate into the campus culture.”

  “If anything does go wrong …”

  “You have my assurance that nothing will.” He learned forward and smiled. I heard that rustling again and felt a sizzle in my veins. I summoned all my power to resist the pull of Duncan Laird’s charisma. “I would like us to be friends, Cal-lie—”

  I snorted.

  “—but if that’s not possible, can we not be congenial colleagues? I welcome your input and suggestions and will be happy to work with you for the good of the college. Isn’t that what we both want?”

  The sizzle in my veins chilled as I realized what Laird was proposing. I could prevent harm to the students if I collaborated with the administration. And, in truth, wasn’t that why I had stayed at Fairwick? After the door to Faerie had closed, with most of my friends trapped behind it, I considered leaving. The academic job market wasn’t in great shape, but I could have gone back to the city, kicked out my subletter, and taken adjunct jobs until I got something better. I could have turned my back on Fairwick and the world of fairies and witches and returned to the life I’d left only a year ago. But then there was Bill’s last note to me.

  There’s another door.

  If there was another door to Faerie and there was any chance of freeing my friends—and any remote chance that Bill was still alive there—I absolutely had to stay in Fairwick and look for that door.

  “We don’t want the same things at all,” I said. “I want you out of here and my college back.”

  Duncan smiled—or maybe he was baring his teeth. “Fair enough, Professor McFay. I appreciate your honesty. Now, if you’ll just give me the diagnostic essays your class did this morning—”

  “No,” I replied.

  “No?”

  “No. I’ll read them and respond to them.”

  “Didn’t you get the memo specifying that all English faculty were to hand in their
students’ essays for review by the administration?”

  “Yes, I got that memo and the ninety-six other memos your office has issued in the last week, but I have no intention of handing over my students’ papers. If you persist in the request, I’ll go to the MLA and complain. Fairwick College won’t be as useful to you if you lose your accreditation.”

  Duncan’s smile vanished. His jaw tightened. I thought I heard teeth grinding and invisible wings beating. “You might be surprised at how the MLA would respond to your complaints. We have friends there. I think you’ll find we have friends”—he smiled, but this time without showing his teeth—“everywhere.” He splayed his hands out in the air again. “But I believe in picking my battles. Keep your papers. I’m sure I’ll have ample opportunity to get to know each and every one of your students.”

  He held his hands higher. The gesture would have seemed conciliatory but for the shadow they threw on the wall. It resembled nothing so much as giant wings spreading over the room.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I WALKED BRISKLY across campus, pouring my anger—and fear—into pumping muscles. It was a beautiful early-September day, cerulean-blue sky, a hint of autumn in the air, a touch of color in the ancient trees: the perfect day to showcase a Northeast college. The old brick buildings basked in a warm, mellow glow, and the faces of the students I passed reflected that same tint in tanned skin, toned bodies, and the white even teeth of privileged youth. It was everything I loved about academia, but everywhere I looked there were signs of darkness lurking below the Arcadian idyll.

  Those magenta Alpha Delta Chi flyers were spread over the quad like a virulent mold, the green-jumpsuited security men were arrayed across the campus like an invading army, and those noxious bells were pealing again, driving all rational thought out of one’s head. (Soheila thought they might be a form of brainwashing.) The most glaring atrocity, though, was the one I saw first thing every morning and the one I saw now as I came out of the southeast gate onto Elm Street. Directly across from my house was the lovely old Victorian that was formerly called the Hart Brake Inn. Nailed onto the gingerbread molding above the porch were three giant Greek letters painted a garish gold: Alpha, Delta, Chi. On the porch where Diana had served afternoon tea, bare-chested boys slumped in an assortment of lawn chairs and old broken-down couches, drinking beer and smoking pot—or at least I had thought it was pot at first. The miasma issuing from the house smelled like ashes and cloves, leading me to wonder if young nephilim smoked church incense.

  Because that’s what these frat boys undoubtedly were—nephilim, or perhaps the spawn of nephilim.

  Two of them, wearing nothing but skimpy gym shorts and flip-flops, were stringing party lights along the porch railing. I recognized Adam Sinclair from class as he looked up and saw me. He whispered something to the other boy, who looked my way and laughed.

  Great, now I’d become the butt of frat-boy humor. Adam waved at me. Not wanting to look like the cranky old lady neighbor I suddenly felt like, I waved back.

  “Prof,” Adam yelled. “Wanna come to our party tonight?”

  I held up the magenta invitation and smiled tightly. “I don’t think I have the right costume, boys.”

  Adam grinned. “You could come as a fairy.”

  At least he hadn’t suggested I come as a slutty fairy. “I’ll be busy grading your papers,” I replied. “Hopefully the noise won’t put me in a bad mood.”

  “No worries, Prof. We’ll keep it down to a dull roar. If we’re keeping you up, though, come on over.”

  “You never know,” I said, a thought occurring to me. “I might just do that.”

  Several of the boys hooted at that and, as I turned around and walked across the street to Honeysuckle House, I was conscious of many sets of male eyes on my back—or probably a little lower. I was glad I’d worn a demure knee-length skirt for the first day of classes, but still I had to concentrate on not swishing my hips. And if I felt reduced to a sex object by these boys, how must my female students feel?

