A Discovery Of Witches Part 27

"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 ma.n.u.script, 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 s.h.i.+mmering."

"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 h.e.l.l 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 house, Diana," Matthew explained patiently. "I want to take you to my home 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 ma.n.u.script-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 my roof for a while." 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.n.u.script, 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 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 father?" The floor s.h.i.+fted 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. 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 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 cus.h.i.+ons. "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 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." 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 finis.h.i.+ng it in time."

Matthew's eyes narrowed speculatively. "Your paper is on alchemical ill.u.s.trations, I a.s.sume?"

"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. Aurora Consurgens. It's French, regrettably." It's French, regrettably."

My eyes widened. Aurora Consurgens Aurora Consurgens was a baffling ma.n.u.script about the opposing forces of alchemical transformation-silver and gold, female and male, dark and light. Its ill.u.s.trations were equally complex and puzzling. was a baffling ma.n.u.script about the opposing forces of alchemical transformation-silver and gold, female and male, dark and light. Its ill.u.s.trations were equally complex and puzzling.

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

"Mine is from 1356."

"But a ma.n.u.script from such an early date won't be ill.u.s.trated," I pointed out. Finding an illuminated alchemical ma.n.u.script 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 ill.u.s.trated copy of Aurora Consurgens Aurora Consurgens represented the opportunity of a lifetime for a historian of alchemy. represented the opportunity of a lifetime for a historian of alchemy.

"What do the extra ill.u.s.trations 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script. 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 a.s.sure me that you would be safe with her and Marthe."