Read Online A Demon Summer by G. M. Malliet - Free Book Online Page A

of the hill, his headlamps picked out painted wooden signs that politely directed him to the abbey gatehouse and firmly away from the restricted area of the nun’s cloister.
    Max parked and walked over to a wooden door set deep within the stone wall of the gatehouse. He lifted the large brass knocker, shaped like a cross, and pounded it against the massive studded door of a type most often found guarding the entries to ancient Oxbridge colleges. After waiting what seemed an unreasonable amount of time he knocked and waited again. Well, there must be someone at home, he thought. It’s not as if the sisters would have taken it into their heads to go see a movie together. Just as he was lifting the knocker to try again, an eye appeared at the peephole. “Thanks be to God!” warbled a thin, high voice from inside. Sounds of an almighty struggle reached his ears. A scraping and clanging of metal and a creaking of wood as the door opened inward, inch by slow inch. Tempted as Max was to help, he feared he might frighten whoever it was on the other side if he started pushing against the wood. Instead he waited.
    And waited. To be greeted at last by a nun of prodigious, Old Testament–like age—an ancient woman, shriveled by weather and time, with a pointed nose and large, compassionate eyes, a bit like Dobby the Elf in Harry Potter . If she had Dobby’s ears, too, that fact was hidden by her white coif and black veil surmounted by a woven circlet.
    Calling on all her remaining resources, the woman gave the door a final tug and then, to Max’s amazement, stood on tiptoe to kiss him, once on each cheek. She looked as delighted to see him as if he were a long-lost relative—the good sort of mislaid relative one does hope to see again. She seemed to take his arrival in her stride—probably the abbey had been alerted by someone on the bishop’s staff. But Max sensed there was more to it than that: it was as if she saw his visit as somehow inevitable. It was only fanciful thinking on his part, he knew that, but it really was as if she’d waited a lifetime for Max Tudor to appear.
    She had lost a few teeth with the passing years but still she could offer a good and welcoming smile, the soft folds of her face settling comfortably around her eyes and mouth. Her grip on his hands was firm. Indeed it could be said she clung fiercely to him in her struggle to remain upright. Now she inched back and peered up into his face, making a study of him. She smelled of soap—lavender and another flowery scent he could only guess at—and of sunlight and starch. There was also the pleasant but faint odor of honey that he decided came from the beeswax candles that were dotted around the room behind her to the right. A hand-lettered wooden sign identified it as the portress’s lodge.
    Max bore the scrutiny patiently, without flinching. It was her job, after all, to assure the safety and security of the abbey by not allowing in random strangers, although he began to think her age and various evident infirmities might make her the worst possible candidate for the job. Indeed, he thought he detected behind the thick lenses of her glasses a film over the eyes that might be the beginning of cataracts.
    Finally she seemed satisfied by what she could make out of his appearance. “You’ll be wanting the guest-mistress,” she shouted. “I’ll go and fetch her, presently.” Slowly she turned, as good as her word, and began a measured shuffle toward her desk in the lodge’s reception area, behind which some sort of primitive call system anchored her to the rest of the building. Max, who had followed her through the large wooden door, shutting it behind him and slotting all the barriers back in place, watched her wobble slowly to behind the counter where she apparently spent much of her day reading and praying, for surely there were few visitors to occupy her time up here. A little