The Book of Life

15

“More tea, Professor Bishop?”

“Hmm?” I looked up at the preppy young man with the expectant expression. “Oh. Yes. Of course.

Thank you.”

“Right away.” He whisked the white porcelain teapot from the table.

I looked toward the door, but there was still no sign of Matthew. He was at Human Resources getting his identification badge while I waited for him in the rarefied atmosphere of the nearby New Haven Lawn Club. The hushed confines of the main building dampened the distinctive plonk of tennis balls and the screaming children enjoying the pool during the last week of summer vacation. Three brides-to-be and their mothers had been escorted through the room where I was sitting to view the facilities they would enjoy should they be married here.

This might be New Haven, but it was not my New Haven.

“Here you are, Professor.” My attentive waiter was back, accompanied by the fresh scent of mint leaves. “Peppermint tea.”

Living in New Haven with Matthew was going to require some adjustment. My little row house on the tree-lined, pedestrians-only stretch of Court Street was far more spartan than any of the residences we’d occupied over the last year, whether in the present or the past. It was furnished simply with flea market finds, cheap pine furniture left over from my graduate-student days, and shelf upon shelf of books and journals. My bed didn’t have a footboard or a headboard, never mind a canopy. But the mattress was wide and welcoming, and at the end of our long drive from Madison the two of us had collapsed into it with groans of relief. We’d spent most of the weekend stocking the house with essentials like any normal New Haven couple: wine from the store on Whitney Avenue for Matthew, groceries for me, and enough electronics to outfit a computer lab. Matthew was horrified that I owned only a laptop. We left the computer store on Broadway with two of everything—one for him and one for me. Afterward we strolled the paths of the residential colleges while the carillon played in Harkness Tower. College and town were just beginning to swell with returning students who shouted greetings across the quad and shared complaints about reading lists and class schedules.

“It’s good to be back,” I had whispered, my hand hooked through his arm. It felt like we were embarking on a new adventure, just the two of us.

But today was different. I felt out of step and out of sorts.

“There you are.” Matthew appeared at my elbow and gave me a lingering kiss. “I missed you.”

I laughed. “We’ve been apart for an hour and a half.”

“Exactly. Far too long.” His attention wandered over the table, taking in the untouched pot of tea, my blank yellow legal pad, and the unopened copy of the latest American Historical Review that we’d rescued from my overstuffed department mailbox on our way to Science Hill. “How was your morning?”

“They’ve taken very good care of me.”

“So they should.” On our way into the grand brick building, Matthew had explained that Marcus was one of the founding members of the private club and that the facility was built on land he’d once owned.

“Can I get you something, Professor Clairmont?”

I pressed my lips together. A small crease appeared in the smooth skin between my husband’s keen eyes.

“Thank you, Chip, but I believe we’re ready to go.”

It was not a moment too soon. I stood and gathered my things, slipping them into the large messenger bag at my feet.

“Can you put the charges on Dr. Whitmore’s account?” Matthew murmured, pulling out my chair.

“Absolutely,” Chip said. “No problem. Always a pleasure to welcome a member of Dr. Whitmore’s family.”

For once I beat Matthew outside.

“Where’s the car?” I said, searching the parking lot.

“It’s parked in the shade.” Matthew lifted the messenger bag from my shoulder. “We’re walking to the lab, not driving. Members are free to leave their cars here, and it’s very close to the lab.” He looked sympathetic. “This is strange for both of us, but the oddness will pass.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. Matthew carried my bag, holding it by the short handle on top.

“It will be better once I’m in the library,” I said, as much for my benefit as his. “Shall we get to work?”

Matthew held out his free hand. I took it, and his expression softened. “Lead the way,” he said.

We crossed Whitney Avenue by the garden filled with dinosaur statuary, cut behind the Peabody, and approached the tall tower where Chris’s labs were located. My steps slowed. Matthew looked up, and up some more.

“No. Please not there. It’s worse than the Beinecke.” His eyes were glued to the unappealing outlines of Kline Biology Tower, or KBT as it was known on campus. He’d likened the Beinecke, with its white marble walls carved into square hollows, to a giant ice-cube tray. “It reminds me of—”

“Your lab in Oxford was no great beauty either, as I recall,” I said, cutting him off before he could give me another vivid analogy that would stay with me forever. “Let’s go.”

It was Matthew’s turn to be reluctant now. He grumbled as we walked into the building, refused to put his blue-and-white Yale lanyard with its magnetized plastic ID card around his neck when the security guard asked him to, continued to complain in the elevator, and was glowering as we looked for the door to Chris’s lab. “It’s going to be fine, Matthew. Chris’s students will be thrilled to meet you,” I assured him.

Matthew was an internationally renowned scholar and a member of the Oxford University faculty. There were few institutions that impressed Yale, but that was one of them.

“The last time I was around students was when Hamish and I were fellows at All Souls.” Matthew looked away in an effort to hide his nervousness. “I’m better suited to a research lab.”

I pulled on his arm, forcing him to stop. Finally he met my eyes.

“You taught Jack all sorts of things. Annie, too,” I reminded him, remembering how he’d been with the two children who had lived with us in Elizabethan London.

“That was different. They were . . .” Matthew trailed off, a shadow flitting through his eyes.

“Family?”

I waited for his response. He nodded reluctantly.

“Students want the same things Annie and Jack did: your attention, your honesty, and your faith in them. You’re going to be brilliant at this. I promise.”

“I’ll settle for adequate,” Matthew muttered. He scanned the hallway. “There’s Christopher’s lab.

We should go. If I’m late, he’s threatened to repossess my ID.”

Chris pushed the door open, clearly frazzled. Matthew caught it and propped it open with his foot.

“Another minute, Clairmont, and I would have started without you. Hey, Diana,” Chris said, kissing me on the cheek. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Why aren’t you at the Beinecke?”

“Special delivery.” I motioned toward the messenger bag, and Matthew handed it over. “The page from Ashmole 782, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” Chris didn’t sound the least bit interested. He and Matthew were clearly focused on other questions.

“You two promised,” I said.

“Right. Ashmole 782.” Chris crossed his arms. “Where’s Miriam?”

“I gave Miriam your invitation and will spare you her response. She will be here when—and if— she chooses.” Matthew held up his ID card. Even the employment office couldn’t take a bad picture of him. He looked like a model. “I’m official, or so they tell me.”

“Good. Let’s go.” Chris took a white lab coat off the nearby rack and shrugged it over his shoulders. He held another out to Matthew.

Matthew looked at it dubiously. “I’m not wearing one of those.”

“Suit yourself. No coat, no contact with the equipment. Up to you.” Chris turned and marched off.

A woman approached him with a sheaf of papers. She was wearing a lab coat with the name CONNELLY embroidered on it and “Beaker” written above it in red marker.

“Thanks, Beaker.” Chris looked them over. “Good. Nobody refused.”

“What are those?” I asked.

“Nondisclosure forms. Chris said neither of you has to sign them.” Beaker looked at Matthew and nodded in greeting. “We’re honored to have you here, Professor Clairmont. I’m Joy Connelly, Chris’s second-in-command. We’re short a lab manager at the moment, so I’m filling in until Chris finds either Mother Teresa or Mussolini. Would you please swipe in so that we have a record of when you arrived?

And you have to swipe out to leave. It keeps the records straight.” She pointed to the reader by the door.

“Thank you, Dr. Connelly.” Matthew obediently swiped his card. He was still not wearing a lab coat, though.

“Professor Bishop needs to swipe in, too. Lab protocol. And please call me Beaker. Everybody else does.”

“Why?” Matthew asked while I fished my ID out of my bag. As usual, it had settled to the bottom.

“Chris finds nicknames easier to remember,” Beaker said.

“He had seventeen Amys and twelve Jareds in his first undergraduate lecture,” I added. “I don’t think he’ll ever recover.”

“Happily, my memory is excellent, Dr. Connelly. So is your work on catalytic RNA, by the way.”

Matthew smiled. Dr. Connelly looked pleased. “Beaker!” Chris bellowed.

“Coming!” Beaker called. “I sure hope he finds Mother Teresa soon,” she muttered to me. “We don’t need another Mussolini.”

“Mother Teresa is dead,” I whispered, running my card through the reader.

“I know. When Chris wrote the job description for the new lab manager, it listed ‘Mother Teresa or Mussolini’ under qualifications. We rewrote it, of course. Human Resources wouldn’t have approved the posting otherwise.”

“What did Chris call his last lab manager?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“Caligula.” Beaker sighed. “We really miss her.”

Matthew waited for us to enter before releasing the door. Beaker looked nonplussed by the courtesy. The door swooshed closed behind us.

A gaggle of white-coated researchers of all ages and descriptions waited for us inside, including senior researchers like Beaker, some exhausted-looking postdoctoral fellows, and a bevy of graduate students. Most sat on stools pulled up to the lab benches; a few lounged against sinks or cabinets. One sink bore a hand-lettered sign over it that said rather ominously THIS SINK RESERVED FOR HAZMAT. Tina, Chris’s perpetually harried administrative assistant, was trying to extricate the filled-out nondisclosure forms from beneath a can of soda without disturbing the laptop that Chris was booting up. The hum of conversation stopped when we entered.

“Oh. My. God. That’s—” A graduate student stared at Matthew and clapped a hand over her mouth.

Matthew had been recognized.

“Hey, Professor Bishop!” A graduate student stood up, smoothing out his lab coat. He looked more nervous than Matthew. “Jonathan Garcia. Remember me? History of Chemistry? Two years ago?”

“Of course. How are you, Jonathan?” I felt several nudging looks as the attention in the room swung in my direction. There were daemons in Chris’s lab. I looked around, trying to figure out who they were. Then I caught the cold stare of a vampire. He was standing by a locked cabinet with Beaker and another woman. Matthew had already noticed him.

“Richard,” Matthew said with a cool nod. “I didn’t know you’d left Berkeley.”

“Last year.” Richard’s expression never wavered.

It had never occurred to me that there would already be creatures in Chris’s lab. I’d visited him only once or twice, when he was working alone. My messenger bag suddenly felt heavy with secrets and possible disaster.

“There will be time for your reunion with Clairmont later, Shotgun,” Chris said, hooking the laptop to a projector. There was a wave of appreciative laughter. “Lights please, Beaker.”

The laughter quieted as the lights dimmed. Chris’s research team leaned forward to see what he had projected on the whiteboard. Black-and-white bars marched across the top of the page, and the overflow was arranged underneath. Each bar—or ideogram, as Matthew had explained to me last night— represented a chromosome.

“This semester we have an all-new research project.” Chris leaned against the whiteboard, his dark skin and white lab coat making him look like another ideogram on the display. “Here’s our subject. Who wants to tell me what it is?”

“Is it alive or dead?” a cool female voice asked.

“Good question, Scully.” Chris grinned.

“Why do you ask?” Matthew looked at the student sharply. Scully squirmed.

“Because,” she explained, “if he’s deceased—oh, the subject is male, by the way—the cause of death might have a genetic component.”

The graduate students, eager to prove their worth, started tossing out rare and deadly genetic disorders faster than they could record them on their laptops.

“All right, all right.” Chris held up his hand. “Our zoo has no more room for zebras. Back to basics, please.”

Matthew’s eyes danced with amusement. When I looked at him in confusion, he explained. “Students tend to go for exotic explanations rather than the more obvious ones—like thinking a patient has SARS rather than a common cold. We call them ‘zebras,’ because they’re hearing hoofbeats and concluding zebras rather than horses.”

“Thanks.” Between the nicknames and the wildlife, I was understandably disoriented.

“Stop trying to impress one another and look at the screen. What do you see?” Chris said, calling a halt to the escalating competition.

“It’s male,” said a weedy-looking young man in a bow tie, who was using a traditional laboratory notebook rather than a computer. Shotgun and Beaker rolled their eyes at each other and shook their heads.

“Scully already deduced that.” Chris looked at them impatiently. He snapped his fingers. “Do not

embarrass me in front of Oxford University, or you will all lift weights with me for the entire month of September.”

Everybody groaned. Chris’s level of physical fitness was legendary, as was his habit of wearing his old Harvard football jersey whenever Yale had a game. He was the only professor who was publicly, and routinely, booed in class.

“Whatever he is, he’s not human,” Jonathan said. “He has twenty-four chromosome pairs.”

Chris looked down at his watch. “Four and a half minutes. Two minutes longer than I thought it would take, but much quicker than Professor Clairmont expected.”

“Touché, Professor Roberts,” Matthew said mildly. Chris’s team slid glances in Matthew’s direction, still trying to figure out what an Oxford professor was doing in a Yale research lab.

“Wait a minute. Rice has twenty-four chromosomes. We’re studying rice?” asked a young woman I’d seen dining at Branford College.

“Of course we’re not studying rice,” Chris said with exasperation. “Since when did rice have a sex, Hazmat?” She must be the owner of the specially labeled sink.

“Chimps?” The young man who offered up this suggestion was handsome, in a studious sort of way, with his blue oxford shirt and wavy brown hair.

Chris circled one of the ideograms at the top of the display with a red Magic Marker. “Does that look like chromosome 2A for a chimp?”

“No,” the young man replied, crestfallen. “The upper arm is too long. That looks like human chromosome 2.”

“It is human chromosome 2.” Chris erased his red mark and started to number the ideograms.

When he got to the twenty-fourth, he circled it. “This is what we’ll be focusing on this semester.

Chromosome 24, known henceforward as CC so that the research team studying genetically modified rice over in Osborn doesn’t get the heebie-jeebies. We have a lot of work to do. The DNA has been sequenced, but very few gene functions have been identified.”

“How many base pairs?” Shotgun asked.

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of forty million,” replied Chris.

“Thank God,” Shotgun murmured, looking straight at Matthew. It sounded like an awful lot to me, but I was glad he was pleased.

“What does CC stand for?” asked a petite Asian woman.

“Before I answer that, I want to remind you that every person here has given Tina a signed nondisclosure agreement,” Chris said.

“Are we working with something that will result in a patent?” A graduate student rubbed his hands together. “Excellent.”

“We are working on a highly sensitive, highly confidential research project with far-reaching implications. What happens in this lab stays in this lab. No talking to your friends. No telling your parents. No boasting in the library. If you talk, you walk. Got it?”

Heads nodded.

“No personal laptops, no cell phones, no photographs. One lab terminal will have Internet access, but only Beaker, Shotgun, and Sherlock will have the access code,” Chris continued, pointing to the senior researchers. “We’ll be keeping lab notebooks the old-fashioned way, written in longhand on paper, and they will all be turned in to Beaker before you swipe out. For those who have forgotten how to use a pen, Bones will show you.”

Bones, the weedy young man with the paper notebook, looked smug. A bit reluctantly the students parted with their cell phones, depositing them in a plastic bucket that Beaker carried around the room.

Meanwhile Shotgun gathered up the laptops and locked them in a cabinet. Once the laboratory had been cleared of contraband electronics, Chris continued.

“When, in the fullness of time, we decide to go public with our findings—and yes, Professor Clairmont, they will one day be published, because that’s what scientists do,” Chris said, looking at Matthew sharply, “—none of you will have to worry about your careers ever again.”

There were smiles all around.

“CC stands for ‘creature chromosome.’”

The formerly smiling faces went blank.

“C-c-creature?” Bones asked.

“I told you there were aliens,” said a man sitting next to Hazmat.

“He’s not from outer space, Mulder,” Chris said.

“Good name,” I told Matthew, who looked bewildered. He didn’t own a TV, after all. “I’ll tell you why later.”

“A werewolf?” Mulder said hopefully. Matthew scowled.

“No more guesses,” Chris said hastily. “Okay, team. Hands up if you’re a daemon.”

Matthew’s jaw dropped.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to Chris.

“Research,” he replied, looking around the room. After a few moments of stunned silence, Chris snapped his fingers. “Come on. Don’t be shy.”

The Asian woman raised her hand. So did a young man who resembled a giraffe with his gingercolored hair and long neck.

“Should have guessed it would be Game Boy and Xbox,” Chris murmured. “Anyone else?”

“Daisy,” the woman said, pointing to a dreamy-eyed creature wearing bright yellow and white clothes who was humming and staring out the window.

“Are you sure, Game Boy?” Chris sounded incredulous. “She’s so . . . um, organized. And precise.

She’s nothing like you and Xbox.”

“Daisy doesn’t know it yet,” Game Boy whispered, her forehead creased with concern, “so go easy on her. Finding out what you really are can freak you out.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Chris replied.

“What’s a daemon?” Beaker asked.

“A highly valued member of this research team who colors outside the lines.” Chris’s response was lightning quick. Shotgun pressed his lips together in amusement.

“Oh,” was Beaker’s mild response.

“I must be a daemon, too, then,” Bones claimed.

“Wannabe,” Game Boy muttered.

Matthew’s lips twitched.

“Wow. Daemons. I knew Yale was a better choice than Johns Hopkins,” Mulder said. “Is this Xbox’s DNA?”

