Chapter 10
Still trying to shake the ice from my
shoulders left by Matthew’s stare, I opened the door to my rooms.
Inside, the answering machine greeted me with a flashing red “13.”
There were nine additional voice-mail messages on my mobile. All of
them were from Sarah and reflected an escalating concern about what
her sixth sense told her was happening in Oxford.
Unable to face my all-too-prescient aunts, I turned
down the volume on the answering machine, turned off the ringers on
both phones, and climbed wearily into bed.
Next morning, when I passed through the porter’s
lodge for a run, Fred waved a stack of message slips at me.
“I’ll pick them up later,” I called, and he flashed
his thumb in acknowledgment.
My feet pounded on familiar dirt paths through the
fields and marshes north of the city, the exercise helping to keep
at bay both my guilt over not calling my aunts and the memory of
Matthew’s cold face.
Back in college I collected the messages and threw
them into the trash. Then I staved off the inevitable call home
with cherished weekend rituals: boiling an egg, brewing tea,
gathering laundry, piling up the drifts of papers that littered
every surface. After I’d wasted most of the morning, there was
nothing left to do but call New York. It was early there, but there
was no chance that anyone was still in bed.
“What do you think you’re up to, Diana?” Sarah
demanded in lieu of hello.
“Good morning, Sarah.” I sank into the armchair by
the defunct fireplace and crossed my feet on a nearby bookshelf.
This was going to take awhile.
“It is not a good morning,” Sarah said tartly.
“We’ve been beside ourselves. What’s going on?”
Em picked up the extension.
“Hi, Em,” I said, recrossing my legs. This was
going to take a long while.
“Is that vampire bothering you?” Em asked
anxiously.
“Not exactly.”
“We know you’ve been spending time with vampires
and daemons,” my aunt broke in impatiently. “Have you lost your
mind, or is something seriously wrong?”
“I haven’t lost my mind, and nothing’s wrong.” The
last bit was a lie, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the
best.
“Do you really think you’re going to fool us? You
cannot lie to a fellow witch!” Sarah exclaimed. “Out with it,
Diana.”
So much for that plan.
“Let her speak, Sarah,” Em said. “We trust Diana to
make the right decisions, remember?”
The ensuing silence led me to believe that this had
been a matter of some controversy.
Sarah drew in her breath, but Em cut her off.
“Where were you last night?”
“Yoga.” There was no way of squirming out of this
inquisition, but it was to my advantage to keep all responses brief
and to the point.
“Yoga?” Sarah asked, incredulous. “Why are you
doing yoga with those creatures? You know it’s dangerous to mix
with daemons and vampires.”
“The class was led by a witch!” I became indignant,
seeing Amira’s serene, lovely face before me.
“This yoga class, was it his idea?” Em asked.
“Yes. It was at Clairmont’s house.”
Sarah made a disgusted sound.
“Told you it was him,” Em muttered to my aunt. She
directed her next words to me. “I see a vampire standing between
you and . . . something. I’m not sure what, exactly.”
“And I keep telling you, Emily Mather, that’s
nonsense. Vampires don’t protect witches.” Sarah’s voice was crisp
with certainty.
“This one does,” I said.
“What?” Em asked and Sarah shouted.
“He has been for days.” I bit my lip, unsure how to
tell the story, then plunged in. “Something happened at the
library. I called up a manuscript, and it was bewitched.”
There was silence.
“A bewitched book.” Sarah’s voice was keen with
interest. “Was it a grimoire?” She was an expert on grimoires, and
her most cherished possession was the ancient volume of spells that
had been passed down in the Bishop family.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “All that was visible
were alchemical illustrations.”
“What else?” My aunt knew that the visible was only
the beginning when it came to bewitched books.
“Someone’s put a spell on the manuscript’s text.
There were faint lines of writing—layers upon layers of them—moving
underneath the surface of the pages.”
In New York, Sarah put down her coffee mug with a
sharp sound. “Was this before or after Matthew Clairmont
appeared?”
“Before,” I whispered.
“You didn’t think this was worth mentioning when
you told us you’d met a vampire?” Sarah did nothing to disguise her
anger. “By the goddess, Diana, you can be so reckless. How was this
book bewitched? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“It smelled funny. It felt . . . wrong. At first I
couldn’t lift the book’s cover. I put my palm on it.” I turned my
hand over on my lap, recalling the sense of instant recognition
between me and the manuscript, half expecting to see the shimmer
that Matthew had mentioned.
“And?” Sarah asked.
“It tingled against my hand, then sighed and . . .
relaxed. I could feel it, through the leather and the wooden
boards.”
“How did you manage to unravel this spell? Did you
say any words? What were you thinking?” Sarah’s curiosity was now
thoroughly roused.
