A Discovery Of Witches Part 53

"I understand the basic principles," I said.

"What happened at La Pierre feels like a gambit to me," Baldwin continued, his eyes never wavering. "The Congregation let you go for some reason of their own. Make your next move before they make theirs. Don't wait your turn like a good girl, and don't be duped into thinking your current freedom means you're safe. Decide what to do to survive, and do it."

"Thanks." He might be Matthew's brother, but Baldwin's close physical presence was unnerving. I extended my gauze-wrapped right arm to him in farewell.

"Sister, that's not how family bids each other adieu. adieu." Baldwin's voice was softly mocking. He gave me no time to react but gripped my shoulders and kissed me on the cheeks. As his face pa.s.sed over mine, he deliberately breathed in my scent. It felt like a threat, and I wondered if he meant it as such. He released me and stood. "Matthew, a bientot. a bientot."

"Wait." Matthew followed his brother. Using his broad back to block my view, he handed Baldwin an envelope. The curved sliver of black wax on it was visible despite his efforts.

"You said you wouldn't obey my orders. After La Pierre you might have reconsidered."

Baldwin stared at the white rectangle. His face twisted sourly before falling into lines of resignation. Taking the envelope, he bowed his head and said, "Je suis a votre commande, seigneur."

The words were formal, motivated by protocol rather than genuine feeling. He was a knight, and Matthew was his master. Baldwin had bowed-technically-to Matthew's authority. But just because he had followed tradition, that did not mean he liked it. He raised the envelope to his forehead in a parody of a salute.

Matthew waited until Baldwin was out of sight before returning to me. He grasped the handles of the wheelchair. "Come, let's get the car."

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Matthew had made advance arrangements for our arrival. We picked up a Range Rover at the terminal curb from a man in uniform who dropped the keys into Matthew's palm, stowed our bags in the trunk, and left without a word. Matthew reached into the backseat, plucked out a blue parka designed for arctic trekking rather than autumn in New York, and arranged it like a down-filled nest in the pa.s.senger seat.

Soon we were driving through early-morning city traffic and then out into the countryside. The navigation system had been programmed with the address of the house in Madison and informed us that we should arrive in a little more than four hours. I looked at the brightening sky and started worrying about how Sarah and Em would react to Matthew.

"We'll be home just after breakfast. That will be interesting." Sarah was not at her best before coffee-copious amounts of it-had entered her bloodstream. "We should call and let them know when to expect us."

"They already know. I called them from Sept-Tours."

Feeling thoroughly managed and slightly muzzy from morphine and fatigue, I settled back for the drive.

We pa.s.sed hardscrabble farms and small houses with early-morning lights twinkling in kitchens and bedrooms. Upstate New York is at its best in October. Now the trees were on fire with red and gold foliage. After the leaves fell, Madison and the surrounding countryside would turn rusty gray and remain that way until the first snows blanketed the world in pristine white batting.

We turned down the rutted road leading to the Bishop house. Its late-eighteenth-century lines were boxy and generous, and it sat back from the road on a little knoll, surrounded by aged apple trees and lilac bushes. The white clapboard was in desperate need of repainting, and the old picket fence was falling down in places. Pale plumes rose in welcome from both chimneys, however, filling the air with the autumn scent of wood smoke.

Matthew pulled in to the driveway, which was pitted with ice-crusted potholes. The Range Rover rumbled its way over them, and he parked next to Sarah's beat-up, once-purple car. A new crop of b.u.mper stickers adorned the back. MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM, a perennial favorite, was stuck next to I'M PAGAN AND I VOTE. Another proclaimed WICCAN ARMY: WE WILL NOT GO SILENTLY INTO THE NIGHT. I sighed.

Matthew turned off the car and looked at me. "I'm supposed to be the nervous one."

"Aren't you?"

"Not as nervous as you are."