  Stepping onto my porch, I met another pair of accusing eyes. In the fanlight above my door, a face set in stained glass stared dolefully at me. I’d come to recognize my demon lover in those green eyes and full lips. An altercation two months ago had cracked the glass below one green eye, making it look as if the figure were shedding a single tear. Each time I saw it now, I thought of my demon lover. Sometimes I thought of him as the creature made of moonlight and shadow who had made love to me in my dreams. Sometimes I remembered Liam Doyle, the broody Irish poet who had shared my bed last winter until I banished him to the Borderlands, but mostly I pined for Bill Carey. The kind brown-eyed handyman had fixed my house and tended to the damaged pieces inside me. I’d discovered that my parents had warded me in my childhood to hide my powers from my grandmother—and then died before they could remove those wards. The wards had not only restricted my powers, they’d kept me from being able to love. Bill’s love for me—proved by throwing himself in front of Duncan Laird and taking a lethal blow meant for me—had broken the last of those wards. I’d recognized him and realized I loved him at the same moment his blood flowed onto the threshold of the door to Faerie—closing that door forever.

  Gazing up into the green glass eyes, I asked the question I asked every time I looked into them: “Are you really gone?”

  And always the same silence for an answer.

  I sighed and opened the door. The big old Victorian house seemed to return my sigh in sympathy as floorboards creaked and curtains huffed at the windows. But it was only the breeze I’d let in. When I closed the door, the house settled down into its hundred-year silence.

  Broken by a diminutive squeak.

  I looked down and saw a tiny gray field mouse, white patch on his chest, sitting at my feet. I crouched down and held out my hand.

  “Hey, Ralph, have you got a message for me?”

  Not that Ralph could talk, even though he was a magical doormouse imbued with a spark of the sacred fire of Muspelheim by his maker, Brock. Still, he could type on laptops and was excellent at carrying messages. He was carrying one now inside the tiny silk pouch he wore around his neck (I’d sewn it from a jewelry pouch). I tipped the pouch over and a tiny origami crane fell out—flapping its paper wings and taking a spin around the foyer.

  A message from Soheila, then, I thought, cheered by the crane’s antics, despite my foul mood. I held out my hand and waited for the paper creature to alight. Experience had taught me it was fruitless to chase the little messengers. After a couple of spins around the foyer, it glided gracefully into my palm and obligingly unfolded itself.

  Mission Fallen Angel in effect. Meet below Main tonight when the damned bells toll midnight.

  I laughed at the dramatic wording. Soheila may have folded the message, but it was written in Frank Delmarco’s handwriting, and the flair for the dramatic was pure Frank, who, it turned out, loved the Hardy Boys and French Resistance movies. I’d accused him more than once of enjoying the nephilim occupation a bit too much.

  I read the message one more time and made sure I had it memorized. Then I tossed the paper into the air and cried, “Flagyr!” The paper burst into flames. The ashes formed themselves into tiny gray cranes as they drifted down to the ground.

  “I think,” I remarked to Ralph as he batted at one of the sooty cranes, “that Soheila has a little too much time on her hands these days.”

  I had a few hours to kill before meeting Frank and Soheila, so I made myself a pot of tea and a fried-egg sandwich for dinner, settling down on the library couch with a stack of student papers to grade. As much as I liked teaching, I’d already learned that a stack of student papers got heavier and thicker the longer they went unread. Especially handwritten ones. Sheesh! I remembered my college professors railing about my generation’s handwriting, but this new crop of freshmen wrote as if they’d penned their essays while driving down a dirt road. I’d seen Linear B tablets that were easier to decipher. Staring at the scrawli
ng lines made me more fatigued than I already was. I was relieved when I got to Nicky’s essay, written in neat dark ink (one of the Cinderella essays had been written in a glitter gel pen) and serviceable syntax. I read through her retelling of Tam Lin again and saw that she’d written another whole page about the variation she’d discovered in Scotland, a ballad called William Duffy.

  I’d never heard of it. I considered looking it up in Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, but that was on the top shelf and I was warm and cozy on the couch. I snuggled down deeper into the cushions, pulled the afghan over my legs, and settled into the tale, delighted to be in the hands of an able storyteller.

  The story begins with a young man named William Duffy, who goes to the enchanted Greenwood one Halloween night and falls in love with a fairy. They lie together in the Greenwood, and the fairy—who’s some kind of guardian of the door to Faerie—forgets to lead her people safely through the door.

  I looked up from the paper, stunned by this detail. Last year, when the incubus had first appeared to me, I’d begun to have dreams in which I was leading a troop of fairies through a meadow, but I’d abandoned them to go into the woods with a handsome young man. Later, when I learned that I was descended from a line of fairy doorkeepers, I’d wondered if my dream was a vestigial memory of my ancestor. Now I wondered if the William Duffy story was about my ancestor. I read on.

  Because the doorkeeper failed to bring her people to the door, many of her kind faded and perished. The Fairy Queen appeared and exacted a punishment for the two lovers. She banished the doorkeeper to the human world and took William Duffy to Faerie as her prisoner. The doorkeeper begged the Fairy Queen for a chance to save William, and the queen agreed. “In seven years, the host will ride out on All Hallows’ Eve with William. If you pull him down from his horse and hold on to him—even as he transforms into frightful shapes—he will be free. But if you fail to claim him, he will be sacrificed as the tithe we must pay to hell.”