“There was no witchcraft involved, Sarah. I needed
to look at the book for my research, and I laid my palm flat on it,
that’s all.” I took a deep breath. “Once it was open, I took some
notes, closed it, and returned the manuscript.”
“You returned it?” There was a loud clatter
as Sarah’s phone hit the floor. I winced and held the receiver away
from my head, but her colorful language was still audible.
“Diana?” Em said faintly. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” I said sharply.
“Diana Bishop, you know better.” Sarah’s voice was
reproachful. “How could you send back a magical object you didn’t
fully understand?”
My aunt had taught me how to recognize enchanted
and bewitched objects—and what to do with them. You were to avoid
touching or moving them until you knew how their magic worked.
Spells could be delicate, and many had protective mechanisms built
into them.
“What was I supposed to do, Sarah?” I could hear my
defensiveness. “Refuse to leave the library until you could examine
it? It was a Friday night. I wanted to go home.”
“What happened when you returned it?” Sarah said
tightly.
“The air might have been a little funny,” I
admitted. “And the library might have given the impression it
shrank for just a moment.”
“You sent the manuscript back and the spell
reactivated,” Sarah said. She swore again. “Few witches are adept
enough to set up a spell that automatically resets when it’s
broken. You’re not dealing with an amateur.”
“That’s the energy that drew them to Oxford,” I
said, suddenly understanding. “It wasn’t my opening the manuscript.
It was the resetting of the spell. The creatures aren’t just at
yoga, Sarah. I’m surrounded by vampires and daemons in the
Bodleian. Clairmont came to the library on Monday night, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the manuscript after he heard two witches
talking about it. By Tuesday the library was crawling with
them.”
“Here we go again,” Sarah said with a sigh. “Before
the month’s out, daemons will be showing up in Madison looking for
you.”
“There must be witches you can rely on for help.”
Em was making an effort to keep her voice level, but I could hear
the concern in it.
“There are witches,” I said haltingly, “but they’re
not helpful. A wizard in a brown tweed coat tried to force his way
into my head. He would have succeeded, too, if not for
Matthew.”
“The vampire put himself between you and another
witch?” Em was horrified. “That’s not done. You never interfere in
business between witches if you’re not one of us.”
“You should be grateful!” I might not want to be
lectured by Clairmont or have breakfast with him again, but the
vampire deserved some credit. “If he hadn’t been there, I don’t
know what would have happened. No witch has ever been so . . .
invasive with me before.”
“Maybe you should get out of Oxford for a while,”
Em suggested.
“I’m not going to leave because there’s a witch
with no manners in town.”
Em and Sarah whispered to each other, their hands
over the receivers.
“I don’t like this one bit,” my aunt finally said
in a tone that suggested that the world was falling apart.
“Bewitched books? Daemons following you? Vampires taking you to
yoga? Witches threatening a Bishop? Witches are supposed to avoid
notice, Diana. Even the humans are going to know something’s going
on.”
“If you stay in Oxford, you’ll have to be more
inconspicuous,” Em agreed. “There’s nothing wrong with coming home
for a while and letting the situation cool off, if that becomes
impossible. You don’t have the manuscript anymore. Maybe they’ll
lose interest.”
None of us believed that was likely.
“I’m not running away.”
“You wouldn’t be,” Em protested.
“I would.” And I wasn’t going to display a shred of
cowardice so long as Matthew Clairmont was around.
“He can’t be with you every minute of every day,
honey,” Em said sadly, hearing my unspoken thoughts.
“I should think not,” Sarah said darkly.
“I don’t need Matthew Clairmont’s help. I can take
care of myself,” I retorted.
“Diana, that vampire isn’t protecting you out of
the goodness of his heart,” Em said. “You represent something he
wants. You have to figure out what it is.”
“Maybe he is interested in alchemy. Maybe
he’s just bored.”
“Vampires do not get bored,” Sarah said crisply,
“not when there’s a witch’s blood around.”
There was nothing to be done about my aunt’s
prejudices. I was tempted to tell her about yoga class, where for
over an hour I’d been gloriously free from fear of other creatures.
But there was no point.
“Enough.” I was firm. “Matthew Clairmont won’t get
any closer, and you needn’t worry about me fiddling with more
bewitched manuscripts. But I’m not leaving Oxford, and that’s
final.”
“All right,” Sarah said. “But there’s not much we
can do from here if things go wrong.”
“I know, Sarah.”
“And the next time you get handed something
magical—whether you expected it or not—behave like the witch you
are, not some silly human. Don’t ignore it or tell yourself you’re
imagining things.” Willful ignorance and dismissing the
supernatural were at the top of Sarah’s list of human pet peeves.
