Matthew was waiting for me in the lodge at half past seven, immaculate as always in a monochromatic combination of dove and charcoal, his dark hair swept back from his uneven hairline. He patiently withstood the inspection of the weekend porter, who sent me off with a nod and a deliberate, “We’ll see you later, Dr. Bishop.”

“You do bring out people’s protective instincts,” Matthew murmured as we passed through the gates.

“Where are we going?” There was no sign of his car in the street.

“We’re dining in college tonight,” he answered, gesturing down toward the Bodleian. I had fully anticipated he would take me to Woodstock, or an apartment in some Victorian pile in North Oxford. It had never occurred to me that he might live in a college.

“In hall, at high table?” I felt terribly underdressed and pulled at the hem of my silky black top.

Matthew tilted his head back and laughed. “I avoid hall whenever possible. And I’m certainly not taking you in there, to sit in the Siege Perilous and be inspected by the fellows.”

We rounded the corner and turned toward the Radcliffe Camera. When we passed by the entrance to Hertford College without stopping, I put my hand on his arm. There was one college in Oxford notorious for its exclusivity and rigid attention to protocol.

It was the same college famous for its brilliant fellows.

“You aren’t.”

Matthew stopped. “Why does it matter what college I belong to?” He looked away. “If you’d rather be around other people, of course, I understand.”

“I’m not worried you’re going to eat me for dinner, Matthew. I’ve just never been inside.” A pair of ornate, scrolled gates guarded his college as if it were Wonderland. Matthew made an impatient noise and caught my hand to prevent me from peering through them.

“It’s just a collection of people in a set of old buildings.” His gruffness did nothing to detract from the fact that he was one of six dozen or so fellows in a college with no students. “Besides, we’re going to my rooms.”

We walked the remaining distance, Matthew relaxing into the darkness with every step as if in the company of an old friend. We passed through a low wooden door that kept the public out of his college’s quiet confines. There was no one in the lodge except the porter, no undergraduates or graduates on the benches in the front quad. It was as quiet and hushed as if its members truly were the “souls of all the faithful people deceased in the university of Oxford.”

Matthew looked down with a shy smile. “Welcome to All Souls.”

All Souls College was a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture, resembling the love child of a wedding cake and a cathedral, with its airy spires and delicate stonework. I sighed with pleasure, unable to say much—at least not yet. But Matthew was going to have a lot of explaining to do later.

“Evening, James,” he said to the porter, who looked over his bifocals and nodded in welcome. Matthew held up his hand. An ancient key dangled off his index finger from a leather loop. “I’ll be just a moment.”

“Right, Professor Clairmont.”

Matthew took my hand again. “Let’s go. We need to continue your education.”

He was like a mischievous boy on a treasure hunt, pulling me along. We ducked through a cracked door black with age, and Matthew switched on a light. His white skin leaped out of the dark, and he looked every inch a vampire.

“It’s a good thing I’m a witch,” I teased. “The sight of you here would be enough to scare a human to death.”

At the bottom of a flight of stairs, Matthew entered a long string of numbers at a security keypad, then hit the star key. I heard a soft click, and he pulled another door open. The smell of must and age and something else that I couldn’t name hit me in a wave. Blackness extended away from the stairway lights.

“This is straight out of a Gothic novel. Where are you taking me?”

“Patience, Diana. It’s not much farther.” Patience, alas, was not the strong suit of Bishop women.

Matthew reached past my shoulder and flipped another switch. Suspended on wires like trapeze artists, a string of old bulbs cast pools of light over what looked like horse stalls for miniature Shetland ponies.

I stared at Matthew, a hundred questions in my eyes.

“After you,” he said with a bow.

Stepping forward, I recognized the strange smell. It was stale alcohol—like the pub on Sunday morning. “Wine?”

“Wine.”

We passed dozens of small enclosures that contained bottles in racks, piles, and crates. Each had a small slate tag, a year scrawled on it in chalk. We wandered past bins that held wine from the First World War and the Second, as well as bottles that Florence Nightingale might have packed in her trunks for the Crimea. There were wines from the year the Berlin Wall was built and the year it came down. Deeper into the cellar, the years scrawled on the slates gave way to broad categories like “Old Claret” and “Vintage Port.”

Finally we reached the end of the room. A dozen small doors stood locked and silent, and Matthew opened one of them. There was no electricity here, but he picked up a candle and wedged it securely into a brass holder before lighting it.

Inside, everything was as neat and orderly as Matthew himself, but for a layer of dust. Tightly spaced wooden racks held the wine off the floor and made it possible to remove a single bottle without making the whole arrangement tumble down. There were red stains next to the jamb where wine had been spit, year after year. The smell of old grapes, corks, and a trace of mildew filled the air.

“Is this yours?” I was incredulous.

“Yes, it’s mine. A few of the fellows have private cellars.”

“What can you possibly have in here that isn’t already out there?” The room behind me must contain a bottle of every wine ever produced. Oxford’s finest wine emporium now seemed barren and oddly sterile in comparison.

Matthew smiled mysteriously. “All sorts of things.”

He moved quickly around the small, windowless room, happily pulling out wines here and there. He handed me a heavy, dark bottle with a gold shield for a label and a wire basket over the cork. Champagne—Dom Perignon.

The next bottle was made from dark green glass, with a simple cream label and black script. He presented it to me with a little flourish, and I saw the date: 1976.

“The year I was born!” I said.

Matthew emerged with two more bottles: one with a long, octagonal label bearing a picture of a chвteau on it and thick red wax around the top; the other lopsided and black, bearing no label and sealed with something that looked like tar. An old manila tag was tied around the neck of the second bottle with a dirty piece of string.

“Shall we?” Matthew asked, blowing out the candle. He locked the door carefully behind him, balancing the two bottles in his other hand, and slipped the key into his pocket. We left behind the smell of wine and climbed back to ground level.

In the dusky air, Matthew seemed to shine with pleasure, his arms full of wine. “What a wonderful night,” he said happily.

We went up to his rooms, which were grander than I had imagined in some ways and much less grand in others. They were smaller than my rooms at New College, located at the very top of one of the oldest blocks in All Souls, full of funny angles and odd slopes. Though the ceilings were tall enough to accommodate Matthew’s height, the rooms still seemed too small to contain him. He had to stoop through every door, and the windowsills reached down to somewhere near his thighs.

What the rooms lacked in size they more than made up for in furnishings. A faded Aubusson rug stretched across the floors, anchored with a collection of original William Morris furniture. Somehow the fifteenth-century architecture, the eighteenth-century rug, and the nineteenth-century rough-hewn oak looked splendid together and gave the rooms the atmosphere of a select Edwardian gentlemen’s club.

A vast refectory table stood at the far side of the main room, with newspapers, books, and the assorted detritus of academic life neatly arranged at one end—memos about new policies, scholarly journals, requests for letters and peer reviews. Each pile was weighted down with a different object. Matthew’s paperweights included the genuine article in heavy blown glass, an old brick, a bronze medal that was no doubt some award he’d won, and a small fire poker. At the other end of the table, a soft linen cloth had been thrown over the wood, held down by the most gorgeous Georgian silver candlesticks I’d ever seen outside a museum. A full array of different-shaped wineglasses stood guard over simple white plates and more Georgian silver.

“I love it.” I looked around with delight. Not a stick of furniture or a single ornament in this room belonged to the college. It was all perfectly, quintessentially Matthew.

“Have a seat.” He rescued the two wine bottles from my slack fingers and whisked them off to what looked like a glorified closet. “All Souls doesn’t believe that fellows should eat in their rooms,” he said by way of explanation as I eyed the meager kitchen facilities, “so we’ll get by as best we can.”

What I was about to eat would equal the finest dinner in town, no doubt.

Matthew plunked the champagne into a silver bucket full of ice and joined me in one of the cozy chairs flanking his nonfunctional fireplace. “Nobody lets you build fires in Oxford fireplaces anymore.” He motioned ruefully at the empty stone enclosure. “When every fireplace was lit, the city smelled like a bonfire.”

“When did you first come to Oxford?” I hoped the openness of my question would assure him I wasn’t prying into his past lives.

“This time it was 1989.” He stretched his long legs out with a sigh of relaxation. “I came to Oriel as a science student and stayed on for a doctorate. When I won an All Souls Prize Fellowship, I switched over here for a few years. When my degree was completed, the university offered me a place and the members elected me a fellow.” Every time he opened his mouth, something amazing popped out. A Prize Fellow? There were only two of those a year.

“And this is your first time at All Souls?” I bit my lip, and he laughed.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, holding up his hands and beginning to tick off colleges. “I’ve been a member—once—of Merton, Magdalen, and University colleges. I’ve been a member of New College and Oriel twice each. And this is the first time All Souls has paid any attention to me.”

Multiplying this answer by a factor of Cambridge, Paris, Padua, and Montpellier—all of which, I was sure, had once had a student on their books named Matthew Clairmont, or some variation thereof—sent a dizzying set of degrees dancing through my head. What must he have studied, all those many years, and whom had he studied with?

“Diana?” Matthew’s amused voice penetrated my thoughts. “Did you hear me?”

“I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes and tightened my hands on my thighs in an effort to keep my mind from wandering. “It’s like a disease. I can’t keep the curiosity at bay when you start reminiscing.”

“I know. It’s one of the difficulties a vampire faces when he spends time with a witch who’s a historian.” Matthew’s mouth was bent in a mock frown, but his eyes twinkled like black stars.

“If you want to avoid these difficulties in future, I suggest you avoid the Bodleian’s paleography reference section,” I said tartly.

“One historian is all I can manage at the moment.” Matthew rose smoothly to his feet. “I asked if you were hungry.”

Why he continued to do so was a mystery—when was I not hungry?

“Yes,” I said, trying to extract myself from a deep Morris chair. Matthew stuck out his hand. I grasped it, and he lifted me easily.

We stood facing each other, our bodies nearly touching. I fixed my attention on the bump of his Bethany ampulla under his sweater.

His eyes flickered over me, leaving their trail of snowflakes. “You look lovely.” I ducked my head, and the usual piece of hair fell over my face. He reached up as he had several times recently and tucked it behind my ear. This time his fingers continued to the base of my skull. He lifted my hair away from my neck and let it fall through his fingers as if it were water. I shivered at the touch of cool air on my skin.

“I love your hair,” he murmured. “It has every color imaginable—even strands of red and black.” I heard the sharp intake of breath that meant he had picked up a new scent.

“What do you smell?” My voice was thick, and I still hadn’t dared to meet his eyes.

“You,” he breathed.

My eyes floated up to his.

“Shall we have dinner?”

After that, it was hard to concentrate on the food, but I did my best. Matthew pulled out my rush-seated chair, which had a full view of the warm, beautiful room. From a minuscule refrigerator, he removed two plates, each with six fresh oysters nestled on top of a bed of crushed ice like the rays of a star.

“Lecture One of your continuing education consists of oysters and champagne.” Matthew sat down and held up a finger like a don about to embark on a favorite subject. He reached for the wine, which was within the wingspan of his long arm, and pulled it from the bucket. With one turn he popped the cork free of the neck of the bottle.

“I usually find that more difficult,” I commented drily, looking at his strong, elegant fingers.

“I can teach you to knock the cork off with a sword if you want.” Matthew grinned. “Of course, a knife works, too, if you don’t have a sword lying around.” He poured some of the liquid into our glasses, where it fizzed and danced in the candlelight.

He raised his glass to me. “А la tienne.”

“А la tienne.” I lifted my own flute and watched the bubbles break on the surface. “Why are the bubbles so tiny?”

“Because the wine is so old. Most champagne is drunk long before this. But I like the old wine—it reminds me of the way champagne used to taste.”

“How old is it?”

“Older than you are,” Matthew replied. He was pulling the oyster shells apart with his bare hands—something that usually required a very sharp knife and a lot of skill—and chucking the shells into a glass bowl in the center of the table. He handed one plate over to me. “It’s from 1961.”

“Please tell me this is the oldest thing we’re drinking tonight,” I said, thinking back to the wine he’d brought to dinner on Thursday, the bottle from which was now holding the last of his white roses on my bedside table.

“Not by a long shot,” he said with a grin.

I tipped the contents of the first shell into my mouth. My eyes popped open as my mouth filled with the taste of the Atlantic.

“Now drink.” He picked up his own glass and watched me take a sip of the golden liquid. “What do you taste?”

The creaminess of the wine and the oysters collided with the taste of sea salt in ways that were utterly bewitching. “It’s as if the whole ocean is in my mouth,” I answered, taking another sip.

We finished the oysters and moved on to an enormous salad. It had every expensive green known to mankind, nuts, berries, and a delicious dressing made with champagne vinegar and olive oil that Matthew whisked together at the table. The tiny slices of meat that adorned it were partridge from the Old Lodge’s grounds. We sipped at what Matthew called my “birthday wine,” which smelled like lemon floor polish and smoke and tasted like chalk and butterscotch.

The next course was a stew, with chunks of meat in a fragrant sauce. My first bite told me it was veal, fixed with apples and a bit of cream, served atop rice. Matthew watched me eat, and he smiled as I tasted the tartness of the apple for the first time. “It’s an old recipe from Normandy,” he said. “Do you like it?”

“It’s wonderful. Did you make it?”

“No,” he said. “The chef from the Old Parsonage’s restaurant made it—and provided precise instructions on how not to burn it to a crisp when I reheated it.”

“You can reheat my dinner anytime.” I let the warmth of the stew soak into my body. “You aren’t eating, though.”

“No, but I’m not hungry.” He continued to watch me eat for a few moments, then returned to the kitchen to fetch another wine. It was the bottle sealed with red wax. He sliced through the wax and pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Perfect,” he pronounced, pouring the scarlet liquid carefully into a nearby decanter.

“Can you already smell it?” I was still unsure of the range of his olfactory powers.

“Oh, yes. This wine in particular.” Matthew poured me a bit and splashed some into his own glass. “Are you ready to taste something miraculous?” he asked. I nodded. “This is Chвteau Margaux from a very great vintage. Some people consider it the finest red wine ever made.”

We picked up our glasses, and I mimicked each of Matthew’s movements. He put his nose in his glass, and I in mine. The smell of violets washed over me. My first taste was like drinking velvet. Then there was milk chocolate, cherries, and a flood of flavors that made no sense and brought back memories of the long-ago smell of my father’s study after he’d been smoking and of emptying the shavings from the pencil sharpener in second grade. The very last thing I noted was a spicy taste that reminded me of Matthew.

“This tastes like you!” I said.

“How so?” he asked.

“Spicy,” I said, flushing suddenly from my cheeks to my hairline.

“Just spicy?”

“No. First I thought it would taste like flowers—violets—because that’s how it smelled. But then I tasted all kinds of things. What do you taste?”

This was going to be far more interesting and less embarrassing than my reaction. He sniffed, swirled, and tasted. “Violets—I agree with you there. Those purple violets covered with sugar. Elizabeth Tudor loved candied violets, and they ruined her teeth.” He sipped again. “Cigar smoke from good cigars, like they used to have at the Marlborough Club when the Prince of Wales stopped in. Blackberries picked wild in the hedgerows outside the Old Lodge’s stables and red currants macerated in brandy.”

Watching a vampire use his sensory powers had to be one of the most surreal experiences anyone could have. It was not just that Matthew could see and hear things I could not—it was that when he did sense something, the perception was so acute and precise. It wasn’t any blackberry—it was a particular blackberry, from a particular place or a particular time.

Matthew kept drinking his wine, and I finished my stew. I took up my wineglass with a contented sigh, toying with the stem so that it caught the light from the candles.

“What do you think I would taste like?” I wondered aloud, my tone playful.

Matthew shot to his feet, his face white and furious. His napkin fell, unnoticed, to the floor. A vein in his forehead pulsed once before subsiding.

I had said something wrong.

He was at my side in the time it took me to blink, pulling me up from my chair. His fingers dug into my elbows.

“There’s one legend about vampires we haven’t discussed, isn’t there?” His eyes were strange, his face frightening. I tried to squirm out of his reach, but his fingers dug deeper. “The one about a vampire who finds himself so bewitched by a woman that he cannot help himself.”

My mind sped over what had happened. He’d asked me what I tasted. I’d tasted him. Then he told me what he tasted and I said—“Oh, Matthew,” I whispered.

“Do you wonder what it would be like for me to taste you?” Matthew’s voice dropped from a purr toward something deeper and more dangerous. For a moment I felt revulsion.

Before that feeling could grow, he released my arms. There was no time to react or draw away. Matthew had woven his fingers through my hair, his thumbs pressing against the base of my skull. I was caught again, and a feeling of stillness came over me, spreading out from his cold touch. Was I drunk from two glasses of wine? Drugged? What else would explain the feeling that I couldn’t break free?

“It’s not only your scent that pleases me. I can hear your witch’s blood as it moves through your veins.” Matthew’s cold lips were against my ear, and his breath was sweet. “Did you know that a witch’s blood makes music? Like a siren who sings to the sailor, asking him to steer his ship into the rocks, the call of your blood could be my undoing—and yours.” His words were so quiet and intimate he seemed to be talking directly into my mind.

The vampire’s lips began to move incrementally along my jawbone. Each place his mouth touched froze, then burned as my blood rushed back to the skin’s surface.

“Matthew,” I breathed around the catch in my throat. I closed my eyes, expecting to feel teeth against my neck yet unable—unwilling—to move.

Instead Matthew’s hungry lips met mine. His arms locked around me, and his fingertips cradled my head. My lips parted under his, my hands trapped between his chest and mine. Underneath my palms his heart beat, once.

With the thump of his heart, the kiss changed. Matthew was no less demanding, but the hunger in his touch turned to something bittersweet. His hands moved forward smoothly until he was cupping my face, and he pulled away reluctantly. For the first time, I heard a soft, ragged sound. It was not like human breathing. It was the sound of minute amounts of oxygen passing through a vampire’s powerful lungs.

“I took advantage of your fear. I shouldn’t have,” he whispered.

My eyes were closed, and I still felt intoxicated, his cinnamon and clove scent driving off the scent of violets from the wine. Restless, I stirred in his grip.

“Be still,” he said, voice harsh. “I might not be able to control myself if you step away.”

He’d warned me in the lab about the relationship between predator and prey. Now he was trying to get me to play dead so the predator in him would lose interest in me.

But I wasn’t dead.

My eyes flew open. There was no mistaking the sharp look on his face. It was avid, hungry. Matthew was a creature of instinct now. But I had instincts, too.

“I’m safe with you.” I formed the words with lips that were freezing and burning at the same time, unused to the feeling of a vampire’s kiss.

“A witch—safe with a vampire? Never be sure of that. It would only take a moment. You wouldn’t be able to stop me if I struck, and I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.” Our eyes met and locked, neither of us blinking. Matthew made a low sound of surprise. “How brave you are.”

“I’ve never been brave.”

“When you gave blood in the lab, the way you meet a vampire’s eyes, how you ordered the creatures out of the library, even the fact that you go back there day after day, refusing to let people keep you from what you want to do—it’s all bravery.”

“That’s stubbornness.” Sarah had explained the difference a long time ago.

“I’ve seen courage like yours before—from women, mostly.” Matthew continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Men don’t have it. Our resolve is born out of fear. It’s merely bravado.”

His glance flickered over me in snowflakes that melted into mere coolness the moment they touched me. One cold finger reached out and captured a tear from the tips of my eyelashes. His face was sad as he lowered me gently into the chair and crouched next to me, resting one hand on my knee and the other on the arm of the rush-seated chair in a protective circle. “Promise me that you will never joke with a vampire—not even me—about blood or how you might taste.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, forcing myself not to look away.

He shook his head. “You told me before that you don’t know much about vampires. What you need to understand is that no vampire is immune to this temptation. Vampires with a conscience spend most of their time trying not to imagine how people would taste. If you were to meet one without a conscience—and there are plenty who fit that category—then God help you.”

“I didn’t think.” I still couldn’t. My mind was whirling with the memory of his kiss, his fury, and his palpable hunger.