Xbox looked at Matthew in silent entreaty. Daisy stopped humming and was now paying guarded attention to the conversation.

Matthew, Shotgun, and I were the grown-ups in this situation. Telling humans about creatures shouldn’t be left to the students. I opened my mouth to reply, but Matthew put a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s not your colleague’s DNA,” Matthew said. “It’s mine.”

“You’re a daemon, too?” Mulder looked at Matthew with interest.

“No, I’m a vampire.” Matthew stepped forward, joining Chris under the projector’s light. “And before you ask, I can go outside during the day and my hair won’t catch fire in the sunlight. I’m Catholic and have a crucifix. When I sleep, which is not often, I prefer a bed to a coffin. If you try to stake me, the wood will likely splinter before it enters my skin.”

He bared his teeth. “No fangs either. And one last thing: I do not, nor have I ever, sparkled.”

Matthew’s face darkened to emphasize the point.

I had been proud of Matthew on many previous occasions. I’d seen him stand up to a queen, a spoiled emperor, and his own awe-inspiring father. His courage—whether fighting with swords or struggling with his own demons—was bone-deep. But nothing compared to how I felt watching him stand before a group of students and his scientific peers and own up to what he was.

“How old are you?” Mulder asked breathlessly. Like his namesake, Mulder was a true believer in all things wondrous and strange.

“Thirty-seven.”

I heard exclamations of disappointment. Matthew took pity on them.

“Give or take about fifteen hundred years.”

“Holy shit!” Scully blurted, looking as though her rational world had been turned inside out.

“That’s older than old. I just can’t believe there’s a vampire at Yale.”

“You’ve obviously never been to the astronomy department,” Game Boy said. “There are four vampires on the faculty there. And that new professor in economics—the woman they hired away from MIT—is definitely a vamp. Rumor has it there are a few in the chemistry department, but they keep to themselves.”

“There are witches at Yale, too.” My voice was quiet, and I avoided Shotgun’s eyes. “We’ve lived alongside humans for millennia. Surely you’ll want to study all three creature chromosomes, Professor Roberts?”

“I will.” Chris’s smile was slow and heartfelt. “Are you volunteering your DNA, Professor Bishop?”

“Let’s take one creature chromosome at a time.” Matthew gave Chris a warning look. He might be willing to let students pore over his genetic information, but Matthew remained unconvinced about letting them pry into mine.

Jonathan looked at me appraisingly. “So it’s witches who sparkle?”

“It’s really more of a glimmer,” I said. “Not all witches have it. I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess.”

Saying the words felt freeing, and when nobody ran screaming from the room, I was flooded with a wave of relief and hope. I also had an insane urge to giggle.

“Lights, please.” Chris said.

The lights came up gradually.

“You said we were working on several projects?” Beaker prompted.

“You’ll be analyzing this, too.” I reached into my messenger bag and drew out a large manila envelope. It was stiffened with cardboard inserts so that the contents wouldn’t be bent and damaged. I untied the strings and pulled out the page from the Book of Life. The brightly colored illustration of the mystical union of Sol and Luna shone in the lab’s fluorescent lights. Someone whistled. Shotgun straightened, his eyes fixed on the page.

“Hey, that’s the chemical wedding of mercury and sulfur,” Jonathan said. “I remember seeing that in class, Professor Bishop.”

I gave my former student an approving nod.

“Shouldn’t that be in the Beinecke?” Shotgun asked Matthew. “Or somewhere else that’s safe?”

The emphasis he placed on “safe” was so slight that I thought I might have imagined it. The expression on Matthew’s face told me I hadn’t.

“Surely it’s safe here, Richard?” The prince-assassin was back in Matthew’s smile. It made me uncomfortable to see Matthew’s lethal personae among the flasks and test tubes.

“What are we supposed to do with it?” Mulder asked, openly curious.

“Analyze its DNA,” I replied. “The illumination is on skin. I’d like to know how old the skin is— and the type of creature it came from.”

“I just read about this kind of research,” Jonathan said. “They’re doing mtDNA analysis on medieval books. They hope it will help to date them and determine where they were made.”

Mitochondrial DNA recorded what an organism had inherited from all its maternal ancestors.

“Maybe you could pull those articles for your colleagues, in case they’re not as well read as you are.” Matthew looked pleased that Jonathan was up to date on the literature. “But we’ll be extracting nuclear DNA as well as mtDNA.”

“That’s impossible,” Shotgun protested. “The parchment has gone through a chemical process to turn skin into a writing surface. Both its age and the changes it underwent during manufacture would damage the DNA—if you could even extract enough to work with.”

“It’s difficult, but not impossible,” Matthew corrected. “I’ve worked extensively with old, fragile, and damaged DNA. My methods should work with this sample, too.”

There were excited looks around the room as the implications of the two research plans sank in.

Both projects represented the kind of work that all scientists hoped to do, no matter what stage of their career they were in.

“You don’t think cows or goats gave their hide for that page, do you, Dr. Bishop?” Beaker’s uneasy voice quieted the room.

“No. I think it was a daemon, a human, a vampire, or a witch.” I was pretty sure it wasn’t human skin but couldn’t rule it out entirely.

“Human?” Scully’s eyes popped at the idea. The prospect of other creatures being flayed to make a book didn’t seem to alarm her.

“Anthropodermic bibliopegy,” Mulder whispered. “I thought it was a myth.”

“Technically it’s not anthropodermic bibliopegy,” I said. “The book this came from isn’t just bound in creature remains—it’s completely constructed from it.”

“Why?” Bones asked. “Why not?” Daisy replied enigmatically. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Matthew said, plucking the page from my fingers. “We’re scientists. The whys come after the whats.”

“I think that’s enough for today,” Chris said. “You all look like you need a break.”

“I need a beer,” Jonathan muttered.

“It’s a bit early in the day, but I completely understand. Just remember—you talk, you walk,” Chris said sternly. “That means no talking to each other outside these walls either. I don’t want anyone to overhear.”

“If someone did overhear us talking about witches and vampires, they’d just think we were playing D&D,” Xbox said. Game Boy nodded.

“No. Talking,” Chris repeated.

The door swooshed open. A tiny woman in a purple miniskirt, red boots, and a black T-shirt that read STAND BACK—I’M GOING TO TRY SCIENCE walked through. Miriam Shephard had arrived.

“Who are you?” Chris demanded.

“Your worst nightmare—and new lab manager. Hi, Diana.” Miriam pointed to the can of soda.

“Whose is that?”

“Mine,” Chris said.

“No food or drink in the lab. That goes double for you, Roberts,” Miriam said, jabbing her finger in Chris’s direction.

“Human Resources didn’t tell me they were sending an applicant,” Beaker said, confused.

“I’m not an applicant. I filled out the paperwork this morning, was hired, and got my dog tags.”

Miriam held up her ID card, which was, as mandated, attached to her lanyard.

“But I’m supposed to interview . . .” Chris began. “Who did you say you are?”

“Miriam Shephard. And HR waived the interview after I showed them this.” Miriam pulled her cell phone out of her waistband. “I quote: ‘Have your ass in my lab at nine A.M., and be prepared to explain my mistakes in two hours—no excuses.’” Miriam removed two sheets of paper from her messenger bag, which was stuffed with laptops and paper files. “Who is Tina?”

“I am.” A smiling Tina stepped forward. “Hello, Dr. Shephard.”

“Hello. I’ve got my hiring manifest or health-insurance waiver or something for you. And this is Roberts’s formal reprimand for his inappropriate text message. File it.” Miriam handed over the papers.

She slung the bag from her shoulder and tossed it to Matthew. “I brought everything you asked for, Matthew.”

The entire lab watched, openmouthed, as the bag full of computers sailed through the air. Matthew caught it without damaging a single laptop, and Chris looked at Miriam’s throwing arm with naked admiration.

“Thank you, Miriam,” Matthew murmured. “I trust you had an uneventful journey.” His tone and choice of words were formal, but there was no disguising his relief at seeing her.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she said caustically. Miriam pulled another piece of paper out of the back pocket on her miniskirt. After examining it she looked up. “Which one of you is Beaker?”

“Here.” Beaker walked toward Miriam, her hand extended. “Joy Connelly.”

“Oh. Sorry. All I have is a ridiculous list of nicknames drawn from the dregs of popular culture, along with some acronyms.” Miriam shook Beaker’s hand, drew a pen out of her boot, and crossed something out. She scribbled something next to it. “Nice to meet you. I like your RNA work. Sound stuff. Very helpful. Let’s go get coffee and figure out what needs to be done to whip this place into compliance.”

“The closest decent coffee is a bit of a hike,” Beaker said apologetically.

“Unacceptable.” Miriam made another note on her paper. “We need a café in the basement as soon as possible. I toured the building on my way up here, and that space is wasted now.”

“Should I come with you?” Chris asked, shifting on his feet. “Not now,” Miriam told him. “Surely you have something more important to do. I’ll be back at one o’clock. That’s when I want to see”—she paused and scrutinized her list—“Sherlock, Game Boy, and Scully.”

“What about me, Miriam?” Shotgun asked.

“We’ll catch up later, Richard. Nice to see a familiar face.” She looked down at her list. “What does Roberts call you?”

“Shotgun.” Richard’s mouth twitched.

“I trust it’s because of your speedy sequencing, not because you’ve taken to hunting like humans.”

Miriam’s eyes narrowed. “Is what we’re doing here going to be a problem, Richard?”

“Can’t imagine why,” Richard said with a small shrug. “The Congregation and its concerns are way above my pay grade.”

“Good.” Miriam surveyed her openly curious new charges. “Well? What are you waiting for? If you want something to do, you can always run some gels. Or unpack supply boxes. There are plenty of them stacked up in the corridor.”

Everyone in the lab scattered.

“Thought so.” She smiled at Chris. He looked nervous. “As for you, Roberts, I’ll see you at two o’clock. We have your article to discuss. And your protocols to review. After that, you can take me to dinner. Somewhere nice, with steak and a good wine list.”

Chris looked dazed but nodded.

“Could you give us a minute?” I asked Chris and Beaker. They moved off to the side, Beaker grinning from ear to ear and Chris pinching the bridge of his nose. Matthew joined us.

“You look surprisingly well for someone who’s been to the sixteenth century and back, Matthew.

And Diana’s obviously enceinte,” Miriam said, using the French word for “pregnant.”

“Thanks. Are you at Marcus’s place?” Matthew asked.

“That monstrosity on Orange Street? No chance. It’s a convenient location, but it gives me the creeps.” Miriam shivered. “Too much mahogany.”

“You’re welcome to stay with us on Court Street,” I offered. “There’s a spare bedroom on the third floor. You’d have privacy.”

“Thanks, but I’m around the corner. At Gallowglass’s condo,” Miriam replied.

“What condo?” Matthew frowned.

“The one he bought on Wooster Square. Some converted church. It’s very nice—a bit too Danish in decor, but far preferable to Marcus’s dark-and-gloomy period.” Miriam looked at Matthew sharply.

“Gallowglass did tell you he was coming with me?”

“No, he did not.” Matthew ran his fingers through his hair.

I knew just how my husband felt: The de Clermonts had switched into overprotective mode. Only now they weren’t protecting just me. They were protecting Matthew as well.

16

“Bad news, I’m afraid.” Lucy Meriweather’s lips twisted in a sympathetic grimace. She was one of the Beinecke librarians, and she’d helped me for years, both with my own research and on the occasions when I brought my students to the library to use the rare books there. “If you want to look at Manuscript 408, you’ll have to go into a private room with a curator. And there’s a limit of thirty minutes. They won’t let you sit in the reading room with it.”

“Thirty minutes? With a curator?” I was stunned by the regulations, having spent the last ten months with Matthew, who never paid any attention to such restrictions. “I’m a Yale professor. Why does a curator have to baby-sit me?”

“Those are the rules for everybody—even our own faculty. The whole thing is online,” Lucy reminded me.

But a computer image, no matter how high the resolution, wasn’t going to give me the information I needed. I’d last seen the Voynich manuscript—now Beinecke Library MS 408—in 1591, when Matthew had carried the book from Dr. Dee’s library to the court of Emperor Rudolf in Prague, hoping that we could swap it for the Book of Life. Now I hoped it would shed light on what Edward Kelley might have done with those missing pages.

I’d been searching for clues to their whereabouts since we went to Madison. One missing page had an image of two scaly, long-tailed creatures bleeding into a round vessel. The other image was a splendid rendering of a tree, its branches bearing an impossible combination of flowers, fruit, and leaves and its trunk made up of writhing human shapes. I’d hoped that locating the two pages would be fairly straightforward in the age of Internet searches and digitized images. So far that had not been the case.

“Maybe if you could explain why you need to see the physical book . . .” Lucy trailed off.

But how could I tell Lucy I needed the book so I could use magic on it?

This was the Beinecke Library, for heaven’s sake.

If anyone found out, it would ruin my career.

“I’ll look at the Voynich tomorrow.” Hopefully, I would have another plan by then, since I couldn’t very well haul out my mother’s book of shadows and devise new spells in front of a curator. Juggling my witch self and my scholar self was proving difficult. “Did the other books I requested arrive?”

“They did.” Lucy’s eyebrows lifted when she slid the collection of medieval magical texts across the desk, along with several early printed books. “Changing your research focus?”

In an effort to be prepared for any magical eventuality when finally it came time to recall Ashmole 782 and reunite it with its missing pages, I had called up books that might inspire my efforts to weave new higher-magic spells. Though my mother’s spell book was a valuable resource, I knew from my own experience how far modern witches had fallen when compared to the witches of the past.

“Alchemy and magic aren’t completely distinct,” I told Lucy defensively. Sarah and Em had tried to get me to see that for years. At last I believed them.

Once I was settled in the reading room, the magical manuscripts were as intriguing as I’d hoped, with sigils that reminded me of weavers’ knots and gramarye that was precise and potent. The early modern books on witchcraft, most of which I knew only by title and reputation, were horrifying, however. Each one brimmed with hatred—for witches and anyone else who was different, rebellious, or refused to conform to societal expectations.

Hours later, still seething over Jean Bodin’s vitriolic insistence that all foul opinions about witches and their evil deeds were warranted, I returned the books and manuscripts to Lucy and made an appointment for nine o’clock the next morning to view the Voynich manuscript with the head curator.

I tramped up the staircase to the main level of the library. Here, glass-encased books formed the Beinecke’s spinal column, the core of knowledge and ideas around which the collection was built. Rows and rows of rare books were lined up on the shelves, bathed in light. It was a breathtaking sight, one that reminded me of my purpose as a historian: to rediscover the important truths contained in those old, dusty volumes.

Matthew was waiting for me outside. He was lounging against the low wall overlooking the Beinecke’s stark sculpture garden, his legs crossed at the ankles, thumbing through the messages on his phone. Sensing my presence, he looked up and smiled.

Not a creature alive could have resisted that smile or the look of concentration in those gray-green eyes.

“How was your day?” he asked after giving me a kiss. I’d asked him not to text me constantly, and he’d been unusually cooperative. As a result he genuinely didn’t know.

“A bit frustrating. I suppose my research skills are bound to be rusty after so many months.

Besides”—my voice dropped—“the books all look weird to me. They’re so old and worn compared to how they looked in the sixteenth century.”

Matthew put his head back and laughed. “I hadn’t thought about that. Your surroundings have changed, too, since you last worked on alchemy at Baynard’s Castle.” He looked over his shoulder at the Beinecke. “I know the library is an architectural treasure, but I still think it looks like an ice-cube tray.”

“So it does,” I agreed with a smile. “I suppose if you’d built it, the Beinecke would look like a Norman keep or a Romanesque cloister.”

“I was thinking of something Gothic—far more modern,” Matthew teased. “Ready to go home?”

“More than ready,” I said, wanting to leave Jean Bodin behind me.

He gestured at my book bag. “May I?”

Usually Matthew didn’t ask. He was trying not to smother me, just as he was attempting to rein in his overprotectiveness. I rewarded him with a smile and handed it over without a word.

“Where’s Roger?” I asked Lucy, looking down at my watch. I’d been granted exactly thirty minutes with the Voynich manuscript, and the curator was nowhere to be seen.

“Roger called in sick, just as he always does on the first day of classes. He hates the hysteria and all the freshmen asking for directions. You’re stuck with me.” Lucy picked up the box that held Beinecke MS 408.

“Sounds good.” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. This might be exactly the break I needed.

Lucy led me to a small private room with windows overlooking the reading room, poor lighting, and a beat-up foam cradle. Security cameras mounted high on the walls would deter any reader from stealing or damaging one of the Beinecke’s priceless books.

“I won’t start the clock until you unwrap it.” Lucy handed me the boxed manuscript. It was all she was carrying. There were no papers, reading materials, or even a cell phone to distract her from the job of monitoring me.

