Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

I shook my head, tucking another bundle of salmon together. “I probably know less about vampires than most humans do. And the little my Aunt Sarah taught me has to be treated as highly suspect, given her prejudices. She was quite clear, for instance, on your diet. She said vampires will consume only blood, because it’s all you need to survive. But that isn’t true, is it?”

Matthew’s eyes narrowed, and his tone was suddenly frosty. “No. You need water to survive. Is that all you drink?”

“Should I not be talking about this?” My questions were making him angry. Nervously I wrapped my legs around the base of the chair and realized I’d never put on any shoes. I was entertaining in bare feet.

“You can’t help being curious, I suppose,” Matthew replied after considering my question for a long moment. “I drink wine and can eat food— preferably uncooked food, or food that’s cold, so that it doesn’t smell.”

“But the food and wine don’t nourish you,” I guessed. “You feed on blood—all kinds of blood.” He flinched. “And you don’t have to wait outside until I invite you into my house. What else do I have wrong about vampires?”

Matthew’s face adopted an expression of long-suffering patience. He sat back in his chair, taking the wineglass with him. I stood up slightly and reached across the table to pour him some more. If I was going to ply him with questions, I could at least ply him with wine, too. Leaning over the candles, I almost set my shirt on fire. Matthew grabbed the wine bottle.

“Why don’t I do that?” he suggested. He poured himself some more and topped up my glass as well before he answered. “Most of what you know about me—about vampires—was dreamed up by humans. These legends made it possible for humans to live around us. Creatures frighten them. And I’m not talking solely about vampires.”

“Black hats, bats, brooms.” It was the unholy trinity of witchcraft lore, which burst into spectacular, ridiculous life every year on Halloween.

“Exactly.” Matthew nodded. “Somewhere in each of these stories, there’s a nugget of truth, something that frightened humans and helped them deny we were real. The strongest distinguishing characteristic of humans is their power of denial. I have strength and long life, you have supernatural abilities, daemons have awe-inspiring creativity. Humans can convince themselves up is down and black is white. It’s their special gift.”

“What’s the truth in the story about vampires not being allowed inside without an invitation?” Having pressed him on his diet, I focused on the entrance protocols.

“Humans are with us all the time. They just refuse to acknowledge our existence because we don’t make sense in their limited world. Once they allow us in—see us for who we really are—then we’re in to stay, just as someone you’ve invited into your home can be hard to get rid of. They can’t ignore us anymore.”

“So it’s like the stories of sunlight,” I said slowly. “It’s not that you can’t be in sunlight, but when you are, it’s harder for humans to ignore you. Rather than admit that you’re walking among them, humans tell themselves you can’t survive the light.”

Matthew nodded again. “They manage to ignore us anyway, of course. We can’t stay indoors until it’s dark. But we make more sense to humans after twilight—and that goes for you, too. You should see the looks when you walk into a room or down the street.”

I thought about my ordinary appearance and glanced at him doubtfully. Matthew chuckled.

“You don’t believe me, I know. But it’s true. When humans see a creature in broad daylight, it makes them uneasy. We’re too much for them—too tall, too strong, too confident, too creative, too powerful, too different. They try very hard to push our square pegs into their round holes all day long. At night it’s a bit easier to dismiss us as merely odd.”

I stood up and removed the fish plates, happy to see that Matthew had eaten everything but the garnish. He poured a bit more of the German wine into his glass while I pulled two more plates out of the refrigerator. Each held neatly arranged slices of raw venison so thin that the butcher insisted you could read the Oxford Mail through them. Vampires didn’t like greens. We’d see about root vegetables and cheese. I heaped beets in the center of each plate and shaved Parmesan on top.

A broad-bottomed decanter full of red wine went into the center of the table, where it quickly caught Matthew’s attention.

“May I?” he asked, no doubt worried about my burning down the college. He reached for the plain glass container, poured a bit of wine into our glasses, then held it up to his nose.

“Côte-Rôtie,” he said with satisfaction. “One of my favorites.”

I eyed the plain glass container. “You can tell that just from smelling it?”

He laughed. “Some vampire stories are true. I have an exceptional sense of smell—and excellent sight and hearing, too. But even a human could tell that this was Côte-Rôtie.” He closed his eyes again. “Is it 2003?”

My mouth gaped open. “Yes!” This was better than watching a game show. There had been a little crown on the label. “Does your nose tell you who made it?”

“Yes, but that’s because I’ve walked the fields where the grapes were grown,” he confessed sheepishly, as if he’d been caught pulling a trick on me.

“You can smell the fields in this?” I stuck my nose in the glass, relieved that the odor of horse manure was no longer there.

“Sometimes I believe I can remember everything I’ve ever smelled. It’s probably vanity,” he said ruefully, “but scents bring back powerful memories. I remember the first time I smelled chocolate as if it were yesterday.”

“Really?” I pitched forward in my chair.

“It was 1615. War hadn’t broken out yet, and the French king had married a Spanish princess that no one liked—especially not the king.” When I smiled, he smiled back, though his eyes were fixed on some distant image. “She brought chocolate to Paris. It was as bitter as sin and as decadent, too. We drank the cacao straight, mixed with water and no sugar.”

I laughed. “It sounds awful. Thank goodness someone figured out that chocolate deserved to be sweet.”

“That was a human, I’m afraid. The vampires liked it bitter and thick.”

We picked up our forks and started in on the venison. “More Scottish food,” I said, gesturing at the meat with my knife.

Matthew chewed a piece. “Red deer. A young Highlands stag from the taste of it.”

I shook my head in amazement.

“As I said,” he continued, “some of the stories are true.”

“Can you fly?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

He snorted. “Of course not. We leave that to the witches, since you can control the elements. But we’re strong and fast. Vampires can run and jump, which makes humans think we can fly. We’re efficient, too.”

“Efficient?” I put my fork down, unsure whether raw venison was to my liking.

“Our bodies don’t waste much energy. We have a lot of it to spend on moving when we need to.”

“You don’t breathe much,” I said, thinking back to yoga and taking a sip of wine.

“No,” Matthew said. “Our hearts don’t beat very often. We don’t need to eat very often. We run cold, which slows down most bodily processes and helps explain why we live so long.”

“The coffin story! You don’t sleep much, but when you do, you sleep like the dead.”

He grinned. “You’re getting the hang of this, I see.”

Matthew’s plate was empty of everything except for the beets, and mine was empty except for the venison. I cleared away the second course and invited him to pour more wine.