He bowed his head, resting the crown against my shoulder. The ampulla from Bethany tumbled out of the neck of his sweater and swung like a pendulum, its tiny coffin glinting in the light from the candles.

He spoke so softly that I had to strain to hear. “Witches and vampires aren’t meant to feel this way. I’m experiencing emotions I’ve never—” He broke off.

“I know.” Carefully I leaned my cheek against his hair. It felt as satiny as it looked. “I feel them, too.”

Matthew’s arms had remained where he left them, one hand on my knee and the other on the arm of the chair. At my words he moved them slowly and clasped my waist. The coldness of his flesh cut through my clothing, but I didn’t shiver. Instead I moved closer so that I could rest my arms on his shoulders.

A vampire evidently could have remained comfortable in that position for days. For a mere witch, however, it wasn’t an option. When I shifted slightly, he looked at me in confusion, and then his face lightened in recognition.

“I forgot,” he said, rising with his swift smoothness and stepping away from me. I moved first one leg and then the other, restoring the circulation to my feet.

Matthew handed me my wine and returned to his own seat. Once he was settled, I tried to give him something to think about other than how I might taste.

“What was the fifth question you had to answer for the Prize Fellowship?” Candidates were invited to sit an exam that involved four questions combining thought-provoking breadth and depth with devilish complexity. If you survived the first four questions, you were asked the famous “fifth question.” It was not a question at all, but a single word like “water,” or “absence.” It was up to the candidate to decide how to respond, and only the most brilliant answer won you a place at All Souls.

He reached across the table—without setting himself on fire—and poured some more wine into my glass. “Desire,” he said, studiously avoiding my eyes.

So much for that diversionary plan.

“Desire? What did you write?”

“As far as I can tell, there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning, year after year.” He hesitated, then continued. “One is fear. The other is desire. That’s what I wrote about.”

Love hadn’t factored into his response, I noticed. It was a brutal picture, a tug-of-war between two equal but opposing impulses. It had the ring of truth, however, which was more than could be said of the glib “love makes the world go round.” Matthew kept hinting that his desire—for blood, chiefly—was so strong that it put everything else at risk.

But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different—that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied—these could turn into deeds when they crossed a witch’s mind.

And if Matthew was going to tell me his secrets, it didn’t seem fair to keep mine so close.

“Magic is desire made real. It’s how I pulled down Notes and Queries the night we met,” I said slowly. “When a witch concentrates on something she wants, and then imagines how she might get it, she can make it happen. That’s why I have to be so careful about my work.” I took a sip of wine, my hand trembling on the glass.

“Then you spend most of your time trying not to want things, just like me. For some of the same reasons, too.” Matthew’s snowflake glances flickered across my cheeks.

“If you mean the fear that if I started, there would be no stopping me—yes. I don’t want to look back on a life where I took everything rather than earned it.”

“So you earn everything twice over. First you earn it by not simply taking it, and then you earn it again through work and effort.” He laughed bitterly. “The advantages of being an otherworldly creature don’t amount to much, do they?”

Matthew suggested we sit by his fireless fireplace. I lounged on the sofa, and he carried some nutty biscuits over to the table by me, before disappearing into the kitchen once more. When he returned, he was carrying a small tray with the ancient black bottle on it—the cork now pulled—and two glasses of amber-colored liquid. He handed one to me.

“Close your eyes and tell me what you smell,” he instructed in his Oxford don’s voice. My lids dropped obediently. The wine seemed at once old and vibrant. It smelled of flowers and nuts and candied lemons and of some other, long-past world that I had—until now—been able only to read about and imagine.

“It smells like the past. But not the dead past. It’s so alive.”

“Open your eyes and take a sip.”

As the sweet, bright liquid went down my throat, something ancient and powerful entered my bloodstream. This must be what vampire blood tastes like. I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” I asked around the flavors in my mouth.

“Malmsey,” he replied with a grin. “Old, old malmsey.”

“How old?” I said suspiciously. “As old as you are?”

He laughed. “No. You don’t want to drink anything as old as I am. It’s from 1795, from grapes grown on the island of Madeira. It was quite popular once, but nobody pays much attention to it now.”

“Good,” I said with greedy satisfaction. “All the more for me.” He laughed again and sat easily in one of his Morris chairs.

We talked about his time at All Souls, about Hamish—the other Prize Fellow, it turned out—and their adventures in Oxford. I laughed at his stories of dining in hall and how he’d bolted to Woodstock after every meal to clean the taste of overcooked beef from his mouth.

“You look tired,” he finally said, standing after another glass of malmsey and another hour of conversation.

“I am tired.” Despite my fatigue, there was something I needed to tell him before he took me home. I put my glass down carefully. “I’ve made a decision, Matthew. On Monday I’ll be recalling Ashmole 782.”

The vampire sat down abruptly.

“I don’t know how I broke the spell the first time, but I’ll try to do it again. Knox doesn’t have much faith that I’ll succeed.” My mouth tightened. “What does he know? He hasn’t been able to break the spell once. And you might be able to see the words in the magical palimpsest that lie under the images.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know what you did to break the spell?” Matthew’s forehead creased with confusion. “What words did you use? What powers did you call upon?”

“I broke the spell without realizing it,” I explained.

“Christ, Diana.” He shot to his feet again. “Does Knox know that you didn’t use witchcraft?”

“If he knows, I didn’t tell him.” I shrugged. “Besides, what does it matter?”

“It matters because if you didn’t break the enchantment, then you met its conditions. Right now the creatures are waiting to observe whatever counterspell you used, copy it if they can, and get Ashmole 782 themselves. When your fellow witches discover that the spell opened for you of its own accord, they won’t be so patient and well behaved.”

Gillian’s angry face swam before my eyes, accompanied by a vivid recollection of the lengths she reported witches had gone to in order to pry secrets from my parents. I brushed the thoughts aside, my stomach rolling, and focused on the flaws in Matthew’s argument.

“The spell was constructed more than a century before I was born. That’s impossible.”

“Just because something seems impossible doesn’t make it untrue,” he said grimly. “Newton knew that. There’s no telling what Knox will do when he understands your relationship to the spell.”

“I’m in danger whether I recall the manuscript or not,” I pointed out. “Knox isn’t going to let this go, is he?”

“No,” he agreed reluctantly. “And he wouldn’t hesitate to use magic against you even if every human in the Bodleian saw him do it. I might not be able to reach you in time.”

Vampires were fast, but magic was faster.

“I’ll sit near the desk with you, then. We’ll know as soon as the manuscript’s delivered.”

“I don’t like this,” Matthew said, clearly worried. “There’s a fine line between bravery and recklessness, Diana.”

“It’s not reckless—I just want my life back.”

“What if this is your life?” he asked. “What if you can’t keep the magic away after all?”

“I’ll keep parts of it.” Remembering his kiss, and the sudden, intense feeling of vitality that had accompanied it, I looked straight into his eyes so he would know he was included. “But I’m not going to be bullied.”

Matthew was still worrying over my plan as he walked me home. When I turned in to New College Lane to use the back entrance, he caught my hand.

“Not on your life,” he said. “Did you see the look that porter gave me? I want him to know you’re safely in college.”

We navigated the uneven sidewalks of Holywell Street, past the entrance to the Turf pub, and through the New College gates. We strolled by the watchful porter, still hand in hand.

“Will you be rowing tomorrow?” Matthew asked at the bottom of my staircase.

I groaned. “No, I’ve got a thousand letters of recommendation to write. I’m going to stay in my rooms and clear my desk.”

“I’m going to Woodstock to go hunting,” he said casually.

“Good hunting, then,” I said, equally casually.

“It doesn’t bother you at all to know I’ll be out culling my own deer?” Matthew sounded taken aback.

“No. Occasionally I eat partridge. Occasionally you feed on deer.” I shrugged. “I honestly don’t see the difference.”

Matthew’s eyes glittered. He stretched his fingers slightly but didn’t let go of my hand. Instead he lifted it to his lips and put a slow kiss on the tender flesh in the hollow of my palm.

“Off to bed,” he said, releasing my fingers. His eyes left trails of ice and snow behind as they lingered not only over my face but my body, too.

Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.

“Good night,” I breathed out along with my next exhale. “I’ll see you Monday.”

I climbed the narrow steps to my rooms. Whoever tightened the doorknob had made a mess of the lock, and the metal hardware and the wood were covered in fresh scratches. Inside, I switched on the lights. The answering machine was blinking, of course. At the window I raised my hand to show that I was safely inside.

When I peeked out a few seconds later, Matthew was already gone.

On Monday morning the air had that magically still quality common in autumn. The whole world felt crisp and bright, and time seemed suspended. I shot out of bed at dawn and pulled on my waiting rowing gear, eager to be outdoors.

The river was empty for the first hour. As the sun broke over the horizon, the fog burned off toward the waterline so that I was slipping through alternate bands of mist and rosy sunshine.

When I pulled up to the dock, Matthew was waiting for me on the curving steps that led to the boathouse’s balcony, an ancient brown-and-bone-striped New College scarf hanging around his neck. I climbed out of the boat, put my hands on my hips, and stared at him in disbelief.

“Where did you get that thing?” I pointed at the scarf.

“You should have more respect for the old members,” he said with his mischievous grin, tossing one end of it over his shoulder. “I think I bought it in 1920, but I can’t honestly remember. After the Great War ended, certainly.”

Shaking my head, I took the oars into the boathouse. Two crews glided by the dock in perfect, powerful unison just as I was lifting my boat out of the water. My knees dipped slightly and the boat swung up and over until its weight rested on my head.

“Why don’t you let me help you with that?” Matthew said, rising from his perch.

“No chance.” My steps were steady as I walked the boat inside. He grumbled something under his breath.

With the boat safely in its rack, Matthew easily talked me into breakfast at Mary and Dan’s cafй. He was going to have to sit next to me much of the day, and I was hungry after the morning’s exertions. He steered me by the elbow around the other diners, his hand firmer on my back than before. Mary greeted me like an old friend, and Steph didn’t bother with a menu, just announced “the usual” when she came by the table. There wasn’t a hint of a question in her voice, and when the plate came—laden with eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and tomatoes—I was glad I hadn’t insisted on something more ladylike.

After breakfast I trotted through the lodge and up to my rooms for a shower and a change of clothes. Fred peered around his window to see if it was indeed Matthew’s Jaguar pulled up outside the gates. The porters were no doubt laying wagers on competing predictions regarding our oddly formal relationship. This morning was the first time I’d managed to convince my escort to simply drop me off.

“It’s broad daylight, and Fred will have kittens if you clog up his gate during delivery hours,” I protested when Matthew started to get out of the car. He’d glowered but agreed that merely pulling straight across the entrance to bar possible vehicular attack was sufficient.

This morning every step of my routine needed to be slow and deliberate. My shower was long and leisurely, the hot water slipping against my tired muscles. Still in no rush, I put on comfortable black trousers, a turtleneck to keep my shoulders from seizing up in the increasingly chilly library, and a reasonably presentable midnight blue cardigan to break up the unalleviated black. My hair was caught in a low ponytail. The short piece in the front fell forward as it always did, and I grumbled and shoved it behind my ear.

In spite of my efforts, my anxiety rose as I pushed open the library’s glass doors. The guard’s eyes narrowed at my uncharacteristically warm smile, and he took an inordinate amount of time checking my face against the picture on my reader’s card. Finally he admitted me, and I pelted up the stairs to Duke Humfrey’s.

It had been no more than an hour since I’d been with Matthew, but the sight of him stretched out among the first bay of Elizabethan desks in one of the medieval wing’s purgatorial chairs was welcome. He looked up when my laptop dropped on the scarred wooden surface.

“Is he here?” I whispered, reluctant to say Knox’s name.

Matthew nodded grimly. “In the Selden End.”

“Well, he can wait down there all day as far as I’m concerned,” I said under my breath, picking up a blank request slip from the shallow rectangular tray on the desk. On it I wrote “Ashmole MS 782,” my name, and my reader number.

Sean was at the collection desk. “I’ve got two items on reserve,” I told him with a smile. He went into the cage and returned with my manuscripts, then held out his hand for my new request. He put the slip into the worn, gray cardboard envelope that would be sent to the stacks.

“May I talk to you a minute?” Sean asked.

“Sure.” I gestured to indicate that Matthew should stay where he was and followed Sean through the swinging gate into the Arts End, which, like the Selden End, ran perpendicular to the length of the old library. We stood beneath a bank of leaded windows that let in the weak morning sunshine.

“Is he bothering you?”

“Professor Clairmont? No.”

“It’s none of my business, but I don’t like him.” Sean looked down the central aisle as if he expected Matthew to pop out and glare at him. “The whole place has been full of strange ducks over the last week or so.”

Unable to disagree, I resorted to muffled noises of sympathy.

“You’d let me know if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course, Sean. But Professor Clairmont’s okay. You don’t have to worry about him.”

My old friend looked unconvinced.

“Sean may know I’m different—but it seems I’m not as different as you,” I told Matthew after returning to my seat.

“Few are,” he said darkly, picking up his reading.

I turned on my computer and tried to concentrate on my work. It would take hours for the manuscript to appear. But thinking about alchemy was harder than ever, caught as I was between a vampire and the call desk. Every time new books emerged from the stacks, I looked up.

After several false alarms, soft steps approached from the Selden End. Matthew tensed in his chair.

Peter Knox strolled up and stopped. “Dr. Bishop,” he said coolly.

“Mr. Knox.” My voice was equally chilly, and I returned my attention to the open volume before me. Knox took a step in my direction.

Matthew spoke quietly, without raising his eyes from the Needham papers. “I’d stop there unless Dr. Bishop wishes to speak with you.”

“I’m very busy.” A sense of pressure wound around my forehead, and a voice whispered in my skull. Every ounce of my energy was devoted to keeping the witch out of my thoughts. “I said I’m busy,” I repeated stonily.

Matthew put his pencil down and pushed away from the desk.

“Mr. Knox was just leaving, Matthew.” Turning to my laptop, I typed a few sentences of utter nonsense.

“I hope you understand what you’re doing,” Knox spit.

Matthew growled, and I laid a hand lightly on his arm. Knox’s eyes fixed on the spot where the bodies of a witch and a vampire touched.

Until that moment Knox had only suspected that Matthew and I were too close for the comfort of witches. Now he was sure.

You’ve told him what you know about our book. Knox’s vicious voice sounded through my head, and though I tried to push against his intrusion, the wizard was too strong. When he resisted my efforts, I gasped in surprise.

Sean looked up from the call desk in alarm. Matthew’s arm was vibrating, his growl subsiding into a somehow more menacing purr.

“Who’s caught human attention now?” I hissed at the witch, squeezing Matthew’s arm to let him know I didn’t need his help.

Knox smiled unpleasantly. “You’ve caught the attention of more than humans this morning, Dr. Bishop. Before nightfall every witch in Oxford will know you’re a traitor.”

Matthew’s muscles coiled, and he reached up to the coffin he wore around his neck.

Oh, God, I thought, he’s going to kill a witch in the Bodleian. I placed myself squarely between the two of them.

“Enough,” I told Knox quietly. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to tell Sean you’re harassing me and have him call security.”

“The light in the Selden End is rather glaring today,” Knox said at last, breaking the standoff. “I believe I’ll move to this part of the library.” He strolled away.

Matthew lifted my hand from his arm and began to pack up his belongings. “We’re leaving.”

“No we’re not. We are not leaving until we get that manuscript.”

“Were you listening?” Matthew said hotly. “He threatened you! I don’t need this manuscript, but I do need—” He stopped abruptly.

I pushed Matthew into his seat. Sean was still staring in our direction, his hand hovering above the phone. Smiling, I shook my head at him before returning my attention to the vampire.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have touched you while he was standing there,” I murmured, looking down at his shoulder, where my hand still rested.

Matthew’s cool fingers lifted my chin. “Do you regret the touch—or the fact that the witch saw you?”

“Neither,” I whispered. His gray eyes went from sad to surprised in an instant. “But you don’t want me to be reckless.”

As Knox approached again, Matthew’s grip on my chin tightened, his senses tuned into the witch. When Knox remained a few desks away, the vampire returned his attention to me. “One more word from him and we’re leaving—manuscript or no manuscript. I mean it, Diana.”

Thinking about alchemical illustrations proved impossible after that. Gillian’s warning about what happened to witches who kept secrets from other witches, and Knox’s firm pronouncement that I was a traitor, resounded through my head. When Matthew tried to get me to stop for lunch, I refused. The manuscript had still not appeared, and we couldn’t be at Blackwell’s when it arrived—not with Knox so close.

“Did you see what I had for breakfast?” I asked when Matthew insisted. “I’m not hungry.”

My coffee-loving daemon drifted by shortly afterward, swinging his headset by the cord. “Hey,” he said with a wave at Matthew and me.

Matthew looked up sharply.

“Good to see you two again. Is it okay if I check my e-mail down there since the witch is here with you?”

“What’s your name?” I asked, smothering a smile.

“Timothy,” he answered, rocking back on his heels. He was wearing mismatched cowboy boots, one red and one black. His eyes were mismatched, too—one was blue and one was green.

“You’re more than welcome to check your e-mail, Timothy.”

“You’re the one.” He tipped his fingers at me, pivoted on the heel of the red boot, and walked away.

An hour later I stood, unable to control my impatience. “The manuscript should have arrived by now.”

The vampire’s eyes followed me across the six feet of open space to the call desk. They felt hard and crisp like ice, rather than soft as snowfall, and they clung to my shoulder blades.

“Hi, Sean. Will you check to see if the manuscript I requested this morning has been delivered?”

“Someone else must have it,” Sean said. “Nothing’s come up for you.”

“Are you sure?” Nobody else had it.

Sean riffled through the slips and found my request. Paper-clipped to it was a note. “It’s missing.”

“It’s not missing. I saw it a few weeks ago.”

“Let’s see.” He rounded the desk, headed for the supervisor’s office. Matthew looked up from his papers and watched as Sean rapped against the open doorframe.

“Dr. Bishop wants this manuscript, and it’s been noted as missing,” Sean explained. He held out the slip.

Mr. Johnson consulted a book on his desk, running his finger over lines scrawled by generations of reading-room supervisors. “Ah, yes. Ashmole 782. That’s been missing since 1859. We don’t have a microfilm.” Matthew’s chair scraped away from his desk.

“But I saw it a few weeks ago.”

“That’s not possible, Dr. Bishop. No one has seen this manuscript for one hundred and fifty years.” Mr. Johnson blinked behind his thick-rimmed glasses.

“Dr. Bishop, could I show you something when you have a moment?” Matthew’s voice made me jump.

“Yes, of course.” I turned blindly toward him. “Thank you,” I whispered to Mr. Johnson.

“We’re leaving. Now,” Matthew hissed. In the aisle an assortment of creatures was focused intently on us. I saw Knox, Timothy, the Scary Sisters, Gillian—and a few more unfamiliar faces. Above the tall bookcases, the old portraits of kings, queens, and other illustrious persons that decorated the walls of Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room stared at us, too, with every bit as much sour disapproval.

“It can’t be missing. I just saw it,” I repeated numbly. “We should have them check.”

“Don’t talk about it now—don’t even think about it.” He gathered up my things with lightning speed, his hands a blur as he saved my work and shut down the computer.

I obediently started reciting English monarchs in my head, beginning with William the Conqueror, to rid my mind of thoughts of the missing manuscript.

Knox passed by, busily texting on his mobile. He was followed by the Scary Sisters, who looked grimmer than usual.

“Why are they all leaving?” I asked Matthew.

“You didn’t recall Ashmole 782. They’re regrouping.” He thrust my bag and computer at me and picked up my two manuscripts. With his free hand, he snared my elbow and moved us toward the call desk. Timothy waved sadly from the Selden End before making a peace sign and turning away.

“Sean, Dr. Bishop is going back to college with me to help solve a problem I’ve found in the Needham papers. She won’t require these for the rest of the day. And I won’t be returning either.” Matthew handed Sean the boxed manuscripts. Sean gave the vampire a dark look before thumping them into a neater pile and heading for the locked manuscript hold.