"Coming home always makes me behave like a teenager. All I want to do is hog the TV remote and eat ice cream." Though trying to be bright and cheerful for his sake, I was not looking forward to this homecoming.

"I'm sure we can arrange for that," he said with a frown. "Meanwhile stop pretending nothing has happened. You're not fooling me, and you won't fool your aunts either."

He left me sitting in the car while he carried our luggage to the front door. We'd ama.s.sed a surprisingly large amount of it, including two computer bags, my disreputable Yale duffel, and an elegant leather valise that might have been mistaken for a Victorian original. There was also Matthew's medical kit, his long gray coat, my bright new parka, and a case of wine. The last was a wise precaution on Matthew's part. Sarah's taste ran to harder stuff, and Em was a teetotaler.

Matthew returned and lifted me out of the car, my legs swinging. Safely on the steps, I gingerly put weight on my right ankle. We both faced the house's red, eighteenth-century door. It was flanked by tiny windows that offered a view of the front hall. Every lamp in the house was lit to welcome us.

"I smell coffee," he said, smiling down at me.

"They're up, then." The catch on the worn, familiar door latch released at my touch. "Unlocked as usual." Before losing my nerve, I warily stepped inside. "Em? Sarah?"

A note in Sarah's dark, decisive handwriting was taped to the staircase's newel post.

"Out. Thought the house needed some time alone with you first. Move slowly. Matthew can stay in Em's old room. Your room is ready." There was a postscript, in Em's rounder scrawl. "Both of you use your parents' room."

My eyes swept over the doors leading from the hall. They were all standing open, and there was no banging upstairs. Even the coffin doors into the keeping room were quiet, rather than swinging wildly on their hinges.

"That's a good sign."

"What? That they're out of the house?" Matthew looked confused.

"No, the silence. The house has been known to misbehave with new people."

"The house is haunted?" Matthew looked around with interest.

"We're witches-of course the house is haunted. But it's more than that. The house is . . . alive. It has its own ideas about visitors, and the more Bishops there are, the worse it acts up. That's why Em and Sarah left."

A phosph.o.r.escent smudge moved in and out of my peripheral vision. My long-dead grandmother, whom I'd never met, was sitting by the keeping room's fireplace in an unfamiliar rocking chair. She looked as young and beautiful as in her wedding picture on the landing upstairs. When she smiled, my own lips curved in response.

"Grandma?" I said tentatively.

He's a looker, isn't he? she said with a wink, her voice rustling like waxed paper. she said with a wink, her voice rustling like waxed paper.

Another head popped around the doorframe. I'll say I'll say, the other ghost agreed. Should be dead, though. Should be dead, though.

My grandmother nodded. Suppose so, Elizabeth, but he is what he is. We' ll get used to him. Suppose so, Elizabeth, but he is what he is. We' ll get used to him.

Matthew was staring in the direction of the keeping room. "Someone is there," he said, full of wonder. "I can almost smell them and hear faint sounds. But I can't see them."

"Ghosts." Reminded of the castle dungeons, I looked around for my mother and father.

Oh, they're not here, my grandmother said sadly.

Disappointed, I turned my attention from my dead family to my undead husband. "Let's go upstairs and put the bags away. That will give the house a chance to know you."

Before we could move another inch, a charcoal ball of fur rocketed out of the back of the house with a blood-chilling yowl. It stopped abruptly one foot away from me and transformed into a hissing cat. She arched her back and screeched again.

"Nice to see you too, Tabitha." Sarah's cat detested me, and the feeling was mutual.

Tabitha lowered her spine into its proper alignment and stalked toward Matthew.

"Vampires are more comfortable with dogs, as a rule," he commented as Tabitha wound around his ankles.

With unerring feline instincts, Tabitha latched onto Matthew's discomfort and was now determined to change his mind about her species. She b.u.t.ted her head against his s.h.i.+n, purring loudly.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," I said. For Tabitha this was an astonis.h.i.+ng display of affection. "She really is the most perverse cat in the history of the world."