“Treat it with respect, and if you don’t know what to do, ask for
help.”
“Promise,” I said quickly, wanting to get off the
phone. But Sarah wasn’t through yet.
“I never thought I’d see the day when a Bishop
relied on a vampire for protection, rather than her own power,” she
said. “My mother must be turning in her grave. This is what comes
from avoiding who you are, Diana. You’ve got a mess on your hands,
and it’s all because you thought you could ignore your heritage. It
doesn’t work that way.”
Sarah’s bitterness soured the atmosphere in my room
long after I’d hung up the phone.
The next morning I stretched my way through some
yoga poses for half an hour and then made a pot of tea. Its vanilla
and floral aromas were comforting, and it had just enough caffeine
to keep me from dozing in the afternoon without keeping me awake at
night. After the leaves steeped, I wrapped the white porcelain pot
in a towel to hold in the heat and carried it to the chair by the
fireplace reserved for my deep thinking.
Calmed by the tea’s familiar scent, I pulled my
knees up to my chin and reviewed my week. No matter where I
started, I found myself returning to my last conversation with
Matthew Clairmont. Had my efforts to prevent magic from seeping
into my life and work meant nothing?
Whenever I was stuck with my research, I imagined a
white table, gleaming and empty, and the evidence as a jigsaw
puzzle that needed to be pieced together. It took the pressure off
and felt like a game.
Now I tumbled everything from the past week onto
that table—Ashmole 782, Matthew Clairmont, Agatha Wilson’s
wandering attention, the tweedy wizard, my tendency to walk with my
eyes closed, the creatures in the Bodleian, how I’d fetched
Notes and Queries from the shelf, Amira’s yoga class. I
swirled the bright pieces around, putting some together and trying
to form a picture, but there were too many gaps, and no clear image
emerged.
Sometimes picking up a random piece of evidence
helped me figure out what was most important. Putting my imaginary
fingers on the table, I drew out a shape, expecting to see Ashmole
782.
Matthew Clairmont’s dark eyes looked back at
me.
Why was this vampire so important?
The pieces of my puzzle started to move of their
own volition, swirling in patterns that were too fast to follow. I
slapped my imaginary hands on the table, and the pieces stopped
their dance. My palms tingled with recognition.
This didn’t seem like a game anymore. It seemed
like magic. And if it was, then I’d been using it in my schoolwork,
in my college courses, and now in my scholarship. But there was no
room in my life for magic, and my mind closed resolutely against
the possibility that I’d been violating my own rules without
knowing it.
The next day I arrived in the library’s cloakroom
at my normal time, went up the stairs, rounded the corner near the
collection desk, and braced myself to see him.
Clairmont wasn’t there.
“Do you need something?” Miriam said in an
irritable voice, scraping her chair against the floor as she
stood.
“Where is Professor Clairmont?”
“He’s hunting,” Miriam said, eyes snapping with
dislike, “in Scotland.”
Hunting. I swallowed hard. “Oh. When will he
be back?”
“I honestly don’t know, Dr. Bishop.” Miriam crossed
her arms and put out a tiny foot.
“I was hoping he’d take me to yoga at the Old Lodge
tonight,” I said faintly, trying to come up with a reasonable
excuse for stopping.
Miriam turned and picked up a ball of black fluff.
She tossed it at me, and I grabbed it as it flew by my hip. “You
left that in his car on Friday.”
“Thank you.” My sweater smelled of carnations and
cinnamon.
“You should be more careful with your things,”
Miriam muttered. “You’re a witch, Dr. Bishop. Take care of
yourself and stop putting Matthew in this impossible
situation.”
I turned on my heel without comment and went to
pick up my manuscripts from Sean.
“Everything all right?” he asked, eyeing Miriam
with a frown.
“Perfectly.” I gave him my usual seat number and,
when he still looked concerned, a warm smile.
How dare Miriam speak to me like that? I
fumed while settling into my workspace.
My fingers itched as if hundreds of insects were
crawling under the skin. Tiny sparks of blue-green were arcing
between my fingertips, leaving traces of energy as they erupted
from the edges of my body. I clenched my hands and quickly sat on
top of them.
This was not good. Like all members of the
university, I’d sworn an oath not to bring fire or flame into
Bodley’s Library. The last time my fingers had behaved like this, I
was thirteen and the fire department had to be called to extinguish
the blaze in the kitchen.
When the burning sensation abated, I looked around
carefully and sighed with relief. I was alone in the Selden End. No
one had witnessed my fireworks display. Pulling my hands from
underneath my thighs, I scrutinized them for further signs of
supernatural activity. The blue was already diminishing to a
silvery gray as the power retreated from my fingertips.