We didn’t exchange a word on the way down the stairs, and by the time we pushed through the glass doors into the courtyard, I was ready to explode with questions.

Peter Knox was lounging against the iron railings surrounding the bronze statue of William Herbert. Matthew stopped abruptly and, with a fast step in front of me and a flick of his shoulder, placed me behind his considerable bulk.

“So, Dr. Bishop, you didn’t get it back,” Knox said maliciously. “I told you it was a fluke. Not even a Bishop could break that spell without proper training in witchcraft. Your mother might have managed it, but you don’t appear to share her talents.”

Matthew curled his lip but said nothing. He was trying not to interfere between witches, yet he wouldn’t be able to resist throttling Knox indefinitely.

“It’s missing. My mother was gifted, but she wasn’t a bloodhound.” I bristled, and Matthew’s hand rose slightly to quiet me.

“It’s been missing,” Knox said. “You found it anyway. It’s a good thing you didn’t manage to break the spell a second time, though.”

“Why is that?” I asked impatiently.

“Because we cannot let our history fall into the hands of animals like him. Witches and vampires don’t mix, Dr. Bishop. There are excellent reasons for it. Remember who you are. If you don’t, you will regret it.”

A witch shouldn’t keep secrets from other witches. Bad things happen when she does. Gillian’s voice echoed in my head, and the walls of the Bodleian drew closer. I fought down the panic that was burbling to the surface.

“Threaten her again and I’ll kill you on the spot.” Matthew’s voice was calm, but a passing tourist’s frozen look suggested that his face betrayed stronger emotions.

“Matthew,” I said quietly. “Not here.”

“Killing witches now, Clairmont?” Knox sneered. “Have you run out of vampires and humans to harm?”

“Leave her alone.” Matthew’s voice remained even, but his body was poised to strike if Knox moved a muscle in my direction.

The witch’s face twisted. “There’s no chance of that. She belongs to us, not you. So does the manuscript.”

“Matthew,” I repeated more urgently. A human boy of thirteen with a nose ring and a troubled complexion was now studying him with interest. “The humans are staring.”

He reached back and grabbed my hand in his. The shock of cold skin against warm and the sensation that I was tethered to him were simultaneous. He pulled me forward, tucking me under his shoulder.

Knox laughed scornfully. “It will take more than that to keep her safe, Clairmont. She’ll get the manuscript back for us. We’ll make sure of it.”

Without another word, Matthew propelled me through the quadrangle and onto the wide cobblestone path surrounding the Radcliffe Camera. He eyed All Souls’ closed iron gates, swore quickly and enthusiastically, and kept me going toward the High Street.

“Not much farther,” he said, his hand gripping mine a bit more tightly.

Matthew didn’t let go of me in the lodge, and he gave a curt nod to the porter on the way to his rooms. Up we climbed to his garret, which was just as warm and comfortable as it had been Saturday evening.

Matthew threw his keys onto the sideboard and deposited me unceremoniously on the sofa. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. He handed it to me, and I held it without drinking until he scowled so darkly that I took a sip and almost choked.

“Why couldn’t I get the manuscript a second time?” I was rattled that Knox had been proved right.

“I should have followed my instincts.” Matthew was standing by the window, clenching and unclenching his right hand and paying absolutely no attention to me. “We don’t understand your connection to the spell. You’ve been in grave danger since you saw Ashmole 782.”

“Knox may threaten, Matthew, but he’s not going to do something stupid in front of so many witnesses.”

“You’re staying at Woodstock for a few days. I want you away from Knox—no more chance meetings in college, no passing by him in the Bodleian.”

“Knox was right: I can’t get the manuscript back. He won’t pay any more attention to me.”

“That’s wishful thinking, Diana. Knox wants to understand the secrets of Ashmole 782 as much as you or I do.” Matthew’s normally impeccable appearance was suffering. He’d run his fingers through his hair until it stood up like a scarecrow’s in places.

“How can you both be so certain there are secrets in the hidden text?” I wondered, moving toward the fireplace. “It’s an alchemy book. Maybe that’s all it is.”

“Alchemy is the story of creation, told chemically. Creatures are chemistry, mapped onto biology.”

“But when Ashmole 782 was written, they didn’t know about biology or share your sense of chemistry.”

Matthew eyes collapsed into slits. “Diana Bishop, I’m shocked at your narrow-mindedness.” He meant it, too. “The creatures who made the manuscript might not have known about DNA, but what proof do you have that they weren’t asking the same questions about creation as a modern scientist?”

“Alchemical texts are allegories, not instruction manuals.” I redirected the fear and frustration of the past several days at him. “They may hint at larger truths, but you can’t build a reliable experiment from them.”

“I never said you could,” he replied, his eyes still dark with suppressed anger. “But we’re talking about potential readers who are witches, daemons, and vampires. A little supernatural reading, a bit of otherworldly creativity, and some long memories to fill in the blanks may give creatures information we don’t want them to have.”

“Information you don’t want them to have!” I remembered my promise to Agatha Wilson, and my voice rose. “You’re as bad as Knox. You want Ashmole 782 to satisfy your own curiosity.” My hands itched as I grabbed at my things.

“Calm down.” There was an edge to his voice that I didn’t like.

“Stop telling me what to do.” The itching sensation intensified.

My fingers were brilliant blue and shooting out little arcs of fire that sputtered at the edges like the sparklers on birthday cakes. I dropped my computer and held them up.

Matthew should have been horrified. Instead he looked intrigued.

“Does that happen often?” His voice was carefully neutral.

“Oh, no.” I ran for the kitchen, trailing sparks.

Matthew beat me to the door. “Not water,” he said sharply. “They smell electrical.”

Ah. That explained the last time I set fire to the kitchen.

I stood mutely, holding my hands up between us. We watched for a few minutes while the blue left my fingertips and the sparks went out entirely, leaving behind a definite smell of bad electrical wiring.

When the fireworks ended, Matthew was lounging against the kitchen doorframe with the nonchalant air of a Renaissance aristocrat waiting to have his portrait painted.

“Well,” he said, watching me with the stillness of an eagle ready to pounce on his prey, “that was interesting. Are you always like that when you get angry?”

“I don’t do angry,” I said, turning away from him. His hand shot out and whirled me back around to face him.

“You’re not getting off that easy.” Matthew’s voice was soft, but the sharp edge was back. “You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it.”

“Let me go!” My mouth contorted into what Sarah called my “sour-puss.” It was enough to make my students quake. Right now I hoped it would make Matthew curl up into a ball and roll away. At the very least, I wanted him to take his hand off my arm so I could get out of there.

“I warned you. Friendships with vampires are complicated. I couldn’t let you go now—even if I wanted to.”

My eyes lowered deliberately to his hand. Matthew removed it with a snort of impatience, and I turned to pick up my bag.

You really shouldn’t turn your back on a vampire if you’ve been arguing.

Matthew’s arms shot around me from behind, pressing my back against his chest so hard that I could feel every flexed muscle. “Now,” he said directly into my ear, “we’re going to talk like civilized creatures about what happened. You are not running away from this—or from me.”

“Let me go, Matthew.” I struggled in his arms.

“No.”

No man had ever refused when I asked him to stop doing something—whether it was blowing his nose in the library or trying to slip a hand up my shirt after a movie. I struggled again. Matthew’s arms got tighter.

“Stop fighting me.” He sounded amused. “You’ll get tired long before I do, I assure you.”

In my women’s self-defense class, they’d taught me what to do if grabbed from behind. I lifted my foot to stomp on his. Matthew moved out of the way, and it smashed into the floor instead.

“We can do this all afternoon if you want,” he murmured. “But I honestly can’t recommend it. My reflexes are much faster than yours.”

“Let me go and we can talk,” I said through clenched teeth.

He laughed softly, his spicy breath tickling the exposed skin at the base of my skull. “That wasn’t a worthy attempt at negotiation, Diana. No, we’re going to talk like this. I want to know how often your fingers have turned blue.”

“Not often.” My instructor had recommended I relax if grabbed from behind and slip out of an assailant’s arms. Matthew’s grip on me only tightened. “A few times, when I was a child, I set fire to things—the kitchen cabinets, but that may have been because I tried to put my hands out in the sink and the fire got worse. My bedroom curtains, once or twice. A tree outside the house—but it was just a small tree.”

“Since then?”

“It happened last week, when Miriam made me angry.”

“How did she do that?” he asked, resting his cheek against the side of my head. It was comforting, if I overlooked the fact that he was holding me against my wishes.

“She told me I needed to learn how to take care of myself and stop relying on you to protect me. She basically accused me of playing the damsel in distress.” Just the thought made my blood simmer and my fingers itch all over again.

“You are many things, Diana, but a damsel in distress is not one of them. You’ve had this reaction twice in less than a week.” Matthew’s voice was thoughtful. “Interesting.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t imagine you do,” he said, “but it is interesting just the same. Now let’s turn to another topic.” His mouth drifted toward my ear, and I tried—unsuccessfully—to pull it away. “What is this nonsense about my not being interested in anything but an old manuscript?”

I flushed. This was mortifying. “Sarah and Em said you were only spending time with me because you wanted something. I assume it’s Ashmole 782.”

“But that’s not true, is it?” he said, running his lips and cheek gently against my hair. My blood started to sing in response. Even I could hear it. He laughed again, this time with satisfaction. “I didn’t think you believed it. I just wanted to be sure.”

My body relaxed into his. “Matthew—” I began.

“I’m letting you go,” he said, cutting me off. “But don’t bolt for the door, understand?”

We were prey and predator once more. If I ran, his instincts would tell him to give chase. I nodded, and he slipped his arms from me, leaving me oddly unsteady.

“What am I going to do with you?” He was standing with his hands on his hips, a lopsided smile on his face. “You are the most exasperating creature I’ve ever met.”

“No one has ever known what to do with me.”

“That I believe.” He surveyed me for a moment. “We’re going to Woodstock.”

“No! I’m perfectly safe in college.” He’d warned me about vampires and protectiveness. He was right—I didn’t like it.

“You are not,” he said with an angry glint in his eyes. “Someone’s tried to break in to your rooms.”

“What?” I was aghast.

“The loose lock, remember?”

In fact, there were fresh scratches on the hardware. But Matthew did not need to know about that.

“You’ll stay at Woodstock until Peter Knox leaves Oxford.”

My face must have betrayed my dismay.

“It won’t be so bad,” he said gently. “You’ll have all the yoga you want.”

With Matthew in bodyguard mode, I didn’t have much choice. And if he was right—which I suspected he was—someone had already gotten past Fred and into my rooms.

“Come,” he said, picking up my computer bag. “I’ll take you to New College and wait while you get your things. But this conversation about the connection between Ashmole 782 and your blue fingers is not over,” he continued, forcing me to meet his eyes. “It’s just beginning.”

We went down to the fellows’ car park, and Matthew retrieved the Jaguar from between a modest blue Vauxhall and an old Peugeot. Given the city’s restrictive traffic patterns, it took twice as long to drive as it would have to walk.

Matthew pulled in to the lodge gates. “I’ll be right back,” I said, slinging my computer bag over my shoulder as he let me out of the car.

“Dr. Bishop, you have mail,” Fred called from the lodge.

I collected the contents of my pigeonhole, my head pounding with stress and anxiety, and waved my mail at Matthew before heading toward my rooms.

Inside, I kicked off my shoes, rubbed my temples, and glanced at the message machine. Mercifully, it wasn’t blinking. The mail contained nothing but bills and a large brown envelope with my name typed on it. There was no stamp, indicating it came from someone within the university. I slid my finger under the flap and pulled out the contents.

A piece of ordinary paper was clipped to something smooth and shiny. Typed on the paper was a single line of text.

“Remember?”

Hands shaking, I pulled off the slip. The paper fluttered to the floor, revealing a familiar glossy photograph. I’d only seen it reproduced in black and white, though, in the newspapers. This was in color, and as bright and vivid as the day it had been taken, in 1983.

My mother’s body lay facedown in a chalk circle, her left leg at an impossible angle. Her right arm reached toward my father, who was lying faceup, his head caved in on one side and a gash splitting his torso from throat to groin. Some of his entrails had been pulled out and were lying next to him on the ground.

A sound between a moan and a scream slipped from my mouth. I dropped to the floor, trembling but unable to tear my eyes from the image.

“Diana!” Matthew’s voice sounded frantic, but he was too far away for me to care. In the distance someone jiggled the doorknob. Feet clattered up the stairs, a key scraped in the lock.

The door burst open, and I looked up into Matthew’s ashen face, along with Fred’s concerned one.

“Dr. Bishop?” Fred asked.

Matthew moved so quickly that Fred had to know he was a vampire. He crouched in front of me. My teeth chattered with shock.

“If I give you my keys, can you move the car to All Souls for me?” Matthew asked over his shoulder. “Dr. Bishop isn’t well, and she shouldn’t be alone.”

“No worries, Professor Clairmont. We’ll keep it here in the warden’s lot,” replied Fred. Matthew threw his keys at the porter, who caught them neatly. Flashing me a worried look, Fred closed the door.

“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.

Matthew pulled me to my feet and led me to the bathroom. Sinking next to the toilet, I threw up, dropping the picture on the floor to grip the sides of the bowl. Once my stomach was empty, the worst of the shaking subsided, but every few seconds a tremble radiated through me.

I closed the lid and reached up to flush, pushing down on the toilet for leverage. My head spun. Matthew caught me before I hit the bathroom wall.

Suddenly my feet were not on the ground. Matthew’s chest was against my right shoulder and his arms underneath my knees. Moments later he laid me gently on my bed and turned the light on, angling the shade away. My wrist was in his cool fingers, and with his touch my pulse began to slow. That made it possible for me to focus on his face. It looked as calm as ever, except that the tiny dark vein in his forehead throbbed slightly every minute or so.

“I’m going to get you something to drink.” He let go of my wrist and stood.

Another wave of panic washed over me. I bolted to my feet, all my instincts telling me to run as far and as fast as possible.

Matthew grabbed me by the shoulders, trying to make eye contact. “Stop, Diana.”

My stomach had invaded my lungs, pressing out all the air, and I struggled against his grasp, not knowing or caring what he was saying. “Let me go,” I pleaded, pushing against his chest with both hands.

“Diana, look at me.” There was no ignoring Matthew’s voice, or the moonlike pull of his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“My parents. Gillian told me witches killed my parents.” My voice was high and tight.

Matthew said something in a language I didn’t understand. “When did this happen? Where were they? Did the witch leave a message on your phone? Did she threaten you?” His hold on me strengthened.

“Nigeria. She said the Bishops have always been trouble.”

“I’ll go with you. Let me make a few phone calls first.” Matthew took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry, Diana.”

“Go where?” Nothing was making any sense.

“To Africa.” Matthew sounded confused. “Someone will have to identify the bodies.”

“My parents were killed when I was seven.”

His eyes widened with shock.

“Even though it happened so long ago, they’re all the witches want to talk about these days—Gillian, Peter Knox.” Shivering as the panic escalated, I felt a scream rise up in my throat. Matthew pressed me to him before it could erupt, holding me so tightly that the outlines of his muscles and bones were sharp against my skin. The scream turned into a sob. “Bad things happen to witches who keep secrets. Gillian said so.”

“No matter what she said, I will not let Knox or any other witch harm you. I’ve got you now.” Matthew’s voice was fierce, and he bowed his head and rested his cheek on my hair while I cried. “Oh, Diana. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe.

When my sobs quieted, Matthew drew away. “I’m going to get you some water, and then you’re going to rest.” His tone did not invite discussion, and he was back in a matter of seconds carrying a glass of water and two tiny pills.

“Take these,” he said, handing them to me along with the water.

“What are they?”

“A sedative.” His stern look encouraged me to pop both pills into my mouth, immediately, along with a gulp of water. “I’ve been carrying one since you told me you suffered from panic attacks.”

“I hate taking tranquilizers.”

“You’ve had a shock, and you’ve got too much adrenaline in your system. You need to rest.” Matthew dragged the duvet around me until I was encased in a lumpy cocoon. He sat on the bed, and his shoes thumped against the floor before he stretched out, his back propped up against the pillows. When he gathered my duvet-wrapped body against him, I sighed. Matthew reached across with his left arm and held me securely. My body, for all its wrappings, fit against him perfectly.

The drug worked its way through my bloodstream. As I was drifting off to sleep, Matthew’s phone shook in his pocket, startling me into wakefulness.

“It’s nothing, probably Marcus,” he said, brushing his lips against my forehead. My heartbeat settled. “Try to rest. You aren’t alone anymore.”

I could still feel the chain that anchored me to Matthew, witch to vampire.

With the links of that chain tight and shining, I slept.

The sky was dark outside Diana’s windows before Matthew could leave her side. Restless at first, she had at last fallen into deep sleep. He noted the subtle changes of scent as her shock subsided, a cold fierceness sweeping over him every time he thought of Peter Knox and Gillian Chamberlain.

Matthew couldn’t remember when he’d felt so protective of another being. He felt other emotions as well, that he was reluctant to acknowledge or name.

She’s a witch, he reminded himself as he watched her sleep. She’s not for you.

The more he said it, the less it seemed to matter.

At last he gently extracted himself and crept from the room, leaving the door open a crack in case she stirred.

Alone in the hall, the vampire let surface the cold anger that had been seething inside for hours. The intensity of it almost choked him. He drew the leather cord from the neck of his sweater and touched the worn, smooth surfaces of Lazarus’s silver coffin. The sound of Diana’s breathing was all that kept him from leaping through the night to hunt down two witches.

The clocks of Oxford struck eight, their familiar, weary tolling reminding Matthew of the call he’d missed. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the messages, quickly thumbing through the automatic notifications from the security systems at the labs and the Old Lodge. There were several messages from Marcus.

Matthew frowned and punched the number to retrieve them. Marcus was not prone to alarm. What could be so urgent?

“Matthew.” The familiar voice held none of its usual playful charm. “I have Diana’s DNA test results. They’re . . . surprising. Call me.”

The recorded voice was still speaking when the vampire’s finger punched another single key on the phone. He raked his hair with his free hand while he waited for Marcus to pick up. It took only one ring.

“Matthew.” There was no warmth in Marcus’s response, only relief. It had been hours since he’d left the messages. Marcus had even checked Matthew’s favorite Oxford haunt, the Pitt Rivers Museum, where the vampire could often be found dividing his attention between the skeleton of an iguanodon and a likeness of Darwin. Miriam had finally banished him from the lab, irritated by his constant questions about where Matthew might be and with whom.

“He’s with her, of course,” Miriam had said in the late afternoon, her voice full of disapproval. “Where else? And if you’re not going to do any work, go home and wait for his call there. You’re in my way.”

“What did the tests show?” Matthew’s voice was low, but his rage was audible.

“What’s happened?” Marcus asked quickly.

A picture lying faceup on the floor of the bathroom caught Matthew’s attention. Diana had been clutching it that afternoon. His eyes narrowed to slits as he took in the image. “Where are you?” he rasped.

“Home,” Marcus answered uneasily.

Matthew picked the photo off the floor and traced its scent to where a piece of paper had slid half under the couch. He read the single word of the message, took a sharp breath. “Bring the reports and my passport to New College. Diana’s rooms are in the garden quadrangle at the top of staircase seven.”

Twenty minutes later Matthew opened the door, his hair standing on end and a ferocious look on his face. The younger vampire had to school himself not to take a step backward.

Marcus held out a manila folder with a maroon passport folded around it, every move deliberate, and patiently waited. He wasn’t about to enter the witch’s rooms without Matthew’s permission, not when the vampire was in this state.

Permission was slow in coming, but at last Matthew took the folder and stepped aside to let Marcus enter.

While Matthew scrutinized Diana’s test results, Marcus studied him. His keen nose took in the old wood and well-worn textiles, along with the smell of the witch’s fear and the vampire’s barely controlled emotions. His own hackles rose at the volatile combination, and a reflexive growl caught in his throat.

Over the years Marcus had come to appreciate Matthew’s finer qualities—his compassion, his conscience, his patience with those he loved. He also knew his faults, anger chief among them. Typically, Matthew’s rage was so destructive that once the poison was out of his system, he disappeared for months or even years to come to terms with what he’d done.