Though I normally flipped manuscripts open to look at the images, I wanted to take my time with the Voynich. I slid the manuscript’s limp vellum binding—the early-modern equivalent of a paperback— through my fingers. Images flooded my mind, my witch’s touch revealing that the present cover was put on the book several centuries after it was written and at least fifty years after I’d held it in Dee’s library.

I could see the bookbinder’s face and seventeenth-century hairstyle when I touched the spine.

I carefully laid the Voynich in the waiting foam cradle and opened the book. I lowered my nose until it practically touched the first, stained page.

“What are you doing, Diana? Smelling it?” Lucy laughed softly.

“As a matter of fact, I am.” If Lucy was going to cooperate with my strange requests this morning, I needed to be as honest as possible.

Openly curious, Lucy came around the table. She gave the Voynich a good sniff, too.

“Smells like an old manuscript to me. Lots of bookworm damage.” She swung her reading glasses down and took an even closer look. “Robert Hooke examined bookworms under his microscope in the seventeenth century. He called them ‘the teeth of time.’” Looking at the first page of the Voynich, I could see why. It was riddled with holes in the upper right corner and the bottom margin, both of which were stained. “I think the bookworms must have been drawn to the oils that readers’ fingers transferred to the parchment.”

“What makes you say that?” Lucy asked. It was just the response I’d hoped for.

“The damage is worst where a reader would have touched to turn to the next folio.” I rested my finger on the corner of the page, as if I were pointing to something.

That brief contact set off another explosion of faces, one morphing into another: Emperor Rudolf’s avaricious expression; a series of unknown men dressed in clothing from different periods, two of them clerics; a woman taking careful notes; another woman packing up a box of books. And the daemon Edward Kelley, furtively tucking something into the Voynich’s cover.

“There is a lot of damage on the bottom edge, too, where the manuscript would have rested against the body if you were carrying it.” Ignorant of the slide show playing before my witch’s third eye, Lucy peered down at the page. “The clothes of the time were probably pretty oily. Didn’t most people wear wool?”

“Wool and silk.” I hesitated, then decided to risk everything—my library card, my reputation, perhaps even my job. “Can I ask a favor, Lucy?”

She looked at me warily. “That depends.”

“I want to rest my hand flat on the page. It will be only for a moment.” I watched her carefully to gauge whether she was planning to call in the security guards for reinforcement.

“You can’t touch the pages, Diana. You know that. If I let you, I would be fired.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m sorry to put you in such a tough spot.”

“Why do you need to touch it?” Lucy asked after a moment of silence, her curiosity aroused.

“I have a sixth sense when it comes to old books. Sometimes I can detect information about them that’s not visible to the naked eye.” That sounded weirder than I’d anticipated. “Are you some kind of book witch?” Lucy’s eyes narrowed.

“That’s exactly what I am,” I said with a laugh.

“I’d like to help you, Diana, but we’re on camera—though there’s no sound, thank God. Everything that happens in this room is taped, and someone is supposed to be watching the monitor whenever the room is occupied.” She shook her head. “It’s too risky.”

“What if nobody could see what I was doing?”

“If you cut off the camera or put chewing gum on the lens—and yes, someone did try that— security will be here in five seconds,” Lucy replied.

“I wasn’t going to use chewing gum, but something like this.” I pulled my familiar disguising spell around me. It would make any magic I worked all but invisible. Then I turned my right hand over and touched the tip of my ring finger to my thumb, pinching the green and yellow threads that filled the room into a tiny bundle. Together the two colors blended into the unnatural yellow-green that was good for disorientation and deception spells. I planned on tying them up in the fifth knot—since the security cameras definitely qualified as a challenge. The fifth knot’s image burned at my right wrist in anticipation.

“Nice tats,” Lucy commented, peering at my hands. “Why did you choose gray ink?”

Gray? When magic was in the air, my hands were every color of the rainbow. My disguising spell must be working.

“Because gray goes with everything.” It was the first thing to cross my mind.

“Oh. Good thinking.” She still looked puzzled.

I returned to my spell. It needed some black in it, as well as the yellow and green. I snagged the fine black threads that surrounded me on my left thumb and then slid them through a loop made by my right thumb and ring finger. The result looked like an unorthodox mudra—one of the hand positions in yoga.

“With knot of five, the spell will thrive,” I murmured, envisioning the completed weaving with my third eye. The twist of yellow-green and black tied itself into an unbreakable knot with five crossings.

“Did you just bewitch the Voynich?” Lucy whispered with alarm.

“Of course not.” After my experiences with bewitched manuscripts, I wouldn’t do such a thing lightly. “I bewitched the air around it.”

To show Lucy what I meant, I moved my hand over the first page, hovering about two inches above the surface. The spell made it appear that my fingers stopped at the bottom of the book.

“Um, Diana? Whatever you were trying to do didn’t work. You’re just touching the edge of the page like you’re supposed to,” Lucy said.

“Actually my hand is over here.” I wiggled my fingers so that they peeked out over the top edge of the book. It was a bit like the old magician’s trick where a woman was put in a box and the box was sawed in half. “Try it. Don’t touch the page yet—just move your hand so that it covers the text.”

I slid my hand out to give Lucy room. She followed my directions and slid her hand between the Voynich and the deception spell. Her hand appeared to stop when it reached the edge of the book, but if you looked carefully, you could see that her forearm was getting shorter. She withdrew quickly, as though she’d touched a hot pan. She turned to me and stared.

“You are a witch.” Lucy swallowed, then smiled. “What a relief. I always suspected you were hiding something, and I was afraid it might be something unsavory—or even illegal.” Like Chris, she didn’t seem remotely surprised to discover that there really were witches.

“Will you let me break the rules?” I glanced down at the Voynich.

“Only if you tell me what you learn. This damned manuscript is the bane of our existence. We get ten requests a day to see it and turn down almost every one.” Lucy returned to her seat and adopted a watchful position. “But be careful. If someone sees you, you’ll lose your library privileges. And I don’t think you would survive if you were banned from the Beinecke.”

I took a deep breath and stared down at the open book. The key to activating my magic was curiosity. But if I wanted more than a dizzying display of faces, I would need to formulate a careful question before putting hand to parchment. I was more certain than ever that the Voynich held important clues about the Book of Life and its missing pages. But I was only going to get one chance to find out what they were.

“What did Edward Kelley place inside the Voynich, and what happened to it?” I whispered before looking down and gently resting my hand on the first folio of the manuscript.

One of the missing pages from the Book of Life appeared before my eyes: the illumination of the tree with its trunk full of writhing, human shapes. It was gray and ghostly, transparent enough that I could see through it to my hand and the writing on the Voynich’s first folio.

A second shadowy page appeared atop the first: two dragons shedding their blood so that it fell into a vessel below.

A third insubstantial page layered over the previous two: the illumination of the alchemical wedding.

For a moment the layers of text and image remained stacked in a magical palimpsest atop the Voynich’s stained parchment. Then, the alchemical wedding dissolved, followed by the picture of the two dragons. But the page with the tree remained.

Hopeful that the image had become real, I lifted my hand from the page and withdrew it. I gathered up the knot at the heart of the spell and jammed it over my pencil eraser, rendering it temporarily invisible and revealing Beinecke MS 408. My heart sank. There was no missing page from the Book of Life there.

“Not what you expected to see?” Lucy looked at me sympathetically.

“No. Something was here once—a few pages from another manuscript—but they’re long gone.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Maybe the sale records mention them. We have boxes of paperwork on the Voynich’s acquisition.

Do you want to see them?” she asked.

The dates of book sales and the names of the people who bought and sold the books could be assembled into a genealogy that described a book’s history and descent right down to the present. In this case it might also provide clues as to who might once have owned the pictures of the tree and the dragons that Kelley removed from the Book of Life.

“Absolutely!” I replied.

Lucy boxed up the Voynich and returned it to the locked hold. She returned shortly thereafter with a trolley loaded with folders, boxes, various notebooks, and a tube.

“Here’s everything on the Voynich, in all its confusing glory. It’s been picked through thousands of times by researchers, but nobody was looking for three missing manuscript pages.” She headed toward our private room. “Come on. I’ll help you sort through it all.”

It took thirty minutes simply to organize the materials on the long table. Some of it would be no use at all: the tube and the scrapbook full of newspaper clippings, the old photostats, and lectures and articles written about the manuscript after the collector Wilfrid Voynich purchased it in 1912. That still left folders full of correspondence, handwritten notes, and a clutch of notebooks kept by Wilfrid’s wife, Ethel.

“Here’s a copy of the chemical analysis of the manuscript, a printout of the cataloging information, and a list of everyone granted access to the manuscript in the past three years.” Lucy handed me a sheaf of papers. “You can keep them. Don’t tell anyone I gave you that list of library patrons, though.”

Matthew would have to go over the chemistry with me—it was all about the inks used in the manuscript, a subject that interested both of us. The list of people who’d seen the manuscript was surprisingly short. Hardly anyone got to look at it anymore. Those who had been granted access were mostly academics—a historian of science from the University of Southern California and another from Cal State Fullerton, a mathematician-cryptographer from Princeton, another from Australia. I’d had coffee with one of the visitors before leaving for Oxford: a writer of popular fiction who was interested in alchemy. One name jumped off the page, though.

Peter Knox had seen the Voynich this past May, before Emily died. “That bastard.” My fingers tingled, and the knots on my wrists burned in warning.

“Something wrong?” Lucy asked.

“There was a name on the list I didn’t expect to see.”

“Ah. A scholarly rival.” She nodded sagely.

“I guess you could say that.” But my difficulty with Knox was more than an argument over competing interpretations. This was war. And if I were going to win it, I would need to pull ahead of him for a change.

The problem was that I had little experience tracking down manuscripts and establishing their provenance. The papers I knew best had belonged to the chemist Robert Boyle. All seventy-four volumes of them had been presented to the Royal Society in 1769, and, like everything else in the Royal Society archives, they were meticulously cataloged, indexed, and cross-referenced.

“If I want to trace the Voynich’s chain of ownership, where do I start?” I mused aloud, staring at the materials.

“The fastest way would be for one of us to start at the manuscript’s origins and work forward while the other starts at the Beinecke’s acquisition of it and works backward. With luck we’ll meet at the middle.” Lucy handed me a folder. “You’re the historian. You take the old stuff.”

I opened the folder, expecting to see something relating to Rudolf II. Instead I found a letter from a mathematician in Prague, Johannes Marcus Marci. It was written in Latin, dated 1665, and sent to someone in Rome addressed as “Reverende et Eximie Domine in Christo Pater.” The recipient was a cleric then, perhaps one of the men I’d seen when I touched the corner of the Voynich’s first page.

I quickly scanned the rest of the text, noting that the cleric was a Father Athanasius and that Marci’s letter was accompanied by a mysterious book that needed deciphering. The Book of Life, perhaps?

Marci said that attempts had been made to contact Father Athanasius before, but the letters had been met with silence. Excited, I kept reading. When the third paragraph revealed the identity of Father Athanasius, however, my excitement turned to dismay.

“The Voynich manuscript once belonged to Athanasius Kircher?” If the missing pages had passed into Kircher’s hands, they could be anywhere.

“I’m afraid so,” Lucy replied. “I understand he was quite . . . er, wide-ranging in his interests.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said. Athanasius Kircher’s modest goal had been nothing less than universal knowledge. He had published forty books and was an internationally bestselling author as well as an inventor. Kircher’s museum of rare and ancient objects was a famous stop on early European grand tours, his range of correspondents extensive, and his library vast. I didn’t have the language skills to work through Kircher’s oeuvre. More important, I lacked the time.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, making me jump.

“Excuse me, Lucy.” I slid the phone out and checked the display. On it was a text message from Matthew.

Where are you? Gallowglass is waiting for you. We have a doctor’s appointment in ninety minutes.

I cursed silently. I’m just leaving the Beinecke, I typed back.

“My husband and I have a date, Lucy. I’m going to have to pick up with this again tomorrow,” I said, closing the folder containing Marci’s letter to Kircher. “A reliable source told me you were on campus with someone tall, dark, and handsome.” Lucy grinned.

“That’s my husband, all right.” I smiled. “Can I look through this stuff tomorrow?”

“Leave everything with me. Things are pretty slow around here at the moment. I’ll see what I can piece together.”

“Thanks for your help, Lucy. I’m under a tight—and nonnegotiable—deadline.” I scooped up pencil, laptop, and pad of paper and rushed to meet Gallowglass. Matthew had seconded his nephew to act as my security detail. Gallowglass was also responsible for monitoring Benjamin’s Internet feed, but so far the screen had remained blank.

“Hello, Auntie. You’re looking bonny.” He kissed me on the cheek.

“I’m sorry. I’m late.”

“Of course you’re late. You were with your books. I didn’t expect you for another hour at least,”

Gallowglass said, dismissing my apology.

When we got to the lab, Matthew had the image of the alchemical wedding from Ashmole 782 in front of him and was so absorbed that he didn’t even look up when the door pinged. Chris and Sherlock were standing at his shoulder, watching intently. Scully sat on a rolling stool nearby. Game Boy had a tiny instrument in her hand and was holding it dangerously close to the manuscript page.

“You get scruffier all the time, Gallowglass. When did you last comb your hair?” Miriam swiped a card through the reader at the door. It was marked VISITOR. Chris was taking security seriously.

“Yesterday.” Gallowglass patted the back and sides of his head. “Why? Is a bird nesting in it?”

“One might well be.” Miriam nodded in my direction. “Hi, Diana. Matthew will be with you soon.”

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

“Trying to teach a postgraduate student with no knowledge of biology or proper laboratory procedures how to remove DNA samples from parchment.” Miriam looked at the group surrounding Matthew with disapproval. “I don’t know why Roberts funds graduate students who don’t even know how to run agarose gels, but I’m just the lab manager.”

Across the room Game Boy let out a frustrated expletive.

“Pull up a stool. This could be a while.” Miriam rolled her eyes.

“Don’t worry. It takes practice,” Matthew told Game Boy, his voice soothing. “I’m nothing but thumbs with that computer game of yours. Try again.”

Again? My mouth dried up. Making repeated stabs at the page from Ashmole 782 might damage the palimpsest. I started toward my husband, and Chris spotted me.

“Hey, Diana.” He intercepted me with a hug. He looked at Gallowglass. “I’m Chris Roberts.

Diana’s friend.”

“Gallowglass. Matthew’s nephew.” Gallowglass surveyed the room, and his nose wrinkled.

“Something stinks.”

“The grad students played a little joke on Matthew.” Chris pointed to the computer terminal, which was festooned with wreaths of garlic bulbs. A crucifix designed for a car dashboard was attached to the mouse pad with a suction cup. Chris turned his attention to Gallowglass’s neck with an intensity that was practically vampiric. “Do you wrestle?”

“Weeell, I have been known to do so for sport.” Gallowglass looked down shyly, his cheeks dimpled.

“Not Greco-Roman by any chance?” Chris asked. “My partner injured his knee and will be in rehab for months. I’m looking for a temporary replacement.”

“It must be Greek. I’m not sure about the Roman part.”

“Where did you learn?” Chris asked.

“My grandfather taught me.” Gallowglass scrunched up his face as his concentration deepened. “I think he wrestled a giant once. He was a fierce fighter.”

“Is this a vampire grandfather?” Chris asked.

Gallowglass nodded. “Vampire wrestling must be fun to watch.” Chris grinned. “Like alligator wrestling, but without the tail.”

“No wrestling. I’m serious, Chris.” I wanted no responsibility, no matter how indirect, for causing bodily harm to a MacArthur genius.

“Spoilsport.” Chris let out a piercing whistle. “Wolfman! Your wife is here.”

Wolfman?

“I was aware of that, Christopher.” Matthew’s tone was frosty, but he gave me a warm smile that made my toes curl. “Hello, Diana. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m finished with Janette.”

“Game Boy’s name is Janette?” Chris murmured. “Who knew?”

“I did. So did Matthew. Perhaps you could tell me why she’s in my lab?” Miriam asked. “Janette’s Ph.D. will be in computational bioinformatics. She belongs in a room full of terminals, not test tubes.”

“I like the way her brain works,” Chris said with a shrug. “She’s a gamer and sees patterns in lab results that the rest of us miss. So she never did advanced work in biology. Who cares? I’m up to my eyeballs in biologists already.”

Chris looked at Matthew and Game Boy working together and shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Matthew is wasted in a research laboratory. Your husband belongs in a classroom. He’s a born teacher.” Chris tapped Gallowglass on the arm. “Call me if you want to meet up in the gym. Diana has my number.”

Chris went back to his work and I turned my attention to Matthew. I’d only seen flashes of this side of my husband, when he was interacting with Annie or Jack in London, but Chris was right. Matthew was using all the tools in a teacher’s bag of tricks: modeling, positive reinforcement, patience, just the right amount of praise, and a touch of humor.

“Why can’t we just swab the surface again?” Game Boy asked. “I know it came up with mouse DNA, but if we picked a fresh spot, it might be different.”

