The Water Witch (38 page)

“I’m sure you’re doing everything you can, Professor McFay. I don’t mean to complain. It’s just that everything is so different—even the students. Like that Adam Sinclair and his frat brothers. I mean, one of the things I liked about Fairwick was that it didn’t have a big Greek life like the state schools. But this new fraternity … well, look at this flyer I got in my mailbox this morning.”

Nicky took out a piece of bright magenta paper and unfolded it. Beneath three large Greek letters—alpha, delta, chi—was a crude drawing of a muscular man in a toga. “Hey, ladies!” the speech bubble by his head announced. “It’s never too early to try out your Halloween costumes. Whether you’re going this year as a slutty vampire, a slutty cat, or just a total slut we invite you …”

“Ew,” I said, taking the virulent page from her, “that’s gross … and completely inappropriate. I’m on my way to the dean’s office right now with a list of complaints. I’ll add this invitation to them.”

Nicky shrugged. “Don’t get yourself in trouble over it. No one I know is going. It’s just that those Alphas act like they own the campus.…”

Nicky’s next words were drowned out by the pealing of bells. Loud obnoxious bells ringing the quarter hour. “And that’s another thing,” she yelled over the clanging. “Those bells! They wake us up at the crack of dawn!”

“It’s on my list,” I told Nicky, giving her a wan smile. We’d reached Main Hall. The gothic gray stone exterior had always given me a sense of calm and stability, but now that it housed the new dean, it felt like a brooding, unassailable castle out of
Dracula
.

“I feel better knowing you’re doing something,” Nicky said. “But I didn’t just follow you to complain. I wanted to talk to you about my research paper.”

“Let me guess, you want to do it on Tam Lin.”

“Well, not exactly. You see the thing is I’m actually feeling a little … well,
disenchanted
with fairy tales these days.”

“Oh,” I said, unable to hide my disappointment. “You’re not dropping the class, are you?”

“Oh no! You’re my favorite teacher, Professor! It’s just … well, when I was in Scotland this summer I came across this collection of fairy tales and ballads that were collected in the Border Country by a woman folklorist named Mary MacGregor White. There’s a ballad in it that’s a sort of variation on Tam Lin. I wrote about it in my essay, only I didn’t read that part in class. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that the stories were collected by a woman folklorist, and I’d like to find out more about her … like what made her interested in folk tales and how she came to write about them. I thought it would be interesting to write about a real person instead of just writing about fairy tales.”

“Hm … I’ve never heard of her … or about any female folklorists of that time period. It sounds like a fascinating topic, Nicky. Of course you can write about that. I look forward to seeing what you dig up.”

“Thanks, Professor. And I hope you don’t mind what I said about fairy tales. I know they’re your thing.”

“It’s perfectly all right, Nicky,” I told her as I turned to go into Main Hall. “There are days lately when I wish I had specialized in something a little more practical myself.”

I
paused for a moment outside the door to the dean’s office to collect myself. My conversation with Nicky had unnerved me. It was one thing to watch my college be taken over by evil forces and another to see the effects of that takeover on the students I cared about. The students had no way of knowing why the college was so different. They didn’t know that the Grove—a club for ultra-conservative witches to which my grandmother happened to belong—had conspired to close the door to Faerie with a mysterious all-male British club that turned out to be run by nephilim. I hadn’t even known about nephilim a couple of months ago. My specialty was fairy tales, not Bible studies. Truthfully, I’d never had much interest in angels, fallen or not. They always seemed much blander than fairies, pixies, elves, and goblins.

But the nephilim weren’t bland at all—and they weren’t even fallen angels, as much as they liked to think they were. According to Soheila, 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 were all gone—and a number of humans, including Dean Elizabeth Book who had gone to Faerie with her partner, Diana Hart—they had free reign to take over Fairwick. Duncan Laird, the leader of the nephilim, 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 the nephilim had 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 what good ears the nephilim had …

I opened the door.

… or what big teeth.

Duncan Laird, DMA (Doctor of Magical Arts), Oxford, Wizard of the 9th 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 finally been unmasked and taken 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 that he’d nearly slashed my throat with—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 was an array of framed diplomas. Perhaps the sound was only my own 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 small 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. 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 effect the air around them? “Do you really believe you 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 now 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 just the incarnation he took,” I said defensively. Then, realizing I’d sounded snobbish, added, “Not that I wouldn’t love a handyman if he was as kind and good-hearted as Bill Carey. He became what I needed most.” I blinked back tears, determined not to show weakness in front of Duncan Laird. I’d worked out why my incubus lover who’d incarnated 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, a sensation
I’d almost 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 had used their powers to seduce human women—or worse. 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 to women. I can just imagine what will happen to any hapless girl who is 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 face remained suitably grave. When he looked up at me his gaze was serious. A little 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 anymore 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 into the Hart Brake Inn, not just because it was across the
street from my house but because it had profaned the memory of my friend Diana Hart. “Why not cancel the party as a consequence of this offensive flyer?”

“I think that would be an overreaction and initiate a chain of bad feeling throughout the campus. Better that the new class 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 again 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, Callie.…”

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 warm 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 had 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 gone back 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 chance that Bill was still alive there—I had to stay here in Fairwick and look for it.

So why not go along with Duncan Laird’s proposal and wield what influence I could on the new administration to keep my students safe?

Because I’d never be able to live with myself.

“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 just baring his teeth. “Fair enough, Professor McFay. I appreciate your honesty. Now, if you’d 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 could hear 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 again, but 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. They looked like giant wings overshadowing everything.