Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Leave them in the keeping room,” I told him. “The house will take care of them.”

I continued to putter, doing laundry and straightening up Sarah’s office. It was not until I went up to put our clothes away that I noticed both computers were missing. I went pounding downstairs in a panic.

“Matthew! The computers are gone!”

“Hamish has them,” he said, catching me in his arms and smoothing my hair against the back of my head. “It’s all right. No one’s been in the house.”

My shoulders sagged, heart still hammering at the idea of being surprised by another Domenico or Juliette.

He made tea, then rubbed my feet while I drank it. All the while he talked about nothing important—houses in Hamilton that had reminded him of some other place and time, his first sniff of a tomato, what he thought when he’d seen me row in Oxford—until I relaxed into the warmth and comfort.

Matthew was always different when no one else was around, but the contrast was especially marked now that our families had left. Since arriving at the Bishop house, he’d gradually taken on the responsibility for eight other lives. He’d watched over all of them, regardless of who they were or how they were related to him, with the same ferocious intensity. Now he had only one creature to manage.

“We haven’t had much time to just talk,” I reflected, thinking of the whirlwind of days since we’d met. “Not just the two of us.”

“The past weeks have been almost biblical in their tests. I think the only thing we’ve escaped is a plague of locusts.” He paused. “But if the universe does want to test us the old-fashioned way, this counts as the end of our trial. It will be forty days this evening.”

So little time, for so much to have happened.

I put my empty mug on the table and reached for his hands. “Where are we going, Matthew?”

“Can you wait a little longer, mon coeur?” He looked out the window. “I want this day to last. And it will be dark soon enough.”

“You like playing house with me.” A piece of hair had fallen onto his forehead, and I brushed it back.

“I love playing house with you,” he said, capturing my hand.

We talked quietly for another half hour, before Matthew glanced outdoors again. “Go upstairs and take a bath. Use every drop of water in the tank and take a long, hot shower, too. You may crave pizza every now and then in the days to come. But that will be nothing compared to your longing for hot water. In a few weeks, you will cheerfully commit murder for a shower.”

Matthew brought up my Halloween costume while I bathed: a calf-length black dress with a high neck, sharp-toed boots, and a pointy hat.

“What, may I ask, are these?” He brandished a pair of stockings with red and white horizontal stripes.

“Those are the stockings Em mentioned.” I groaned. “She’ll know if I don’t wear them.”

“If I still had my phone, I would take a picture of you in these hideous things and blackmail you for eternity.”

“Is there anything that would ensure your silence?” I sank lower into the tub.

“I’m sure there is,” Matthew said, tossing the stockings behind him.

We were playful at first. As at dinner last night, and again at breakfast, we carefully avoided mentioning that this might be our last chance to be together. I was still a novice, but Em told me even the most experienced timewalkers respected the unpredictability of moving between past and future and recognized how easy it would be to wander indefinitely within the spiderweb of time.

Matthew sensed my changing mood and answered it first with greater gentleness, then with a fierce possessiveness that demanded I think of nothing but him.

Despite our obvious need for comfort and reassurance, we didn’t consummate our marriage.

“When we’re safe,” he’d murmured, kissing me along my collarbone. “When there’s more time.”

Somewhere along the way, my smallpox blister burst. Matthew examined it and pronounced that it was doing nicely—an odd description for an angry open wound the size of a dime. He removed the bandage from my neck, revealing the barest trace of Miriam’s sutures, and the one from my arm as well.

“You’re a fast healer,” he said approvingly, kissing the inside of my elbow where he’d drunk from my veins. His lips felt warm against my skin.

“How odd. My skin is cold there.” I touched my neck. “Here, too.”

Matthew drew his thumb across the spot where my carotid artery passed close to the surface. I shivered at his touch. The number of nerve endings there had seemingly tripled.

“Extra sensitivity,” Matthew said, “as if you’re part vampire.” He bent and put his lips against my pulse.

“Oh,” I gasped, taken aback at the intensity of feeling.

Mindful of the time, I buttoned myself into the black dress. With a braid down my back, I might have stepped out of a photograph from the turn of the nineteenth century.

“Too bad we’re not timewalking to World War I,” Matthew said, pulling at the sleeves of the dress. “You’d make a convincing schoolmistress circa 1912 in that getup.”

“Not with these on.” I sat on the bed and started pulling on the candy-striped stockings.

Matthew roared with laughter and begged me to put the hat on immediately.

“I’ll set fire to myself,” I protested. “Wait until the jack-o’-lanterns are lit.”

We went outside with matches, thinking we could light the pumpkins the human way. A breeze had kicked up, though, which made it difficult to strike the matches and impossible to keep the candles illuminated.

“Damn it,” I swore. “Sophie’s work shouldn’t go to waste.”

“Can you use a spell?” Matthew said, already prepared to have another go at the matchbox.

“If not, then I have no business even pretending to be a witch on Halloween.” The mere thought of explaining my failure to Sophie made me concentrate on the task at hand, and the wick burst into life. I lit the other eleven pumpkins that were scattered down the drive, each more amazing or terrifying than the last.

At six o’clock there was a fierce pounding on the door and muffled cries of “Trick or treat!” Matthew had never experienced an American Halloween, and he eagerly greeted our first visitors.

Whoever was outside received one of his heart-stopping smiles before Matthew grinned and beckoned me forward.

A tiny witch and a slightly larger vampire were holding hands on the front porch.

“Trick or treat,” they intoned, holding out their open pillowcases.

“I’m a vampire,” the boy said, baring his fangs at Matthew. He pointed to his sister. “She’s a witch.”

“I can see that,” Matthew said gravely, taking in the black cape and white makeup. “I’m a vampire, too.”

The boy examined him critically. “Your mother should have worked harder on your costume. You don’t look like a vampire at all. Where’s your cape?” The miniature vampire swept his arms up, a fold of his own satin cape in each fist, revealing its bat-shaped wings. “See, you need your cape to fly. Otherwise you can’t turn into a bat.”

“Ah. That is a problem. My cape is at home, and now I can’t fly back and get it. Perhaps I can borrow yours.” Matthew dumped a handful of candy into each pillowcase, the eyes of both children growing large at his generosity. I peeked around the door to wave at their parents.

“You can tell she’s a witch,” the girl piped up, nodding approvingly at my red-and-white-striped stockings and black boots. At their parents’ urging, they shouted thank-yous as they trotted down the walk and climbed into the waiting car.

Over the next three hours, we greeted a steady stream of fairy princesses, pirates, ghosts, skeletons, mermaids, and space aliens, along with still more witches and vampires. I gently told Matthew that one piece of candy per goblin was de rigueur and that if he didn’t stop distributing handfuls of goodies now, we would run out long before the trick-or-treating stopped at nine o’clock.