“Maybe,” Matthew said, “but there were a lot of mice in medieval libraries. Still, you should feel free to swab it again after you’ve taken this sample.”

Game Boy sighed and steadied her hand.

“Deep breath, Janette.” Matthew gave her an encouraging nod. “Take your time.”

With great care Game Boy inserted a needle so fine it was almost invisible into the very edge of the parchment.

“There you go,” Matthew said softly. “Slow and steady.”

“I did it!” Game Boy shouted. You would have thought she’d split the atom. There were whoops of support, a high five, and a muttered “About time” from Miriam. But it was Matthew’s response that mattered. Game Boy turned to him expectantly.

“Eureka,” Matthew said, his hands spread wide. Game Boy grinned broadly. “Well done, Janette.

We’ll make a geneticist out of you yet.”

“No way. I’d rather build a computer from spare parts than do that again.” Game Boy stripped her gloves off quickly.

“Hello, darling. How was your day?” Matthew rose and kissed me on the cheek. One eyebrow lifted as he looked at Gallowglass, who silently conveyed that all was well.

“Let’s see . . . I worked some magic in the Beinecke.”

“Should I worry?” Matthew asked, clearly thinking of the havoc that witchwind and witchfire might cause.

“Nope,” I said. “And I have a lead on one of the missing pages from Ashmole 782.”

“That was quick. You can tell me about it on our way to the doctor’s office,” he said, swiping his card through the reader.

“By all means take your time with Diana. There’s nothing pressing here. One hundred and twenty five vampire genes identified and only four hundred to go,” Miriam called as we left. “Chris will be counting the minutes.”

“Five hundred genes to go!” Chris shouted.

“Your gene prediction is way off,” Miriam replied.

“A hundred bucks says it’s not.” Chris glanced up from a report.

“That the best you can do?” Miriam pursed her lips.

“I’ll empty my piggy bank when I get home and let you know, Miriam,” Chris said. Miriam’s lips twitched.

“Let’s go,” said Matthew, “before they start arguing about something else.”

“Oh, they’re not arguing,” Gallowglass said, holding the door open for us. “They’re flirting.”

My jaw dropped. “What makes you say that?”

“Chris likes to give people nicknames.” Gallowglass turned to Matthew. “Chris called you Wolfman. What does he call Miriam?”

Matthew thought for a moment. “Miriam.”

“Exactly.” Gallowglass grinned from ear to ear.

Matthew swore.

“Don’t fret, Uncle. Miriam hasn’t given any man a tumble since Bertrand was killed.”

“Miriam . . . and a human?” Matthew sounded stunned.

“Nothing will come of it,” Gallowglass said soothingly as the elevator doors opened. “She will break Chris’s heart, of course, but there’s naught we can do about it.”

I was deeply grateful to Miriam. Now Matthew and Gallowglass had someone to worry about besides me.

“Poor lad.” Gallowglass sighed, pushing the button that closed the elevator doors. As we descended, he cracked his knuckles. “Perhaps I will wrestle with him after all. A good thrashing always clears the mind.”

A few days ago, I’d worried whether the vampires would survive being at Yale once the students and faculty were around. Now I wondered whether Yale would survive the vampires.

16

I stood in front of the refrigerator, staring at the images of our children with my hands curved around my belly. Where had the month of September gone?

The three-dimensional ultrasound pictures of Baby A and Baby B—Matthew and I had elected not to learn the sexes of our two children—were uncanny. Instead of the familiar ghostly silhouette I’d seen in friends’ pregnancy scans, these revealed detailed images of faces with crinkled brows, thumbs rammed into mouths, perfectly bowed lips. My finger reached out, and I touched Baby B’s nose.

Cool hands slid around me from behind, and a tall, muscular body provided a strong pillar for me to rest against. Matthew pressed lightly on a spot a few inches above my pubic bone.

“B’s nose is just there in that picture,” he said softly. His other hand rested a bit higher on the swell of my belly. “Baby A was here.”

We stood silently as the chain that had always joined me to Matthew extended to accommodate these two bright, fragile links. For months I had known that Matthew’s children—our children—were growing inside me. But I had not felt it. Everything was different now that I’d seen their faces, crumpled in concentration as they did the hard work of becoming.

“What are you thinking?” Matthew asked, curious about my extended silence.

“I’m not thinking. I’m feeling.” And what I was feeling was impossible to describe.

His laugh was soft, as though he didn’t want to disturb the babies’ sleep.

“They’re both all right,” I assured myself. “Normal. Perfect.”

“They are perfectly healthy. But none of our children will ever be normal. And thank God for that.”

He kissed me. “What’s on your schedule for today?”

“More work at the library.” My initial, magical lead that had promised to reveal the fate of at least one of the Book of Life’s missing pages had turned into weeks of hard, scholarly slogging. Lucy and I had been working steadily to discover just how the Voynich manuscript came into Athanasius Kircher’s hands and later into Yale’s possession, hoping to catch a trace of the mysterious tree image that had remained superimposed on the Voynich for a few precious moments. We’d set up camp in the same small private room where I’d worked my spell so that we could talk without disturbing the growing number of students and faculty using the Beinecke’s adjacent reading room. There we’d pored over library lists and indexes of Kircher’s correspondence, and we’d written dozens of letters to various experts in the United States and abroad—with no concrete results.

“You’re remembering what the doctor said about taking breaks?” Matthew asked. With the exception of the ultrasound, our trip to the doctor’s office had been sobering. She had drummed into me the dangers of premature labor and preeclampsia, the necessity of staying hydrated, my body’s additional need for rest.

“My blood pressure is fine.” This, I understood, was one of the biggest risks: that through a combination of dehydration, fatigue, and stress, my blood pressure would suddenly spike.

“I know.” Monitoring my blood pressure was my vampire husband’s responsibility, and Matthew took it seriously. “But it won’t remain that way if you push yourself.”

“This is my twenty-fifth week of pregnancy, Matthew. It’s almost October.”

“I know that, too.”

After October 1 the doctor was grounding me. If we remained in New Haven where we could continue working, the only way to get to the Bodleian Library would be by some combination of boat, plane, and automobile. Even now I was restricted to flights of no more than three hours.

“We can still get you to Oxford by plane.” Matthew knew of my concerns. “It will have to stop in Montreal, and then Newfoundland, Iceland, and Ireland, but if you must get to London, we can manage it.” His expression suggested that he and I might have different ideas about what circumstances would justify my crossing the Atlantic in this hopscotch fashion. “Of course, if you’d prefer we can go to Europe now.”

“Let’s not borrow trouble.” I pulled away from him. “Tell me about your day.”

“Chris and Miriam think they have a new approach to understanding the blood-rage gene,” he said.

“They’re planning to trawl through my genome using one of Marcus’s theories about noncoding DNA.

Their current hypothesis is that it might contain triggers that control how and to what extent blood rage manifests in a given individual.”

“This is Marcus’s junk DNA—the ninety-eight percent of the genome that doesn’t code proteins, right?” I took a bottle of water out of the fridge and popped the cap off to show my commitment to hydration.

“That’s right. I’m still resistant to the notion, but the evidence they’re pulling together is convincing.” Matthew looked wry. “I really am an old Mendelian fossil, just as Chris said.”

“Yes, but you’re my Mendelian fossil,” I said. Matthew laughed. “And if Marcus’s hypothesis is correct, what will that mean in terms of finding a cure?”

His smile died. “It may mean that there is no cure—that blood rage is a hereditary genetic condition that develops in response to a multitude of factors. It can be far easier to cure a disease with a single, unequivocal cause, like a germ or a single gene mutation.”

“Can the contents of my genome help?” There had been much discussion of the babies since I’d had my ultrasound, and speculation as to what effect a witch’s blood—a weaver’s in particular—might have on the blood-rage gene. I didn’t want my children to end up as science experiments, especially after seeing Benjamin’s horrific laboratory, but I had no objection to doing my bit for scientific progress.

“I don’t want your DNA to be the subject of further scientific research.” Matthew stalked to the window. “I should never have taken that sample from you back in Oxford.”

I smothered a sigh. With every hard-won freedom Matthew granted me and each conscious effort he made not to smother me with overpossessiveness, his authoritarian traits had to find a new outlet. It was like watching someone try to dam up a raging river. And Matthew’s inability to locate Benjamin and release his captive witch were only making it worse. Every lead Matthew received about Benjamin’s current location turned into a dead end, just like my attempts to trace Ashmole 782’s missing pages.Before I could try to reason with him, my phone rang. It was a distinctive ringtone—the opening bars of “Sympathy for the Devil”—which I had not yet managed to change. When the phone was programmed, someone had irrevocably attached it to one of my contacts.

“Your brother is calling.” Matthew’s tone was capable of freezing Old Faithful.

“What do you want, Baldwin?” There was no need for polite preamble.

“Your lack of faith wounds me, sister.” Baldwin laughed. “I’m in New York. I thought I might come to New Haven and make sure that your accommodations are suitable.”

Matthew’s vampire hearing made my conversation with Baldwin completely audible. The oath he uttered in response to his brother’s words was blistering.

“Matthew is with me. Gallowglass and Miriam are one block away. Mind your own business.” I drew the phone from my ear, eager to disconnect.

“Diana.” Baldwin’s voice managed to extend to even my limited human hearing.

I returned the phone to my ear.

“There is another vampire working in Matthew’s lab—Richard Bellingham is the name he goes by now.”

“Yes.” My eyes went to Matthew, who was standing in a deceptively relaxed position in front of the window—legs spread slightly, hands clasped behind his back. It was a stance of readiness.

“Be careful around him.” Baldwin’s voice flattened. “You don’t want me to have to order Matthew to get rid of Bellingham. But I will do that, without hesitation, should I think he possesses information that could prove . . . difficult . . . for the family.”

“He knows I’m a witch. And that I’m pregnant.” It was evident that Baldwin knew a great deal about our life in New Haven already. There was no point in hiding the truth. “Every vampire in that provincial town knows. And they travel to New York. Often.” Baldwin paused. “In my family if you create a mess, you clean it up—or Matthew does. Those are your options.”

“It’s always such a pleasure to hear from you, brother.”

Baldwin merely laughed.

“Is that all, my lord?”

“It’s ‘sieur.’ Do you need me to come there and refresh your memory of vampire law and etiquette?”

“No,” I said, spitting out the word.

“Good. Tell Matthew to stop blocking my calls, and we won’t have to repeat this conversation.”

The line went dead.

“That f—” I began.

Matthew wrenched the phone out of my hand and flung it across the room. It made a satisfying sound of breaking glass when it hit the mantel of the defunct fireplace. Then his hands were cradling my face as though the violent moment that came before had been a mirage.

“Now I’ll have to get another phone.” I looked into Matthew’s stormy eyes. They were a reliable indication of his state of mind: clear gray when he was at ease, appearing green when his pupils enlarged with emotion and blotted out all but the green rim around his iris. At the moment, the gray and green were battling for supremacy.

“Baldwin will no doubt have one here before the day is done.” Matthew’s attention fixed on the pulse at my throat.

“Let’s hope your brother doesn’t feel he needs to deliver it himself.”

Matthew’s eyes drifted to my lips. “He’s not my brother. He’s your brother.”

“Hello the house!” Gallowglass’s booming, cheerful voice rose up from the downstairs hall.

Matthew’s kiss was hard and demanding. I gave him what he needed, deliberately softening my spine and my mouth so that he could feel, in this moment at least, that he was in charge. “Oh. Sorry. Shall I come back?” Gallowglass said from the stairs. Then his nostrils flared as he detected my husband’s overpowering clove scent. “Something wrong, Matthew?”

“Nothing that Baldwin’s sudden and seemingly accidental death wouldn’t fix,” Matthew said darkly.

“Business as usual, then. I thought you might want me to walk Auntie to the library.”

“Why?” Matthew asked.

“Miriam called. She’s in a mood and wants you to ‘get out of Diana’s knickers and into my lab.’”

Gallowglass consulted the palm of his hand. It was covered in writing. “Yep. That’s exactly what she said.”

“I’ll get my bag,” I murmured, pulling away from Matthew.

“Hello, Apple and Bean.” Gallowglass stared, besotted, at the images on the fridge. He thought calling them Baby A and Baby B was beneath their dignity and so had bestowed nicknames upon them.

“Bean has Granny’s fingers. Did you notice, Matthew?”

Gallowglass kept the mood light and the banter flowing on our walk to campus. Matthew accompanied us to the Beinecke, as though he expected Baldwin to rise up out of the sidewalk before us with a new phone and another dire warning.

Leaving the de Clermonts behind, it was with relief that I opened the door into our research room.

“I’ve never seen such a tangled provenance!” Lucy exclaimed the moment I appeared. “So John Dee did own the Voynich?”

“That’s right.” I put down my pad of paper and my pencil. Other than my magic, they were the only items I carried. Happily, my power didn’t set off the metal detectors. “Dee gave the Voynich to Emperor Rudolf in exchange for Ashmole 782.” It was, in truth, a bit more complicated than that, as was often the case when Gallowglass and Matthew were involved in the transfer of property.

“The Bodleian Library manuscript that’s missing three pages?” Lucy held her head in her hands and stared down at the notes, clippings, and correspondence littering the table. “Edward Kelley removed those pages before Ashmole 782 was sent back to England. Kelley temporarily put them inside the Voynich for safekeeping. At some point he gave two of the pages away.

But he kept one for himself—the page with the illumination of a tree on it.” It really was impossibly tangled.

“So it must have been Kelley who gave the Voynich manuscript—along with the picture of the tree—to Emperor Rudolf’s botanist, the Jacobus de Tepenecz whose signature is on the back of the first folio.” Time had faded the ink, but Lucy had shown me photographs taken under ultraviolet light.

“Probably,” I said.

“And after the botanist, an alchemist owned it?” She made some annotations on her Voynich timeline. It was looking a bit messy with our constant deletions and additions.

“Georg Baresch. I haven’t been able to find out much about him.” I studied my own notes.

“Baresch was friends with de Tepenecz, and Marci acquired the Voynich from him.”

“The Voynich manuscript’s illustrations of strange flora would certainly intrigue a botanist—not to mention the illumination of a tree from Ashmole 782. But why would an alchemist be interested in them?” Lucy asked.

“Because some of the Voynich’s illustrations resemble alchemical apparatus. The ingredients and processes needed to make the philosopher’s stone were jealously guarded secrets, and alchemists often hid them in symbols: plants, animals, even people.” The Book of Life contained the same potent blend of the real and the symbolic.

“And Athanasius Kircher was interested in words and symbols, too. That’s why you think he would have been interested in the illumination of the tree as well as the Voynich,” Lucy said slowly.

“Yes. It’s why the missing letter that Georg Baresch claims he sent to Kircher in 1637 is so significant.” I slid a folder in her direction. “The Kircher expert I know from Stanford is in Rome. She volunteered to go to the Pontifical Gregorian University archives, where the bulk of Kircher’s correspondence is kept, and nose around. She sent me a transcription of the later letter from Baresch to Kircher written in 1639. It refers back to their exchange, but the Jesuits told her the original letter can’t be found.”

“When librarians say ‘it’s lost,’ I always wonder if that’s really true,” she grumbled.

“Me, too.” I thought wryly of my experiences with Ashmole 782.

Lucy opened the folder and groaned. “This is in Latin, Diana. You’re going to have to tell me what it says.”

“Baresch thought Kircher might be able to decipher the Voynich’s secrets. Kircher had been working on Egyptian hieroglyphs. It made him an international celebrity, and people sent him mysterious texts and writings from far and wide,” I explained. “To better hook Kircher’s interest, Baresch forwarded partial transcripts of the Voynich to Rome in 1637 and again in 1639.”

“There’s no specific mention of a picture of a tree, though,” Lucy said.

“No. But it’s still possible that Baresch sent it to Kircher as an additional lure. It’s of a much higher quality than the Voynich’s pictures.” I sat back in my chair. “I’m afraid that’s as far as I’ve been able to get. What have you found out about the book sale where Wilfrid Voynich acquired the manuscript?”

Just as Lucy opened her mouth to reply, a librarian rapped on the door and entered.

“Your husband is on the phone, Professor Bishop.” He looked at me in disapproval. “Please tell him that we aren’t a hotel switchboard and don’t usually take calls for our patrons.”

“Sorry,” I said, getting out of my chair. “I had an accident with my phone this morning. My husband is a bit . . . er, overprotective.” I gestured apologetically at my rounded form.

The librarian looked slightly mollified and pointed to a phone on the wall that had a single flashing light. “Use that.”

“How did Baldwin get here so fast?” I asked Matthew when we were connected. It was the only thing I could think of that would make Matthew call the library’s main number. “Did he come by helicopter?”

“It’s not Baldwin. We’ve discovered something strange about the picture of the chemical wedding from Ashmole 782.”

“Strange how?”

“Come and see. I’d rather not talk about it on the phone.”

