Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Weeks ago.” Matthew shrugged with his usual disregard for the passage of time. “I can’t remember.”

“Tonight you’re having wine and soup. Tomorrow—it’s up to you what you eat. Do you want some time alone before dinner, or will you risk playing billiards with me?” Hamish was extremely good at billiards and even better at snooker, which he had learned to play as a teenager. He’d made his first money in Glasgow’s billiards halls and could beat almost anyone. Matthew refused to play snooker with him anymore on the grounds that it was no fun to lose every time, even to a friend. The vampire had tried to teach him carambole instead, the old French game involving balls and cues, but Matthew always won those games. Billiards was the sensible compromise.

Unable to resist a battle of any sort, Matthew agreed. “I’ll change and join you.”

Hamish’s felt-covered billiards table was in a room opposite the library. He was there in a sweater and trousers when Matthew arrived in a white shirt and jeans. The vampire avoided wearing white, which made him look startling and ghostly, but it was the only decent shirt he had with him. He’d packed for a hunting trip, not a dinner party.

He picked up his cue and stood at the end of the table. “Ready?”

Hamish nodded. “Let’s say an hour of play, shall we? Then we’ll go down for a drink.”

The two men bent over their cues. “Be gentle with me, Matthew,” Hamish murmured just before they struck the balls. The vampire snorted as they shot to the far end, hit the cushion, and rebounded.

“I’ll take the white,” said Matthew when the balls stopped rolling and his was closest. He palmed the other and tossed it to Hamish. The daemon put a red ball on its mark and stood back.

As in hunting, Matthew was in no rush to score points. He shot fifteen hazards in a row, putting the red ball in a different pocket each time. “If you don’t mind,” he drawled, pointing to the table. The daemon put his yellow ball on it without comment.

Matthew mixed up simple shots that took the red ball into the pockets with trickier shots known as cannons that were not his forte. Cannons involved hitting both Hamish’s yellow ball and the red ball with one strike of the cue, and they required not only strength but finesse.

“Where did you find the witch?” Hamish asked casually after Matthew cannoned the yellow and red balls.

Matthew retrieved the white ball and prepared for his next shot. “The Bodleian.”

The daemon’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “The Bodleian? Since when have you been a regular at the library?”

Matthew fouled, his white ball hopping over the cushion and onto the floor. “Since I was at a concert and overheard two witches talking about an American who’d got her hands on a long-lost manuscript,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out why the witches would give a damn.” He stepped back from the table, annoyed at his error.

Hamish quickly played his fifteen hazards. Matthew placed his ball on the table and picked up the chalk to mark down Hamish’s score.

“So you just strolled in there and struck up a conversation with her to find out?” The daemon pocketed all three balls with a single shot.

“I went looking for her, yes.” Matthew watched while Hamish moved around the table. “I was curious.”

“Was she happy to see you?” Hamish asked mildly, making another tricky shot. He knew that vampires, witches, and daemons seldom mixed. They preferred to spend time within close-knit circles of similar creatures. His friendship with Matthew was a relative rarity, and Hamish’s daemonic friends thought it was madness to let a vampire get so close. On a night like this one, he thought they might have a point.

“Not exactly. Diana was frightened at first, even though she met my eyes without flinching. Her eyes are extraordinary—blue and gold and green and gray,” Matthew mused. “Later she wanted to hit me. She smelled so angry.”

Hamish bit back a laugh. “Sounds like a reasonable response to being ambushed by a vampire in the Bodleian.” He decided to be kind to Matthew and save him from a reply. The daemon shot his yellow ball over the red, deliberately nicking it just enough that the red ball drifted forward and collided with it. “Damn,” he groaned. “A foul.”

Matthew returned to the table, shot a few hazards, and tried a cannon or two.

“Have you seen each other outside the library?” Hamish asked when the vampire had regained some of his composure.

“I don’t see her much, actually, even in the library. I sit in one part and she sits in another. I’ve taken her to breakfast, though. And to the Old Lodge, to meet Amira.”

Hamish kept his jaw closed with difficulty. Matthew had known women for years without taking them to the Old Lodge. And what was this about sitting at opposite ends of the library?

“Wouldn’t it be easier to sit next to her in the library, if you’re interested in her?”

“I’m not interested in her!” Matthew’s cue exploded into the white ball. “I want the manuscript. I’ve been trying to get my hands on it for more than a hundred years. She just put in the slip and up it came from the stacks.” His voice was envious.

“What manuscript, Matt?” Hamish was doing his best to be patient, but the exchange was rapidly becoming unendurable. Matthew was giving out information like a miser parting with pennies. It was intensely aggravating for quick-minded daemons to deal with creatures who didn’t consider any division of time smaller than a decade particularly important.

“An alchemical book that belonged to Elias Ashmole. Diana Bishop is a highly respected historian of alchemy.”

Matthew fouled again by striking the balls too hard. Hamish respotted the balls and continued to rack up points while his friend simmered down. Finally Jordan came to tell them that drinks were available downstairs.

“What’s the score?” Hamish peered at the chalk marks. He knew he’d won, but the gentlemanly thing was to ask—or so Matthew had told him.

“You won, of course.”

Matthew stalked out of the room and pounded down the stairs at considerably more than a human pace. Jordan eyed the polished treads with concern.

“Professor Clairmont is having a difficult day, Jordan.”

“So it would seem,” the butler murmured.

“Better bring up another bottle of red. It’s going to be a long night.”

They had their drinks in what had once been the lodge’s reception area. Its windows looked out on the gardens, which were still kept in orderly, classical parterres despite the fact that their proportions were all wrong for a hunting lodge. They were too grand—they belonged to a palace, not a folly.

In front of the fireplace, drinks in hand, Hamish could at last press his way into the heart of the mystery. “Tell me about this manuscript of Diana’s, Matthew. It contains what, exactly? The recipe for the philosopher’s stone that turns lead into gold?” Hamish’s voice was lightly mocking. “Instructions on how to concoct the elixir of life so you can transform mortal into immortal flesh?”

The daemon stopped his teasing the instant Matthew’s eyes rose to meet his.

“You aren’t serious,” Hamish whispered, his voice shocked. The philosopher’s stone was just a legend, like the Holy Grail or Atlantis. It couldn’t possibly be real. Belatedly, he realized that vampires, daemons, and witches weren’t supposed to be real either.

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Matthew asked.

“No.” The daemon shuddered. Matthew had always been convinced that he could use his scientific skills to figure out what made vampires resistant to death and decay. The philosopher’s stone fit neatly into those dreams.