I opened the first box only after ascertaining I
wouldn’t set fire to it and pretended that nothing unusual had
happened. Still, I hesitated to touch my computer for fear that my
fingers would fuse to the plastic keys.
Not surprisingly, it was difficult to concentrate,
and that same manuscript was still before me at lunchtime. Maybe
some tea would calm me down.
At the beginning of term, one would expect to see a
handful of human readers in Duke Humfrey’s medieval wing. Today
there was only one: an elderly human woman examining an illuminated
manuscript with a magnifying glass. She was squashed between an
unfamiliar daemon and one of the female vampires from last week.
Gillian Chamberlain was there, too, glowering at me along with four
other witches as if I’d let down our entire species.
Hurrying past, I stopped at Miriam’s desk. “I
presume you have instructions to follow me to lunch. Are you
coming?”
She put down her pencil with exaggerated care.
“After you.”
Miriam was in front of me by the time I reached the
back staircase. She pointed to the steps on the other side. “Go
down that way.”
“Why? What difference does it make?”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged.
One flight down I glanced through the small window
stuck into the swinging door that led to the Lower Reading Room,
and I gasped.
The room was full to bursting with creatures. They
had segregated themselves. One long table held nothing but daemons,
conspicuous because not a single book—open or closed—sat in front
of them. Vampires sat at another table, their bodies perfectly
still and their eyes never blinking. The witches appeared studious,
but their frowns were signs of irritation rather than
concentration, since the daemons and vampires had staked out the
tables closest to the staircase.
“No wonder we’re not supposed to mix. No human
could ignore this,” Miriam observed.
“What have I done now?” I asked in a whisper.
“Nothing. Matthew’s not here,” she said
matter-of-factly.
“Why are they so afraid of Matthew?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Vampires don’t tell tales.
But don’t worry,” she continued, baring her sharp, white teeth,
“these work perfectly, so you’ve got nothing to fear.”
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I clattered down
the stairs, pushing through the tourists in the quadrangle. At
Blackwell’s, I swallowed a sandwich and a bottle of water. Miriam
caught my eye as I passed by her on the way to the exit. She put
aside a murder mystery and followed me.
“Diana,” she said quietly as we passed through the
library’s gates, “what are you up to?”
“None of your business,” I snapped.
Miriam sighed.
Back in Duke Humfrey’s, I located the wizard in
brown tweed. Miriam watched intently from the center aisle, still
as a statue.
“Are you in charge?”
He tipped his head to the side in
acknowledgment.
“I’m Diana Bishop,” I said, sticking out my
hand.
“Peter Knox. And I know very well who you are.
You’re Rebecca and Stephen’s child.” He touched my fingertips
lightly with his own. There was a nineteenth-century grimoire
sitting in front of him, a stack of reference books at his
side.
The name was familiar, though I couldn’t place it,
and hearing my parents’ names come out of this wizard’s mouth was
disquieting. I swallowed, hard. “Please clear your . . . friends
out of the library. The new students arrive today, and we wouldn’t
want to frighten them.”
“If we could have a quiet word, Dr. Bishop, I’m
sure we could come to some arrangement.” He pushed his glasses up
over the bridge of his nose. The closer I was to Knox, the more
danger I felt. The skin under my fingernails started to prickle
ominously.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said
sorrowfully. “That vampire, on the other hand—”
“You think I found something that belongs to the
witches,” I interrupted. “I no longer have it. If you want Ashmole
782, there are request slips on the desk in front of you.”
“You don’t understand the complexity of the
situation.”
“No, and I don’t want to know. Please, leave
me alone.”
“Physically you are very like your mother.” Knox’s
eyes swept over my face. “But you have some of Stephen’s
stubbornness as well, I see.”
I felt the usual combination of envy and irritation
that accompanied a witch’s references to my parents or family
history—as if they had an equal claim to mine.
“I’ll try,” he continued, “but I don’t control
those animals.” He waved across the aisle, where one of the Scary
Sisters was watching Knox and me with interest. I hesitated, then
crossed over to her seat.
“I’m sure you heard our conversation, and you must
know I’m under the direct supervision of two vampires already,” I
said. “You’re welcome to stay, if you don’t trust Matthew and
Miriam. But clear the others out of the Lower Reading Room.”
“Witches are hardly ever worth a moment of a
vampire’s time, but you are full of surprises today, Diana Bishop.
Wait until I tell my sister Clarissa what she’s missed.” The female
vampire’s words came out in a lush, unhurried drawl redolent of
impeccable breeding and a fine education. She smiled, teeth
gleaming in the low light of the medieval wing. “Challenging Knox—a
child like you? What a tale I’ll have to tell.”
I dragged my eyes away from her flawless features
and went off in search of a familiar daemonic face.