And Marcus had never seen his father so coldly furious as he was now. Matthew Clairmont had entered Marcus’s life in 1777 and changed it—forever. He had appeared in the Bennett farmhouse at the side of an improvised sling that carried the wounded Marquis de Lafayette from the killing fields at the Battle of Brandywine. Matthew towered over the other men, barking orders at everyone regardless of rank.

No one disputed his commands—not even Lafayette, who joked with his friend despite his injuries. The marquis’s good humor couldn’t stave off a tongue-lashing from Matthew, however. When Lafayette protested that he could manage while soldiers with more serious injuries were tended to, Clairmont released a volley of French so laced with expletives and ultimatums that his own men looked at him with awe and the marquis subsided into silence.

Marcus had listened, wide-eyed, when the French soldier railed at the head of the army’s medical corps, the esteemed Dr. Shippen, rejecting his treatment plan as “barbaric.” Clairmont demanded that the doctor’s second in command, John Cochran, treat Lafayette instead. Two days later Clairmont and Shippen could be heard arguing the finer points of anatomy and physiology in fluent Latin—to the delight of the medical staff and General Washington.

Matthew had killed more than his share of British soldiers before the Continental Army was defeated at Brandywine. Men brought into the hospital spun impossible tales of his fearlessness in battle. Some claimed he walked straight into enemy lines, unfazed by bullets and bayonets. When the guns stopped, Clairmont insisted that Marcus remain with the marquis as his nurse.

In the autumn, once Lafayette was able to ride again, the two of them disappeared into the forests of Pennsylvania and New York. They returned with an army of Oneida warriors. The Oneida called Lafayette “Kayewla” for his skill with the horse. Matthew they referred to as “atlutanu’n,” the warrior chief, because of his ability to lead men into battle.

Matthew remained with the army long after Lafayette returned to France. Marcus continued to serve, too, as a lowly surgeon’s assistant. Day after day he tried to stanch the wounds of soldiers injured by musket, cannon, and sword. Clairmont always sought him out whenever one of his own men was injured. Marcus, he said, had a gift for healing.

Shortly after the Continental Army arrived in Yorktown in 1781, Marcus caught a fever. His gift for healing meant nothing then. He lay cold and shivering, tended to only when someone had the time. After four days of suffering, Marcus knew he was dying. When Clairmont came to visit some of his own stricken men, accompanied once again by Lafayette, he saw Marcus on a broken cot in the corner and smelled the scent of death.

The French officer sat at the young man’s side as night turned toward day and shared his story. Marcus thought he was dreaming. A man who drank blood and found it impossible to die? After hearing that, Marcus became convinced that he was already dead and being tormented by one of the devils his father had warned him would prey on his sinful nature.

The vampire explained that Marcus could survive the fever, but there would be a price. First he would have to be reborn. Then he would have to hunt, and kill, and drink blood—even human blood. For a time his need for it would make working among the injured and sick impossible. Matthew promised to send Marcus to university while he got used to his new life.

Sometime before dawn, when the pain became excruciating, Marcus decided he wanted to live more than he feared the new life the vampire had laid out for him. Matthew carried him, limp and burning with fever, out of the hospital and into the woods, where the Oneida waited to lead them into the mountains. Matthew drained him of his blood in a remote hollow, where no one could hear his screams. Even now Marcus remembered the powerful thirst that had followed. He’d been mad with it, desperate to swallow anything cold and liquid.

Finally Matthew had slashed his own wrist with his teeth and let Marcus drink. The vampire’s powerful blood brought him back to startling life.

The Oneida waited impassively at the mouth of the cave and prevented him from wreaking havoc on the nearby farms when his hunger for blood surfaced. They had recognized what Matthew was the moment he appeared in their village. He was like Dagwanoenyent, the witch who lived in the whirlwind and could not die. Why the gods had decided to give the French warrior these gifts was a mystery to the Oneida, but the gods were known for their puzzling decisions. All they could do was make sure their children knew Dagwanoenyent’s legend, carefully instructing them how to kill such a creature by burning him, grinding his bones into powder, and dispersing it to the four winds so that he could not be reborn.

Thwarted, Marcus had behaved like the child he was, howling with frustration and shaking with need. When Matthew hunted down a deer to feed the young man who had been reborn as his son, Marcus quickly sucked it dry. It sated his hunger but didn’t dull the thrumming in his veins as Matthew’s ancient blood suffused his body.

After a week of bringing fresh kills back to their den, Matthew decided Marcus was ready to hunt for himself. Father and son tracked deer and bear through deep forests and along moonlit mountain ridges. Matthew trained him to smell the air, to watch in the shadows for the smallest hint of movement, and to feel changes in the wind that would bring fresh scents their way. And he taught the healer how to kill.

In those early days, Marcus wanted richer blood. He needed it, too, to quench his deep thirst and feed his ravenous body. But Matthew waited until Marcus could track a deer quickly, bring it down, and drain its blood without making a mess before he let him hunt humans. Women were off-limits. Too confusing for newly reborn vampires, Matthew explained, as the lines between sex and death, courtship and hunting, were too finely drawn.

First father and son fed on sick British soldiers. Some begged Marcus to spare their life, and Matthew taught him how to feed on warmbloods without killing them. Then they hunted criminals, who cried for mercy and didn’t deserve it. In every case Matthew made Marcus explain why he’d picked a particular man as his prey. Marcus’s ethics developed, in the halting, deliberate way that they must when a vampire comes to terms with what he needs to do in order to survive.

Matthew was widely known for his finely developed sense of right and wrong. All his mistakes in judgment could be traced back to decisions made in anger. Marcus had been told that his father was not as prone to that dangerous emotion as he’d been in the past. Perhaps so, but tonight in Oxford, Matthew’s face wore the same murderous expression it had at Brandywine—and there was no battlefield to vent his rage.

“You’ve made a mistake.” Matthew’s eyes were wild when he finished poring over the witch’s DNA tests.

Marcus shook his head. “I analyzed her blood twice. Miriam confirmed my findings with the DNA from the swab. I admit the results are surprising.”

Matthew drew in a shaky breath. “They’re preposterous.”

“Diana possesses nearly every genetic marker we’ve ever seen in a witch.” His mouth tightened into a grim line as he flipped to the final pages. “But these sequences have us concerned.”

Matthew leafed quickly through the data. There were more than two dozen sequences of DNA, some short and some long, with Miriam’s tiny red question marks next to them.

“Christ,” he said, tossing them back at his son. “We already have enough to worry about. That bastard Peter Knox has threatened her. He wants the manuscript. Diana tried to recall it, but Ashmole 782 has gone back into the library and won’t come out again. Happily, Knox is convinced—for now—that she first obtained it by deliberately breaking its spell.”

“She didn’t?”

“No. Diana doesn’t have the knowledge or control to do anything that intricate. Her power is completely undisciplined. She put a hole in my rug.” Matthew looked sour, and his son struggled not to smile. His father did love his antiques.

“Then we’ll keep Knox away and give Diana a chance to come to terms with her abilities. That doesn’t sound too difficult.”

“Knox is not my only concern. Diana received these in the mail today.” Matthew picked up the photograph and its accompanying slip of paper and handed them to his son. When he continued, his voice had a dangerous, flat tone. “Her parents. I remember hearing about two American witches killed in Nigeria, but it was so long ago. I never connected them to Diana.”

“Holy God,” Marcus said softly. Staring at the picture, he tried to imagine what it would be like to receive a photo of his own father ripped to pieces and tossed into the dirt to die.

“There’s more. From what I can piece together, Diana has long believed that her parents were killed by humans. That’s the chief reason she’s tried to keep magic from her life.”

“That won’t work, will it?” muttered Marcus, thinking of the witch’s DNA.

“No,” Matthew agreed, grim-faced. “While I was in Scotland, another American witch, Gillian Chamberlain, informed her that it wasn’t humans at all—but fellow witches—who murdered her parents.”

“Did they?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s clearly more to this situation than a witch’s discovery of Ashmole 782.” Matthew’s tone turned deadly. “I intend to find out what it is.”

Something silver glinted against his father’s dusky sweater. He’s wearing Lazarus’s coffin, Marcus realized.

No one in the family talked openly about Eleanor St. Leger or the events surrounding her death, for fear of driving Matthew into one of his rages. Marcus understood that his father hadn’t wanted to leave Paris in 1140, where he was happily studying philosophy. But when the head of the family, Matthew’s own father, Philippe, called him back to Jerusalem to help resolve the conflicts that continued to plague the Holy Land long after the conclusion of Urban II’s Crusade, Matthew obeyed without question. He had met Eleanor, befriended her sprawling English family, and fallen resolutely in love.

But the St. Legers and the de Clermonts were often on opposite sides in the disputes, and Matthew’s older brothers—Hugh, Godfrey, and Baldwin—urged him to put the woman aside, leaving a clear path for them to destroy her family. Matthew refused. One day a squabble between Baldwin and Matthew over some petty political crisis involving the St. Legers spiraled out of control. Before Philippe could be found and made to stop it, Eleanor intervened. By the time Matthew and Baldwin came to their senses, she’d lost too much blood to recover.

Marcus still didn’t understand why Matthew had let Eleanor die if he’d loved her so much.

Now Matthew wore his pilgrim’s badge only when he was afraid he was going to kill someone or when he was thinking of Eleanor St. Leger—or both.

“That picture is a threat—and not an idle one. Hamish thought the Bishop name would make the witches more cautious, but I fear the opposite is true. No matter how great her innate talents might be, Diana can’t protect herself, and she’s too damn self-reliant to ask for help. I need you to stay with her for a few hours.” Matthew dragged his eyes from the picture of Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor. “I’m going to find Gillian Chamberlain.”

“You can’t be sure it was Gillian who delivered that picture,” Marcus pointed out. “There are two different scents on it.”

“The other belongs to Peter Knox.”

“But Peter Knox is a member of the Congregation!” Marcus knew that a nine-member council of daemons, witches, and vampires had been formed during the Crusades—three representatives from each species. The Congregation’s job was to ensure every creature’s safety by seeing to it that no one caught the attention of humans. “If you make a move in his direction, it will be seen as a challenge to their authority. The whole family will be implicated. You aren’t seriously considering endangering us just to avenge a witch?”

“You aren’t questioning my loyalty, are you?” Matthew purred.

“No, I’m questioning your judgment,” Marcus said hotly, facing his father without fear. “This ridiculous romance is bad enough. The Congregation already has one reason to take steps against you. Don’t give them another.”

During Marcus’s first visit to France, his vampire grandmother had explained that he was now bound by a covenant that prohibited close relationships between different orders of creatures, as well as any meddling in human religion and politics. All other interactions with humans—including affairs of the heart—were to be avoided but were permitted as long as they didn’t lead to trouble. Marcus preferred spending time with vampires and always had, so the covenant’s terms had mattered little to him—until now.

“Nobody cares anymore,” Matthew said defensively, his gray eyes drifting in the direction of Diana’s bedroom door.

“My God, she doesn’t understand about the covenant,” Marcus said contemptuously, “and you have no intention of telling her. You damn well know you can’t keep this secret from her indefinitely.”

“The Congregation isn’t going to enforce a promise made nearly a thousand years ago in a very different world.” Matthew’s eyes were now fixed on an antique print of the goddess Diana aiming her bow at a hunter fleeing through the forest. He remembered a passage from a book written long ago by a friend—“ for they are no longer hunters, but the hunted”— and shivered.

“Think before you do this, Matthew.”

“I’ve made my decision.” He avoided his son’s eyes. “Will you check on her while I’m gone, make sure she’s all right?”

Marcus nodded, unable to deny the raw appeal in his father’s voice.

After the door closed behind his father, Marcus went to Diana. He lifted one of her eyelids, then the other, and picked up her wrist. He sniffed, noting the fear and shock that surrounded her. He also detected the drug that was still circulating through her veins. Good, he thought. At least his father had had the presence of mind to give her a sedative.

Marcus continued to probe Diana’s condition, looking minutely at her skin and listening to the sound of her breath. When he was finished, he stood quietly at the witch’s bedside, watching her dream. Her forehead was creased into a frown, as if she were arguing with someone.

After his examination Marcus knew two things. First, Diana would be fine. She’d had a serious shock and needed rest, but no permanent damage had been done. Second, his father’s scent was all over her. He’d done it deliberately, to mark Diana so that every vampire would know to whom she belonged. That meant the situation had gone further than Marcus had believed possible. It was going to be difficult for his father to detach himself from this witch. And he would have to, if the stories that Marcus’s grandmother had told him were true.

It was after midnight when Matthew reappeared. He looked even angrier than when he’d left, but he was spotless and impeccable as always. He ran his fingers through his hair and strode straight into Diana’s room without a word to his son.

Marcus knew better than to question Matthew then. After he emerged from the witch’s room, Marcus asked only, “Will you discuss the DNA findings with Diana?”

“No,” Matthew said shortly, without a hint of guilt over keeping information of this magnitude from her. “Nor am I going to share what the witches of the Congregation might do to her. She’s been through enough.”

“Diana Bishop is less fragile than you think. You have no right to keep that information to yourself, if you are going to continue to spend time with her.” Marcus knew that a vampire’s life was measured not in hours or years but in secrets revealed and kept. Vampires guarded their personal relationships, the names they’d adopted, and the details of the many lives they’d led. Nonetheless, his father kept more secrets than most, and his urge to hide things from his own family was intensely aggravating.

“Stay out of this, Marcus,” his father snarled. “It’s not your business.”

Marcus swore. “Your damned secrets are going to be the family’s undoing.”

Matthew had his son by the scruff of the neck before he’d finished speaking. “My secrets have kept this family safe for many centuries, my son. Where would you be today if not for my secrets?”

“Food for worms in an unmarked Yorktown grave, I expect,” Marcus said breathlessly, his vocal cords constricted.

Over the years Marcus had tried with little success to uncover some of his father’s secrets. He’d never been able to discover who tipped Matthew off that Marcus was raising hell in New Orleans after Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase, for example. There he’d created a vampire family as boisterous and charming as himself from the city’s youngest, least responsible citizens. Marcus’s brood—which included an alarming number of gamblers and ne’er-do-wells—risked human discovery every time they went out after dark. The witches of New Orleans, Marcus remembered, had made it clear they wanted them to leave town.

Then Matthew had shown up, uninvited and unannounced, with a gorgeous mixed-race vampire: Juliette Durand. Matthew and Juliette had waged a campaign to bring Marcus’s family to heel. Within days they’d formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi. That was when the real trouble began.

By the end of the first fortnight, Marcus’s new family was considerably, and mysteriously, smaller. As the number of deaths and disappearances mounted, Matthew threw up his hands and murmured about the dangers of New Orleans. Juliette, whom Marcus had grown to detest in the few days he’d known her, smiled secretively and cooed encouraging words in his father’s ears. She was the most manipulative creature Marcus had ever met, and he was thrilled when she and his father parted ways.

Under pressure from his remaining children, Marcus made devout assurances to behave if only Matthew and Juliette would leave.

Matthew agreed, after setting out what was expected of members of the de Clermont family in exacting detail. “If you are determined to make me a grandfather,” his father instructed during an extremely unpleasant interview held in the presence of several of the city’s oldest and most powerful vampires, “take more care.” The memory still made Marcus blanch.

Who or what gave Matthew and Juliette the authority to act as they did remained a mystery. His father’s strength, Juliette’s cunning, and the luster of the de Clermont name may have helped them gain the support of the vampires. But there was more to it than that. Every creature in New Orleans—even the witches—had treated his father like royalty.

Marcus wondered if his father had been a member of the Congregation, all those years ago. It would explain a great deal.

Matthew’s voice sent his son’s memories flying. “Diana may be brave, Marcus, but she doesn’t need to know everything now.” He released Marcus and stepped away.

“Does she know about our family, then? Your other children?” Does she know about your father? Marcus didn’t say the last aloud.

Matthew knew what he was thinking anyway. “I don’t tell other vampires’ tales.”

“You’re making a mistake,” said Marcus, shaking his head. “Diana won’t thank you for keeping things from her.”

“So you and Hamish say. When she’s ready, I’ll tell her everything—but not before.” His father’s voice was firm. “My only concern right now is getting Diana out of Oxford.”

“Will you drop her off in Scotland? Surely she’ll be beyond anyone’s reach there.” Marcus thought at once of Hamish’s remote estate. “Or will you leave her at Woodstock before you go?”

“Before I go where?” Matthew’s face was puzzled.

“You had me bring your passport.” Now it was Marcus who was puzzled. That’s what his father did—he got angry and went away by himself until he was under better control.

“I have no intention of leaving Diana,” Matthew said icily. “I’m taking her to Sept-Tours.”

“You can’t possibly put her under the same roof as Ysabeau!” Marcus’s shocked voice rang in the small room.

“It’s my home, too,” Matthew said, jaw set in a stubborn line.

“Your mother openly boasts about the witches she’s killed and blames every witch she meets for what happened to Louisa and your father.”

Matthew’s face crumpled, and Marcus at last understood. The photograph had reminded Matthew of Philippe’s death and Ysabeau’s battle with madness in the years that followed.

Matthew pressed the palms of his hands against his temples, as if desperately trying to shape a better plan from the outside in. “Diana had nothing to do with either tragedy. Ysabeau will understand.”

“She won’t—you know she won’t,” Marcus said obstinately. He loved his grandmother and didn’t want her hurt. And if Matthew—her favorite—brought a witch home, it was going to hurt her. Badly.

“There’s nowhere as safe as Sept-Tours. The witches will think twice before tangling with Ysabeau—especially at her own home.”

“For God’s sake, don’t leave the two of them alone together.”

“I won’t,” Matthew promised. “I’ll need you and Miriam to move into the gatehouse in hopes that will convince everyone Diana is there. They’ll figure out the truth eventually, but it may win us a few days. My keys are with the porter. Come back in a few hours, when we’ve gone. Take the duvet from her bed—it will have her scent on it—and drive to Woodstock. Stay there until you hear from me.”

“Can you protect yourself and that witch at the same time?” Marcus asked quietly.

“I can handle it,” Matthew said with certainty.

Marcus nodded, and the two vampires gripped forearms, exchanging a meaningful look. Anything they needed to say to each other at moments like these had long since been said.

When Matthew was alone again, he sank into the sofa and cradled his head in his hands. Marcus’s vehement opposition had shaken him.

He looked up and stared again at the print of the goddess of the hunt stalking her prey. Another line from the same old poem came into his mind. “‘I saw her coming from the forest,’” he whispered, “‘Huntress of myself, beloved Diana.’”

In the bedroom, too far away for a warmblood to have heard, Diana stirred and cried out. Matthew sped to her side and gathered her into his arms. The protectiveness returned, and with it a renewed sense of purpose.

“I’m here,” he murmured against the rainbow strands of her hair. He looked down at Diana’s sleeping face, her mouth puckered and a fierce frown between her eyes. It was a face he’d studied for hours and knew well, but its contradictions still fascinated him. “Have you bewitched me?” he wondered aloud.

After tonight Matthew knew his need for her was greater than anything else. Neither his family nor his next taste of blood mattered as much as knowing that she was safe and within arm’s reach. If that was what it meant to be bewitched, he was a lost man.

His arms tightened, holding Diana in sleep as he would not allow himself to do when she was awake. She sighed, nestling closer.

Were he not a vampire he wouldn’t have caught her faint, murmured words as she clutched both his ampulla and the fabric of his sweater, her fist resting firmly against his heart.

“You’re not lost. I found you.”

Matthew wondered fleetingly if he’d imagined it but knew that he hadn’t.

She could hear his thoughts.

Not all the time, not when she was conscious—not yet. But it was only a matter of time before Diana knew everything there was to know about him. She would know his secrets, the dark and terrible things he wasn’t brave enough to face.

She answered with another faint murmur. “I’m brave enough for both of us.”

Matthew bent his head toward hers. “You’ll have to be.”

