Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

Overhead, a door closed.

“He’s back. He will go to his father’s room, as he always does when he is troubled,” Ysabeau explained.

Matthew’s beautiful young mother sat and stared at the fire, while I wrung my hands in my lap, refusing everything Marthe put in front of me. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but my hollowness had nothing to do with hunger.

I felt shattered, surrounded by the broken pieces of my formerly ordered life. My degree from Oxford, my position at Yale, and my carefully researched and written books had long provided meaning and structure to my life. But none of them were of comfort to me in this strange new world of menacing vampires and threatening witches. My exposure to it had left me raw, with a new fragility linked to a vampire and the invisible, undeniable movement of a witch’s blood in my veins.

At last Matthew entered the salon, clean and dressed in fresh clothes. His eyes sought me out immediately, their cold touch fluttering over me as he checked that I was unharmed. His mouth softened in relief.

It was the last hint of comforting familiarity that I detected in him.

The vampire who entered the salon was not the Matthew that I knew. He was not the elegant, charming creature who had slipped into my life with a mocking smile and invitations to breakfast. Nor was he the scientist, absorbed in his work and preoccupied with the question of why he was here. And there was no sign of the Matthew who had swung me into his arms and kissed me with such passionate intensity only the night before.

This Matthew was cold and impassive. The few soft edges he’d once possessed—around his mouth, in the delicacy of his hands, the stillness of his eyes—had been replaced by hard lines and angles. He seemed older than I remembered, a combination of weariness and careful remove reflecting every moment of his nearly fifteen hundred years of age.

A log broke in the fireplace. The sparks caught my eye, burning blood orange as they fell in the grate.

Nothing but the color red appeared at first. Then the red took on a texture, strands of red burnished here and there with gold and silver. The texture became a thing—hair, Sarah’s hair. My fingers caught the strap of a backpack from my shoulder, and I dropped my lunch box on the floor of the family room with the same officious clatter as my father when he dropped his briefcase by the door.

“I’m home.” My child’s voice was high and bright. “Are there cookies?”

Sarah’s head turned, red and orange, catching sparks in the late-afternoon light.

But her face was pure white.

The white overwhelmed the other colors, became silver, and assumed a texture like the scales of a fish. Chain mail clung to a familiar, muscular body. Matthew.

“I’m through.” His white hands tore at a black tunic with a silver cross on the front, rending it at the shoulders. He flung it at someone’s feet, turned, and strode away.

With a single blink of my eyes, the vision was gone, replaced by the warm tones of the salon at Sept-Tours, but the startling knowledge of what had happened lingered. As with the witchwind, there had been no warning when this hidden talent of mine was released. Had my mother’s visions come on so suddenly and had such clarity? I glanced around the room, but the only creature who seemed to have noticed something was odd was Marthe, who looked at me with concern.

Matthew went to Ysabeau and kissed her lightly on both of her flawless white cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Maman,” he murmured.

“Hein, he was always a pig. It’s not your fault.” Ysabeau gave her son’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I am glad you are home.”

“He’s gone. There’s nothing to worry about tonight,” Matthew said, his mouth tight. He drew his fingers through his hair.

“Drink.” Marthe belonged to the sustenance school of crisis management. She handed a glass of wine to Matthew and plunked yet another cup of tea next to me. It sat on the table, untouched, sending tendrils of steam into the room.

“Thank you, Marthe.” Matthew drank deeply. As he did, his eyes returned to mine, but he deliberately looked away as he swallowed. “My phone,” he said, turning toward his study.

He descended the stairs a few moments later. “For you.” He gave me the phone in such a way that our hands didn’t need to touch.

I knew who was on the line. “Hello, Sarah.”

“I’ve been calling for more than eight hours. What on earth is wrong?” Sarah knew something bad was happening—she wouldn’t have called a vampire otherwise. Her tense voice conjured up the image of her white face from my vision. She’d been frightened in it, not just sad.

“There’s nothing wrong,” I said, not wanting her to be scared anymore. “I’m with Matthew.”

“Being with Matthew is what got you into this trouble in the first place.”

“Sarah, I can’t talk now.” The last thing I needed was to argue with my aunt.

She drew in her breath. “Diana, there are a few things you need to know before you decide to throw in your lot with a vampire.”

“Really?” I asked, my temper flaring. “Do you think now is the time to tell me about the covenant? You don’t by any chance know the witches who are among the current members of the Congregation, do you? I have a few things I’d like to say to them.” My fingers were burning, and the skin under my nails was becoming a vivid sky blue.

“You turned your back on your power, Diana, and refused to talk about magic. The covenant wasn’t relevant to your life, nor was the Congregation.” Sarah sounded defensive.

My bitter laugh helped the blue tinge fade from my fingers. “Justify it any way you want, Sarah. After Mom and Dad were killed, you and Em should have told me, and not just hinted at something in mysterious half-truths. But it’s too late now. I need to talk to Matthew. I’ll call you tomorrow.” After severing the connection and flinging the phone onto the ottoman at my feet, I closed my eyes and waited for the tingling in my fingers to subside.

All three vampires were staring at me—I could feel it.

“So,” I said into the silence, “are we to expect more visitors from this Congregation?”

Matthew’s mouth tightened. “No.”

It was a one-word answer, but at least it was the word I wanted to hear. Over the past few days, I’d had a respite from Matthew’s mood changes and had almost forgotten how alarming they could be. His next words wiped away my hope that this latest outburst would soon pass.

“There will be no visits from the Congregation because we aren’t going to break the covenant. We’ll stay here for a few more days, then return to Oxford. Is that all right with you, Maman?”

“Of course,” Ysabeau replied promptly. She sighed with relief.

“We should keep the standard flying,” Matthew continued, his voice businesslike. “The village should know to be on its guard.”

Ysabeau nodded, and her son took a sip of his wine. I stared, first at one and then the other. Neither responded to my silent demand for more information.

“It’s only been a few days since you took me out of Oxford,” I said after no one rose to my wordless challenge.

Matthew’s eyes lifted to mine in forbidding response. “Now you’re going back,” he said evenly. “Meanwhile there will be no walks outside the grounds. No riding on your own.” His present coldness was more frightening than anything Domenico had said.

“And?” I pressed him.

“No more dancing,” Matthew said, his abruptness suggesting that a host of other activities were included in this category. “We’re going to abide by the Congregation’s rules. If we stop aggravating them, they’ll turn their attention to more important matters.”