The latte-loving daemon was drifting around the
computer terminals wearing headphones and humming under his breath
to some unheard music as the end of the cord was swinging freely
around the tops of his thighs. Once he pulled the white plastic
disks from his ears, I tried to impress upon him the seriousness of
the situation.
“Listen, you’re welcome to keep surfing the Net up
here. But we’ve got a problem downstairs. It’s not necessary for
two dozen daemons to be watching me.”
The daemon made an indulgent sound. “You’ll know
soon enough.”
“Could they watch me from farther away? The
Sheldonian? The White Horse?” I was trying to be helpful. “If not,
the human readers will start asking questions.”
“We’re not like you,” he said dreamily.
“Does that mean you can’t help or you won’t?” I
tried not to sound impatient.
“It’s all the same thing. We need to know,
too.”
This was impossible. “Whatever you can do to take
some of the pressure off the seats would be greatly
appreciated.”
Miriam was still watching me. Ignoring her, I
returned to my desk.
At the end of the completely unproductive day, I
pinched the bridge of my nose, swore under my breath, and packed up
my things.
The next morning the Bodleian was far less
crowded. Miriam was scribbling furiously and didn’t look up when I
passed. There was still no sign of Clairmont. Even so, everybody
was observing the rules that he had clearly, if silently, laid
down, and they stayed out of the Selden End. Gillian was in the
medieval wing, crouched over her papyri, as were both Scary Sisters
and a few daemons. With the exception of Gillian, who was doing
real work, the rest went through the motions with perfect
respectability. And when I stuck my head around the swinging door
into the Lower Reading Room after a hot cup of tea at midmorning,
only a few creatures looked up. The musical, coffee-loving daemon
was among them. He tipped his fingers and winked at me
knowingly.
I got a reasonable amount of work done, although
not enough to make up for yesterday. I began by reading alchemical
poems—the trickiest of texts—that were attributed to Mary, the
sister of Moses. “Three things if you three hours attend,”
read one part of the poem, “Are chained together in the
End.” The meaning of the verses remained a mystery, although
the most likely subject was the chemical combination of silver,
gold, and mercury. Could Chris produce an experiment from this
poem? I wondered, noting the possible chemical processes
involved.
When I turned to another, anonymous poem, entitled
“Verse on the Threefold Sophic Fire,” the similarities between its
imagery and an illumination I’d seen yesterday of an alchemical
mountain, riddled with mines and miners digging in the ground for
precious metals and stones, were unmistakable.
Within this Mine two Stones of old were
found,
Whence this the Ancients called Holy Ground;
Who knew their Value, Power and Extent,
And Nature how with Nature to Ferment
For these if you Ferment with Natural Gold
Or Silver, their hid Treasures they unfold.
Whence this the Ancients called Holy Ground;
Who knew their Value, Power and Extent,
And Nature how with Nature to Ferment
For these if you Ferment with Natural Gold
Or Silver, their hid Treasures they unfold.
I stifled a groan. My research would become
exponentially more complicated if I had to connect not only art and
science but art and poetry.
“It must be hard to concentrate on your research
with vampires watching you.”
Gillian Chamberlain was standing next to me, her
hazel eyes sparking with suppressed malevolence.
“What do you want, Gillian?”
“I’m just being friendly, Diana. We’re sisters,
remember?” Gillian’s shiny black hair swung above her collar. Its
smoothness suggested that she was not troubled by surges of static
electricity. Her power must be regularly released. I
shivered.
“I have no sisters, Gillian. I’m an only
child.”
“It’s a good thing, too. Your family has caused
more than enough trouble. Look at what happened at Salem. It was
all Bridget Bishop’s fault.” Gillian’s tone was vicious.
Here we go again, I thought, closing the
volume before me. As usual, the Bishops were proving to be an
irresistible topic of conversation.
“What are you talking about, Gillian?” My voice was
sharp. “Bridget Bishop was found guilty of witchcraft and executed.
She didn’t instigate the witch-hunt—she was a victim of it, just
like the others. You know that, as does every other witch in this
library.”
“Bridget Bishop drew human attention, first with
those poppets of hers and then with her provocative clothes and
immorality. The human hysteria would have passed if not for
her.”
“She was found innocent of practicing witchcraft,”
I retorted, bristling.
“In 1680—but no one believed it. Not after they
found the poppets in her cellar wall, pins stuck through them and
the heads ripped off. Afterward Bridget did nothing to protect her
fellow witches from falling under suspicion. She was so
independent.” Gillian’s voice dropped. “That was your mother’s
fatal flaw, too.”
“Stop it, Gillian.” The air around us seemed
unnaturally cold and clear.