There was a powerful taste of cloves in my mouth, and I’d been mummified in my own duvet. When I stirred in my wrappings, the bed’s old springs gave slightly.

“Shh.” Matthew’s lips were at my ear, and his body formed a shell against my back. We lay there like spoons in a drawer, tight against each other.

“What time is it?” My voice was hoarse.

Matthew pulled away slightly and looked at his watch. “It’s after one.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“Since around six last night.”

Last night.

My mind shattered into words and images: the alchemical manuscript, Peter Knox’s threat, my fingers turning blue with electricity, the photograph of my parents, my mother’s hand frozen in a never-ending reach.

“You gave me drugs.” I pushed against the duvet, trying to work my hands free. “I don’t like taking drugs, Matthew.”

“Next time you go into shock, I’ll let you suffer needlessly.” He gave a single twitch to the bed covering that was more effective than all my previous wrestling with it.

Matthew’s sharp tone shook the shards of memory, and new images rose to the surface. Gillian Chamberlain’s twisted face warned me about keeping secrets, and the piece of paper commanded me to remember. For a few moments, I was seven again, trying to understand how my bright, vital parents could be gone from my life.

In my rooms I reached toward Matthew, while in my mind’s eye my mother’s hand reached for my father across a chalk-inscribed circle. The lingering childhood desolation of their death collided with a new, adult empathy for my mother’s desperate attempt to touch my father. Abruptly pulling from Matthew’s arms, I lifted my knees to my chest in a tight, protective ball.

Matthew wanted to help—I could see that—but he was unsure of me, and the shadow of my own conflicted emotions fell over his face.

Knox’s voice sounded again in my mind, full of poison. Remember who you are.

“Remember?” the note asked.

Without warning, I turned back toward the vampire, closing the distance between me and him in a rush. My parents were gone, but Matthew was here. Tucking my head under his chin, I listened for several minutes for the next pump of blood through his system. The leisurely rhythms of his vampire heart soon put me to sleep.

My own heart was pounding when I awoke again in the dark, kicking at the loosened duvet and swimming to a seated position. Behind me, Matthew turned on the lamp, its shade still angled away from the bed.

“What is it?” he asked.

“The magic found me. The witches did, too. I’ll be killed for my magic, like my parents were killed.” The words rushed from my mouth, panic speeding their passage, and I stumbled to my feet.

“No.” Matthew rose and stood between me and the door. “We’re going to face this, Diana, whatever it is. Otherwise you’ll never stop running.”

Part of me knew that what he said was true. The rest wanted to flee into the darkness. But how could I, with a vampire standing in the way?

The air began to stir around me as if trying to drive off the feeling of being trapped. Chilly wisps edged up the legs of my trousers. The air crept up my body, lifting the hair around my face in a gentle breeze. Matthew swore and stepped toward me, his arm outstretched. The breeze increased into gusts of wind that ruffled the bedclothes and the curtains.

“It’s all right.” His voice was pitched deliberately to be heard above the whirlwind and to calm me at the same time.

But it wasn’t enough.

The force of the wind kept rising, and with it my arms rose, too, shaping the air into a column that enclosed me as protectively as the duvet. On the other side of the disturbance, Matthew stood, one hand still extended, eyes fixed on mine. When I opened my mouth to warn him to stay away, nothing came out but frigid air.

“It’s all right,” he said again, not breaking his gaze. “I won’t move.”

I hadn’t realized that was the problem until he said the words.

“I promise,” he said firmly.

The wind faltered. The cyclone surrounding me became a whirlwind, then a breeze, then disappeared entirely. I gasped and dropped to my knees.

“What is happening to me?” Every day I ran and rowed and did yoga, and my body did what I told it to. Now it was doing unimaginable things. I looked down to make sure my hands weren’t sparkling with electricity and my feet weren’t still being buffeted by winds.

“That was a witchwind,” Matthew explained, not moving. “Do you know what that is?”

I’d heard of a witch in Albany who could summon storms, but no one had ever called it a “witchwind.”

“Not really,” I confessed, still sneaking glances at my hands and feet.

“Some witches have inherited the ability to control the element of air. You’re one of them,” he said.

“That wasn’t control.”

“It was your first time.” Matthew was matter-of-fact. He gestured around the small bedroom: the intact curtains and sheets, all the clothing strewn on the chest of drawers and floor exactly where they’d been left that morning. “We’re both still standing, and the room doesn’t look like a tornado went through it. That’s control—for now.”

“But I didn’t ask for it. Do these things just happen to witches—electrical fires and winds they didn’t summon?” I pushed the hair out of my eyes and swayed, exhausted. Too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Matthew’s body inclined toward me as if to catch me should I fall.

“Witchwinds and blue fingers are rare these days. There’s magic inside you, Diana, and it wants to get out, whether you ask for it or not.”

“I felt trapped.”

“I shouldn’t have cornered you last night.” Matthew looked ashamed. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you. You’re like a perpetual-motion machine. All I wanted was for you to stand still for a moment and listen.”

It must be even harder to cope with my incessant need to move if you were a vampire who seldom needed to breathe. Once again the space between Matthew and me was suddenly too large. I started to rise.

“Am I forgiven?” he asked sincerely. I nodded. “May I?” he asked, gesturing at his feet. I nodded again.

He took three fast steps in the time it took me to stand up. My body pitched into him just as it had in the Bodleian the first night I saw him, standing aristocratic and serene in Duke Humfrey’s Reading Room. This time, however, I didn’t pull away so quickly. Instead I rested against him willingly, his skin soothingly cool rather than frightening and cold.

We stood silent for a few moments, holding each other. My heart quieted, and his arms remained loose, although his shuddering breath suggested that this was not easy.

“I’m sorry, too.” My body softened into him, his sweater scratchy on my cheek. “I’ll try to keep my energy under control.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. And you shouldn’t try so hard to be something you’re not. Would you drink tea if I made you some?” he asked, his lips moving against the top of my head.

Outside, the night was unalleviated by any hint of sunrise. “What time is it now?”

Matthew’s hand swiveled between my shoulder blades so that he could see the face of his watch. “Just after three.”

I groaned. “I’m so tired, but tea sounds wonderful.”

“I’ll make it, then.” He gently loosened my arms from around his waist. “Be right back.”

Not wanting to let him out of my sight, I drifted along. He rummaged through the tins and bags of available teas.

“I told you I liked tea,” I said apologetically as he found yet another brown bag in the cupboard, tucked behind a coffee press I seldom used.

“Do you have a preference?” He gestured at the crowded shelf.

“The one in the black bag with the gold label, please.” Green tea seemed the most soothing option.

He busied himself with the kettle and pot. He poured hot water over the fragrant leaves and thrust a chipped old mug in my direction once it was ready. The aromas of green tea, vanilla, and citrus were so very different from Matthew, but comforting nevertheless.

He made himself a mug, too, his nostrils flaring in appreciation. “That actually doesn’t smell too bad,” he acknowledged, taking a small sip. It was the only time I’d seen him drink anything other than wine.

“Where shall we sit?” I asked, cradling the warm mug in my hands.

Matthew inclined his head toward the living room. “In there. We need to talk.”

He sat in one corner of the comfortable old sofa, and I arranged myself opposite. The steam from the tea rose around my face, a gentle reminder of the witchwind.

“I need to understand why Knox thinks you’ve broken the spell on Ashmole 782,” Matthew said when we were settled.

I replayed the conversation in the warden’s rooms. “He said that spells become volatile around the anniversaries of their casting. Other witches—ones who know witchcraft—have tried to break it, and they’ve failed. He figured I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“A talented witch bound Ashmole 782, and I suspect this spell is nearly impossible to break. No one who’s tried to get the manuscript before met its conditions, no matter how much witchcraft they knew or what time of year they tried.” He stared into the depths of his tea. “You did. The question is how, and why.”

“The idea that I could fulfill the conditions of a spell cast before I was born is harder to believe than that it was just an anniversary aberration. And if I fulfilled the conditions once, why not again?” Matthew opened his mouth, and I shook my head. “No, it’s not because of you.”

“Knox knows witchcraft, and spells are complicated. I suppose it’s possible that time pulls them out of shape every now and again.” He looked unconvinced.

“I wish I could see the pattern in all this.” My white table rose into view, with pieces of the puzzle laid on it. Though I moved a few pieces around—Knox, the manuscript, my parents—they refused to form an image. Matthew’s voice broke through my reveries.

“Diana?”

“Hmm?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said, too quickly.

“You’re using magic,” he said, putting his tea down. “I can smell it. See it, too. You’re shimmering.”

“It’s what I do when I can’t solve a puzzle—like now.” My head was bowed to hide how difficult it was to talk about this. “I see a white table and imagine all the different pieces. They have shapes and colors, and they move around until they form a pattern. When the pattern forms, they stop moving to show I’m on the right track.”

Matthew waited a long time before he responded. “How often do you play this game?”

“All the time,” I said reluctantly. “While you were in Scotland, I realized that it was yet more magic, like knowing who’s looking at me without turning my head.”

“There is a pattern, you know,” he said. “You use your magic when you’re not thinking.”

“What do you mean?” The puzzle pieces started dancing on the white table.

“When you’re moving, you don’t think—not with the rational part of your mind, at least. You’re somewhere else entirely when you row, or run, or do yoga. Without your mind keeping your gifts in check, out they come.”

“But I was thinking before,” I said, “and the witchwind came anyway.”

“Ah, but then you were feeling a powerful emotion,” he explained, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “That always keeps the intellect at bay. It’s the same thing that happened when your fingers turned blue with Miriam and then with me. This white table of yours is an exception to the general rule.”

“Moods and movement are enough to trigger these forces? Who would want to be a witch if something so simple can make all hell break loose?”

“A great many people, I would imagine.” Matthew glanced away. “I want to ask you to do something for me,” he said. The sofa creaked as he faced me once more. “And I want you to think about it before you answer. Will you do that?”

“Of course.” I nodded.

“I want to take you home.”

“I’m not going back to America.” It had taken me five seconds to do exactly what he’d asked me not to.

Matthew shook his head. “Not your home. My home. You need to get out of Oxford.”

“I already told you I’d go to Woodstock.”

“The Old Lodge is my house, Diana,” Matthew explained patiently. “I want to take you to my home—to France.”

“France?” I pushed the hair out of my face to get a clearer view of him.

“The witches are intent on getting Ashmole 782 and keeping it from the other creatures. Their theory that you broke the spell and the prominence of your family are all that’s kept them at arm’s length. When Knox and the others find out that you used no witchcraft to obtain the manuscript—that the spell was set to open for you—they’ll want to know how and why.”

My eyes closed against the sudden, sharp image of my father and mother. “And they won’t ask nicely.”

“Probably not.” Matthew took a deep breath, and the vein in his forehead throbbed. “I saw the photo, Diana. I want you away from Peter Knox and the library. I want you under my roof for a while.”

“Gillian said it was witches.” When my eyes met his, I was struck by how tiny the pupils were. Usually they were black and enormous, but something was different about Matthew tonight. His skin was less ghostly, and there was a touch more color in his normally pale lips. “Was she right?”

“I can’t know for sure, Diana. The Nigerian Hausa believe that the source of a witch’s power is contained in stones in the stomach. Someone went looking for them in your father,” he said regretfully. “Another witch is the most likely scenario.”

There was a soft click, and the light on the answering machine began to blink. I groaned.

“That’s the fifth time your aunts have called,” Matthew observed.

No matter how low the volume, the vampire was going to be able to hear the message. I walked to the table near him and picked up the receiver.

“I’m here, I’m here,” I began, talking over my aunt’s agitated voice.

“We thought you were dead,” Sarah said. The realization that she and I were the last remaining Bishops struck me forcefully. I could picture her sitting in the kitchen, phone to her ear and hair wild around her face. She was getting older, and despite her feistiness, the fact that I was far away and in danger had rocked her.

“I’m not dead. I’m in my rooms, and Matthew is with me.” I smiled at him weakly. He didn’t smile back.

“What’s going on?” Em asked from another extension. After my parents died, Em’s hair had turned silver in the space of a few months. At the time she was still a young woman—not yet thirty—but Em had always seemed more fragile after that, as if she might blow away in the next puff of wind. Like my aunt, she was clearly upset at what her sixth sense told her was happening in Oxford.

“I tried to recall the manuscript, that’s all,” I said lightly, making an effort not to worry them further. Matthew stared at me disapprovingly, and I turned away. It didn’t help. His glacial eyes bored into my shoulder instead. “But this time it didn’t come up from the stacks.”

“You think we’re calling because of that book?” demanded Sarah.

Long, cold fingers grasped the phone and drew it away from my ear.

“Ms. Bishop, this is Matthew Clairmont,” he said crisply. When I reached to take the receiver from him, Matthew gripped my wrist and shook his head, once, in warning. “Diana’s been threatened. By other witches. One of them is Peter Knox.”

I didn’t need to be a vampire to hear the outburst on the other end of the line. He dropped my wrist and handed me the phone.

“Peter Knox!” Sarah cried. Matthew’s eyes closed as if the sound hurt his eardrums. “How long has he been hanging around?”

“Since the beginning,” I said, my voice wavering. “He was the brown wizard who tried to push his way into my head.”

“You didn’t let him get very far, did you?” Sarah sounded frightened.

“I did what I could, Sarah. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing, magic-wise.”

Em intervened. “Honey, a lot of us have problems with Peter Knox. More important, your father didn’t trust him—not at all.”

“My father?” The floor shifted under my feet, and Matthew’s arm circled my waist, keeping me steady. I wiped at my eyes but couldn’t remove the sight of my father’s misshapen head and gashed torso.

“Diana, what else happened?” Sarah said softly. “Peter Knox should scare the socks off you, but there’s more to it than that.”

My free hand clutched at Matthew’s arm. “Somebody sent me a picture of Mom and Dad.”

The silence stretched on the other end of the line. “Oh, Diana,” Em murmured.

“That picture?” Sarah asked grimly.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Sarah swore. “Put him back on the phone.”

“He can hear you perfectly from where he’s standing,” I remarked. “Besides, anything you have to say to him you can say to me, too.”

Matthew’s hand moved from my waist to the small of my back. He began to rub it with the heel of his hand, pressing into the rigid muscles until they started to relax.

“Both of you listen to me, then. Get far, far away from Peter Knox. And that vampire had better see that you do, or I’m holding him responsible. Stephen Proctor was the most easygoing man alive. It took a lot to make him dislike someone—and he detested that wizard. Diana, you will come home immediately.”

“I will not, Sarah! I’m going to France with Matthew.” Sarah’s far less attractive option had just convinced me.

There was silence.

“France?” Em said faintly.

Matthew held out his hand.

“Matthew would like to speak to you.” I handed him the phone before Sarah could protest.

“Ms. Bishop? Do you have caller ID?”

I snorted. The brown phone hanging on the kitchen wall in Madison had a rotary dial and a cord a mile long so that Sarah could wander around while she talked. It took forever to simply dial a local number. Caller ID? Not likely.

“No? Take down these numbers, then.” Matthew slowly doled out the number to his mobile and another that presumably belonged to the house, along with detailed instructions on international dialing codes. “Call at any time.”

Sarah then said something pointed, based on Matthew’s startled expression.

“I’ll make sure she’s safe.” He handed me the phone.

“I’m getting off now. I love you both. Don’t worry.”

“Stop telling us not to worry,” Sarah scolded. “You’re our niece. We’re good and worried, Diana, and likely to stay that way.”

I sighed. “What can I do to convince you that I’m all right?”

“Pick up the phone more often, for starters,” she said grimly.

When we’d said our good-byes, I stood next to Matthew, unwilling to meet his eyes. “All this is my fault, just like Sarah said. I’ve been behaving like a clueless human.”

He turned away and walked to the end of the sofa, as far from me as he could get in the small room, and sank into the cushions. “This bargain you made about magic and its place in your life—you made it when you were a lonely, frightened child. Now, every time you take a step, it’s as though your future hinges on whether you manage to put your foot down in the right place.”

Matthew looked startled when I sat next to him and silently took his hands in mine, resisting the urge to tell him it was going to be all right.

“In France maybe you can just be for a few days—not trying, not worrying about making a mistake,” he continued. “Maybe you could rest—although I’ve never seen you stop moving long enough. You even move in your sleep, you know.”

“I don’t have time to rest, Matthew.” I was already having second thoughts about leaving Oxford. “The alchemy conference is less than six weeks away. They’re expecting me to deliver the opening lecture. I’ve barely started it, and without access to the Bodleian there’s no chance of finishing it in time.”

Matthew’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “Your paper is on alchemical illustrations, I assume?”

“Yes, on the allegorical image tradition in England.”

“Then I don’t suppose you would be interested in seeing my fourteenth-century copy of Aurora Consurgens. It’s French, regrettably.”

My eyes widened. Aurora Consurgens was a baffling manuscript about the opposing forces of alchemical transformation—silver and gold, female and male, dark and light. Its illustrations were equally complex and puzzling.

“The earliest known copy of the Aurora is from the 1420s.”

“Mine is from 1356.”

“But a manuscript from such an early date won’t be illustrated,” I pointed out. Finding an illuminated alchemical manuscript from before 1400 was as unlikely as discovering a Model-T Ford parked on the battlefield at Gettysburg.

“This one is.”

“Does it contain all thirty-eight images?”

“No. It has forty.” He smiled. “It would seem that previous historians have been wrong about several particulars.”

Discoveries on this scale were rare. To get first crack at an unknown, fourteenth-century illustrated copy of Aurora Consurgens represented the opportunity of a lifetime for a historian of alchemy.

“What do the extra illustrations show? Is the text the same?”

“You’ll have to come to France to find out.”

“Let’s go, then,” I said promptly. After weeks of frustration, writing my keynote address suddenly seemed possible.

“You won’t go for your own safety, but if there’s a manuscript involved?” He shook his head ruefully. “So much for common sense.”

“I’ve never been known for my common sense,” I confessed. “When do we leave?”

“An hour?”

“An hour.” This was no spur-of-the-moment decision. He’d been planning it since I’d fallen asleep the night before.

He nodded. “There’s a plane waiting at the airstrip by the old American air force base. How long will it take you to get your things together?”

“That depends on what I need to bring with me,” I said, my head spinning.

“Nothing much. We won’t be going anywhere. Pack warm clothes, and I don’t imagine you’ll consider leaving without your running shoes. It will be just the two of us, along with my mother and her housekeeper.”

His. Mother.

“Matthew,” I said faintly, “I didn’t know you had a mother.”

“Everybody has a mother, Diana,” he said, turning his clear gray eyes to mine. “I’ve had two. The woman who gave birth to me and Ysabeau—the woman who made me a vampire.”

Matthew was one thing. A houseful of unfamiliar vampires was quite another. Caution about taking such a dangerous step pushed aside some of my eagerness to see the manuscript. My hesitation must have shown.

“I hadn’t thought,” he said, his voice tinged with hurt. “Of course you have no reason to trust Ysabeau. But she did assure me that you would be safe with her and Marthe.”

“If you trust them, then I do, too.” To my surprise, I meant it—in spite of the niggling worry that he’d had to ask them if they planned on taking a piece out of my neck.

“Thank you,” he said simply. Matthew’s eyes drifted to my mouth, and my blood tingled in response. “You pack, and I’ll wash up and make a few phone calls.”

When I passed by his end of the sofa, he caught my hand in his. Once again the shock of his cold skin was counteracted by an answering warmth in my own.

“You’re doing the right thing,” he murmured before he released me.

It was almost laundry day, and my bedroom was draped with dirty clothes. A rummage through the wardrobe yielded several nearly identical pairs of black pants that were clean, a few pairs of leggings, and half a dozen long-sleeved T-shirts and turtlenecks. There was a beat-up Yale duffel bag on top of it, and I jumped up and snagged the strap with one hand. The clothes all went into the old blue-and-white canvas bag, along with a few sweaters and a fleece pullover. I also chucked in sneakers, socks, and underwear, along with some old yoga clothes. I didn’t own decent pajamas and could sleep in those. Remembering Matthew’s French mother, I slipped in one presentable shirt and pair of trousers.

