Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

Clairmont frowned. “They aren’t my friends, Dr. Bishop.”

“No? I haven’t seen so many vampires, witches, and daemons in one place since my aunts dragged me to a pagan summer festival when I was thirteen. If they’re not your friends, why are they always hanging around you?” I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead and pushed the damp hair away from my face.

“Good God,” the vampire murmured incredulously. “The rumors are true.”

“What rumors?” I said impatiently.

“You think these . . . things want to spend time with me?” Clairmont’s voice dripped with contempt and something that sounded like surprise. “Unbelievable.”

I worked my fleece pullover up above my shoulders and yanked it off. Clairmont’s eyes flickered to my collarbones, over my bare arms, and down to my fingertips. I felt uncharacteristically naked in my familiar rowing clothes.

“Yes,” I snapped. “I’ve lived in Oxford. I visit every year. The only thing that’s been different this time is you. Since you showed up last night, I’ve been pushed out of my seat in the library, stared at by strange vampires and daemons, and threatened by unfamiliar witches.”

Clairmont’s arms rose slightly, as if he were going to take me by the shoulders and shake me. Though I was by no means short at just under five-seven, he was so tall that my neck had to bend sharply so I could make eye contact. Acutely aware of his size and strength relative to my own, I stepped back and crossed my arms, calling upon my professional persona to steel my nerves.

“They’re not interested in me, Dr. Bishop. They’re interested in you.”

“Why? What could they possibly want from me?”

“Do you really not know why every daemon, witch, and vampire south of the Midlands is following you?” There was a note of disbelief in his voice, and the vampire’s expression suggested he was seeing me for the first time.

“No,” I said, my eyes on two men enjoying their afternoon pint at a nearby table. Thankfully, they were absorbed in their own conversation. “I’ve done nothing in Oxford except read old manuscripts, row on the river, prepare for my conference, and keep to myself. It’s all I’ve ever done here. There’s no reason for any creature to pay this kind of attention to me.”

“Think, Diana.” Clairmont’s voice was intense. A ripple of something that wasn’t fear passed across my skin when he said my first name. “What have you been reading?”

His eyelids dropped over his strange eyes, but not before I’d seen their avid expression.

My aunts had warned me that Matthew Clairmont wanted something. They were right.

He fixed his odd, gray-rimmed black eyes on me once more. “They’re following you because they believe you’ve found something lost many years ago,” he said reluctantly. “They want it back, and they think you can get it for them.”

I thought about the manuscripts I’d consulted over the past few days. My heart sank. There was only one likely candidate for all this attention.

“If they’re not your friends, how do you know what they want?”

“I hear things, Dr. Bishop. I have very good hearing,” he said patiently, reverting to his characteristic formality. “I’m also fairly observant. At a concert on Sunday evening, two witches were talking about an American—a fellow witch—who found a book in Bodley’s Library that had been given up for lost. Since then I’ve noticed many new faces in Oxford, and they make me uneasy.”

“It’s Mabon. That explains why the witches are in Oxford.” I was trying to match his patient tone, though he hadn’t answered my last question.

Smiling sardonically, Clairmont shook his head. “No, it’s not the equinox. It’s the manuscript.”

“What do you know about Ashmole 782?” I asked quietly.

“Less than you do,” said Clairmont, his eyes narrowing to slits. It made him look even more like a large, lethal beast. “I’ve never seen it. You’ve held it in your hands. Where is it now, Dr. Bishop? You weren’t so foolish as to leave it in your room?”

I was aghast. “You think I stole it? From the Bodleian? How dare you suggest such a thing!”

“You didn’t have it Monday night,” he said. “And it wasn’t on your desk today either.”

“You are observant,” I said sharply, “if you could see all that from where you were sitting. I returned it Friday, if you must know.” It occurred to me, belatedly, that he might have rifled through the things on my desk. “What’s so special about the manuscript that you’d snoop through a colleague’s work?”

He winced slightly, but my triumph at catching him doing something so inappropriate was blunted by a twinge of fear that this vampire was following me as closely as he obviously was.

“Simple curiosity,” he said, baring his teeth. Sarah had not misled me—vampires don’t have fangs.

“I hope you don’t expect me to believe that.”

“I don’t care what you believe, Dr. Bishop. But you should be on your guard. These creatures are serious. And when they come to understand what an unusual witch you are?” Clairmont shook his head.

“What do you mean?” All the blood drained from my head, leaving me dizzy.

“It’s uncommon these days for a witch to have so much . . . potential.” Clairmont’s voice dropped to a purr that vibrated in the back of his throat. “Not everyone can see it—yet—but I can. You shimmer with it when you concentrate. When you’re angry, too. Surely the daemons in the library will sense it soon, if they haven’t already.”

“I appreciate the warning. But I don’t need your help.” I prepared to stalk away, but his hand shot out and gripped my upper arm, stopping me in my tracks.

“Don’t be too sure of that. Be careful. Please.” Clairmont hesitated, his face shaken out of its perfect lines as he wrestled with something. “Especially if you see that wizard again.”

I stared fixedly at the hand on my arm. Clairmont released me. His lids dropped, shuttering his eyes.

My row back to the boathouse was slow and steady, but the repetitive movements weren’t able to carry away my lingering confusion and unease. Every now and again, there was a gray blur on the towpath, but nothing else caught my attention except for people bicycling home from work and a very ordinary human walking her dog.

After returning the equipment and locking the boathouse, I set off down the towpath at a measured jog.

Matthew Clairmont was standing across the river in front of the University Boat House.

I began to run, and when I looked back over my shoulder, he was gone.

After dinner I sat down on the sofa by the sitting room’s dormant fireplace and switched on my laptop. Why would a scientist of Clairmont’s caliber want to see an alchemical manuscript—even one under a spell—so much that he’d sit at the Bodleian all day, across from a witch, and read through old notes on morphogenesis? His business card was tucked into one of the pockets of my bag. I fished it out, propping it up against the screen.

On the Internet, below an unrelated link to a murder mystery and the unavoidable hits from social-networking sites, a string of biographical listings looked promising: his faculty Web page, a Wikipedia article, and links to the current fellows of the Royal Society.

I clicked on the faculty Web page and snorted. Matthew Clairmont was one of those faculty members who didn’t like to post any information— even academic information—on the Net. On Yale’s Web site, a visitor could get contact information and a complete vita for practically every member of the faculty. Oxford clearly had a different attitude toward privacy. No wonder a vampire taught here.