The Angel Stone: A Novel by Juliet Dark Read Free Book Online

research on the angel stone, and we should all keep a vigilant eye on our female students—”
    “The frat party!” I cried. “I tried to get Duncan to cancel it, but he refused. It’s the perfect setup for preying on girls.”
    “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Frank growled. “Let’s get over there.”
    “Excellent idea,” Soheila said briskly, sweeping the papers on the desk into a neat stack with a spell that reordered them as we’d found them. When the pages had slid themselves into their envelope, she returned the package to the filing cabinet and closed the drawer with a gusty shove. “You two go to the party. We’d better leave now. We can’t expect Ralph to keep that security guard busy forever.”
    Soheila led the way out of the office to the back stairs. Frank followed, trying to catch up to her, but when he saw that she was determined not to talk to him, he fell back next to me.
    “What did I say?” he asked, an unaccustomed look of confusion on his face.
    “That part about an incubus being capable of selfless love. Soheila doesn’t believe it. She thinks her kind will always take advantage of a human. It’s why—”
    Frank cut me off by holding up his hand. We’d reached the lobby. A great lumpy-looking figure was sprawled across the floor in front of the janitor’s closet—our entrance to the tunnels. I stepped closer and saw that it was the security guard. For a moment I thought that Ralph had somehow killed him, but then I heard him snoring. Ralph was sitting beside hishead, cleaning fluorescent Cheetos crumbs out of his whiskers.
    “Wow, you exhausted him!” I said, crouching down and holding out my hand for Ralph. “You must be tired, too.”
    Ralph yawned, climbed into my hand, curled up, and promptly fell asleep. I tucked him into my backpack.
    “Did he have to pass out right in front of our entrance to the tunnels?” Frank asked.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Soheila responded. “It’s late enough that we should be able to find our ways back across the campus. I’m going to the library to look up matters related to the angel stone. You and Callie go to the Alpha party, and then you should make sure Callie gets home safely. If Callie
is
the only one who can open this hallow door, then she’s in grave danger from the nephilim. You have to protect
her
as well as the students.” She gave Frank a look to impress upon him the gravity of this responsibility, but it was so full of longing that the air between them literally steamed up. She quickly turned and fled through the back door of Main, trailing fog behind her.
    “Sheesh, McFay, I will never understand women. Come on, let’s get to the Alpha House before Soheila unleashes a hurricane on us.”
    We followed Soheila out the back door—onto a campus wreathed in mist. It might have been a natural weather front, but I was betting that Soheila’s conflicting emotions for Frank had collided to form the fog bank. At least it provided cover for us as we walked toward the southeast gate and I summoned up the nerve to ask Frank if Bill had said anything else that morning the door closed.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. I thought maybe it would be better if you forgot him if he’s really gone.”
    “But he told you about a door that only I could open.”
    “He said you had the power to open something called thehallow door but that doing it might kill you. He wanted me to promise to keep you from trying to open it.”
    “And did you promise?” I peered through the fog at Frank. With his beret pulled low over his eyes, it was hard to make out his expression.
    “I told him you were too stubborn to listen to anyone. He laughed and said he’d noticed that, but he thought that if anyone could talk some sense into you it would be me. After all, I’d talked you into letting me look down your shirt to check for vampire bites.”
    I blushed at the memory. “Liam was furious when he came upon us that day. Was