Matthew’s low voice floated down the hall. He talked first to Fred, then to Marcus, and then to a cab company. With the bag’s strap over my shoulder, I maneuvered myself awkwardly into the bathroom. Toothbrush, soap, shampoo, and a hairbrush all went inside, along with a hair dryer and a tube of mascara. I hardly ever wore the stuff, but on this occasion a cosmetic aid seemed a good idea.

When I was finished, I rejoined Matthew in the living room. He was thumbing through the messages on his phone, my computer case at his feet. “Is that it?” he asked, eyeing the duffel bag with surprise.

“You told me I didn’t need much.”

“Yes, but I’m not used to women listening to me when it comes to luggage. When Miriam goes away for the weekend, she packs enough to outfit the French Foreign Legion, and my mother requires multiple steamer trunks. Louisa wouldn’t have crossed the street with what you’re carrying, never mind leave the country.”

“Along with having no common sense, I’m not known for being high maintenance either.”

Matthew nodded appreciatively. “Do you have your passport?”

I pointed. “It’s in my computer bag.”

“We can go, then,” Matthew said, his eyes sweeping the rooms one last time.

“Where’s the photo?” It seemed wrong to just leave it.

“Marcus has it,” he said quickly.

“When was Marcus here?” I asked with a frown.

“While you were sleeping. Do you want me to get it back for you?” His finger hovered over a key on his phone.

“No.” I shook my head. There was no reason for me to look at it again.

Matthew took my bags and managed to get them and me down the stairs with no mishaps. A cab was waiting outside the college gates. Matthew stopped for a brief conversation with Fred. The vampire handed the porter a card, and the two men shook hands. Some deal had been struck, the particulars of which would never be disclosed to me. Matthew tucked me into the cab, and we drove for about thirty minutes, leaving the lights of Oxford behind us.

“Why didn’t we take your car?” I asked as we headed into the countryside.

“This is better,” he explained. “There’s no need to have Marcus fetch it later.”

The sway of the cab was rocking me to sleep. Leaning against Matthew’s shoulder, I dozed.

At the airport we were airborne soon after we’d had our passports checked and the pilot filed the paperwork. We sat opposite each other on couches arranged around a low table during the takeoff. I yawned every few moments, ears popping as we climbed. Once we reached cruising altitude, Matthew unsnapped his seat belt and gathered up some pillows and a blanket from a cabinet under the windows.

“We’ll be in France soon.” He propped the pillows at the end of my sofa, which was about as deep as a twin bed, and held the blanket open to cover me. “Meanwhile you should get some sleep.”

I didn’t want to sleep. The truth was, I was afraid to. That photograph was etched on the inside of my eyelids.

He crouched next to me, the blanket hanging lightly from his fingers. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to close my eyes.”

Matthew tossed all the pillows except one onto the floor. “Come here,” he said, sitting beside me and patting the fluffy white rectangle invitingly. I swung around, shimmied down the leather-covered surface, and put my head on his lap, stretching out my legs. He tossed the edge of the blanket from his right hand to his left so that it covered me in soft folds.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“You’re welcome.” He took his fingers and touched them to his lips, then to mine. I tasted salt. “Sleep. I’ll be right here.”

I did sleep, heavy and deep with no dreams, waking only when Matthew’s cool fingers touched my face and he told me we were about to land.

“What time is it?” I asked, now thoroughly disoriented.

“It’s about eight,” he said, looking at his watch.

“Where are we?” I swung to a seated position and rooted for my seat belt.

“Outside Lyon, in the Auvergne.”

“In the center of the country?” I asked, imagining the map of France. He nodded. “Is that where you’re from?”

“I was born and reborn nearby. My home—my family’s home—is an hour or two away. We should arrive by midmorning.”

We landed in the private area of the busy regional airport and had our passports and travel documents checked by a bored-looking civil servant who snapped to attention the moment he saw Matthew’s name.

“Do you always travel this way?” It was far easier than flying a commercial airline through London’s Heathrow or Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport.

“Yes,” he said without apology or self-consciousness. “The one time I’m entirely glad that I’m a vampire and have money to burn is when I travel.”

Matthew stopped behind a Range Rover the size of Connecticut and fished a set of keys out of his pocket. He opened the back door, stowing my bags inside. The Range Rover was slightly less deluxe than his Jaguar, but what it lacked in elegance it more than made up for in heft. It was like traveling in an armored personnel carrier.

“Do you really need this much car to drive in France?” I eyed the smooth roads.

Matthew laughed. “You haven’t seen my mother’s house yet.”

We drove west through beautiful countryside, studded here and there with grand chвteaus and steep mountains. Fields and vineyards stretched in all directions, and even under the steely sky the land seemed to blaze with the color of turning leaves. A sign indicated the direction of Clermont-Ferrand. That couldn’t be a coincidence, in spite of the different spelling.

Matthew kept heading west. He slowed, turned down a narrow road, and pulled to the side. He pointed off to the distance. “There,” he said. “Sept-Tours.”

In the center of rolling hills was a flattened peak dominated by a crenellated hulk of buff and rose stone. Seven smaller towers surrounded it, and a turreted gatehouse stood guard in front. This was not a pretty, fairy-tale castle made for moonlit balls. Sept-Tours was a fortress.

“That’s home?” I gasped.

“That’s home.” Matthew took his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. “Maman? We’re almost there.”

Something was said on the other end, and the line went dead. Matthew smiled tightly and pulled back onto the road.

“She’s expecting us?” I asked, just managing to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“She is.”

“And this is all right with her?” I didn’t ask the real question—Are you sure it’s okay that you’re bringing a witch home?—but didn’t need to.

Matthew’s eyes remained fixed on the road. “Ysabeau doesn’t like surprises as much as I do,” he said lightly, turning on to something that looked like a goat track.

We drove between rows of chestnut trees, climbing until we reached Sept-Tours. Matthew steered the car between two of the seven towers and through to a paved courtyard in front of the entrance to the central structure. Parterres and gardens peeked out to the right and left, before the forest took over. The vampire parked the car.

“Ready?” he asked with a bright smile.

“As I’ll ever be,” I replied warily.

Matthew opened my car door and helped me down. Pulling at my black jacket, I looked up at the chвteau’s imposing stone faзade. The forbidding lines of the castle were nothing compared to what awaited me inside. The door swung open.

“Courage,” Matthew said, kissing me gently on the cheek.

Ysabeau stood in the doorway of her enormous chвteau, regal and icy, and glared at her vampire son as we climbed the stone stairs.

Matthew stooped a full foot to kiss her softly on both cheeks. “Shall we come inside, or do you wish to continue our greetings out here?”

His mother stepped back to let us pass. I felt her furious gaze and smelled something reminiscent of sarsaparilla soda and caramel. We walked through a short, dark hallway, lined in a none-too-welcoming fashion with pikes that pointed directly at the visitor’s head, and into a room with high ceilings and wall paintings that had clearly been done by some imaginative nineteenth-century artist to reflect a medieval past that never was. Lions, fleurs-de-lis, a snake with his tail in his mouth, and scallop shells were painted on white walls. At one end a circular set of stairs climbed to the top of one of the towers.

Indoors I faced the full force of Ysabeau’s stare. Matthew’s mother personified the terrifying elegance that seemed bred to the bone in French-women. Like her son—who disconcertingly appeared to be slightly older than she was—she was dressed in a monochromatic palette that minimized her uncanny paleness. Ysabeau’s preferred colors ranged from cream to soft brown. Every inch of her ensemble was expensive and simple, from the tips of her soft, buff-colored leather shoes to the topazes that fluttered from her ears. Slivers of startling, cold emerald surrounded dark pupils, and the high slashes of her cheekbones kept her perfect features and dazzling white skin from sliding into mere prettiness. Her hair had the color and texture of honey, a golden pour of silk caught at the base of her skull in a heavy, low knot.

“You might have shown some consideration, Matthew.” Her accent softened his name, making it sound ancient. Like all vampires she had a seductive and melodic voice. In Ysabeau’s case it sounded of distant bells, pure and deep.

“Afraid of the gossip, Maman? I thought you prided yourself on being a radical.” Matthew sounded both indulgent and impatient. He tossed the keys onto a nearby table. They slid across the perfect finish and landed with a clatter at the base of a Chinese porcelain bowl.

“I have never been a radical!” Ysabeau was horrified. “Change is very much overrated.”

She turned and surveyed me from head to toe. Her perfectly formed mouth tightened.

She did not like what she saw—and it was no wonder. I tried to see myself through her eyes—the sandy hair that was neither thick nor well behaved, the dusting of freckles from being outdoors too much, the nose that was too long for the rest of my face. My eyes were my best feature, but they were unlikely to make up for my fashion sense. Next to her elegance and Matthew’s perpetually unruffled self, I felt—and looked—like a gauche country mouse. I pulled at the hem of my jacket with my free hand, glad to see that there was no sign of magic at the fingertips, and hoped that there was also no sign of that phantom “shimmering” that Matthew had mentioned.

“Maman, this is Diana Bishop. Diana, my mother, Ysabeau de Clermont.” The syllables rolled off his tongue.

Ysabeau’s nostrils flared delicately. “I do not like the way witches smell.” Her English was flawless, her glittering eyes fixed on mine. “She is sweet and repulsively green, like spring.”

Matthew launched into a volley of something unintelligible that sounded like a cross between French, Spanish, and Latin. He kept his voice low, but there was no disguising the anger in it.

“Зa suffit,” Ysabeau retorted in recognizable French, drawing her hand across her throat. I swallowed hard and reflexively reached for the collar of my jacket.

“Diana.” Ysabeau said it with a long e rather than an i and an emphasis on the first rather than the second syllable. She extended one white, cold hand, and I took her fingers lightly in mine. Matthew grabbed my left hand in his, and for a moment we made an odd chain of vampires and a witch. “Encantada.”

“She’s pleased to meet you,” Matthew said, translating for me and shooting a warning glance at his mother.

“Yes, yes,” Ysabeau said impatiently, turning back to her son. “Of course she speaks only English and new French. Modern warmbloods are so poorly educated.”

A stout old woman with skin like snow and a mass of incongruously dark hair wrapped around her head in intricate braids stepped into the front hall, her arms outstretched. “Matthew!” she cried. “Cossн anatz?”

“Va plan, mercйs. E tu?” Matthew caught her in a hug, and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Aital aital,” she replied, grabbing her elbow and grimacing.

Matthew murmured in sympathy, and Ysabeau appealed to the ceiling for deliverance from the emotional spectacle.

“Marthe, this is my friend Diana,” he said, drawing me forward.

Marthe, too, was a vampire, one of the oldest I’d ever seen. She had to have been in her sixties when she was reborn, and though her hair was dark, there was no mistaking her age. Lines crisscrossed her face, and the joints of her hands were so gnarled that apparently not even vampiric blood could straighten them.

“Welcome, Diana,” she said in a husky voice of sand and treacle, looking deep into my eyes. She nodded at Matthew and reached for my hand. Her nostrils flared. “Elle est une puissante sorciиre,” she said to Matthew, her voice appreciative.

“She says you’re a powerful witch,” Matthew explained. His closeness somewhat diminished my instinctive concern with having a vampire sniff me.

Having no idea what the proper French response was to such a comment, I smiled weakly at Marthe and hoped that would do.

“You’re exhausted,” Matthew said, his eyes flicking over my face. He began rapidly questioning the two vampires in the unfamiliar language. This led to a great deal of pointing, eye rolling, emphatic gestures, and sighs. When Ysabeau mentioned the name Louisa, Matthew looked at his mother with renewed fury. His voice took on a flat, abrupt finality when he answered her.

Ysabeau shrugged. “Of course, Matthew,” she murmured with patent insincerity.

“Let’s get you settled.” Matthew’s voice warmed as he spoke to me.

“I will bring food and wine,” Marthe said in halting English.

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you, Ysabeau, for having me in your home.” She sniffed and bared her teeth. I hoped it was a smile but feared it was not.

“And water, Marthe,” Matthew added. “Oh, and food is coming this morning.”

“Some of it has already arrived,” his mother said tartly. “Leaves. Sacks of vegetables and eggs. You were very bad to ask them to drive it down.”

“Diana needs to eat, Maman. I didn’t imagine you had a great deal of proper food in the house.” Matthew’s long ribbon of patience was fraying from the events of last evening and now his lukewarm homecoming.

“I need fresh blood, but I don’t expect Victoire and Alain to fetch it from Paris in the middle of the night.” Ysabeau looked vastly pleased with herself as my knees swayed.

Matthew exhaled sharply, his hand under my elbow to steady me. “Marthe,” he asked, pointedly ignoring Ysabeau, “can you bring up eggs and toast and some tea for Diana?”

Marthe eyed Ysabeau and then Matthew as if she were at center court at Wimbledon. She cackled with laughter. “Тc,” she replied, with a cheerful nod.

“We’ll see you two at dinner,” Matthew said calmly. I felt four icy patches on my shoulders as the women watched us depart. Marthe said something to Ysabeau that made her snort and Matthew smile broadly.

“What did Marthe say?” I whispered, remembering too late that there were few conversations, whispered or shouted, that would not be overheard by everyone in the house.

“She said we looked well together.”

“I don’t want Ysabeau to be furious with me the whole time we’re here.”

“Pay no attention to her,” he said serenely. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”

We passed through a doorway into a long room with a wide assortment of chairs and tables of many different styles and periods. There were two fireplaces, and two knights in glistening armor jousted over one of them, their bright lances crossing neatly without a drop of bloodshed. The fresco had clearly been painted by the same dewy-eyed chivalric enthusiast who’d decorated the hall. A pair of doors led to another room, this one lined with bookcases.

“Is that a library?” I asked, Ysabeau’s hostility momentarily forgotten. “Can I see your copy of Aurora Consurgens now?”

“Later,” Matthew said firmly. “You’re going to eat something and then sleep.”

He led the way to another curving staircase, navigating through the labyrinth of ancient furniture with the ease of long experience. My own passage was more tentative, and my thighs grazed a bow-fronted chest of drawers, setting a tall porcelain vase swaying. When we finally reached the bottom of the staircase, Matthew paused.

“It’s a long climb, and you’re tired. Do you need me to carry you?”

“No,” I said indignantly. “You are not going to sling me over your shoulder like a victorious medieval knight making off with the spoils of battle.”

Matthew pressed his lips together, eyes dancing.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

He did laugh, the sound bouncing off the stone walls as if a pack of amused vampires were standing in the stairwell. This was, after all, precisely the kind of place where knights would have carried women upstairs. But I didn’t plan on being counted among them.

By the fifteenth tread, my sides were heaving with effort. The tower’s worn stone steps were not made for ordinary feet and legs—they had clearly been designed for vampires like Matthew who were either over six feet tall, extremely agile, or both. I gritted my teeth and kept climbing. Around a final bend in the stairs, a room opened up suddenly.

“Oh.” My hand traveled to my mouth in amazement.

I didn’t have to be told whose room this was. It was Matthew’s, through and through.

We were in the chвteau’s graceful round tower—the one that still had its smooth, conical copper roof and was set on the back of the massive main building. Tall, narrow windows punctuated the walls, their leaded panes letting in slashes of light and autumn colors from the fields and trees outside.

The room was circular, and high bookcases smoothed its graceful curves into occasional straight lines. A large fireplace was set squarely into the walls that butted up against the chвteau’s central structure. This fireplace had miraculously escaped the attention of the nineteenth-century fresco painter. There were armchairs and couches, tables and hassocks, most in shades of green, brown, and gold. Despite the size of the room and the expanses of gray stone, the overall effect was of cozy warmth.

The room’s most intriguing objects were those Matthew had chosen to keep from one of his many lives. A painting by Vermeer was propped up on a bookshelf next to a shell. It was unfamiliar—not one of the artist’s few known canvases. The subject looked an awful lot like Matthew. A broadsword so long and heavy that no one but a vampire could have wielded it hung over the fireplace, and a Matthew-size suit of armor stood in one corner. Opposite, there was an ancient-looking human skeleton hanging from a wooden stand, the bones tied together with something resembling piano wire. On the table next to it were two microscopes, both made in the seventeenth century unless I was very much mistaken. An ornate crucifix studded with large red, green, and blue stones was tucked into a niche in the wall along with a stunning ivory carving of the Virgin.

Matthew’s snowflakes drifted across my face as he watched me survey his belongings.

“It’s a Matthew museum,” I said softly, knowing that every object there told a story.

“It’s just my study.”

“Where did you—” I began, pointing at the microscopes.

“Later,” he said again. “You have thirty more steps to climb.”

Matthew led me to the other side of the room and a second staircase. This one, too, curved up toward the heavens. Thirty slow steps later, I stood on the edge of another round room dominated by an enormous walnut four-poster bed complete with tester and heavy hangings. High above it were the exposed beams and supports that held the copper roof in place. A table was pushed against one wall, a fireplace was tucked into another, and a few comfortable chairs were arranged before it. Opposite, a door stood ajar, revealing an enormous bathtub.

“It’s like a falcon’s lair,” I said, peering out the window. Matthew had been looking at this landscape from these windows since the Middle Ages. I wondered, briefly, about the other women he’d brought here before me. I was sure I wasn’t the first, but I didn’t think there had been many. There was something intensely private about the chвteau.

Matthew came up behind me and looked over my shoulder. “Do you approve?” His breath was soft against my ear. I nodded.

“How long?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“This tower?” he asked. “About seven hundred years.”

“And the village? Do they know about you?”

“Yes. Like witches, vampires are safer when they’re part of a community who knows what they are but doesn’t ask too many questions.”

Generations of Bishops had lived in Madison without anyone’s making a fuss. Like Peter Knox, we were hiding in plain sight.

“Thank you for bringing me to Sept-Tours,” I said. “It does feel safer than Oxford.” In spite of Ysabeau.

“Thank you for braving my mother.” Matthew chuckled as if he’d heard my unspoken words. The distinctive scent of carnations accompanied the sound. “She’s overprotective, like most parents.”

“I felt like an idiot—and underdressed, too. I didn’t bring a single thing to wear that will meet with her approval.” I bit my lip, my forehead creased.

“Coco Chanel didn’t meet with Ysabeau’s approval. You may be aiming a bit high.”

I laughed and turned, my eyes seeking his. When they met, my breath caught. Matthew’s gaze lingered on my eyes, cheeks, and finally my mouth. His hand rose to my face.

“You’re so alive,” he said gruffly. “You should be with a man much, much younger.”

I lifted to my toes. He bent his head. Before our lips touched, a tray clattered on the table.

“‘Vos etz arbres e branca,’” Marthe sang, giving Matthew a wicked look.

He laughed and sang back in a clear baritone, “‘On fruitz de gaug s’asazona.’”

“What language is that?” I asked, getting down off my tiptoes and following Matthew to the fireplace.

“The old tongue,” Marthe replied.

“Occitan.” Matthew removed the silver cover from a plate of eggs. The aroma of hot food filled the room. “Marthe decided to recite poetry before you sat down to eat.”

Marthe giggled and swatted at Matthew’s wrist with a towel that she pulled from her waist. He dropped the cover and took a seat.

“Come here, come here,” she said, gesturing at the chair across from him. “Sit, eat.” I did as I was told. Marthe poured Matthew a goblet of wine from a tall, silver-handled glass pitcher.

“Mercйs,” he murmured, his nose going immediately to the glass in anticipation.

A similar pitcher held icy-cold water, and Marthe put this in another goblet, which she handed to me. She poured a steaming cup of tea, which I recognized immediately as coming from Mariage Frиres in Paris. Apparently Matthew had raided my cupboards while I slept last night and been quite specific with his shopping lists. Marthe poured thick cream into the cup before he could stop her, and I shot him a warning glance. At this point I needed allies. Besides, I was too thirsty to care. He leaned back in his chair meekly, sipping his wine.

Marthe pulled more items from her tray—a silver place setting, salt, pepper, butter, jam, toast, and a golden omelet flecked with fresh herbs.

“Merci, Marthe,” I said with heartfelt gratitude.