“Your mother and father were standoffish, just like
you, thinking they didn’t need the Cambridge coven’s support after
they got married. They learned, didn’t they?”
I shut my eyes, but it was impossible to block out
the image I’d spent most of my life trying to forget: my mother and
father lying dead in the middle of a chalk-marked circle somewhere
in Nigeria, their bodies broken and bloody. My aunt wouldn’t share
the details of their death at the time, so I’d slipped into the
public library to look them up. That’s where I’d first seen the
picture and the lurid headline that accompanied it. The nightmares
had gone on for years afterward.
“There was nothing the Cambridge coven could do to
prevent my parents’ murder. They were killed on another continent
by fearful humans.” I gripped the arms of my chair, hoping that she
wouldn’t see my white knuckles.
Gillian gave an unpleasant laugh. “It wasn’t
humans, Diana. If it had been, their killers would have been caught
and dealt with.” She crouched down, her face close to mine.
“Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor were keeping secrets from other
witches. We needed to discover them. Their deaths were unfortunate,
but necessary. Your father had more power than we ever
dreamed.”
“Stop talking about my family and my
parents as though they belong to you,” I warned. “They were killed
by humans.” There was a roaring in my ears, and the coldness that
surrounded us was intensifying.
“Are you sure?” Gillian whispered, sending a fresh
chill into my bones. “As a witch, you’d know if I was lying to
you.”
I governed my features, determined not to show my
confusion. What Gillian said about my parents couldn’t be true, and
yet there were none of the subtle alarms that typically accompanied
untruths between witches—the spark of anger, an overwhelming
feeling of contempt.
“Think about what happened to Bridget Bishop and
your parents the next time you turn down an invitation to a coven
gathering,” Gillian murmured, her lips so close to my ear that her
breath swept against my skin. “A witch shouldn’t keep secrets from
other witches. Bad things happen when she does.”
Gillian straightened and stared at me for a few
seconds, the tingle of her glance growing uncomfortable the longer
it lasted. Staring fixedly at the closed manuscript before me, I
refused to meet her eyes.
After she left, the air’s temperature returned to
normal. When my heart stopped pounding and the roaring in my ears
abated, I packed my belongings with shaking hands, badly wanting to
be back in my rooms. Adrenaline was coursing through my body, and I
wasn’t sure how long it would be possible to fend off my
panic.
I managed to get out of the library without
incident, avoiding Miriam’s sharp glance. If Gillian was right, it
was the jealousy of fellow witches that I needed to be wary of, not
human fear. And the mention of my father’s hidden powers made
something half remembered flit at the edges of my mind, but it
eluded me when I tried to fix it in place long enough to see it
clearly.
At New College, Fred hailed me from the porter’s
lodge with a fistful of mail. A creamy envelope, thick with a
distinctive woven feeling, lay on top.
It was a note from the warden, summoning me for a
drink before dinner.
In my rooms I considered calling his secretary and
feigning illness to get out of the invitation. My head was reeling,
and there was little chance I could keep down even a drop of sherry
in my present state.
But the college had behaved handsomely when I’d
requested a place to stay. The least I could do was express my
thanks personally. My sense of professional obligation began to
supplant the anxiety stirred up by Gillian. Holding on to my
identity as a scholar like a lifeline, I resolved to make my
appreciation known.
After changing, I made my way to the warden’s
lodgings and rang the bell. A member of the college staff opened
the door and ushered me inside, leading me to the parlor.
“Hello, Dr. Bishop.” Nicholas Marsh’s blue eyes
crinkled at the corners, and his snowy white hair and round red
cheeks made him look like Santa Claus. Soothed by his warmth and
armored with a sense of professional duty, I smiled.
“Professor Marsh.” I took his outstretched hand.
“Thank you for inviting me.”
“It’s overdue, I’m afraid. I was in Italy, you
know.”
“Yes, the bursar told me.”
“Then you have forgiven me for neglecting you for
so long,” he said. “I hope to make it up to you by introducing you
to an old friend of mine who is in Oxford for a few days. He’s a
well-known author and writes about subjects that might interest
you.”
Marsh stood aside, giving me a glimpse of a thick
head of brown hair peppered with gray and the sleeve of a brown
tweed jacket. I froze in confusion.
“Come and meet Peter Knox,” the warden said, taking
my elbow gently. “He’s acquainted with your work.”
The wizard stood. Finally I recognized what had
been eluding me. Knox’s name had been in the newspaper story about
vampire murders. He was the expert the police called in to examine
deaths that had an occult twist. My fingers started to itch.
“Dr. Bishop,” Knox said, holding out his hand.
“I’ve seen you in the Bodleian.”
