Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

Finally it was time for Sophie and Nathaniel to depart. Marcus put the couple’s few belongings in the trunk of his little blue sports car. Marcus and Nathaniel stood, their two blond heads close in conversation, while Sophie said good-bye to Sarah and Em. When she was finished, she turned to me. I’d been banished to the keeping room to make sure that no one inadvertently touched me.

“This isn’t really good-bye,” she told me from across the hall.

My third eye opened, and in the winking of the sunlight on the banister I saw myself enveloped in one of Sophie’s fierce hugs.

“No,” I said, surprised and comforted by the vision.

Sophie nodded as if she, too, had seen the glimpse of the future. “See, I told you. Maybe the baby will be here when you get back. Remember, you’ll be her godmother.”

While waiting for Sophie and Nathaniel to say their good-byes, Matthew and Miriam had positioned all the pumpkins down the driveway. With a flick of her wrist and a few mumbled words, Sarah lit them. Dusk was still hours away, but Sophie could at least get a sense of what they would look like on Halloween night. She clapped her hands and tore down the steps to fling herself into the arms of Matthew and then Miriam. Her final hug was reserved for Marcus, who exchanged a few quiet words with her before tucking her into the low-slung passenger seat.

“Thanks for the car,” Sophie said, admiring the burled wood on the dashboard. “Nathaniel used to drive fast, but he drives like an old lady now on account of the baby.”

“No speeding,” Matthew said firmly, sounding like a father. “Call us when you get home.”

We waved them off. When they were out of sight Sarah extinguished the pumpkins. Matthew put his arms around me as the remaining family drifted back inside.

“I’m ready for you, Diana,” Hamish said, coming out onto the porch. He’d already put on his jacket, prepared to leave for New York before returning to London.

I signed the two copies of the will, and they were witnessed by Em and Sarah. Hamish rolled up one copy and slid it into a metal cylinder. He threaded the ends of the tube with black-and-silver ribbons and sealed it with wax bearing Matthew’s mark.

Matthew waited by the black rental car while Hamish said a courteous farewell to Miriam, then kissed Em and Sarah, inviting them to stay with him on their way to Sept-Tours.

“Call me if you need anything,” he told Sarah, taking her hand and giving it a single squeeze. “You have my numbers.” He turned to me.

“Good-bye, Hamish.” I returned his kisses, first on one cheek, then the other. “Thank you for all you did to put Matthew’s mind at ease.”

“Just doing my job,” Hamish said with forced cheerfulness. His voice dropped. “Remember what I told you. There will be no way to call for help if you need it.”

“I won’t need it,” I said.

A few minutes later, the car’s engine turned over and Hamish, too, was gone, red taillights blinking in the gathering darkness.

The house didn’t like its new emptiness and responded by banging furniture around and moaning softly whenever anyone left or entered a room.

“I’ll miss them,” Em confessed while making dinner. The house sighed sympathetically.

“Go,” Sarah said to me, taking the knife out of Em’s hand. “Take Matthew to Sept-Tours and be back here in time to make the salad.”

After much discussion we’d finally decided to timewalk to the night I’d found his copy of Origin.

But getting Matthew to Sept-Tours was more of a challenge than I’d expected. My arms were so full of stuff to help me steer—one of his pens and two books from his study—that Matthew had to hold on to my waist. Then we got stuck.

Invisible hands seemed to hold my foot up, refusing to let me lower it into Sept-Tours. The farther back in time we went, the thicker the strands were around my feet. And time clung to Matthew in sturdy, twining vines.

At last we made it to Matthew’s study. The room was just as we’d left it, with the fire lit and an unlabeled bottle of wine waiting on the table.

I dropped the books and the pen on the sofa, shaking with fatigue.

“What’s wrong?” Matthew asked.

“It was as if too many pasts were coming together, and it was impossible to wade through them. I was afraid you might let go.”

“Nothing felt different to me,” Matthew said. “It took a bit longer than before, but I expected that, given the time and distance.”

He poured us both some wine, and we discussed the pros and cons of going downstairs. Finally, our desire to see Ysabeau and Marthe won out. Matthew remembered I’d been wearing my blue sweater. Its high neckline would hide my bandage, so I went upstairs to change.

When I came back down, his face broke into a slow, appreciative smile. “Just as beautiful now as then,” he said, kissing me deeply. “Maybe more so.”

“Be careful,” I warned him with a laugh. “You hadn’t decided you loved me yet.”

“Oh, I’d decided,” he said, kissing me again. “I just hadn’t told you.”

The women were sitting right where we expected them to be, Marthe with her murder mystery and Ysabeau with her newspapers. The conversation might not have been exactly the same, but it didn’t seem to matter. The most difficult part of the evening was watching Matthew dance with his mother. The bittersweet expression on his face as he twirled her was new, and he definitely hadn’t caught her up in a fierce bear hug when their dance was over. When he invited me to dance, I gave his hand an extra squeeze of sympathy.

“Thank you for this,” he whispered in my ear as he whirled me around. He planted a soft kiss on my neck. That definitely hadn’t happened the first time.

Matthew brought the evening to a close just as he had before, by announcing that he was taking me to bed. This time we said good night knowing that it was good-bye. Our return trip was much the same, but less frightening for its familiarity. I didn’t panic or lose my concentration when time resisted our passage, focusing intently on the familiar rituals of making dinner in the Bishop house. We were back in plenty of time to make the salad.

During dinner Sarah and Em regaled the vampires with tales of my adventures growing up. When my aunts ran out of stories, Matthew teased Marcus about his disastrous real-estate deals in the nineteenth century, the enormous investments he’d made in new technologies in the twentieth century that had never panned out, and his perpetual weakness for redheaded women.

“I knew I liked you.” Sarah smoothed down her own unruly red mop and poured him more whiskey.

Halloween dawned clear and bright. Snow was always a possibility in this neck of the woods, but this year the weather looked encouraging. Matthew and Marcus took a longer walk than usual, and I lingered over tea and coffee with Sarah and Em.

When the phone rang, we all jumped. Sarah answered it, and we could tell from her half of the conversation that the call was unexpected.

She hung up and joined us at the table in the family room, which was once again big enough to seat all of us. “That was Faye. She and Janet are at the Hunters’. In their RV. They want to know if we’ll join them on their fall trip. They’re driving to Arizona, then up to Seattle.”

“The goddess has been busy,” Em said with a smile. The two of them had been trying for days to decide how they would extricate themselves from Madison without setting off a flurry of gossip. “I guess that settles it. We’ll hit the road, then go meet Ysabeau.”

We carried bags of food and other supplies to Sarah’s beat-up old car. When it was fully loaded and you could barely see out the rearview mirror, they started issuing orders.