“Eat!” she commanded, aiming her towel at me this time.

Marthe looked satisfied with the enthusiasm of my first few bites. Then she sniffed the air. She frowned and directed an exclamation of disgust at Matthew before striding to the fireplace. A match snapped, and the dry wood began to crackle.

“Marthe,” Matthew protested, standing up with his wineglass, “I can do that.”

“She is cold,” Marthe grumbled, clearly aggravated that he hadn’t anticipated this before he sat down, “and you are thirsty. I will make the fire.”

Within minutes there was a blaze. Though no fire would make the enormous room toasty, it took the chill from the air. Marthe brushed her hands together and stood. “She must sleep. I can smell she has been afraid.”

“She’ll sleep when she’s through eating,” Matthew said, holding up his right hand in a pledge. Marthe looked at him for a long moment and shook her finger at him as though he were fifteen, and not fifteen hundred, years old. Finally his innocent expression convinced her. She left the room, her ancient feet moving surely down the challenging stairs.

“Occitan is the language of the troubadours, isn’t it?” I asked, after Marthe had departed. The vampire nodded. “I didn’t realize it was spoken this far north.”

“We’re not that far north,” Matthew said with a smile. “Once, Paris was nothing more than an insignificant borderlands town. Most people spoke Occitan then. The hills kept the northerners—and their language—at a distance. Even now people here are wary of outsiders.”

“What do the words mean?” I asked.

“‘You are the tree and branch,’” he said, fixing his eyes on the slashes of countryside visible through the nearest window, “‘where delight’s fruit ripens. ’” Matthew shook his head ruefully. “Marthe will hum the song all afternoon and make Ysabeau crazy.”

The fire continued to spread its warmth through the room, and the heat made me drowsy. By the time the eggs were gone, it was difficult to keep my eyes open.

I was in the middle of a jaw-splitting yawn when Matthew drew me from the chair. He scooped me into his arms, my feet swinging in midair. I started to protest.

“Enough,” he said. “You can barely sit up straight, never mind walk.”

He put me gently on the end of the bed and pulled the coverlet back. The snowy-white sheets looked so crisp and inviting. I dropped my head onto the mountain of down pillows arranged against the bed’s intricate walnut carvings.

“Sleep.” Matthew took the bed’s curtains in both hands and gave them a yank.

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to,” I said, stifling another yawn. “I’m not good at napping.”

“All appearances to the contrary,” he said drily. “You’re in France now. You’re not supposed to try. I’ll be downstairs. Call if you need anything.”

With one staircase leading from the hall up to his study and the other staircase leading to the bedroom from the opposite side, no one could reach this room without going past—and through—Matthew. The rooms had been designed as if he needed to protect himself from his own family.

A question rose to my lips, but he gave the curtains a final tug until they were closed, effectively silencing me. The heavy bed hangings didn’t allow the light to penetrate, and they shut out the worst of the drafts as well. Relaxing into the firm mattress, my body’s warmth magnified by the layers of bedding, I quickly fell asleep.

I woke up to the rustle of turning pages and sat bolt upright, trying to imagine why someone had shut me into a box made of fabric. Then I remembered.

France. Matthew. At his home.

“Matthew?” I called softly.

He parted the curtains and looked down with a smile. Behind him, candles were lit—dozens and dozens of them. Some were set into the sconces around the room, and others stood in ornate candelabras on the floor and tables.

“For someone who doesn’t nap, you slept quite soundly,” he said with satisfaction. As far as he was concerned, the trip to France had already proved a success.

“What time is it?”

“I’m going to get you a watch if you don’t stop asking me that.” Matthew glanced at his old Cartier. “It’s nearly two in the afternoon. Marthe will probably be here any minute with some tea. Do you want to shower and change?”

The thought of a hot shower had me eagerly pushing back the covers. “Yes, please!”

Matthew dodged my flying limbs and helped me to the floor, which was farther away than I had expected. It was cold, too, the stone flagstones stinging against my bare feet.

“Your bag is in the bathroom, the computer is downstairs in my study, and there are fresh towels. Take your time.” He watched as I skittered into the bathroom.

“This is a palace!” I exclaimed. An enormous white, freestanding tub was tucked between two of the windows, and a long wooden bench held my dilapidated Yale duffel. In the far corner, a showerhead was set into the wall.

I started running the water, expecting to wait a long time for it to heat up. Miraculously, steam enveloped me immediately, and the honey-and-nectarine scent of my soap helped to lift the tension of the past twenty-four hours.

Once my muscles were unkinked, I slipped on jeans and a turtleneck, along with a pair of socks. There was no outlet for my blow dryer, so I settled instead for roughly toweling my hair and dragging a comb through it before tying it back in a ponytail.

“Marthe brought up tea,” he said when I walked into the bedroom, glancing at a teapot and cup sitting on the table. “Do you want me to pour you some?”

I sighed with pleasure as the soothing liquid went down my throat. “When can I see the Aurora manuscript?”

“When I’m sure you won’t get lost on your way to the library. Ready for the grand tour?”

“Yes, please.” I slid loafers on over my socks and ran back into the bathroom to get a sweater. As I raced around, Matthew waited patiently, standing near the top of the stairs.

“Should we take the teapot down?” I asked, skidding to a halt.

“No, she’d be furious if I let a guest touch a dish. Wait twenty-four hours before helping Marthe.”

Matthew slipped down the stairs as if he could handle the uneven, smooth treads blindfolded. I crept along, guiding my fingers against the stone wall.

When we reached his study, he pointed to my computer, already plugged in and resting on a table by the window, before we descended to the salon. Marthe had been there, and a warm fire was crackling in the fireplace, sending the smell of wood smoke through the room. I grabbed Matthew.

“The library,” I said. “The tour needs to start there.”

It was another room that had been filled over the years with bric-a-brac and furniture. An Italian Savonarola folding chair was pulled up to a French Directory secretary, while a vast oak table circa 1700 held display cabinets that looked as if they’d been plucked from a Victorian museum. Despite the mismatches, the room was held together by miles of leather-bound books on walnut shelving and by an enormous Aubusson carpet in soft golds, blues, and browns.

As in most old libraries, the books were shelved by size. There were thick manuscripts in leather bindings, shelved with spines in and ornamental clasps out, the titles inked onto the fore edges of the vellum. There were tiny incunabula and pocket-size books in neat rows on one bookcase, spanning the history of print from the 1450s to the present. A number of rare modern first editions, including a run of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, were there, too. One case held nothing but large folios—botanical books, atlases, medical books. If all this was downstairs, what treasures lived in Matthew’s tower study?

He let me circle the room, peering at the titles and gasping. When I returned to his side, all I could do was shake my head in disbelief.

“Imagine what you’d have if you’d been buying books for centuries,” Matthew said with a shrug that reminded me of Ysabeau. “Things pile up. We’ve gotten rid of a lot over the years. We had to. Otherwise this room would be the size of the Bibliothиque Nationale.”

“So where is it?”

“You’re already out of patience, I see.” He went to a shelf, his eyes darting among the volumes. He pulled out a small book with black tooled covers and presented it to me.

When I looked for a velveteen cradle to put it on, he laughed.

“Just open it, Diana. It’s not going to disintegrate.”

It felt strange to hold such a manuscript in my hands, trained as I was to think of them as rare, precious objects rather than reading material. Trying not to open the covers too wide and crack the binding, I peeked inside. An explosion of bright colors, gold, and silver leaped out.

“Oh,” I breathed. The other copies I’d seen of Aurora Consurgens were not nearly so fine. “It’s beautiful. Do you know who did the illuminations?”

“A woman named Bourgot Le Noir. She was quite popular in Paris in the middle of the fourteenth century.” Matthew took the book from me and opened it fully. “There. Now you can see it properly.”

The first illumination showed a queen standing on a small hill, sheltering seven small creatures inside her outspread cloak. Delicate vines framed the image, twisting and turning their way across the vellum. Here and there, buds burst into flowers, and birds sat on the branches. In the afternoon light, the queen’s embroidered golden dress glowed against a brilliant vermilion background. At the bottom of the page, a man in a black robe sat atop a shield that bore a coat of arms in black and silver. The man’s attention was directed at the queen, a rapt expression on his face and his hands raised in supplication.

“Nobody is going to believe this. An unknown copy of Aurora Consurgens—with illuminations by a woman?” I shook my head in amazement. “How will I cite it?”

“I’ll loan the manuscript to the Beinecke Library for a year, if that helps. Anonymously, of course. As for Bourgot, the experts will say it’s her father’s work. But it’s all hers. We probably have the receipt for it somewhere,” Matthew said vaguely, looking around. “I’ll ask Ysabeau where Godfrey’s things are.”

“Godfrey?” The unfamiliar coat of arms featured a fleur-de-lis, surrounded by a snake with its tail in its mouth.

“My brother.” The vagueness left his voice, and his face darkened. “He died in 1668, fighting in one of Louis XIV’s infernal wars.” Closing the manuscript gently, he put it on a nearby table. “I’ll take this up to my study later so you can look at it more closely. In the morning Ysabeau reads her newspapers here, but otherwise it sits empty. You’re welcome to browse the shelves whenever you like.”

With that promise he moved me through the salon and into the great hall. We stood by the table with the Chinese bowl, and he pointed out features of the room, including the old minstrels’ gallery, the trapdoor in the roof that had let the smoke out before the fireplaces and chimneys were constructed, and the entrance to the square watchtower overlooking the main approach to the chвteau. That climb could wait until another day.

Matthew led me down to the lower ground floor, with its maze of store-rooms, wine cellars, kitchens, servants’ rooms, larders, and pantries. Marthe stepped out of one of the kitchens, flour covering her arms up to the elbows, and handed me a warm roll fresh from the oven. I munched on it as Matthew walked the corridors, pointing out the old purposes of every room—where the grain was stored, the venison hung, the cheese made.

“Vampires don’t eat anything,” I said, confused.

“No, but our tenants did. Marthe loves to cook.”

I promised to keep her busy. The roll was delicious, and the eggs had been perfect.

Our next stop was the gardens. Though we had descended a flight of stairs to get to the kitchens, we left the chвteau at ground level. The gardens were straight out of the sixteenth century, with divided beds full of herbs and autumn vegetables. Rosebushes, some with a few lonely blooms remaining, filled the borders.

But the aroma that intrigued me wasn’t floral. I made a beeline for a low-slung building.

“Be careful, Diana,” he called, striding across the gravel, “Balthasar bites.”

“Which one is Balthasar?”

He rounded the stable entrance, an anxious look on his face. “The stallion using your spine as a scratching post,” Matthew replied tightly. I was standing with my back to a large, heavy-footed horse while a mastiff and a wolfhound circled my feet, sniffing me with interest.

“Oh, he won’t bite me.” The enormous Percheron maneuvered his head so he could rub his ears on my hip. “And who are these gentlemen?” I asked, ruffling the fur on the wolf hound’s neck while the mastiff tried to put my hand in his mouth.

“The hound is Fallon, and the mastiff is Hector.” Matthew snapped his fingers, and both dogs came running to his side, where they sat obediently and watched his face for further instructions. “Please step away from that horse.”

“Why? He’s fine.” Balthasar stamped the ground in agreement and pitched an ear back to look haughtily at Matthew.

“‘If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it’s only because it doesn’t know that the fire can consume it,’” Matthew murmured under his breath. “Balthasar is only fine until he gets bored. I’d like you to move away before he kicks the stall door down.”

“We’re making your master nervous, and he’s started reciting obscure bits of poetry written by mad Italian clerics. I’ll be back tomorrow with something sweet.” I turned and kissed Balthasar on the nose. He nickered, his hooves dancing with impatience.

Matthew tried to cover his surprise. “You recognized that?”

“Giordano Bruno. ‘If the thirsty stag runs to the brook, it’s only because he isn’t aware of the cruel bow,’” I continued. “‘If the unicorn runs to its chaste nest, it’s only because he doesn’t see the noose prepared for him.’”

“You know the work of the Nolan?” Matthew used the sixteenth-century mystic’s own way of referring to himself.

My eyes narrowed. Good God, had he known Bruno as well as Machiavelli ? Matthew seemed to have been attracted to every strange character who’d ever lived. “He was an early supporter of Copernicus, and I’m a historian of science. How do you know Bruno’s work?”

“I’m a great reader,” he said evasively.

“You knew him!” My tone was accusing. “Was he a daemon?”

“One who crossed the madness-genius divide rather too frequently, I’m afraid.”

“I should have known. He believed in extraterrestrial life and cursed his inquisitors on the way to the stake,” I said, shaking my head.

“Nevertheless, he understood the power of desire.”

I looked sharply at the vampire. “‘Desire urges me on, as fear bridles me.’ Did Bruno feature in your essay for All Souls?”

“A bit.” Matthew’s mouth flattened into a hard line. “Will you please come away from there? We can talk about philosophy another time.”

Other passages drifted through my mind. There was something else about Bruno’s work that might make Matthew think of him. He wrote about the goddess Diana.

I stepped away from the stall.

“Balthasar isn’t a pony,” Matthew warned, pulling my elbow.

“I can see that. But I could handle that horse.” Both the alchemical manuscript and the Italian philosopher vanished from my mind at the thought of such a challenge.

“You don’t ride as well?” Matthew asked in disbelief.

“I grew up in the country and have ridden since I was a child—dressage, jumping, everything.” Being on a horse was even more like flying than rowing was.

“We have other horses. Balthasar stays where he is,” he said firmly.

Riding was an unforeseen bonus of coming to France, one that almost made Ysabeau’s cold presence bearable. Matthew led me to the other end of the stables, where six more fine animals waited. Two of them were big and black—although not as large as Balthasar—one a fairly round chestnut mare, another a bay gelding. There were two gray Andalusians as well, with large feet and curved necks. One came to the door to see what was going on in her domain.

“This is Nar Rakasa,” he said, gently rubbing her muzzle. “Her name means ‘fire dancer.’ We usually just call her Rakasa. She moves beautifully, but she’s willful. You two should get along famously.”

I refused to take the bait, though it was charmingly offered, and let Rakasa sniff at my hair and face. “What’s her sister’s name?”

“Fiddat—‘silver.’” Fiddat came forward when Matthew said her name, her dark eyes affectionate. “Fiddat is Ysabeau’s horse, and Rakasa is her sister.” Matthew pointed to the two blacks. “Those are mine. Dahr and Sayad.”

“What do their names mean?” I asked, walking to their stalls.

“Dahr is Arabic for ‘time,’ and Sayad means ‘hunter,’” Matthew explained, joining me. “Sayad loves riding across the fields chasing game and jumping hedges. Dahr is patient and steady.”

We continued the tour, Matthew pointing out features of the mountains and orienting me to the town. He showed me where the chвteau had been modified and how restorers had used a different kind of stone because the original was no longer available. By the time we were finished, I wasn’t likely to get lost—in part due to the central keep, which was hard to misplace.

“Why am I so tired?” I yawned as we returned to the chвteau.

“You’re hopeless,” Matthew said in exasperation. “Do you really need me to recount the events of the past thirty-six hours?”

At his urging I agreed to another nap. Leaving him in the study, I climbed the stairs and flung myself into bed, too tired to even blow out the candles.

Moments later I was dreaming of riding through a dark forest, a loose green tunic belted around my waist. There were sandals tied onto my feet, their leather fastenings crossed around my ankles and calves. Dogs bayed and hooves crashed in the underbrush behind me. A quiver of arrows nestled against my shoulder, and in one fist I held a bow. Despite the ominous sounds of my pursuers, I felt no fear.

In my dream I smiled with the knowledge I could outrun those who hunted me.

“Fly,” I commanded—and the horse did.

The next morning my first thoughts were also of riding.

I ran a brush through my hair, rinsed my mouth out, and threw on close-fitting pair of black leggings. They were the nearest thing to riding breeches that I had with me. Running shoes would make it impossible to keep my heels down in the stirrups, so on went my loafers instead. Not exactly proper footwear, but they’d do. A long-sleeved T-shirt and a fleece pullover completed my ensemble. Dragging my hair back into a ponytail, I returned to the bedroom.

Matthew lifted his eyebrow as I rocketed into the room, his arm barring me from going any farther. He was leaning against the wide archway that led to the stairs, well groomed as always, wearing dark gray breeches and a black sweater. “Let’s ride in the afternoon.”

I’d been expecting this. Dinner with Ysabeau had been tense at best, and afterward my sleep had been punctuated with nightmares. Matthew had climbed the stairs to check on me several times.

“I’m fine. Exercise and fresh air will be the best thing in the world for me.” When I tried to get past him again, he stopped me with only a dark look.

“If you so much as sway in the saddle, I’m bringing you home. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Downstairs, I headed for the dining room, but Matthew pulled me in the other direction. “Let’s eat in the kitchens,” he said quietly. No formal breakfast with Ysabeau staring at me over Le Monde. That was welcome news.

We ate in what were ostensibly the housekeeper’s rooms, in front of a blazing fire at a table set for two—though I would be the only one eating Marthe’s excellent, abundant food. A huge pot of tea sat on the scarred, round wooden table, wrapped in a linen towel to keep it hot. Marthe glanced at me with concern, tutting at my dark circles and pale skin.

When my fork slowed, Matthew reached for a pyramid of boxes crowned with a black-velvet-covered helmet. “For you,” he said, putting them on the table.

The helmet was self-explanatory. It was shaped like a high-crowned baseball hat, with a fold of black grosgrain ribbon at the nape. Despite its velvet covering and ribbon, the helmet was sturdy and made expressly to keep soft human skulls from cracking if they met with the ground. I hated them, but it was a wise precaution.

“Thank you,” I said. “What’s in the boxes?”

“Open them and see.”

The first box held a pair of black breeches with suede patches inside the knees to grip the saddle. They would be far more pleasant to ride in than my thin, slippery leggings and looked like they would fit, too. Matthew must have been making more phone calls and relaying approximate measurements while I napped. I smiled at him in gratitude.

The box also held a black padded vest with a long tail and stiff metal supports sewn into the seams. It looked and would no doubt feel like a turtle’s shell—uncomfortable and unwieldy.

“This isn’t necessary.” I held it up, frowning.

“It is if you’re going riding.” His voice didn’t show the slightest hint of emotion. “You tell me you’re experienced. If so, you won’t have a problem adjusting to its weight.”

My color rose and my fingertips gave a warning tingle. Matthew watched me with interest, and Marthe came to the door and gave a sniff. I breathed in and out until the tingling stopped.

“You wear a seat belt in my car,” Matthew said evenly. “You’ll wear a vest on my horse.”

We stared at each other in a standoff of wills. The thought of the fresh air defeated me, and Marthe’s eyes glittered with amusement. No doubt our negotiations were as much fun to watch as were the volleys between Matthew and Ysabeau.

I pulled the final box toward me in silent concession. It was long and heavy, and there was a sharp tang of leather when the lid lifted.

Boots. Knee-length, black boots. I’d never shown horses and had limited resources, so I had never owned a proper pair of riding boots. These were beautiful, with their curved calves and supple leather. My fingers touched their shining surfaces.

“Thank you,” I breathed, delighted with his surprise.

“I’m pretty sure they’ll fit,” Matthew said, his eyes soft.

“Come, girl,” Marthe said cheerfully from the door. “You change.”

She barely got me into the laundry room before I’d kicked off my loafers and peeled the leggings from my body. She took the worn Lycra and cotton from me while I wriggled into the breeches.

“There was a time when women didn’t ride like men,” Marthe said, looking at the muscles in my legs and shaking her head.

Matthew was on his phone when I returned, sending out instructions to all the other people in his world who required his management. He looked up with approval.

“Those will be more comfortable.” He stood and picked up the boots. “There’s no jack in here. You’ll have to wear your other shoes to the stables.”

“No, I want to put them on now,” I said, fingers outstretched.

“Sit down, then.” He shook his head at my impatience. “You’ll never get them on the first time without help.” Matthew picked up my chair with me in it and turned it so he had more room to maneuver. He held out the right boot, and I stuck my foot in as far as the ankle. He was right. No amount of tugging was going to get my foot around the stiff bend. He stood over my foot, grasping the heel and toe of the boot and wriggling it gently as I pulled the leather in the other direction. After several minutes of struggle, my foot worked its way into the shank. Matthew gave the sole a final, firm push, and the boot snuggled against my bones.