“Be right there.” I hung up and turned to Lucy. “I’m so sorry, Lucy, but I have to go. My husband wants me to help with a problem in his lab. Can we continue later?”

“Sure,” she said.

I hesitated. “Would you like to come with me? You could meet Matthew—and see a page from Ashmole 782.”

“One of the fugitive sheets?” Lucy was out of her chair in an instant. “Give me a minute and I’ll meet you upstairs.”

Rushing outside, we ran smack into my bodyguard.

“Slow down, Auntie. You don’t want to joggle the babes.” Gallowglass gripped my elbow until I was steady on my feet, then gazed down at my petite companion. “Are you all right, miss?”

“M-me?” Lucy stammered, craning her neck to make eye contact with the big Gael. “I’m fine.”

“Just checking,” Gallowglass said kindly. “I’m as big as a galleon under full sail. Running into me has bruised men far bigger than you.”

“This is my husband’s nephew, Gallowglass. Gallowglass, Lucy Meriweather. She’s coming with us.” After that hasty introduction, I dashed in the direction of Kline Biology Tower, my bag banging against my hip. After a few clumsy strides, Gallowglass took the bag and transferred it to his own arm.

“He carries your books?” Lucy whispered.

“And groceries,” I whispered back. “He would carry me, too, if I let him.”

Gallowglass snorted.

“Hurry,” I said, my worn sneakers squeaking on the polished floors of the building where Matthew and Chris worked.

At the doorway to Chris’s lab, I swiped my ID card and the doors opened. Miriam was waiting for us inside, looking at her watch.

“Time!” she called. “I won. Again. That’s ten dollars, Roberts.”

Chris groaned. “I was sure Gallowglass would slow her down.” The lab was quiet today, with only a handful of people working. I waved at Beaker. Scully was there, too, standing next to Mulder and a digital scale.

“Sorry to interrupt your research, but we wanted you to know straightaway what we discovered.”

Matthew glanced at Lucy.

“Matthew, this is Lucy Meriweather. I thought Lucy should see the page from Ashmole 782, since she’s spending so much time searching for its lost siblings,” I explained.

“A pleasure, Lucy. Come see what you’re helping Diana to find.” Matthew’s expression went from wary to welcoming, and he gestured toward Mulder and Scully. “Miriam, can you log Lucy in as a guest?”

“Already done.” Miriam tapped Chris on the shoulder. “Staring at that chromosome map isn’t getting you anywhere, Roberts. Take a break.”

Chris flung down his pen. “We need more data.”

“We’re scientists. Of course we need more data.” The air between Chris and Miriam hummed with tension. “Come and look at the pretty picture anyway.”

“Oh, okay,” Chris grumbled, giving Miriam a sheepish smile.

The illumination of the alchemical wedding rested on a wooden book stand. No matter how often I saw it, the image always amazed me—and not just because the personifications of sulfur and quicksilver looked like Matthew and me. So much detail surrounded the chemical couple: the rocky landscape, the wedding guests, the mythical and symbolic beasts who witnessed the ceremony, the phoenix who encompassed the scene within flaming wings. Next to the page was something that looked like a flat metal postal scale with a blank sheet of parchment in the tray.

“Scully will tell us what she discovered.” Matthew gave the student the floor. “This illuminated page is too heavy,” Scully said, blinking her eyes behind a pair of thick lenses.

“Heavier than a single page should be, I mean.”

“Sarah and I both thought it felt heavy.” I looked at Matthew. “Remember when the house first gave us the page in Madison?” I reminded him in a whisper.

He nodded. “Perhaps it’s something a vampire can’t perceive. Even now that I’ve seen Scully’s evidence, the page feels entirely normal to me.”

“I ordered some vellum online from a traditional parchment maker,” Scully said. “It arrived this morning. I cut the sheet to the same size—nine inches by eleven and a half inches—and weighed it. You can have the leftovers, Professor Clairmont. We can all use some practice with that probe you’ve developed.”

“Thank you, Scully. Good idea. And we’ll run some core samples of the modern vellum for comparison’s sake,” Matthew said with a smile.

“As you can see,” Scully resumed, “the new vellum weighed a little over an ounce and a half.

When I weighed Professor Bishop’s page the first time, it weighed thirteen ounces—as much as approximately nine sheets of ordinary vellum.” Scully removed the fresh sheet of calfskin and put the page from Ashmole 782 in its place.

“The weight of the ink can’t account for that discrepancy.” Lucy put on her own glasses to take a closer look at the digital readout. “And the parchment used in Ashmole 782 looks like it’s thinner, too.”

“It’s about half the thickness of the vellum. I measured it.” Scully pushed her glasses back into place.

“But the Book of Life had more than a hundred pages—probably close to two hundred.” I did some rapid calculations. “If a single page weighs thirteen ounces, the whole book would weigh close to a hundred and fifty pounds.”

“That’s not all. The page isn’t always the same weight,” Mulder said. He pointed to the scale’s digital readout. “Look, Professor Clairmont. The weight’s dropped again. Now it’s down to seven ounces.” He took up a clipboard and noted the time and weight on it.

“It’s been fluctuating randomly all morning,” Matthew said. “Thankfully, Scully had the good sense to leave the page on the scale. If she’d removed it immediately, we would have missed it.”

“That wasn’t deliberate.” Scully flushed and lowered her voice. “I had to use the restroom. When I came back, the weight had risen to a full pound.”

“What’s your conclusion, Scully?” Chris asked in his teacher voice.

“I don’t have one,” she said, clearly frustrated. “Vellum can’t lose weight and gain it again. It’s dead. Nothing I’m observing is possible!”

“Welcome to the world of science, my friend,” Chris said with a laugh. He turned to Scully’s companion. “How about you, Mulder?”

“The page is clearly some sort of magical container. There are other pages inside it. Its weight changes because it’s still somehow connected to the rest of the manuscript.” Mulder slid a glance in my direction.

“I think you’re right, Mulder,” I said, smiling.

“We should leave it where it is and record its weight every fifteen minutes. Maybe there will be a pattern,” Mulder suggested.

“Sounds like a plan.” Chris looked at Mulder approvingly.

“So, Professor Bishop,” Mulder said cautiously, “do you think there really are other pages inside this one?”

“If so, that would make Ashmole 782 a palimpsest,” Lucy said, her imagination sparking. “A magical palimpsest.”

My conclusion from today’s events in the lab was that humans are much cleverer than we creatures give them credit for.

“It is a palimpsest,” I confirmed. “But I never thought of Ashmole 782 as—what did you call it, Mulder?”

“A magical container,” he repeated, looking pleased.

We already knew that Ashmole 782 was valuable because of its text and its genetic information. If Mulder was correct, there was no telling what else might be in it.

“Have the DNA results come back from the sample you took a few weeks ago, Matthew?” Maybe if we knew what creature the vellum came from, it would shed some light on the situation.

“Wait. You removed a piece of this manuscript and ran a chemical analysis on it?” Lucy looked horrified.

“Only a very small piece from the core of the page. We inserted a microscopic probe into the edge.

You can’t see the hole it made—not even with a magnifying glass,” Matthew assured her.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Lucy said.

“That’s because Professor Clairmont developed the technology, and he hasn’t shared it with the rest of the class.” Chris cast a disapproving look at Matthew. “But we’re going to change that, aren’t we, Matthew?”

“Apparently,” said Matthew.

Miriam shrugged. “Give it up, Matthew. We’ve used it for years to remove DNA from all sorts of soft tissue samples. It’s time somebody else had fun with it,” she said.

“We’ll leave the page to you, Scully.” Chris inclined his head toward the other end of the lab in a clear request for a conversation.

“Can I touch it?” Lucy asked, her eyes glued to the page.

“Of course. It’s survived all these years, after all,” Matthew said. “Mulder, Scully, can you help Ms.

Meriweather? Let us know when you’re ready to leave, Lucy, and we’ll get you back to work.”

Based on Lucy’s avid expression, we had plenty of time to talk.

“What is it?” I asked Chris. Now that we were away from his students, Chris looked as if he had bad news.

“If we’re going to learn anything more about blood rage, we need more data,” Chris said. “And before you say anything, Miriam, I’m not criticizing what you and Matthew have managed to figure out.

It’s as good as it could possibly be, given that most of your DNA samples come from the long dead—or the undead. But DNA deteriorates over time. And we need to develop the genetic maps for daemons and witches and sequence their genomes if we want to reach accurate conclusions about what makes you distinct.”

“So we get more data,” I said, relieved. “I thought this was serious.”

“It is,” Matthew said grimly. “One of the reasons the genetic maps for witches and daemons are less complete is that I had no good way to acquire DNA samples from living donors. Amira and Hamish were happy to volunteer theirs, of course, as were some of the regulars at Amira’s yoga classes at the Old Lodge.”

“But if you were to ask for samples from a broader cross section of creatures, you’d have to answer their questions about how the material was going to be used.” Now I understood.

“We’ve got another problem,” Chris said. “We simply don’t have enough DNA from Matthew’s bloodline to establish a pedigree that can tell us how blood rage is inherited. There are samples from Matthew, his mother, and Marcus Whitmore—that’s all.”

“Why not send Marcus to New Orleans?” Miriam asked Matthew.

“What’s in New Orleans?” Chris asked sharply.

“Marcus’s children,” Gallowglass said.

“Whitmore has children?” Chris looked at Matthew incredulously. “How many?”

“A fair few,” Gallowglass said, cocking his head to the side. “Grandchildren, too. And Mad Myra’s got more than her fair share of blood rage, doesn’t she? You’d be wanting her DNA, for sure.”

Chris thumped a lab bench, the rack of empty test tubes rattling like bones.

“Goddamn it, Matthew! You told me you had no other living offspring. I’ve been wasting my time with results based on DNA and three family samples while your grandchildren and great-grandchildren are running up and down Bourbon Street?”

“I didn’t want to bother Marcus,” Matthew said shortly. “He has other concerns.”

“Like what? Another psychotic brother? There’s been nothing on the Bad Seed’s video feed for weeks, but that’s not going to continue indefinitely. When Benjamin pops up again, we’ll need more than predictive modeling and hunches to outsmart him!” Chris exclaimed.

“Calm down, Chris,” Miriam said, putting a hand on his arm. “The vampire genome already includes better data than either the witch or the daemon genome.”

“But it’s still shaky in places,” Chris argued, “especially now that we’re looking at the junk DNA. I need more witch, daemon, and vampire DNA—stat.”

“Game Boy, Xbox, and Daisy all volunteered to be swabbed,” Miriam said. “It violates modern research protocols, but I don’t think it’s an insurmountable problem provided you’re transparent about it later, Chris.”

“Xbox mentioned a club on Crown Street where the daemons hang out.” Chris wiped at his tired eyes. “I’ll go down and recruit some volunteers.”

“You can’t go there. You’ll stick out as a human—and a professor,” Miriam said firmly. “I’ll do it.

I’m far scarier.”

“Only after dark.” Chris shot her a slow smile.

“Good idea, Miriam,” I said hastily. I wanted no further information about what Miriam was like when the sun went down.

“You can swab me,” Gallowglass said. “I’m not Matthew’s bloodline, but it could help. And there are plenty of other vampires in New Haven. Give Eva Jäeger a ring.”

“Baldwin’s Eva?” Matthew was stunned. “I haven’t seen Eva since she discovered Baldwin’s role in engineering the German stock market crash of 1911 and left him.”

“I don’t think either of them would appreciate your being so indiscreet, Matthew,” Gallowglass chided.

“Let me guess: She’s the new hire in the economics department,” I said. “Wonderful. Baldwin’s ex. That’s just what we need.”

“And have you run into more of these New Haven vampires?” Matthew demanded.

“A few,” Gallowglass said vaguely.

As Matthew opened his mouth to inquire further, Lucy interrupted us.

“The page from Ashmole 782 changed its weight three times while I was standing there.” She shook her head in amazement. “If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m sorry to break this up, but I have to get back to the Beinecke.”

“I’ll go with you, Lucy,” I said. “You still haven’t told me what you’ve learned about the Voynich.”

“After all this science, it’s not very exciting,” she said apologetically.

“It is to me.” I kissed Matthew. “See you at home.”

“I should be there by late afternoon.” He hooked me into his arm and pressed his mouth against my ear. His next words were low so that the other vampires would have to strain to hear them. “Don’t stay too long at the library. Remember what the doctor said.”

“I remember, Matthew,” I promised him. “Bye, Chris.”

“See you soon.” Chris gave me a hug and released me quickly. He looked down at my protruding stomach reproachfully. “One of your kids just elbowed me.”

“Or kneed you.” I laughed, smoothing a hand over the bump. “They’re both pretty active these days.”

Matthew’s gaze rested on me: proud, tender, a shade worried. It felt like falling into a pile of freshly fallen snow—crisp and soft at the same time. If we had been at home, he would have pulled me into his arms so that he, too, could feel the kicks, or knelt before me to watch the bulges of feet and hands and elbows.

I smiled at him shyly. Miriam cleared her throat.

“Take care, Gallowglass,” Matthew murmured. It was no casual farewell, but an order.

His nephew nodded. “As if your wife were my own.” We returned to the Beinecke at a statelier pace, chatting about the Voynich and Ashmole 782. Lucy was even more caught up in the mystery now. Gallowglass insisted we pick up something to eat, so we stopped at the pizza place on Wall Street. I waved to a fellow historian who was sitting in one of the scarred booths with stacks of index cards and an enormous soft drink, but she barely acknowledged me.

Leaving Gallowglass at his post outside the Beinecke, we went to the staff room with our late lunch. Everybody else had already eaten, so we had the place to ourselves. In between bites Lucy gave me an overview of her findings.

“Wilfrid Voynich bought Yale’s mysterious manuscript from the Jesuits in 1912,” she said, munching on a cucumber from her healthy salad. “They were quietly liquidating their collections at the Villa Mondragone outside Rome.”

“Mondragone?” I shook my head, thinking of Corra.

“Yep. It got its name from the heraldic device of Pope Gregory XIII—the guy who reformed the calendar. But you probably know more about that than I do.”

I nodded. Crossing Europe in the late sixteenth century had required familiarity with Gregory’s reforms if I had wanted to know what day it was.

“More than three hundred volumes from the Jesuit College in Rome were moved to the Villa Mondragone sometime in the late nineteenth century. I’m still a bit fuzzy on the details, but there was some sort of confiscation of church property during Italian unification.” Lucy stabbed an anemic cherry tomato with her fork. “The books sent to Villa Mondragone were reportedly the most treasured volumes in the Jesuit library.”

“Hmm. I wonder if I could get a list.” I’d owe my friend from Stanford even more, but it might lead to one of the missing pages.

“It’s worth a shot. Voynich wasn’t the only interested buyer, of course. The Villa Mondragone sale was one of the greatest private book auctions of the twentieth century. Voynich almost lost the manuscript to two other buyers.”

“Do you know who they were?” I asked.

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. One was from Prague. That’s all I’ve been able to discover.”

“Prague?” I felt faint.

“You don’t look well,” Lucy said. “You should go home and rest. I’ll keep working on it and see you tomorrow,” she added, closing up her empty Styrofoam container.

“Auntie. You’re early,” Gallowglass said when I exited the building.

“Ran into a research snag.” I sighed. “The whole day has been a few bits of progress sandwiched between a two thick slices of frustration. Hopefully, Matthew and Chris will make further discoveries in the lab, because we’re running out of time. Or perhaps I should say I’m running out of time.”

“It will all work out in the end,” Gallowglass said with a sage nod. “It always does.”

We cut across the green and through the gap between the courthouse and City Hall. On Court Street we crossed the railroad tracks and headed toward my house.

“When did you buy your condo on Wooster Square, Gallowglass?” I asked, finally getting around to one of many questions about the de Clermonts and their relationship to New Haven.

“After you came here as a teacher,” Gallowglass said. “I wanted to be sure you were all right in your new job, and Marcus was always telling stories about a robbery at his house or that his car had been vandalized.”

“I take it Marcus wasn’t living in his house at the time,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“Lord no. He hasn’t been in New Haven for decades.”

“Well, we’re perfectly safe here.” I looked down the pedestrians-only length of Court Street, a tree lined, residential enclave in the heart of the city. As usual, it was deserted, except for a black cat and some potted plants.

“Perhaps,” Gallowglass said dubiously.

We had just reached the stairs leading to the front door when a dark car pulled up to the intersection of Court and Olive Streets where we had been only moments before. The car idled while a lanky young man with sandy blond hair unfolded from the passenger seat. He was all legs and arms, with surprisingly broad shoulders for someone so slender. I thought he must be an undergraduate, because he wore one of the standard Yale student uniforms: dark jeans and a black T-shirt. Sunglasses shielded his eyes, and he bent over and spoke to the driver.

“Good God.” Gallowglass looked as though he’d seen a ghost. “It can’t be.”

I studied the undergraduate without recognition. “Do you know him?”

