Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

It was hard to criticize, however, given his obvious delight. His responses to the children who came to the door revealed a wholly new side of him. Crouching down so that he was less intimidating, he asked questions about their costumes and told every young boy purporting to be a vampire that he was the most frightening creature he’d ever beheld.

But it was his encounter with one fairy princess wearing an oversize set of wings and a gauze skirt that tugged hardest at my heart. Overwhelmed and exhausted by the occasion, she burst into tears when Matthew asked which piece of candy she wanted. Her brother, a strapping young pirate aged six, dropped her hand in horror.

“We shall ask your mother.” Matthew swept the fairy princess into his arms and grabbed the pirate by the back of his bandanna. He safely delivered both children into the waiting arms of their parents. Long before reaching them, however, the fairy princess had forgotten her tears. Instead she had one sticky hand wrapped in the collar of Matthew’s sweater and was tapping him lightly on the head with her wand, repeating, “Bippity, bop-pity, BOO!”

“When she grows up and thinks about Prince Charming, he’ll look just like you,” I told him after he returned to the house. A shower of silver glitter fell as he dipped his head for a kiss. “You’re covered with fairy dust,” I said, laughing and brushing the last of it from his hair.

Around eight o’clock, when the tide of fairy princesses and pirates turned to Gothic teenagers wearing black lipstick and leather garments festooned with chains, Matthew handed me the basket of candy and retreated to the keeping room.

“Coward,” I teased, straightening my hat before answering the door to another gloomy bunch.

Only three minutes before it would be safe to turn out the porch light without ruining the Bishops’ Halloween reputation, we heard another loud knock and a bellowed “Trick or treat!”

“Who can that be?” I groaned, slamming my hat back on my head.

Two young wizards stood on the front steps. One was the paperboy. He was accompanied by a lanky teenager with bad skin and a pierced nose, whom I recognized dimly as belonging to the O’Neil clan. Their costumes, such as they were, consisted of torn jeans, safety-pinned T-shirts, fake blood, plastic teeth, and lengths of dog leash.

“Aren’t you a bit old for this, Sammy?”

“It’th Tham now.” Sammy’s voice was breaking, full of unexpected ups and downs, and his prosthetic fangs gave him a lisp.

“Hello, Sam.” There were half a dozen pieces in the bottom of the candy basket. “You’re welcome to what’s left. We were just about to put out the lights. Shouldn’t you be at the Hunters’ house, bobbing for apples?”

“We heard your pumpkinth were really cool thith year.” Sammy shifted from one foot to the other. “And, uh, well . . .” He flushed and took out his plastic teeth. “Rob swore he saw a vampire here the other day. I bet him twenty bucks the Bishops wouldn’t let one in the house.”

“What makes you so sure you’d recognize a vampire if you saw one?”

The vampire in question came out of the keeping room and stood behind me. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly. Two adolescent jaws dropped.

“We’d have to be either human or really stupid not to recognize him,” said Rob, awestruck. “He’s the biggest vampire I’ve ever seen.”

“Cool.” Sammy grinned from ear to ear. He high-fived his friend and grabbed the candy.

“Don’t forget to pay up, Sam,” I said sternly.

“And, Samuel,” Matthew said, his French accent unusually pronounced, “could I ask you—as a favor to me—not to tell anyone else about this?”

“Ever?” Sammy was incredulous at the notion of keeping such a juicy piece of information to himself.

Matthew’s mouth twitched. “No. I see your point. Can you keep quiet until tomorrow?”

“Sure!” Sammy nodded, looking to Rob for confirmation. “That’s only three hours. We can do that. No problem.”

They got on their bikes and headed off.

“The roads are dark,” Matthew said with a frown of concern. “We should drive them.”

“They’ll be fine. They’re not vampires, but they can definitely find their way to town.”

The two bikes skidded to a halt, sending up a shower of loose gravel.

“You want us to turn off the pumpkins?” Sammy shouted from the driveway.

“If you want to,” I said. “Thanks!”

Rob O’Neil waved at the left side of the driveway and Sammy at the right, extinguishing all the jack-o’-lanterns with enviable casualness. The two boys rode off, their bikes bumping over the ruts, their progress made easier by the moon and the burgeoning sixth sense of the teenage witch.

I shut the door and leaned against it, groaning. “My feet are killing me.” I unlaced my boots and kicked them off, tossing the hat onto the steps.

“The page from Ashmole 782 is gone,” Matthew announced quietly, leaning against the banister post.

“Mom’s letter?”

“Also gone.”

“It’s time, then.” I pulled myself away from the old door, and the house moaned softly.

“Make yourself some tea and meet me in the family room. I’ll get the bag.”

He waited for me on the couch, the soft-sided briefcase sitting closed at his feet and the silver chess piece and gold earring lying on the coffee table. I handed him a glass of wine and sat alongside. “That’s the last of the wine.”

Matthew eyed my tea. “And that’s the last of the tea for you as well.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair and took a deep breath. “I would have liked to go sometime closer, when there was less death and disease,” he began, sounding tentative, “and somewhere closer, with tea and plumbing. But I think you’ll like it once you get used to it.”

I still didn’t know when or where “it” was.

Matthew bent down to undo the lock. When he opened the bag and saw what was on top, he let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I was afraid Ysabeau might have sent the wrong one.”

“You haven’t opened the bag yet?” I was amazed at his self-control.

“No.” Matthew lifted out a book. “I didn’t want to think about it too much. Just in case.”

He handed me the book. It had black leather bindings with simple silver borders.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, running my fingers over its surface.

“Open it.” Matthew looked anxious.

“Will I know where we’re going once I do?” Now that the third object was in my hands, I felt strangely reluctant.

“I think so.”

The front cover creaked open, and the unmistakable scent of old paper and ink rose in the air. There were no marbled endpapers, no bookplates, no additional blank sheets such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors put in their books. And the covers were heavy, indicating that wooden boards were concealed beneath the smoothly stretched leather.

Two lines were written in thick black ink on the first page, in a tight, spiky script of the late sixteenth century.

“‘To my own sweet Matt,’ ” I read aloud. “‘Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?’”

The dedication was unsigned, but it was familiar.

“Shakespeare?” I lifted my eyes to Matthew.

“Not originally,” he replied, his face tense. “Will was something of a magpie when it came to collecting other people’s words.”

I slowly turned the page.

It wasn’t a printed book but a manuscript, written in the same bold hand as the inscription. I looked closer to make out the words.

“Jesus,” I said hoarsely, clapping the book shut. My hands were shaking.