Once both boots were on, I held my legs out to admire. Matthew tugged and patted, sliding his cold fingers around the top rim to make sure my blood could circulate. I stood, my legs feeling unusually long, took a few stiff-ankled steps, and did a little twirl.

“Thank you.” I threw my arms around his neck, the toes of my boots grazing the floor. “I love them.”

Matthew carried my vest and hat to the stables, much as he had carried my computer and yoga mat in Oxford. The stable doors were flung open, and there were sounds of activity.

“Georges?” Matthew called. A small, wiry man of indeterminate age—though not a vampire—came around the corner, carrying a bridle and a curry comb. When we passed Balthasar’s stall, the stallion stomped angrily and tossed his head. You promised, he seemed to say. Inside my pocket was a tiny apple that I’d wheedled from Marthe.

“Here you go, baby,” I said, holding it out on a flat palm. Matthew watched warily as Balthasar extended his neck and reached with delicate lips to pick the fruit from my hand. Once it was in his mouth, he looked at his owner triumphantly.

“Yes, I see that you are behaving like a prince,” Matthew said drily, “but that doesn’t mean you won’t behave like a devil at the first opportunity.” Balthasar’s hooves struck the ground in annoyance.

We passed by the tack room. In addition to the regular saddles, bridles, and reins, there were freestanding wooden frames that held something like a small armchair with odd supports on one side.

“What are they?”

“Sidesaddles,” Matthew said, kicking off his shoes and stepping into a tall pair of well-worn boots. His foot slid down easily with a simple stamp on the heel and a tug at the top. “Ysabeau prefers them.”

In the paddock Dahr and Rakasa turned their heads and looked with interest while Georges and Matthew began a detailed discussion of all the natural obstacles we might encounter. I held my palm out to Dahr, sorry that there were no more apples in my pocket. The gelding looked disappointed, too, once he picked up the sweet scent.

“Next time,” I promised. Ducking under his neck, I arrived at Rakasa’s side. “Hello, beauty.”

Rakasa picked up her right front foot and cocked her head toward me. I ran my hands over her neck and shoulders, getting her used to my scent and touch, and gave the saddle a tug, checking the tightness of the girth strap and making sure the blanket underneath was smooth. She reached around and gave me an inquiring smell and a snuffle, nosing at my pullover where the apple had been. She tossed her head in indignation.

“You, too,” I promised her with a laugh, placing my left hand firmly on her rump. “Let’s have a look.”

Horses like having their feet touched about as much as most witches like being dunked in water—which is to say not much. But, out of habit and superstition, I’d never ridden a horse without first checking to make sure that nothing was lodged in their soft hooves.

When I straightened, the two men were watching me closely. Georges said something that indicated I would do. Matthew nodded thoughtfully, holding out my vest and hat. The vest was snug and hard—but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The hat interfered with my ponytail, and I slid the elastic band lower to accommodate it before snapping the chin band together. Matthew was at my back in the time it took me to grab the reins and lift my foot to Rakasa’s stirrup.

“Will you never wait until I help you?” he growled into my ear.

“I can get onto a horse myself,” I said hotly.

“But you don’t need to.” Matthew’s hands cupped my shin, lifting me effortlessly into the saddle. After that, he checked my stirrup length, rechecked the girth strap, and finally went to his own horse. He swung into the saddle with a practiced air that suggested he’d been on horseback for hundreds of years. Once there, he looked like a king.

Rakasa started to dance in impatience, and I pushed my heels down. She stopped, looking puzzled. “Quiet,” I whispered. She nodded her head and stared forward, her ears working back and forth.

“Take her around the paddock while I check my saddle,” Matthew said casually, swinging his left knee onto Dahr’s shoulder and fiddling with his stirrup leather. My eyes narrowed. His stirrups needed no adjustment. He was checking out my riding skills.

I walked Rakasa halfway around the paddock, to feel her gait. The Andalusian really did dance, delicately picking up her feet and putting them down firmly in a beautiful, rocking movement. When I pressed both heels into her sides, Rakasa’s dancing walk turned into an equally rollicking, smooth trot. We passed Matthew, who had given up all pretense of adjusting his saddle. Georges leaned against the fence, smiling broadly.

Beautiful girl, I breathed silently. Her left ear shot back, and she picked up the pace slightly. My calf pressed into her flank, just behind the stirrup, and she broke into a canter, her feet reaching out into the air and her neck arched. How angry would Matthew be if we jumped the paddock fence?

Angry, I was sure.

Rakasa rounded the corner, and I slowed her to a trot. “Well?” I demanded.

Georges nodded and opened the paddock gate.

“You have a good seat,” Matthew said, eyeing my backside. “Good hands, too. You’ll be all right. By the way,” he continued in a conversational tone, leaning toward me and dropping his voice, “if you’d jumped the fence back there, today’s outing would have been over.”

Once we’d cleared the gardens and passed through the old gate, the trees thickened, and Matthew scanned the forest. A few feet into the woods, he began to relax, having accounted for every creature within and discovered that none of them were of the two-legged variety.

Matthew kicked Dahr into a trot, and Rakasa obediently waited for me to kick her as well. I did, amazed all over again at how smoothly she moved.

“What kind of horse is Dahr?” I asked, noticing his equally smooth gait.

“I suppose you’d call him a destrier,” Matthew explained. That was the mount that carried knights to the Crusades. “He was bred for speed and agility.”

“I thought destriers were enormous warhorses.” Dahr was bigger than Rakasa, but not much.

“They were large for the time. But they weren’t big enough to carry any of the men in this family into battle, not once we had armor on our backs, and weapons. We trained on horses like Dahr and rode them for pleasure, but we fought on Percherons like Balthasar.”

I stared between Rakasa’s ears, working up the courage to broach another subject. “May I ask you something about your mother?”

“Of course,” Matthew said, twisting in his saddle. He put one fist on his hip and held his horse’s reins lightly in the other hand. I now knew with absolute certainty how a medieval knight looked on horseback.

“Why does she hate witches so much? Vampires and witches are traditional enemies, but Ysabeau’s dislike of me goes beyond that. It seems personal.”

“I suppose you want a better answer than that you smell like spring.”

“Yes, I want the real reason.”

“She’s jealous.” Matthew patted Dahr’s shoulder.

“What on earth is she jealous of ?”

“Let’s see. Your power—especially a witch’s ability to see the future. Your ability to bear children and pass that power to a new generation. And the ease with which you die, I suppose,” he said, his voice reflective.

“Ysabeau had you and Louisa for children.”

“Yes, Ysabeau made both of us. But it’s not quite the same as bearing a child, I think.”

“Why does she envy a witch’s second sight?”

“That has to do with how Ysabeau was made. Her maker didn’t ask permission first.” Matthew’s face darkened. “He wanted her for a wife, and he just took her and turned her into a vampire. She had a reputation as a seer and was young enough to still hope for children. When she became a vampire, both of those abilities were gone. She’s never quite gotten over it, and witches are a constant reminder of the life she lost.”

“Why does she envy that witches die so easily?”

“Because she misses my father.” He abruptly stopped talking, and it was clear I’d pressed him enough.

The trees thinned, and Rakasa’s ears shot back and forth impatiently.

“Go ahead,” he said with resignation, gesturing at the open field before us.

Rakasa leaped forward at the touch of my heels, catching the bit in her teeth. She slowed climbing the hill, and once on the crest she pranced and tossed her head, clearly enjoying the fact that Dahr was standing at the bottom while she was on top. I circled her into a fast figure eight, changing her leads on the fly to keep her from stumbling as she went around corners.

Dahr took off—not at a canter but a gallop—his black tail streaming out behind him and his hooves striking the earth with unbelievable speed. I gasped and pulled lightly on Rakasa’s reins to make her stop. So that was the point of destriers. They could go from zero to sixty like a finely tuned sports car. Matthew made no effort to slow his horse as he approached, but Dahr stopped on a dime about six feet away from us, his sides bowed out slightly with the exertion.

“Show-off ! You won’t let me jump a fence and you put on that display?” I teased.

“Dahr doesn’t get enough exercise either. This is exactly what he needs.” Matthew grinned and patted his horse on the shoulder. “Are you interested in a race? We’ll give you a head start, of course,” he said with a courtly bow.

“You’re on. Where to?”

Matthew pointed to a solitary tree on the top of the ridge and watched me, alert for the first indication of movement. He’d picked something that you could shoot past without running into anything. Maybe Rakasa wasn’t as good at abrupt stops as Dahr was.

There was no way I was going to surprise a vampire and no way my horse—for all her smooth gait—was going to beat Dahr up the ridge. Still, I was eager to see how well she would perform. I leaned forward and patted Rakasa on the neck, resting my chin for just a moment on her warm flesh and closing my eyes.

Fly, I encouraged her silently.

Rakasa shot forward as if she’d been slapped on the rump, and my instincts took over.

I lifted myself out of the saddle to make it easier for her to carry my weight, tying a loose knot in the reins. When her speed stabilized, I lowered myself into the saddle, clutching her warm body between my legs. My feet kicked free from the unnecessary stirrups, and my fingers wove through her mane. Matthew and Dahr thundered behind us. It was like my dream, the one where dogs and horses were chasing me. My left hand curled as if holding something, and I bent low along Rakasa’s neck, eyes closed.

Fly, I repeated, but the voice in my head no longer sounded like my own. Rakasa responded with still more speed.

I felt the tree grow closer. Matthew swore in Occitan, and Rakasa swerved to the left at the last minute, slowing to a canter and then a trot. There was a tug on her reins. My eyes shot open in alarm.

“Do you always ride unfamiliar horses at top speed, with your eyes closed, no reins, and no stirrups?” Matthew’s voice was coldly furious. “You row with your eyes closed—I’ve seen you. And you walk with them closed, too. I always suspected that magic was involved. You must use your power to ride as well. Otherwise you’d be dead. And for what it’s worth, I believe you’re telling Rakasa what to do with your mind and not with your hands and legs.”

I wondered if what he said was true. Matthew made an impatient sound and dismounted by swinging his right leg high over Dahr’s head, kicking his left foot out of the stirrup, and sliding down the horse’s side facing front.

“Get down from there,” he said roughly, grabbing Rakasa’s loose reins.

Dismounting the traditional way, I swung my right leg over Rakasa’s rump. When my back was to him, Matthew reached up and scooped me off the horse. Now I knew why he preferred to face front. It kept you from being grabbed from behind and hauled off your mount. He turned me around and crushed me to his chest.

“Dieu,” he whispered into my hair. “Don’t do anything like that again, please.”

“You told me not to worry about what I was doing. It’s why you brought me to France,” I said, confused by his reaction.

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I’m trying not to interfere. But it’s difficult to watch you using powers you don’t understand—especially when you’re not aware you’re doing it.”

Matthew left me to tend to the horses, tying their reins so that they wouldn’t step on them but giving them the freedom to nibble the sparse fall grass. When he returned, his face was somber.

“There’s something I need to show you.” He led me to the tree, and we sat underneath it. I folded my legs carefully to the side so that my boots didn’t cut into my legs. Matthew simply dropped, his knees on the ground and his feet curled under his thighs.

He reached into the pocket of his breeches and drew out a piece of paper with black and gray bars on a white background. It had been folded and refolded several times.

It was a DNA report. “Mine?”

“Yours.”

“When?” My fingers traced the bars along the page.

“Marcus brought the results to New College. I didn’t want to share them with you so soon after you were reminded of your parents’ death.” He hesitated. “Was I right to wait?”

When I nodded, Matthew looked relieved. “What does it say?” I asked.

“We don’t understand everything,” he replied slowly. “But Marcus and Miriam did identify markers in your DNA that we’ve seen before.”

Miriam’s tiny, precise handwriting marched down the left side of the page, and the bars, some circled with red pen, marched down the right. “This is the genetic marker for precognition,” Matthew continued, pointing to the first circled smudge. His finger began slowly moving down the page. “This one is for flight. This helps witches find things that are lost.”

Matthew kept reeling off powers and abilities one at a time until my head spun.

“This one is for talking with the dead, this is transmogrification, this is telekinesis, this is spell casting, this one is charms, this one is curses. And you’ve got mind reading, telepathy, and empathy—they’re next to one another.”

“This can’t be right.” I’d never heard of a witch with more than one or two powers. Matthew had already reached a dozen.

“I think the findings are right, Diana. These powers may never manifest, but you’ve inherited the genetic predisposition for them.” He flipped the page. There were more red circles and more careful annotations by Miriam. “Here are the elemental markers. Earth is present in almost all witches, and some have either earth and air or earth and water. You’ve got all three, which we’ve never seen before. And you’ve also got fire. Fire is very, very rare.” Matthew pointed to the four smudges.

“What are elemental markers?” My feet were feeling uncomfortably breezy, and my fingers were tingling.

“Indications that you have the genetic predisposition to control one or more of the elements. They explain why you could raise a witchwind. Based on this, you could command witchfire and what’s called witchwater as well.”

“What does earth do?”

“Herbal magic, the power to affect growing things—the basics. Combined with spell casting, cursing, and charms—or any one of them, really—it means you have not only powerful magical abilities but an innate talent for witchcraft.”

My aunt was good with spells. Emily wasn’t but could fly for short distances and see the future. These were classic differences among witches—dividing those who used witchcraft, like Sarah, from those who used magic. It all boiled down to whether words shaped your power or whether you just had it and could wield it as you liked. I buried my face in my hands. The prospect of seeing the future as my mother could had been scary enough. Control of the elements? Talking with the dead?

“There is a long list of powers on that sheet. We’ve only seen—what?—four or five of them?” It was terrifying.

“I suspect we’ve seen more than that—like the way you move with your eyes closed, your ability to communicate with Rakasa, and your sparkly fingers. We just don’t have names for them yet.”

“Please tell me that’s all.”

Matthew hesitated. “Not quite.” He flipped to another page. “We can’t yet identify these markers. In most cases we have to correlate accounts of a witch’s activities—some of them centuries old—with DNA evidence. It can be hard to match them up.”

“Do the tests explain why my magic is emerging now?”

“We don’t need a test for that. Your magic is behaving as if it’s waking after a long sleep. All that inactivity has made it restless, and now it wants to have its way. Blood will out,” Matthew said lightly. He rocked gracefully to his feet and lifted me up. “You’ll catch cold sitting on the ground, and I’ll have a hell of a time explaining myself to Marthe if you get sick.” He whistled to the horses. They strolled in our direction, still munching on their unexpected treat.

We rode for another hour, exploring the woods and fields around Sept-Tours. Matthew pointed out the best place to hunt rabbits and where his father had taught him to shoot a crossbow without taking out his own eye. When we turned back to the stables, my worries over the test results had been replaced with a pleasant feeling of exhaustion.

“My muscles will be sore tomorrow,” I said, groaning. “I haven’t been on a horse for years.”

“Nobody would have guessed that from the way that you rode today,” he said. We passed out of the forest and entered the chвteau’s stone gate. “You’re a good rider, Diana, but you mustn’t go out by yourself. It’s too easy to lose your way.”

Matthew wasn’t worried I’d get lost. He was worried I’d be found.

“I won’t.”

His long fingers relaxed on the reins. He’d been clutching them for the past five minutes. This vampire was used to giving orders that were obeyed instantly. He wasn’t accustomed to making requests and negotiating agreements. And his usual quick temper was nowhere in evidence.

Sidling Rakasa closer to Dahr, I reached over and raised Matthew’s palm to my mouth. My lips were warm against his hard, cold flesh.

His pupils dilated in surprise.

I let go and, clucking Rakasa forward, headed into the stables.

Ysabeau was mercifully absent at lunch. Afterward I wanted to go straight to Matthew’s study and start examining Aurora Consurgens, but he convinced me to take a bath first. It would, he promised, make the inevitable muscle stiffness more bearable. Halfway upstairs, I had to stop and rub a cramp in my leg. I was going to pay for the morning’s enthusiasm.

The bath was heavenly—long, hot, and relaxing. I put on loose black trousers, a sweater, and a pair of socks and padded downstairs, where a fire was blazing. My flesh turned orange and red as I held my hands out to the flames. What would it be like to control fire? My fingers tingled in response to the question, and I slid them safely into my pockets.

Matthew looked up from his desk. “Your manuscript is next to your computer.”

Its black covers drew me as surely as a magnet. I sat down at the table and opened them, holding the book carefully. The colors were even brighter than I remembered. After staring at the queen for several minutes, I turned the first page.

“Incipit tractatus Aurora Consurgens intitulatus.” The words were familiar—“Here begins the treatise called the Rising of the Dawn”—but I still felt the shiver of pleasure associated with seeing a manuscript for the first time. “Everything good comes to me along with her. She is known as the Wisdom of the South, who calls out in the streets, and to the multitudes,” I read silently, translating from the Latin. It was a beautiful work, full of paraphrases from Scripture as well as other texts.

“Do you have a Bible up here?” It would be wise for me to have one handy as I made my way through the manuscript.

“Yes—but I’m not sure where it is. Do you want me to look for it?” Matthew rose slightly from his chair, but his eyes were still glued to his computer screen.

“No, I’ll find it.” I got up and ran my finger down the edge of the nearest shelf. Matthew’s books were arranged not by size but in a running time line. Those on the first bookshelf were so ancient that I couldn’t bear to think about what they contained—the lost works of Aristotle, perhaps? Anything was possible.

Roughly half of Matthew’s books were shelved spine in to protect the books’ fragile edges. Many of these had identifying marks written along the edges of the pages, and thick black letters spelled out a title here, an author’s name there. Halfway around the room, the books began to appear spine out, their titles and authors embossed in gold and silver.

I slid past the manuscripts with their thick and bumpy pages, some with small Greek letters on the front edge. I kept going, looking for a large, fat, printed book. My index finger froze in front of one bound in brown leather and covered with gilding.

“Matthew, please tell me ‘Biblia Sacra 1450’ is not what I think it is.”

“Okay, it’s not what you think it is,” he said automatically, fingers racing over the keys with more than human speed. He was paying little attention to what I was doing and none at all to what I was saying.

Leaving Gutenberg’s Bible where it was, I continued along the shelves, hoping that it wasn’t the only one available to me. My finger froze again at a book labeled Will’s Playes. “Were these books given to you by friends?”

“Most of them.” Matthew didn’t even look up.

Like German printing, the early days of English drama were a subject for later discussion.

For the most part, Matthew’s books were in pristine condition. This was not entirely surprising, given their owner. Some, though, were well worn. A slender, tall book on the bottom shelf, for instance, had corners so torn and thin you could see the wooden boards peeking through the leather. Curious to see what had made this book a favorite, I pulled it out and opened the pages. It was Vesalius’s anatomy book from 1543, the first to depict dissected human bodies in exacting detail.

Now hunting for fresh insights into Matthew, I sought out the next book to show signs of heavy use. This time it was a smaller, thicker volume. Inked onto the fore edge was the title De motu. William Harvey’s study of the circulation of the blood and his explanation of how the heart pumped must have been interesting reading for vampires when it was first published in the 1620s, though they must already have had some notion that this might be the case.

Matthew’s well-worn books included works on electricity, microscopy, and physiology. But the most battered book I’d seen yet was resting on the nineteenth-century shelves: a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Sneaking a glance at Matthew, I pulled the book off the shelf with the stealth of a shoplifter. Its green cloth binding, with the title and author stamped in gold, was frayed with wear. Matthew had written his name in a beautiful copperplate script on the flyleaf.

There was a letter folded inside.

“Dear Sir,” it began. “Your letter of 15 October has reached me at last. I am mortified at my slow reply. I have for many years been collecting all the facts which I could in regard to the variation and origin of species, and your approval of my reasonings comes as welcome news as my book will soon pass into the publisher’s hands.” It was signed “C. Darwin,” and the date was 1859.

The two men had been exchanging letters just weeks prior to Origin’s publication in November.