The young man’s eyes met mine. Mirrored lenses could not block the effects of a vampire’s cold stare. He took the glasses off and gave me a lopsided smile. “You’re a hard woman to find, Mistress Roydon.”

18

That voice. When I’d last heard it, it was higher, without the low rumble at the back of his throat.

Those eyes. Golden brown shot through with gold and leafy green. They still looked older than his years.

His smile. The left corner had always lifted higher than the right.

“Jack?” I choked on the name as my heart constricted.

A hundred pounds of white dog pawed out of the backseat of the car, hopping over the gearshift and through the open door, long hair flying and pink tongue lolling out of his mouth. Jack grabbed him by the collar.

“Stay, Lobero.” Jack ruffled the hair atop the dog’s shaggy head, revealing glimpses of black button eyes. The dog gazed at him adoringly, thumped his tail, and sat panting to await further instruction.

“Hello, Gallowglass.” Jack walked slowly toward us.

“Jackie.” Gallowglass’s voice was thick with emotion. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was. Then I wasn’t.” Jack looked down at me, unsure of his welcome. Leaving no room for doubt, I flung my arms around him.

“Oh, Jack.” Jack smelled of coal fires and foggy mornings rather than warm bread, as he had when he was a child. After a moment of hesitation, he enfolded me within long, lean arms. He was older and taller, but he still felt fragile, as though his mature appearance were nothing more than a shell.

“I missed you,” Jack whispered.

“Diana!” Matthew was still more than two blocks away, but he’d spotted the car blocking the entrance into Court Street, as well as the strange man who held me. From his perspective I must have looked trapped, even with Gallowglass standing nearby. Instinct took over, and Matthew ran, his body a blur.

Lobero raised an alarm with a booming bark. Komondors were a lot like vampires: bred to protect those they loved, loyal to family, large enough to take down wolves and bears, and ready to die rather than yield to another creature.

Jack sensed the threat, without seeing its source. He transformed before my eyes into a creature from nightmares, teeth bared and eyes glassy and black. He grabbed me and held me tight, shielding me from whatever loomed behind. But he was restricting the flow of air into my lungs, as well.

“No! Not you, too,” I gasped, wasting the last of my breath. Now there was no way for me to warn Matthew that someone had given our bright, vulnerable boy blood rage.

Before Matthew could hurtle over the car’s hood, a man climbed out of the driver’s seat and grabbed him. He must be a vampire, too, I thought dizzily, if he had the strength to stop Matthew.

“Stop, Matthew. It’s Jack.” The man’s deep, rumbling voice and distinctive London accent conjured up unwelcome memories of a single drop of blood falling into a vampire’s waiting mouth.

Andrew Hubbard. The vampire king of London was in New Haven. Stars flickered at the edges of my vision.

Matthew snarled and twisted. Hubbard’s spine met the metal frame of the car with a bone-crushing thud.

“It’s Jack,” Hubbard repeated, gripping Matthew by the neck and forcing him to listen.

This time the message got through. Matthew’s eyes widened, and he looked in our direction.

“Jack?” Matthew’s voice was hoarse.

“Master Roydon?” Without turning, Jack cocked his head to the side as Matthew’s voice penetrated the black haze of the blood rage. His grip loosened.

I drew in a lungful of air, struggling to push back the star-filled darkness. My hand went instinctively to my belly, where I felt a reassuring poke, then another. Lobero sniffed at my feet and hands as if trying to figure out my relationship to his master, then sat before me and growled at Matthew.

“Is this another dream?” There was a trace of the lost child he had once been in his bass voice, and Jack squeezed his eyes shut rather than risk waking up.

“It’s no dream, Jack,” Gallowglass said softly. “Step away from Mistress Roydon now. Matthew poses no danger to his mate.”

“Oh, God. I touched her.” Jack sounded horrified. Slowly he turned and held up his hands in surrender, willing to accept whatever punishment Matthew saw fit to mete out. Jack’s eyes, which had been returning to normal, darkened again. But he wasn’t angry. So why was the blood rage resurfacing?

“Hush,” I said, gently lowering his arm. “You’ve touched me a thousand times. Matthew doesn’t care.”

“I wasn’t . . .this . . . before.” Jack’s voice was taut with self-loathing.

Matthew drew closer slowly so as not to startle Jack. Andrew Hubbard slammed the car door and followed him. The centuries had done little to change the London vampire famous for his priestly ways and his brood of adopted creatures of all species and ages. He looked the same: clean-shaven, pale of face, and blond of hair. Only Hubbard’s slate-colored eyes and somber clothing provided notes of contrast to his otherwise pallid appearance. And his body was still tall and thin, with slightly stooped, broad shoulders.

As the two vampires approached, the dog’s growl turned more menacing and his lips peeled back from his teeth.

“Come, Lobero,” Matthew commanded. He crouched down and waited patiently while the dog considered his options.

“He’s a one-man dog,” Hubbard warned. “The only creature he’ll listen to is Jack.”

Lobero’s wet nose pushed into my hand, and then he sniffed his master. The dog’s muzzle lifted to take in the other scents before he moved toward Matthew and Hubbard. Lobero recognized Father Hubbard, but Matthew received a more thorough evaluation. When he was through, Lobero’s tail shifted from left to right. It wasn’t exactly a wag, but the dog had instinctively acknowledged the alpha in this pack.

“Good boy.” Matthew stood and pointed to his heel. Lobero obediently swung around and followed as Matthew joined Jack, Gallowglass, and me.

“All right, mon coeur?” Matthew murmured.

“Of course,” I said, still a bit short of breath.

“And you, Jack?” Matthew rested a hand on Jack’s shoulder. It was not the typical de Clermont embrace. This was a father greeting his son after a long separation—a father who feared that his child had been through hell.

“I’m better now,” Jack could always be relied upon to tell the truth when asked a direct question. “I overreact when I’m surprised.”

“So do I.” Matthew’s grip on him tightened a fraction. “I’m sorry. You had your back turned, and I wasn’t expecting ever to see you again.”

“It’s been . . . difficult. To stay away.” The faint vibration in Jack’s voice suggested it had been more than difficult.

“I can imagine. Why don’t we go inside and you can tell us your tale?” This was not a casual invitation; Matthew was asking Jack to bare his soul. Jack looked worried at the prospect.

“What you say is your choice, Jack,” Matthew assured him. “Tell us nothing, tell us everything, but let’s go inside while you do it. Your latest Lobero is no quieter than your first. He’ll have the neighbors calling the police if he keeps barking.”

Jack nodded.

Matthew’s head cocked to the side. The gesture made him look a bit like Jack. He smiled. “Where has our little boy gone? I don’t have to crouch down anymore to meet your eyes.”

The remaining tension left Jack’s body with Matthew’s gentle teasing. He grinned shyly and scratched Lobero’s ears.

“Father Hubbard will come with us. Could you take the car, Gallowglass, and park it somewhere where it’s not blocking the road?” Matthew asked.

Gallowglass held out his hand, and Hubbard put the keys into it.

“There’s a briefcase in the trunk,” Hubbard said. “Bring it back with you.”

Gallowglass nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. He gave Hubbard a blistering look before stalking toward the car.

“He never has liked me.” Hubbard straightened the lapels on his austere black jacket, which he wore over a black shirt. Even after more than six hundred years, the vampire remained a cleric at heart.

He nodded to me, acknowledging my presence for the first time. “Mistress Roydon.”

“My name is Bishop.” I wanted to remind him of the last time we’d seen each other and the agreement that he’d made—and broken, based on the evidence before me.

“Dr. Bishop, then.” Hubbard’s strange, multicolored eyes narrowed.

“You didn’t keep your promise,” I hissed. Jack’s agitated stare settled on my neck.

“What promise?” Jack demanded from behind me.

Damn. Jack had always had excellent hearing but I’d forgotten he was now gifted with preternatural senses, too.

“I swore that I’d take care of you and Annie for Mistress Roydon,” Hubbard said.

“Father Hubbard kept his word, mistress,” Jack said quietly. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“And we’re grateful to him.” Matthew looked anything but. He tossed me the keys to the house.

Gallowglass still had my bag, and without its contents I had no way to open the door.

Hubbard caught them instead and turned the key in the lock.

“Take Lobero upstairs and get him some water, Jack. The kitchen’s on the first floor.” Matthew plucked the keys from Hubbard’s grasp as he went past and put them in a bowl on the hall table.

Jack called to Lobero and obediently started up the worn, painted treads. “You’re a dead man, Hubbard—and so is the one who made Jack a vampire.” Matthew’s voice was no more than a hollow murmur. Jack heard it nonetheless.

“You can’t kill him, Master Roydon.” Jack stood at the top of the stairs, his fingers wrapped tightly around Lobero’s collar. “Father Hubbard is your grandson. He’s my maker, too.”

Jack turned away, and we heard the cabinet doors open, then water running from an open tap. The sounds were oddly homely considering that a conversational bomb had just gone off.

“My grandson?” Matthew looked at Hubbard in shock. “But that means . . .”

“Benjamin Fox is my sire.” Andrew Hubbard’s origins had always been shrouded in obscurity.

London legends said that he had been a priest when the Black Death first visited England in 1349. After Hubbard’s parishioners all succumbed to the illness, Hubbard had dug his own grave and climbed into it.

Some mysterious vampire had brought Hubbard back from the brink of death—but no one seemed to know who.

“As far as your son was concerned, I was only a tool—someone he made to further his aims in England. Benjamin hoped I would have blood rage,” Hubbard continued. “He also hoped I would help him organize an army to stand against the de Clermonts and their allies. But he was disappointed on both counts, and I’ve managed to keep him away from me and my flock. Until now.”

“What’s happened?” Matthew asked brusquely.

“Benjamin wants Jack. I can’t let him have the boy again,” was Hubbard’s equally abrupt reply.

“Again?” That madman had been with Jack. I turned blindly toward the stairs, but Matthew caught me by the wrists and trapped me against his chest.

“Wait,” he commanded.

Gallowglass came through the door with a large black briefcase and my book bag. He surveyed the scene and dropped what he was carrying.

“What’s happened now?” he asked, looking from Matthew to Hubbard.

“Father Hubbard made Jack a vampire,” I said as neutrally as I could. Jack was listening after all. Gallowglass slammed Hubbard against the wall. “You bastard. I could smell your scent all over him. I thought—”

It was Gallowglass’s turn to be tossed against something—in his case it was the floor. Hubbard pressed one polished black shoe against the big Gael’s sternum. I was astonished that someone who looked so skeletal could be so strong.

“Thought what, Gallowglass?” Hubbard’s tone was menacing. “That I’d violated a child?”

Upstairs, Jack’s rising agitation soured the air. He’d learned from an early age how quickly ordinary quarrels could turn violent. As a boy he’d found even a hint of disagreement between Matthew and me distressing.

“Corra!” I cried, instinctively wanting her support.

By the time my firedrake swooped down and landed on the newel post, Matthew had averted any potential bloodshed by picking up Gallowglass and Hubbard by the scruffs of their necks, prying them apart, and shaking them until their teeth rattled.

Corra gave an irritated bleat and fixed a malevolent stare on Father Hubbard, suspecting quite rightly that he was to blame for her interrupted nap.

“I’ll be damned.” Jack’s fair head peeked over the railing. “Didn’t I tell you Corra would survive the timewalking, Father H?” He gave a hoot of delight and pounded on the painted wood. Jack’s behavior reminded me so strongly of the joyous boy he had once been that I had to fight back the tears.

Corra let out an answering cry of welcome, followed by a stream of fire and song that filled the entrance with happiness. She took flight, zooming up and latching her wings around Jack. Then she tucked her head atop his and began to croon, her tail encircling his ribs so that the spade-shaped tip could gently pat his back. Lobero padded over to his master and gave Corra a suspicious sniff. She must have smelled like family, and therefore a creature to be included among his many responsibilities. He dropped down at Jack’s side, head on his paws but eyes still watchful.

“Your tongue is even longer than Lobero’s,” Jack said, trying not to giggle as Corra tickled his neck. “I can’t believe she remembers me.”

“Of course she remembers you! How could she forget someone who spoiled her with currant buns?” I said with a smile.

By the time we were settled in the living room overlooking Court Street, the blood rage had receded from Jack’s veins. Aware of his low position in the house’s pecking order, he waited until everyone else took a chair before choosing his own seat. He was ready to join the dog on the floor when Matthew patted the sofa cushion.

“Sit with me, Jack.” Matthew’s invitation held a note of command. Jack sat, pulling at the knees of his jeans.

“You look to be about twenty,” Matthew observed, hoping to draw him into conversation.

“Twenty, maybe twenty-one,” Jack said. “Leonard and I— You remember Leonard?” Matthew nodded. “We figured it out because of my memories of the Armada. Nothing specific, you understand, just the fear of the Spanish invasion in the streets, the lighting of the beacons, and the victory celebrations. I must have been at least five in 1588 to remember that.”

I did some rapid calculations. That meant Jack was made a vampire in 1603. “The plague.”

The disease had swept through London with a vengeance that year. I noticed a mottled patch on his neck, just under his ear. It looked like a bruise, but it must be a mark left by a plague sore. For it to have remained visible even after Jack became a vampire suggested that he had been moments from death when Hubbard transformed him.

“Aye,” Jack said, looking down at his hands. He turned them this way and that. “Annie died from it ten years earlier, soon after Master Marlowe was killed in Deptford.”

I’d wondered what had happened to our Annie. I had imagined her a prosperous seamstress with her own business. I’d hoped she would have married a good man and had children. But she’d died while still a teenager, her life snuffed out before it truly began.

“That was a dreadful year, 1593, Mistress Roydon. The dead were everywhere. By the time Father Hubbard and I learned she was sick, it was too late,” Jack said, his expression bereft.

“You’re old enough to call me Diana,” I said gently.

Jack plucked at his jeans without replying. “Father Hubbard took me in when you . . . left,” he continued. “Sir Walter was in trouble, and Lord Northumberland was too busy at court to look after me.”

Jack smiled at Hubbard with obvious affection. “Those were good times, running about London with the gang.”

“I was on very intimate terms with the sheriff during your so-called good times,” Hubbard said drily. “You and Leonard got into more mischief than any two boys who ever lived.”

“Nah,” Jack said, grinning. “The only really serious trouble was when we snuck into the Tower to take Sir Walter his books and stayed on to pass a letter from him to Lady Raleigh.”

“You did—” Matthew shuddered and shook his head. “Christ, Jack. You never could distinguish between a petty crime and a hanging offense.”

“I can now,” Jack said cheerfully. Then his expression became nervous once more. Lobero’s head rose, and he rested his muzzle on Jack’s knee.

“Don’t be mad at Father Hubbard. He only did what I asked, Master Roydon. Leonard explained creatures to me long before I became one, so I knew what you and Gallowglass and Davy were. Things made better sense after that.” Jack paused. “I should have had the courage to face death and accept it, but I couldn’t go to my grave without seeing you again. My life felt . . . unfinished.”

“And how does it feel now?” Matthew asked.

“Long. Lonely. And hard—harder than I ever imagined.” Jack twisted Lobero’s hair, rolling the strands until they formed a tight rope. He cleared his throat. “But it was all worth it for today,” he continued softly. “Every bit of it.”

Matthew’s long arm reached for Jack’s shoulder. He squeezed it, then quickly let go again. For a moment I saw desolation and grief on my husband’s face before he donned his composed mask once more. It was the vampire version of a disguising spell. “Father Hubbard told me his blood might make me ill, Master Roydon.” Jack shrugged. “But I was already sick. What difference would it make to change one illness for another?”

No difference at all, I thought, except that one killed you and the other could make you a killer.

“Andrew was right to tell you,” Matthew said. Father Hubbard looked surprised by this admission.

“I don’t imagine your grandsire gave him the same consideration.” Matthew was careful to use the terms that Hubbard and Jack used to describe their relationship to Benjamin.

“No. He wouldn’t have done. My grandsire doesn’t believe that he owes anyone an explanation for any of his actions.” Jack shot to his feet and traveled aimlessly around the room, Lobero following. He examined the moldings around the door, running his fingers along the wood. “You have the sickness in your blood, too, Master Roydon. I remember it from Greenwich. But it doesn’t control you, like it does my grandsire. And me.”

“It did once.” Matthew looked at Gallowglass and gave him a slight nod.

“I remember when Matthew was as wild as the devil and nigh invincible with a sword in his hand.

Even the bravest men ran in terror.” Gallowglass leaned forward, hands clasped and knees spread wide.

“My grandsire told me about Master—Matthew’s past.” Jack shuddered. “He said that Matthew’s talent for killing was in me, too, and I had to be true to it or you would never recognize me as your blood.”

I’d seen Benjamin’s unspeakable cruelty on camera, how he twisted hopes and fears into a weapon to destroy a creature’s sense of self. That he’d done so with Jack’s feelings for Matthew made me blind with fury. I clenched my hands into fists, tightening the cords in my fingers until the magic threatened to burst through my skin.