“Yes, I believe you have.” I extended my own and
was relieved to see that it was not emitting sparks. We clasped
hands as briefly as possible.
His right fingertips flickered slightly, a tiny
furl and a release of bones and skin that no human would have
noticed. It reminded me of my childhood, when my mother’s hands had
flickered and furled to produce pancakes and fold laundry. Shutting
my eyes, I braced for an outpouring of magic.
The phone rang.
“I must get that, I’m afraid,” Marsh apologized.
“Do sit down.”
I sat as far from Knox as possible, perched on a
straight-backed wooden chair usually reserved for disgraced junior
members of the college.
Knox and I remained silent while Marsh murmured and
tutted into the phone. He punched a button on the console and
approached me, a glass of sherry in his hand. “That’s the
vice-chancellor. Two freshers have gone missing,” he said, using
the university’s slang term for new students. “You two chat while I
deal with this in my study. Please excuse me.”
Distant doors opened and closed, and muffled voices
conferred in the hall before there was silence.
“Missing students?” I said blandly. Surely Knox had
magically engineered both the crisis and the phone call that had
drawn Marsh away.
“I don’t understand, Dr. Bishop,” Knox murmured.
“It seems unfortunate for the university to misplace two children.
Besides, this gives us a chance to talk privately.”
“What do we have to talk about?” I sniffed my
sherry and prayed for the warden’s return.
“A great many things.”
I glanced at the door.
“Nicholas will be quite busy until we’re
through.”
“Let’s get this over with, then, so that the warden
can return to his drink.”
“As you wish,” Knox said. “Tell me what brought you
to Oxford, Dr. Bishop.”
“Alchemy.” I would answer the man’s questions, if
only to get Marsh back into the room, but wasn’t going to tell him
more than was necessary.
“You must have known that Ashmole 782 was
bewitched. No one with even a drop of Bishop blood in her veins
could have failed to notice. Why did you send it back?” Knox’s
brown eyes were sharp. He wanted the manuscript as much as Matthew
Clairmont did—if not more.
“I was done with it.” It was difficult to keep my
voice even.
“Was there nothing about the manuscript that piqued
your interest?”
“Nothing.”
Peter Knox’s mouth twisted into an ugly expression.
He knew I was lying. “Have you shared your observations with the
vampire?”
“I take it you mean Professor Clairmont.” When
creatures refused to use proper names, it was a way of denying that
those who were not like you were your equals.
Knox’s fingers unwound once more. When I thought he
might point them at me, he curled them around the arms of his chair
instead. “We all respect your family and what you’ve endured.
Nevertheless, questions have been raised about your unorthodox
relationship with this creature. You are betraying your ancestral
lineage with this self-indulgent behavior. It must stop.”
“Professor Clairmont is a professional colleague,”
I said, steering the conversation away from my family, “and I know
nothing about the manuscript. It was in my possession for a matter
of minutes. Yes, I knew it was under a spell. But that was
immaterial to me, since I’d requested it to study the
contents.”
“The vampire has wanted that book for more than a
century,” Knox said, his voice vicious. “He mustn’t be allowed to
have it.”
“Why?” My voice crackled with suppressed anger.
“Because it belongs to the witches? Vampires and daemons can’t
enchant objects. A witch put that book under a spell, and now it’s
back under the same spell. What are you worried about?”
“More than you could possibly comprehend, Dr.
Bishop.”
“I’m confident I can keep up, Mr. Knox,” I
replied. Knox’s mouth tightened with displeasure when I emphasized
his position outside the academy. Every time the wizard used my
title, his formality sounded like a taunt, as if he were trying to
make a point that he, not I, was the real expert. I might not use
my power, and I couldn’t have conjured up my own lost keys, but
being patronized by this wizard was intolerable.
“I am disturbed that you—a Bishop—are associating
with a vampire.” He held up his hand as a protest bubbled to my
lips. “Let’s not insult each other with further untruths. Instead
of the natural revulsion you should feel for that animal, you feel
gratitude.”
I remained silent, seething.
“And I’m concerned because we are perilously close
to catching human attention,” he continued.
“I tried to get the creatures out of the
library.”
“Ah, but it’s not just the library, is it? A
vampire is leaving drained, bloodless corpses around Westminster.
The daemons are unusually restless, vulnerable as ever to their own
madness and the swings of energy in the world. We can’t afford to
be noticed.”
“You told the reporters that there was nothing
supernatural about those deaths.”
Knox looked incredulous. “You don’t expect me to
tell humans everything?”
“I do, actually, when they’re paying you.”
“You’re not only self-indulgent, you’re foolish.
That surprises me, Dr. Bishop. Your father was known for his good
sense.”