Tabitha hissed at me and resumed her sybaritic attention to Matthew's lower legs.

"Just ignore her," I recommended, hobbling toward the stairs. Matthew swept up the bags and followed.

Gripping the banister, I made a slow ascent. Matthew took each step with me, his face alight with excitement and interest. He didn't seem at all alarmed that the house was giving him the once-over.

My body was rigid with antic.i.p.ation, however. Pictures had fallen onto unsuspecting guests, doors and windows flapped open and closed, and lights went on and off without warning. I let out a sigh of relief when we made it to the landing without incident.

"Not many of my friends visited the house," I explained when he raised an eyebrow. "It was easier to see them at the mall in Syracuse."

The upstairs rooms were arranged in a square around the central staircase. Em and Sarah's room was in the front corner, overlooking the driveway. My mother and father's room was at the back of the house, with a view of the fields and a section of the old apple orchard that gradually gave way to a deeper wood of oaks and maples. The door was open, a light on inside. I stepped hesitantly toward the welcoming, golden rectangle and over the threshold.

The room was warm and comfortable, its broad bed loaded with quilts and pillows. Nothing matched, except for the plain white curtains. The floor was constructed out of wide pine planks with gaps large enough to swallow a hairbrush. A bathroom opened up to the right, and a radiator was popping and hissing inside.

"Lily of the valley," Matthew commented, his nostrils flaring at all the new scents.

"My mother's favorite perfume." An ancient bottle of Diorissimo with a faded black-and-white houndstooth ribbon wrapped around the neck still stood on the bureau.

Matthew dropped the bags onto the floor. "Is it going to bother you to be in here?" His eyes were worried. "You could have your old room, as Sarah suggested."

"No chance," I said firmly. "It's in the attic, and the bathroom is down here. Besides, there's no way we'll both fit in a single bed."

Matthew looked away. "I had thought we might-"

"We're not sleeping in separate beds. I'm no less your wife among witches than among vampires," I interrupted, drawing him toward me. The house settled on its foundations with a tiny sigh, as if bracing itself for a long conversation.

"No, but it might be easier-"

"For whom?" I interrupted again.

"For you," he finished. "You're in pain. You'd sleep more soundly in bed alone."

There would be no sleep for me at all without him at my side. Not wanting to worry him by saying so, I rested my hands on his chest in an attempt to distract him from the matter of sleeping arrangements. "Kiss me."

His mouth tightened into a no, but his eyes said yes. I pressed my body against his, and he responded with a kiss that was both sweet and gentle.

"I thought you were lost," he murmured when we parted, resting his forehead against mine, "forever. Now I'm afraid you might shatter into a thousand pieces because of what Satu did. If something had happened to you, I'd have gone mad."

My scent enveloped Matthew, and he relaxed a fraction. He relaxed further when his hands slid around my hips. They were relatively unscathed, and his touch was both comforting and electrifying. My need for him had only intensified since my ordeal with Satu.

"Can you feel it?" I took his hand in mine, pressing it against the center of my chest.

"Feel what?" Matthew's face was puzzled.

Unsure what would make an impression on his preternatural senses, I concentrated on the chain that had unfurled when he'd first kissed me. When I touched it with an imaginary finger, it emitted a low, steady hum.

Matthew gasped, a look of wonder on his face. "I can hear something. What is it?" He bent to rest his ear against my chest.

"It's you, inside me," I said. "You ground me-an anchor at the end of a long, silvery chain. It's why I'm so certain of you, I suppose." My voice dropped. "Provided I could feel you-had this connection to you-there was nothing Satu could say or do that I couldn't endure."

"It's like the sound your blood makes when you talk to Rakasa with your mind, or when you called the witchwind. Now that I know what to listen for, it's audible."

Ysabeau had mentioned she could hear my witch's blood singing. I tried to make the chain's music louder, its vibrations pa.s.sing into the rest of my body.