“Benjamin doesn’t know me as well as he thinks.” Anger was building in Matthew, too, his spicy scent growing sharper. “I would recognize you as mine before the entire world, and proudly—even if you weren’t my blood.”

Hubbard looked uneasy. His attention shifted from Matthew to Jack. “You would make me your blood-sworn son?” Jack slowly turned to Matthew. “Like Philippe did with Mistress Roydon—I mean, Diana?”

Matthew’s eyes widened slightly as he nodded, trying to absorb the fact that Philippe had known of Matthew’s children when Matthew had not. A look of betrayal crossed his face.

“Philippe visited me whenever he came to London,” Jack explained, oblivious to the changes in Matthew. “He told me to listen for his blood vow, because it was loud and I would probably hear Mistress Roydon before I saw her. And you were right, Miss—Diana. Matthew’s father really was as big as the emperor’s bear.”

“If you met my father, then I’m sure you heard plenty of tales about my bad behavior.” The muscle in Matthew’s jaw had started ticking as betrayal turned to bitterness, his pupils growing larger by the second and his rage continued to gain ground.

“No,” Jack said, confusion wrinkling his brow. “Philippe spoke only of his admiration and said you would teach me to ignore what my blood was telling me to do.”

Matthew jerked as though he’d been hit.

“Philippe always made me feel closer to you and Mistress Roydon. Calmer, too.” Jack looked nervous again. “But it has been a long time since I saw Philippe.”

“He was captured in the war,” Matthew explained, “and died as a result of what he suffered.”

It was a careful half-truth.

“Father Hubbard told me. I’m glad Philippe didn’t live to see—” This time the shudder traveled through Jack from the marrow of his bones to the surface of his skin. His eyes went full black without warning, filled with horror and dread.

Jack’s present suffering was far worse than what Matthew had to endure. With Matthew it was only bitter fury that brought the blood rage to the surface. With Jack a wider range of emotions triggered it.

“It’s all right.” Matthew was with him in an instant, one hand clamped around his neck and the other resting on his cheek. Lobero pawed at Matthew’s foot as if to say, Do something. “Don’t touch me when I’m like this,” Jack snarled, pushing at Matthew’s chest. But he might as well have tried to move a mountain. “You’ll make it worse.”

“You think you can order me about, pup?” Matthew’s eyebrow arched. “Whatever you think is so terrible, just say it. You’ll feel better once you do.”

With Matthew’s encouragement Jack’s confession tumbled from some dark place inside where he stored up everything that was evil and terrifying.

“Benjamin found me a few years ago. He said he’d been waiting for me. My grandsire promised to take me to you, but only after I’d proved that I was really one of Matthew de Clermont’s blood.”

Gallowglass swore. Jack’s eyes darted to him, and a snarl broke free.

“Keep your eyes on me, Jack.” Matthew’s tone made it clear that any resistance would be met with a swift and harsh reprisal. My husband was performing an impossible balancing act, one that required unconditional love along with a steady assertion of dominance. Pack dynamics were always fraught.

With blood rage they could turn deadly in an instant.

Jack dragged his attention from Gallowglass, and his shoulders lowered a fraction.

“Then what happened?” Matthew prompted.

“I killed. Again and again. The more I killed, the more I wanted to kill. The blood did more than feed me—it fed the blood rage, too.”

“It was clever of you to understand that so quickly,” Matthew said approvingly.

“Sometimes I came to my senses long enough to realize that what I was doing was wrong. I tried to save the warmbloods then, but I couldn’t stop drinking,” Jack confessed. “I managed to turn two of my prey into vampires. Benjamin was pleased with me then.”

“Only two?” A shadow flitted across Matthew’s features.

“Benjamin wanted me to save more, but it took too much control. No matter what I did, most of them died.” Jack’s inky eyes filled with blood tears, the pupils taking on a red sheen.

“Where did these deaths occur?” Matthew sounded only mildly curious, but my sixth sense told me the question was crucial to understanding what had happened to Jack.

“Everywhere. I had to keep moving. There was so much blood. I had to get away from the police, and the newspapers. . . .” Jack shuddered.

VAMPIRE ON THE LOOSE IN LONDON. I remembered the vivid headline and all the clippings of the “vampire murders” that Matthew had collected from around the world. I bowed my head, not wanting Jack to realize I knew that he was the murderer whom European authorities were seeking.

“But it’s the ones that lived who suffered the most,” Jack continued, his voice deadening further with every word. “My grandsire took my children from me and said he would make sure they were raised properly.”

“Benjamin used you.” Matthew looked deep into his eyes, trying to make a connection. Jack shook his head.

“When I made those children, I broke my vow to Father Hubbard. He said the world didn’t need more vampires—there were plenty already—and if I was lonely, I could take care of creatures whose families didn’t want them anymore. All Father Hubbard asked was that I not make children, but I failed him again and again. After that, I couldn’t go back to London—not with so much blood on my hands.

And I couldn’t stay with my grandsire. When I told Benjamin I wanted to leave, he went into a terrible rage and killed one of my children in retaliation. His sons held me down and forced me to watch.” Jack bit back a harsh sound. “And my daughter. My daughter. They—”

He retched. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late to keep the blood from escaping as he vomited. It streamed over his chin, soaking into his dark shirt. Lobero leaped up, barking sharply and pawing at his back.

Unable to stay away a moment longer, I rushed to Jack’s side.

“Diana!” Gallowglass cried. “You must not—”

“Don’t tell me what to do. Get me a towel!” I snapped.

Jack fell to his hands and knees, his landing softened by Matthew’s strong arms. I knelt beside him as he continued to purge his stomach of its contents. Gallowglass handed me a towel. I used it to mop Jack’s face and hands, which were covered with blood. The towel was soon sodden and icy cold from my frantic efforts to stanch the flow, the contact with so much vampire blood making my hands numb and clumsy.

“The force of the vomiting must have broken some blood vessels in his stomach and throat,”

Matthew said. “Andrew, can you get a pitcher of water? Put plenty of ice in it.”

Hubbard went to the kitchen and was back in moments.

“Here,” he said, thrusting the pitcher at Matthew.

“Raise his head, Diana,” Matthew instructed. “Keep hold of him, Andrew. His body is screaming for blood, and he’ll fight against taking water.”

“What can I do?” Gallowglass said, his voice gruff.

“Wipe off Lobero’s paws before he tracks blood all over the house. Jack won’t need any reminders of what’s happened.” Matthew gripped Jack’s chin. “Jack!”

Jack’s glassy black eyes swiveled toward Matthew.

“Drink this,” Matthew commanded, raising Jack’s chin a few inches. Jack spluttered and snapped in an attempt to throw him off. But Hubbard kept Jack immobilized long enough to empty the pitcher.

Jack hiccupped, and Hubbard loosened his hold.

“Well done, Jackie,” Gallowglass said.

I smoothed Jack’s hair away from his forehead as he bent forward again, clutching at his visibly heaving stomach.

“I got blood on you,” he whispered. My shirt was streaked with it.

“So you did,” I said. “It’s not the first time a vampire’s bled on me, Jack.”

“Try to rest now,” Matthew told him. “You’re exhausted.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” Jack swallowed hard as the gorge rose again in his throat.

“Shh.” I rubbed his neck. “I can promise there will be no nightmares.”

“How can you be sure?” Jack asked.

“Magic.” I traced the pattern of the fifth knot on his forehead and lowered my voice to a whisper.

“Mirror shimmers, monsters shake, banish nightmares until he wakes.”

Jack’s eyes slowly closed. After a few minutes, he was curled on his side, sleeping peacefully.

I wove another spell—one that was meant just for him. It required no words, for no one would ever use it but me. The threads surrounding Jack were a furious snarl of red, black, and yellow. I pulled on the healing green threads that surrounded me, as well as the white threads that helped break curses and establish new beginnings. I twisted them together and tied them around Jack’s wrist, fixing the braid with a secure, six-crossed knot.

“There’s a guest room upstairs,” I said. “We’ll put Jack to bed there. Corra and Lobero will let us know if he stirs.”

“Would that be all right?” Matthew asked Hubbard.

“When it comes to Jack, you don’t need my permission,” Hubbard replied.

“Yes I do. You’re his father,” Matthew said. “I’m only his sire,” Hubbard said softly. “You’re Jack’s father, Matthew. You always have been.”

19

Matthew carried Jack up to the third floor, cradling his body as if he were a baby. Lobero and Corra accompanied us, both beasts aware of the job they had to do. While Matthew stripped off Jack’s blood soaked shirt, I rummaged in our bedroom closet for something he could wear instead. Jack was easily six feet tall, but he had a much rangier frame than Matthew. I found an oversize Yale men’s crew team shirt that I sometimes slept in, hoping it would do. Matthew slipped Jack’s seemingly boneless arms into it and pulled it over his lolling head. My spell had knocked him out cold.

Together we settled him on the bed, neither of us speaking unless it was absolutely necessary. I drew the sheet up around Jack’s shoulders while Lobero watched my every move from the floor. Corra perched on the lamp, attentive and unblinking, her weight bending the shade to an alarming degree.

I touched Jack’s sandy hair and the dark mark on his neck, then pressed my hand over his heart.

Even though he was asleep, I could feel the parts of him warring for control: mind, body, soul. Though Hubbard had ensured that Jack would be twenty-one forever, he had a weariness that made him seem like a man three times that age.

Jack had been through so much. Too much, thanks to Benjamin. I wanted that madman obliterated from the face of the earth. The fingers on my left hand splayed wide, my wrist stinging where the knot circled my pulse. Magic was nothing more than desire made real, and the power in my veins responded to my unspoken wishes for revenge.

“Jack was our responsibility, and we weren’t there for him.” My voice was low and fierce. “And Annie . . .”

“We’re here for Jack now.” Matthew’s eyes held the same sorrow and anger that I knew were in my own. “There’s nothing we can do for Annie, except pray that her soul found rest.”

I nodded, controlling my emotions with difficulty.

“Take a shower, ma lionne. Hubbard’s touch and Jack’s blood . . .” Matthew couldn’t abide it when my skin carried the scent of another creature. “I’ll stay with him while you do. Then you and I will go downstairs and talk to . . . my grandson.” His final words were slow and deliberate, as though he were getting his tongue used to them.

I squeezed his hand, kissed Jack lightly on the forehead, and reluctantly headed into the bathroom in a futile effort to wash myself clean of the evening’s events.

Thirty minutes later we found Gallowglass and Hubbard sitting opposite each other at the simple pine dining table. They glared. They stared. They growled. I was glad Jack wasn’t awake to witness it.

Matthew dropped my hand and walked the few steps to the kitchen. He pulled out a bottle of sparkling water for me and three bottles of wine. After distributing them he went back for a corkscrew and four glasses.

“You may be my cousin, but I still don’t like you, Hubbard.” Gallowglass’s growl subsided into an inhuman sound that was far more disturbing.

“It’s mutual.” Hubbard hoisted his black briefcase onto the table and left it within easy reach.

Matthew worked the corkscrew into his bottle, watching his nephew and Hubbard jockey for position without comment. He poured himself a glass of wine and drank it down in two gulps.

“You’re not fit to be a parent,” Gallowglass said, eyes narrowing.

“Who is?” Hubbard shot back.

“Enough.” Matthew didn’t raise his voice, but there was a timbre in it that lifted the hairs on my neck and instantly silenced Gallowglass and Hubbard. “Has the blood rage always affected Jack this way, Andrew, or has it worsened since he met Benjamin?”

Hubbard sat back in his chair with a sardonic smile. “That’s where you want to start, is it?”

“How about you start by explaining why you made Jack a vampire when you knew it could give him blood rage!” My anger had burned straight through any courtesy I might once have extended to him.

“I gave him a choice, Diana,” Hubbard retorted, “not to mention a chance.”

“Jack was dying of plague!” I cried. “He wasn’t capable of making a clear decision. You were the grown-up. Jack was a child.”

“Jack was full on twenty years—a man, not the boy you left with Lord Northumberland. And he’d been through hell waiting in vain for your return!” Hubbard said.

Afraid we might wake Jack, I lowered my voice. “I left you with plenty of money to keep both Jack and Annie out of harm’s way. Neither of them should have wanted for anything.”

“You think a warm bed and food in his belly could mend Jack’s broken heart?” Hubbard’s otherworldly eyes were cold. “He looked for you every day for twelve years. That’s twelve years of going to the docks to meet the ships from Europe in hopes that you would be aboard; twelve years interviewing every foreigner he could find in London to inquire if you had been seen in Amsterdam, or Lubeck, or Prague; and twelve years walking up to anyone he suspected of being a witch to show that person a picture he’d drawn of the famous sorceress Diana Roydon. It’s a miracle the plague took his life and not the queen’s justices!”

I blanched.

“You had a choice, too,” Hubbard reminded me. “So if you want to cast blame for Jack’s becoming a vampire, blame yourself or blame Matthew. He was your responsibility. You made him mine.”

“That wasn’t our bargain, and you know it!” The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. I froze, a look of horror on my face. This was another secret I’d kept from Matthew, one that I’d thought was safely behind me.

Gallowglass’s breath hissed in surprise. Matthew’s icy gaze splintered against my skin. Then the room fell utterly silent. “I need to speak to my wife and my grandson, Gallowglass. Alone,” Matthew said. The emphasis he placed on “my wife” and “my grandson” was subtle but unmistakable.

Gallowglass stood, his face set in lines of disapproval. “I’ll be upstairs with Jack.”

Matthew shook his head. “Go home and wait for Miriam. I’ll call when Andrew and Jack are ready to join you.”

“Jack will stay here,” I said, my voice rising again, “with us. Where he belongs.”

The forbidding look Matthew directed my way silenced me immediately, even though the twenty first century was no place for a Renaissance prince and a year ago I would have protested his high handedness. Now I knew that my husband was hanging on to his control by a very slender thread.

“I’m not staying under the same roof as a de Clermont. Especially not him,” Hubbard said, pointing in Gallowglass’s direction.

“You forget, Andrew,” Matthew said, “you are a de Clermont. So is Jack.”

“I was never a de Clermont,” Hubbard said viciously.

“Once you drank Benjamin’s blood, you were never anything else.” Matthew’s voice was clipped.

“In this family you do what I say.”

“Family?” Hubbard scoffed. “You were part of Philippe’s pack, and now you answer to Baldwin.

You don’t have a family of your own.”

“Apparently I do.” Matthew’s mouth twisted with regret. “Time to go, Gallowglass.”

“Very well, Matthew. I’ll let you send me off—this time—but I’ll not go far. And if my instincts tell me there’s trouble, I’m coming back and to hell with vampire custom and law.” Gallowglass got up and kissed me on the cheek. “Holler if you need me, Auntie.”

Matthew waited until the front door closed before he turned on Hubbard. “Exactly what deal did you strike with my mate?” he demanded.

“It’s my fault, Matthew. I went to Hubbard—” I began, wanting to confess and get it over with.

The table reverberated under the force of Matthew’s blow. “Answer me, Andrew.”

“I agreed to protect anyone who belonged to her, even you,” Hubbard said shortly. In this respect he was a de Clermont to the bone—volunteering nothing, only giving away what he must.

“And in exchange?” Matthew asked sharply. “You wouldn’t make such a vow without getting something equally precious in return.”

“Your mate gave me one drop of blood—one single drop,” Hubbard said, his tone resentful. I’d tricked him, abiding to the letter of his request rather than its spirit. Apparently Andrew Hubbard held grudges.

“Did you know then that I was your grandfather?” Matthew asked. I couldn’t imagine why this was important.

“Yes,” Andrew said, looking slightly green.

Matthew hauled him across the table so that they were nose to nose. “And what did you learn from that one drop of blood?”

“Her true name—Diana Bishop. Nothing more, I swear. The witch used her magic to make sure of it.” On Hubbard’s tongue the word “witch” sounded filthy and obscene.

“Never take advantage of my wife’s protective instincts again, Andrew. If you do, I’ll have your head.” Matthew’s grip tightened. “Given your prurience, there isn’t a vampire alive who would fault me for doing so.”

“I don’t care what the two of you get up to behind closed doors—though others will, since your mate is obviously pregnant and there isn’t a hint of another man’s scent on her.” Hubbard pursed his lips in disapproval.

At last I understood Matthew’s earlier question. By knowingly taking my blood and seeking out my thoughts and memories, Andrew Hubbard had done the vampire equivalent of watching his grandparents have sex. Had I not found a way to slow its flow so he got only the drop he asked for and nothing more, Hubbard would have seen into our private lives and might have learned Matthew’s secrets as well as my own. My eyes closed tight against the realization of the damage that would have resulted. A distracting murmur came from Andrew’s briefcase. It reminded me of the noise I sometimes heard during a lecture, when a student’s phone went off unexpectedly.

“You left your phone on speaker,” I said, my attention drawn to the low chatter. “Someone is leaving a message.”

Matthew and Andrew both frowned.

“I don’t hear anything,” Matthew said.