“I’ve had a long day. Is that all?” Standing
abruptly, I moved toward the door. Even in normal circumstances, it
was difficult to listen to anyone but Sarah and Em talking about my
parents. Now—after Gillian’s revelations—there was something almost
obscene about it.
“No, it is not,” said Knox unpleasantly. “What I am
most intrigued by, at present, is the question of how an ignorant
witch with no training of any sort managed to break a spell that
has defied the efforts of those far more adept than you will ever
be.”
“So that’s why you’re all watching me.” I sat down,
my back pressing against the chair’s slats.
“Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” he said
curtly. “Your success may have been a fluke—an anniversary reaction
related to when the spell was first cast. The passage of time can
interfere with witchcraft, and anniversaries are particularly
volatile moments. You haven’t tried to recall it yet, but when you
do, it may not come as easily as it did the first time.”
“And what anniversary would we be
celebrating?”
“The sesquicentennial.”
I had wondered why a witch would put a spell on the
manuscript in the first place. Someone must have been looking for
it all those years ago, too. I blanched.
We were back to Matthew Clairmont and his interest
in Ashmole 782.
“You are managing to keep up, aren’t you?
The next time you see your vampire, ask him what he was doing in
the autumn of 1859. I doubt he’ll tell you the truth, but he might
reveal enough for you to figure it out on your own.”
“I’m tired. Why don’t you tell me, witch to witch,
what your interest is in Ashmole 782?” I’d heard why the
daemons wanted the manuscript. Even Matthew had given me some
explanation. Knox’s fascination with it was a missing piece of the
puzzle.
“That manuscript belongs to us,” Knox said
fiercely. “We’re the only creatures who can understand its secrets
and the only creatures who can be trusted to keep them.”
“What is in the manuscript?” I said, temper
flaring at last.
“The first spells ever constructed. Descriptions of
the enchantments that bind the world together.” Knox’s face grew
dreamy. “The secret of immortality. How witches made the first
daemon. How vampires can be destroyed, once and for all.” His eyes
pierced mine. “It’s the source of all our power, past and present.
It cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of daemons or
vampires—or humans.”
The events of the afternoon were catching up with
me, and I had to press my knees together to keep them from shaking.
“Nobody would put all that information in a single book.”
“The first witch did,” Knox said. “And her sons and
daughters, too, down through time. It’s our history, Diana. Surely
you want to protect it from prying eyes.”
The warden entered the room as if he’d been waiting
by the door. The tension was suffocating, but he seemed blissfully
unaware of it.
“What a palaver over nothing.” Marsh shook his
white head. “The freshers illegally obtained a punt. They were
located, stuck under a bridge and a little worse for wine, utterly
content with their situation. A romance may result.”
“I’m so glad,” I murmured. The clocks struck
forty-five minutes past the hour, and I stood. “Is that the time? I
have a dinner engagement.”
“You won’t be joining us for dinner?” the warden
asked with a frown. “Peter has been looking forward to talking to
you about alchemy.”
“Our paths will cross again. Soon,” Knox said
smoothly. “My visit was such a surprise, and of course the lady has
better things to do than have dinner with two men our age.”
Be careful with Matthew Clairmont. Knox’s
voice rang in my head. He’s a killer.
Marsh smiled. “Yes, of course. I do hope to see you
again—when the freshers have settled down.”
Ask him about 1859. See if he’ll share his
secrets with a witch.
It’s hardly a secret if you know it.
Surprise registered on Knox’s face when I replied to his mental
warning in kind. It was the sixth time I’d used magic this year,
but these were surely extenuating circumstances.
“It would be a pleasure, Warden. And thank you
again for letting me stay in college this year.” I nodded to the
wizard. “Mr. Knox.”
Fleeing from the warden’s lodgings, I turned toward
my old refuge in the cloisters and walked among the pillars until
my pulse stopped racing. My mind was occupied with only one
question: what to do now that two witches—my own people—had
threatened me in the space of a single afternoon. With sudden
clarity I knew the answer.
In my rooms I searched my bag until my fingers
found Clairmont’s crumpled business card, and then I dialed the
first number.
He didn’t answer.
After a robotic voice indicated that it was ready
to receive my message, I spoke.
“Matthew, it’s Diana. I’m sorry to bother you when
you’re out of town.” I took a deep breath, trying to dispel some of
the guilt associated with my decision not to tell Clairmont about
Gillian and my parents, but only about Knox. “We need to talk.
Something has happened. It’s that wizard from the library. His name
is Peter Knox. If you get this message, please call me.”
I’d assured Sarah and Em that no vampire would
meddle in my life. Gillian Chamberlain and Peter Knox had changed
my mind. With shaking hands I lowered the shades and locked the
door, wishing I’d never heard of Ashmole 782.