Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“They know I’m a little different. Mary may suspect I’m more than a little different, but she’s convinced that I saved Dan’s life, so she’s decided it doesn’t matter.”

“How did you save her husband?” Vampires were supposed to take human lives, not save them.

“I saw him on a rotation at the Radcliffe when they were short staffed. Mary had seen a program that described the symptoms of stroke, and she recognized them when her husband began to struggle. Without her he’d be dead or seriously incapacitated.”

“But she thinks you saved Dan?” The vampire’s spiciness was making me dizzy. I lifted the lid from the teapot, replacing the aroma of carnations with the tannic smell of black tea.

“Mary saved him the first time, but after he was admitted into hospital he had a terrible reaction to his medication. I told you she’s observant. When she took her concerns to one of the physicians, he brushed them aside. I . . . overheard—and intervened.”

“Do you often see patients?” I poured each of us a steaming mug of tea so strong you could stand a spoon up in it. My hands trembled slightly at the idea of a vampire prowling the wards at the John Radcliffe among the sick and injured.

“No,” he said, toying with the sugar jar, “only when they have an emergency.”

Pushing one of the mugs toward him, I fixed my eyes on the sugar. He handed it to me. I put precisely half a teaspoon of sugar and half a cup of milk into my tea. This was just how I liked it—black as tar, a hint of sugar to cut the edge off the bitterness, then enough milk to make it look less like stew. This done, I stirred the concoction clockwise. As soon as experience told me it wouldn’t burn my tongue, I took a sip. Perfect.

The vampire was smiling.

“What?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen anyone approach tea with that much attentiveness to detail.”

“You must not spend much time with serious tea drinkers. It’s all about being able to gauge the strength before you put the sugar and milk in it.” His steaming mug sat untouched in front of him. “You like yours black, I see.”

“Tea’s not really my drink,” he said, his voicing dropping slightly.

“What is your drink?” The minute the question was out of my mouth, I wished I could call it back. His mood went from amusement to tight-lipped fury.

“You have to ask?” he said scathingly. “Even humans know the answer to that question.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.” I gripped the mug, trying to steady myself.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

I drank my tea in silence. We both looked up when Steph approached with a toast rack full of grilled bread and a plate heaped high with eggs and bacon.

“Mum thought you needed veg,” Steph explained when my eyes widened at the mound of fried mushrooms and tomatoes that accompanied the breakfast. “She said you looked like death.”

“Thank you!” I said. Mary’s critique of my appearance did nothing to diminish my appreciation for the extra food.

Steph grinned and Clairmont offered me a small smile when I picked up the fork and applied myself to the plate.

Everything was piping hot and fragrant, with the perfect ratio of fried surface to melting, tender insides. My hunger appeased, I started a methodical attack on the toast rack, taking up the first triangle of cold toast and scraping butter over its surface. The vampire watched me eat with the same acute attention he’d devoted to watching me make my tea.

“So why science?” I ventured, tucking the toast into my mouth so he’d have to answer.

“Why history?” His voice was dismissive, but he wasn’t going to fend me off that easily.

“You first.”

“I suppose I need to know why I’m here,” he said, looking fixedly at the table. He was building a moated castle from the sugar jar and a ring of blue artificial-sweetener packets.

I froze at the similarity between his explanation and what Agatha had told me the day before about Ashmole 782. “That’s a question for philosophers, not scientists.” I sucked a drop of butter off my finger to hide my confusion.

His eyes glittered with another wave of sudden anger. “You don’t really believe that—that scientists don’t care about why.”

“They used to be interested in the whys,” I conceded, keeping a wary eye on him. His sudden shifts in mood were downright frightening. “Now it seems all they’re concerned with is the question of how—how does the body work, how do the planets move?”

Clairmont snorted. “Not the good scientists.” The people behind him got up to leave, and he tensed, ready if they decided to rush the table.

“And you’re a good scientist.”

He let my assessment pass without comment.

“Someday you’ll have to explain to me the relationship between neuroscience, DNA research, animal behavior, and evolution. They don’t obviously fit together.” I took another bite of toast.

Clairmont’s left eyebrow rose toward his hairline. “You’ve been catching up on your scientific journals,” he said sharply.

I shrugged. “You had an unfair advantage. You knew all about my work. I was just leveling the playing field.”

He mumbled something under his breath that sounded French. “I’ve had a lot of time to think,” he replied flatly in English, enlarging the moat around his castle with another ring of sweetener packets. “There’s no connection between them.”

“Liar,” I said softly.

Not surprisingly, my accusation made Clairmont furious, but the speed of the transformation still took me aback. It was a reminder that I was having breakfast with a creature who could be lethal.

“Tell me what the connection is, then,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’m not sure,” I said truthfully. “Something’s holding them all together, a question that links your research interests and gives meaning to them. The only other explanation is that you’re an intellectual magpie—which is ridiculous, given how highly regarded your work is—or maybe you get bored easily. You don’t seem the type to be prone to intellectual ennui. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Clairmont studied me until the silence grew uncomfortable. My stomach was starting to complain at the amount of food I’d expected it to absorb. I poured fresh tea and doctored it while waiting for him to speak.

“For a witch you’re observant, too.” The vampire’s eyes showed grudging admiration.

“Vampires aren’t the only creatures who can hunt, Matthew.”

“No. We all hunt something, don’t we Diana?” He lingered over my name. “Now it’s my turn. Why history?”

“You haven’t answered all my questions.” And I hadn’t yet asked him my most important question.

He shook his head firmly, and I redirected my energy from ferreting out information to protecting myself from Clairmont’s attempts to obtain it.

“At first it was the neatness of it, I suppose.” My voice sounded surprisingly tentative. “The past seemed so predictable, as if nothing that happened there was surprising.”

“Spoken like someone who wasn’t there,” the vampire said drily.

I gave a short laugh. “I found that out soon enough. But in the beginning that’s how it seemed. At Oxford the professors made the past a tidy story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everything seemed logical, inevitable. Their stories hooked me, and that was it. No other subject interested me. I became a historian and have never looked back.”

“Even though you discovered that human beings—past or present—aren’t logical?”

“History only became more challenging when it became less neat. Every time I pick up a book or a document from the past, I’m in a battle with people who lived hundreds of years ago. They have their secrets and obsessions—all the things they won’t or can’t reveal. It’s my job to discover and explain them.”