I ended up going downtown to McGuckin’s Variety Store and buying a slew of decorations and candy. I spent most of the day decorating my yard and front porch, hoping some inspiration for the door spell would come to me while I warded my home. As I draped spiderwebs over my front porch, I wove in another protection spell. And as I attached plastic ghosts to pulleys, I called on the spirits of my ancestors to watch over me. My efforts inspired my neighbors. Cheryl Lindisfarne from two doors down dropped by to say she was glad to see I was getting in the spirit.
“With all the fuss, I felt a little funny putting out decorations this year, but now that I see you doing it, I’m going to tell Harald to pull out all the stops. He’s got a coffin with a zombie in it whose eyes bug out when it opens.”
“Ooh,” I said, jealous. “I’ll come by later to see it.”
By five o’clock, my house looked like it belonged to the Addams Family. Standing back to admire it, I noticed that all my neighbors had followed my lead and decorated their homes with the trappings of Halloween. Down the street, a troop of diminutive fairies, ghosts, and goblins was shrieking with delight at Harald Lindisfarne, who was dressed as Herman Munster.
Yikes! There were already trick-or-treaters. I’d forgotten that parents took their little kids out before dark—and dark was not so far off now.
In fact, it was just that moment when day slid into evening. The sun setting behind the mountains in the west lit up the east side of the street but cast the west side, where Alpha House stood, into shadow. It looked as if the street were divided down the middle. Where the two sides met, the air shimmered and crackled with energy. I could feel it from my toes to my fingertips—the turning. This was the moment when the year turned from light toward dark, the hinge of the year, as Moondance had called it, a liminal time when boundaries—between light and dark, seen and unseen, death and life—could be crossed. I felt the weight of a world teetering on the edge. Would I be able to become the hallow door and cross over to Faerie and into seventeenth-century Ballydoon?
My mind, like the planet, seemed to be turning toward the dark, but then I noticed an odd assortment of trick-or-treaters heading my way. Three women dressed in long black robes, the middle one carrying a lantern, were walking down the middle of the street, along the dividing line. The lantern carried by the middle figure swayed back and forth, casting an orange glow that pushed away the edges of the dark just a little and lit up their faces. I recognized Adelaide, Phoenix, and Jen.
They stopped opposite the Lindisfarnes’ house. Jen took a long taper from beneath her robe and lit it from the lantern. She walked slowly, cupping the flame with her hand, into the Lindisfarnes’ yard and spoke to Cheryl, who was dressed as Lily Munster. Cheryl nodded yes to whatever she had been asked. Jen walked up to the front-porch steps, knelt beside the jack-o’-lanterns, and lit each of them with the taper. As each flame was kindled, a warm glow spread outward from the pumpkin. It lit up the faces of my ordinary, down-to-earth neighbors with something decidedly extraordinary. I felt the warmth of that glow two doors down.
Jen rose to her feet, rejoining Phoenix and Adelaide, and they proceeded to Evangeline Sprague’s house, repeating the same ritual. I saw Evangeline’s old face suffused with that otherworldly glow.
As the three women approached my house, I noticed that the brothers of Alpha Delta Chi had come out to their porch to watch the procession. They stood with arms crossed over their broad chests, expressions inscrutable in the shadows. For the first time, I thought about who these boys really were. Their fathers were nephilim, but presumably they had human mothers. Were they all completely unreachable?
I walked to the middle of the street to meet the women and inspect the lantern more closely. It looked like an ordinary hurricane lantern, the kind they sold at McGuckin’s Variety, but the flame inside glowed fiercely.
“We kindled it from a needfire,” Jen told me.
“That’s a fire you make by rubbing two sticks together,” Phoenix added. “We did it at a crossroads at dawn while saying a spell to protect the town, and now we’re carrying it through the whole village, lighting everyone’s pumpkins.”
Phoenix herself was lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. I wondered what the crash from this high would be, but I reminded myself that the former addict wouldn’t have to worry about that if we didn’t succeed against the nephilim.
“The needfire protects the house where it’s lit,” Jen said more soberly, as she withdrew a long thin piece of wood from her cloak. “We’ll light yours now.”
I walked with Jen to my front porch and watched her light the three warded jack-o’-lanterns, each seeming to leap to life. As we returned to the other two women, I saw that the Alphas were still watching us. “I have an idea,” I told Jen. “Can you give me one of those tapers?”
Jen handed me a long piece of wood, watching me curiously as I lit it from the lantern and then crossed over to the dark side of the street. The flame sputtered and I felt a corresponding shudder inside, as if I’d become a hollow pumpkin and the needfire had been kindled inside me. I cupped my hand around the taper, sheltering the struggling flame, and kept going, feeling the light inside myself growing with each step. The boys on the porch shifted uneasily as I approached. At the foot of the porch steps, I paused, the flame cupped in my palm, and looked up into the face of Adam Sinclair.
“It occurs to me that you probably haven’t had much choice about what side you’re on,” I said.
Adam’s upper lip twisted into a sneer, but his eyes, I noticed, were focused on the flame in my hand, which was burning steadily now.
“We’re on the winning side,” he said.
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybe not. But it’s going to be a long night. Who knows what will wander out of the woods? Why not take what protection you can?”
“We don’t need …” Adam began, but then his eyes widened. I turned to see what he was looking at. The last light had faded from the street. The woods loomed dark behind my house, but not entirely dark. There were small flickering lights in the shadows and, when the wind stirred, the sound of creatures moving through the shadows—a scritch of nails and a heavy leathery thudding of wings. Turning back to Adam, I saw that his face had turned white. Suddenly he looked very young. “Sure, why not?” he said, shrugging. He picked up one of the tiki candles left over from their luau party and carried it down the steps to me. He tilted the glass sideways and water ran out of it, nearly extinguishing the taper. I heard a gasp from one of the boys on the porch. I steadied the taper, which was barely long enough to reach the wick inside the glass. The flame hissed and sputtered when it touched the damp wax. I held it against the wick, waiting for it to light, my fingertips beginning to burn.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass in class,” Adam said, so softly I wondered if I’d heard right. But then the wick caught, and in the glow of the flame I saw a look of contrition on his young face. At the same instant, I felt something click inside myself. What had Nicky said? A good teacher is a door to other worlds. I’d opened up a new world for Adam—a possibility of becoming something other than what the nephilim wanted for him—and in doing so I’d become a doorway. This was how I’d be the hallow door.
“That’s okay, Adam,” I said, feeling grateful to the boy for what he’d unwittingly done for me. “You’ve got plenty of time to make it up to me. Just keep your brothers safe tonight and we’ll get a fresh start tomorrow, okay?”