Matthew lifted his head and gave me a glorious smile. "Amazing."

The humming grew more intense, and I lost control of the energy pulsing through me. Overhead, a score of stars burst into life and shot through the room.

"Oops." Dozens of ghostly eyes tingled against my back. The house shut the door firmly against the inquiring looks of my ancestors, who had a.s.sembled to see the fireworks display as if it were Independence Day.

"Did you do that?" Matthew stared intently at the closed door.

"No," I explained earnestly. "The sparklers were mine. That was the house. It has a thing about privacy."

"Thank G.o.d," he murmured, pulling my hips firmly to his and kissing me again in a way that had the ghosts on the other side muttering.

The fireworks fizzled out in a stream of aquamarine light over the chest of drawers.

"I love you, Matthew Clairmont," I said at the earliest opportunity.

"And I love you, Diana Bishop," he replied formally. "But your aunt and Emily must be freezing. Show me the rest of the house so that they can come inside."

Slowly we went through the other rooms on the second floor, most unused now and filled with a.s.sorted bric-a-brac from Em's yard-sale addiction and all the junk Sarah couldn't bear to throw away for fear she might need it one day.

Matthew helped me up the stairs to the attic bedroom where I'd endured my adolescence. It still had posters of musicians tacked to the walls and sported the strong shades of purple and green that were a teenager's attempt at a sophisticated color scheme.

Downstairs, we explored the big formal rooms built to receive guests-the keeping room on one side of the front door and the office and small parlor opposite. We pa.s.sed through the rarely used dining room and into the heart of the house-a family room large enough to serve as TV room and eating area, with the kitchen at the far end.

"It looks like Em's taken up needlepoint-again," I said, picking up a half-finished canvas with a basket of flowers on it. "And Sarah's fallen off the wagon."

"She's a smoker?" Matthew gave the air a long sniff.

"When she's stressed. Em makes her smoke outside-but you can still smell it. Does it bother you?" I asked, acutely aware of how sensitive he might be to the odor.

"Dieu, Diana, I've smelled worse," he replied. Diana, I've smelled worse," he replied.

The cavernous kitchen retained its wall of brick ovens and a gigantic walk-in fireplace. There were modern appliances, too, and old stone floors that had endured two centuries of dropped pans, wet animals, muddy shoes, and other more witchy substances. I ushered him into Sarah's adjacent workroom. Originally a freestanding summer kitchen, it was now connected to the house and still equipped with cranes for holding cauldrons of stew and spits for roasting meat. Herbs hung from the ceiling, and a storage loft held drying fruits and jars of her lotions and potions. The tour over, we returned to the kitchen "This room is so brown. brown." I studied the decor while flicking the porch light on and off again, the Bishops' long-standing signal that it was safe to enter. There was a brown refrigerator, brown wooden cabinets, warm red-brown brick, a brown rotary-dial phone, and tired brown-checked wallpaper. "What it needs is a fresh coat of white paint."

Matthew's chin lifted, and his eyes panned to the back door.

"February would be ideal for the job, if you're offering to do the work," a throaty voice said from the mudroom. Sarah rounded the corner, wearing jeans and an oversize plaid flannel s.h.i.+rt. Her red hair was wild and her cheeks bright with the cold.

"h.e.l.lo, Sarah," I said, backing up toward the sink.

"h.e.l.lo, Diana." Sarah stared fixedly at the bruise under my eye. "This is the vampire, I take it?"

"Yes." I hobbled forward again to make the introductions. Sarah's sharp gaze turned to my ankle. "Sarah, this is Matthew Clairmont. Matthew, my aunt, Sarah Bishop."

Matthew extended his right hand. "Sarah," he said, meeting her eyes without hesitation.

Sarah pursed her lips in response. Like me, she had the Bishop chin, which was slightly too long for the rest of her face. It was now jutting out even more.