“And I don’t own a mobile phone,” Hubbard added.

“Where is it coming from, then?” I asked, looking around. “Did someone turn on the radio?”

“The only thing in my briefcase is this.” Hubbard released its two brass clasps and withdrew something.

The chattering grew louder as a jolt of power entered my body. Every sense I had was heightened, and the threads that bound the world chimed in sudden agitation, coiling and twisting in the space between me and the sheet of vellum that Andrew Hubbard held in his fingers. My blood responded to the faint vestiges of magic that clung to this solitary page from the Book of Life, and my wrists burned as a faint, familiar scent of must and age filled the room.

Hubbard turned the page so that it faced me, but I already knew what I would see there: two alchemical dragons locked together, the blood from their wounds falling into a basin from which naked, pale figures rose. It depicted the stage in the alchemical process after the chemical marriage of the moon queen and the sun king: conceptio, when a new and powerful substance sprang forth from the union of opposites—male and female, light and dark, sun and moon.

After spending weeks in the Beinecke looking for Ashmole 782’s missing pages, I’d unexpectedly encountered one of them in my own dining room.

“Edward Kelley sent it to me the autumn after you left. He told me not to let it out of my sight.”

Hubbard slid the page toward me.

We had only caught a glimpse of this illumination in Rudolf’s palace. Later Matthew and I had speculated that what we thought were two dragons might actually be a firedrake and an ouroboros. One of the alchemical dragons was indeed a firedrake, with two legs and wings, and the other was a snake with its tail in its mouth. The ouroboros at my wrist writhed in recognition, its colors shining with possibility. The image was mesmerizing, and now that I had time to study it properly, small things struck me: the dragons’ rapt expressions as they gazed into each other’s eyes, the look of wonder on their progeny’s faces as they emerged from the basin where they’d been born, the striking balance between two such powerful creatures.

“Jack made sure Edward’s picture was safe no matter what. Plague, fire, war—the boy never let anything touch it. He claimed it belonged to you, Mistress Roydon,” Hubbard said, interrupting my reveries.

“To me?” I touched the corner of the vellum, and one of the twins gave a strong kick. “No. It belongs to all of us.”

“And yet you have some kind of special connection to it. You’re the only one who has ever heard it speak.” Andrew said. “Long ago, a witch in my care said he thought it came from the witches’ first spell book. But an old vampire passing through London said it was a page from the Book of Life. I pray to God that neither tale is true.”

“What do you know about the Book of Life?” Matthew’s voice was a peal of thunder.

“I know that Benjamin wants it,” Hubbard said. “He told Jack as much. But that wasn’t the first time my sire mentioned the book. Benjamin looked for it in Oxford long ago—before he made me a vampire.”

That meant Benjamin had been looking for the Book of Life since before the middle of the fourteenth century—far longer than Matthew had been interested in it.

“My sire thought he might find it in the library of an Oxford sorcerer. Benjamin took the witch a gift in exchange for the book: a brass head that supposedly spoke oracles.” Hubbard’s face filled with sadness. “It is always a pity to see such a wise man taken in by vanity and superstition. ‘Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal,’ sayeth the Lord.”

Gerbert of Aurillac had reputedly owned just such a miraculous device. I had thought Peter Knox was the member of the Congregation who was most interested in Ashmole 782. Was it possible that Gerbert had been in league with Benjamin all these years and it was he who sought out Peter Knox’s help?

“The witch in Oxford took the brass head but wouldn’t relinquish the book,” Hubbard continued.

“Decades later my sire still cursed him for his duplicity. I never did discover the witch’s name.”

“I believe it was Roger Bacon—an alchemist and a philosopher as well as a witch.” Matthew looked at me. Bacon once owned the Book of Life, and had called it the “true secret of secrets.”

“Alchemy is one of the witches’ many vanities,” Hubbard said with disdain. His expression turned anxious. “My children tell me Benjamin has been back in England.”

“He has. Benjamin has been watching my lab in Oxford.” Matthew made no mention of the fact that the Book of Life was currently a few blocks away from that very laboratory. Hubbard might be his grandson, but that didn’t mean Matthew trusted him.

“If Benjamin is in England, how will we keep him away from Jack?” I asked Matthew urgently.

“Jack will return to London. My sire is no more welcome there than you are, Matthew.” Hubbard stood. “So long as he is with me, Jack will be safe.”

“No one is safe from Benjamin. Jack is not going back to London.” The note of command was back in Matthew’s voice. “Nor are you, Andrew. Not yet.”

“We’ve done very well without your interference,” Hubbard retorted. “It’s a bit late for you to decide you want to lord it over your children like some ancient Roman father.”

“The paterfamilias. A fascinating tradition.” Matthew settled back in his chair, his wineglass cupped in his hand. He looked no longer like a prince but a king. “Imagine giving one man the power of life and death over his wife, his children, his servants, anyone he adopted into his family, and even his close relatives who lacked a strong father of their own. It reminds me a bit of what you tried to accomplish in London.”

Matthew sipped at his wine. Hubbard looked more uncomfortable with each passing moment.

“My children obey me willingly,” Hubbard said stiffly. “They honor me, as godly children should.”

“Such an idealist,” Matthew said, softly mocking. “You know who came up with the paterfamilias, of course.”

“The Romans, as I said,” Hubbard replied sharply. “I am educated, Matthew, in spite of your doubts on this score.”

“No, it was Philippe.” Matthew’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “Philippe thought Roman society could benefit from a healthy dose of vampire family discipline, and a reminder of the father’s importance.”

“Philippe de Clermont was guilty of the sin of pride. God is the only true Father. You are a Christian, Matthew. Surely you agree.” Hubbard’s expression held the fervency of a true believer.

“Perhaps,” Matthew said, as though he were seriously considering his grandson’s argument. “But until God calls us to Him, I will have to suffice. Like it or not, Andrew, in the eyes of other vampires I am your paterfamilias, the head of your clan, your alpha—call it what you like. And all your children— including Jack and all the other strays you’ve adopted be they daemon, vampire, or witch—are mine

under vampire law.”

“No.” Hubbard shook his head. “I never wanted any part of the de Clermont family.”

“What you want doesn’t matter. Not anymore.” Matthew put down his wine and took my hand in his.

“To command my loyalty, you would have to recognize my sire—Benjamin—as your son. And you will never do that,” Hubbard said savagely. “As head of the de Clermonts, Baldwin takes the family’s honor and position seriously. He would never permit you to branch out on your own given the scourge in your blood.”

Before Matthew could respond to Andrew’s challenge, Corra uttered a warning squawk. Realizing that Jack must have awoken, I rose from my seat to go to him. Unfamiliar rooms had terrified him as a child.

“Stay here,” Matthew said, his grip on my hand tightening.

“He needs me!” I protested.

“Jack needs a strong hand and consistent boundaries,” Matthew said softly. “He knows you love him. But he can’t handle such strong feelings at the moment.”

“I trust him.” My voice quavered with anger and hurt.

“I don’t,” Matthew said sharply. “It’s not just anger that sets off the blood rage in him. Love and loyalty do, too.”

“Don’t ask me to ignore him.” I wanted Matthew to stop acting the role of paterfamilias long enough to behave like a true father.

“I’m sorry, Diana.” A shadow settled in Matthew’s eyes, one that I thought was gone forever. “I have to put Jack’s needs first.”

“What needs?” Jack stood in the door. He yawned, tufts of hair standing up in apparent alarm.

Lobero pushed past his master and went straight to Matthew, looking for acknowledgment of a job well done.

“You need to hunt. There’s a full moon, alas, but not even I can control the heavens.” Matthew’s lie flowed from his tongue like honey. He ruffled Lobero’s ears. “We’re all going—you, me, your father, even Gallowglass. Lobero can come, too.”

Jack’s nose wrinkled. “Not hungry.”

“Don’t feed, then. But you’re hunting nevertheless. Be ready at midnight. I’ll pick you up.”

“Pick me up?” Jack looked from me to Hubbard. “I thought we would stay here.”

“You’ll be just around the corner with Gallowglass and Miriam. Andrew will be there with you,”

Matthew assured him. “This house isn’t large enough for a witch and three vampires. We’re nocturnal creatures, and Diana and the babies need their sleep.” Jack looked at my belly wistfully. “I always wanted a baby brother.”

“You may well get two sisters instead,” Matthew said, chuckling.

My hand lowered automatically over my belly as one of the twins gave another strong kick. They had been unusually active ever since Jack showed up.

“Are they moving?” Jack asked me, his face eager. “Can I touch them?”

I looked at Matthew. Jack’s glance slid in the same direction.

“Let me show you how.” Matthew’s tone was easy, though his eyes were sharp. He took Jack’s hand and pressed it into the side of my belly.

“I don’t feel anything,” Jack said, frowning with concentration.

A particularly strong kick, followed by a sharp elbow, thudded against the wall of my uterus.

“Whoa!” Jack’s face was inches from mine, his eyes full of wonder. “Do they kick like that all day?”

“It feels like it.” I wanted to smooth down the mess of Jack’s hair. I wanted to take him into my arms and promise him that no one was ever going to hurt him again. But I could offer him neither of these comforts.

Sensing the maternal turn my mood had taken, Matthew lifted Jack’s hand away. Jack’s face fell, experiencing it as rejection. Furious with Matthew, I reached to jerk Jack’s hand back. Before I could, Matthew put his hand at my waist and pulled me against his side. It was an unmistakable gesture of possession.

Jack’s eyes went black.

Hubbard pitched forward to intervene, and Matthew froze him in place with a look.

In the space of five heartbeats, Jack’s eyes returned to normal. When they were brown and green once more, Matthew gave him an approving smile.

“Your instinct to protect Diana is entirely appropriate,” Matthew told him. “Believing you have to shield her from me is not.”

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Jack whispered. “It won’t happen again.”

“I accept your apology. Sadly, it will happen again. Learning to control your illness isn’t going to be easy—or quick.” Matthew’s tone turned brisk. “Kiss Diana good night, Jack, and get settled at Gallowglass’s house. It’s a former church around the corner. You’ll feel right at home.”

“Hear that, Father H?” Jack grinned. “Wonder if it has bats in its belfry, like yours.”

“I no longer have a bat problem,” Hubbard said sourly.

“Father H still lives in a church in the city,” Jack explained, suddenly animated. “It’s not the same one you visited. That old heap burned down. Most of this one did, too, come to think of it.”

I laughed. Jack had always loved telling stories and had a talent for it, too.

“Now just the tower remains. Father H did it up so nicely you hardly notice it’s just a pile of rubbish.” Jack grinned at Hubbard and gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek, his mood swinging from blood rage to happiness in a remarkably short period of time. He sped down the stairs. “Come on, Lobero. Let’s go wrestle with Gallowglass.”

“Midnight,” Matthew called after him. “Be ready. And be nice to Miriam, Jack. If you don’t, she’ll make you wish you’d never been reborn.”

“Don’t worry, I’m used to dealing with difficult females!” Jack replied. Lobero barked with excitement and orbited Jack’s legs to encourage him outside.

“Keep the picture, Mistress Roydon. If both Matthew and Benjamin covet it, then I wish to be as far away from it as possible,” Andrew said.

“How generous, Andrew.” Matthew’s hand shot out and closed around Hubbard’s throat. “Stay in New Haven until I give you leave to go.”

Their eyes clashed, slate and gray-green. Andrew was the first to look away.

“Come on, Father H!” Jack bellowed. “I want to see Gallowglass’s church, and Lobero needs a walk.”

“Midnight, Andrew.” Matthew’s words were perfectly cordial, but there was a warning in them. The door closed, and the sound of Lobero’s barking faded. When it had faded completely, I turned on Matthew.

“How could you—”

The sight of Matthew, his head buried in his hands, brought me to an abrupt stop. My anger, which had been blazing, slowly fizzled. He looked up, his face ravaged with guilt and sorrow. “Jack . . . Benjamin . . .” Matthew shuddered. “God help me, what have I done?”

20

Matthew sat in the broken-down easy chair opposite the bed where Diana was sleeping, plowing through another inconclusive set of test results so that he and Chris could reevaluate their research strategy at tomorrow’s meeting. Given the late hour, he was taken by surprise when his phone’s screen lit up.

Moving carefully so as not to wake his wife, Matthew padded silently out of the room and down the stairs to the kitchen, where he could speak without being overheard.

“You need to come,” Gallowglass said, his voice gruff and low. “Now.”

Matthew’s flesh prickled, and his eyes rose to the ceiling as though he could see through the plaster and floorboards into the bedroom. His first instinct was always to protect her, even though it was clear that the danger was elsewhere.

“Leave Auntie at home,” Gallowglass said flatly, as though he could witness Matthew’s actions.

“Miriam’s on her way.” The phone went dead.

Matthew stared down at the display for a moment, its bright colors bringing a note of false cheer to the early-morning hours before they faded to black.

The front door creaked open.

Matthew was at the top of the stairs by the time Miriam walked through it. He studied her closely.

There was not a drop of blood on her, thank God. Even so, Miriam’s eyes were wide and her face bore a haunted expression. Very little frightened his longtime friend and colleague, but she was clearly terrified. Matthew swore.

“What’s wrong?” Diana descended from the third floor, her coppery hair seeming to capture all the available light in the house. “Is it Jack?”

Matthew nodded. Gallowglass wouldn’t have called otherwise.

“I’ll only be a minute,” Diana said, reversing her direction to get dressed.

“No, Diana,” Miriam said quietly.

Diana froze, her hand on the banister. She twisted her body around and met Miriam’s eyes.

“Is he d-dead?” she whispered numbly. Matthew was at her side in the space of a human heartbeat.

“No, mon coeur. He’s not dead.” Matthew knew this was Diana’s worst nightmare: that someone she loved would be taken from her before the two of them could say a proper farewell. But whatever was talking place in the house on Wooster Square might somehow be worse.

“Stay with Miriam.” Matthew pressed a kiss against her stiff lips. “I’ll be home soon.”

“He’s been doing so well,” Diana said. Jack had been in New Haven for a week, and his blood rage had diminished in both frequency and intensity. Matthew’s strict boundaries and consistent expectations had already made a difference.

“We knew there would be setbacks,” Matthew said, tucking a silky strand of hair behind Diana’s ear. “I know you won’t sleep, but try to rest at least.” He was worried she’d do nothing but pace and stare out the window until he returned with news.

“You can read these while you wait.” Miriam drew a thick stack of articles out of her bag. She was making an effort to sound brisk and matter-of-fact, her bittersweet scent of galbanum and pomegranate stronger now. “This is everything you asked for, and I added some other articles you might be interested in: all of Matthew’s studies on wolves, as well as some classic pieces on wolf parenting and pack behavior. It’s basically Dr. Spock for the modern vampire parent.”

Matthew turned to Diana in amazement. Once again, his wife had surprised him. Her cheeks reddened, and she took the articles from Miriam.

“I need to understand how this vampire family stuff works. Go. Tell Jack I love him.” Diana’s voice broke. “If you can.”

Matthew squeezed her hand without replying. He would make no promises on that score. Jack had to understand that his access to Diana depended on his behavior—and Matthew’s approval.

“Prepare yourself,” Miriam murmured when he passed her. “And I don’t care if Benjamin is your son. If you don’t kill him after seeing this, I will.”

In spite of the late hour, Gallowglass’s house was not the only one in the neighborhood that was still illuminated. New Haven was a college town, after all. Most of Wooster Square’s night owls sought a strange companionship, working in full view with curtains and blinds open. What distinguished the vampire’s house was that the drapes were tightly closed and only cracks of golden light around the edges of the windows betrayed the fact that someone was still awake.

Inside the house pools of lamplight cast a warm glow over a few personal belongings. Otherwise it was sparsely decorated with Danish Modern furniture made from blond wood accented with occasional antiques and splashes of bold color. One of Gallowglass’s most treasured possessions—a tattered eighteenth-century Red Ensign that he and Davy Hancock had stripped from their beloved cargo ship the Earl of Pembroke before it was refitted and renamed Endeavour—was balled up on the floor.

Matthew sniffed. The house was filled with the bitter, acrid scent that Diana had likened to a coal fire, and faint strains of Bach filled the air. The St. Matthew Passion—the same music that Benjamin played in his laboratory to torture his captive witch. Matthew’s stomach twisted into a heavy knot.

He rounded the corner of the living room. What he saw brought him to an immediate stop. Stark murals in shades of black and gray covered every inch of the canvas-hued walls. Jack stood atop a makeshift scaffold constructed from pieces of furniture, wielding a soft artist’s pencil. The floor was littered with pencil stubs and the paper peelings that Jack had torn away to reveal fresh charcoal.

Matthew’s eyes swept the walls from floor to ceiling. Detailed landscapes, studies of animals and plants that were almost microscopic in their precision, and sensitive portraits were linked together with breathtaking swaths of line and form that defied painterly logic. The overall effect was beautiful yet disturbing, as if Sir Anthony van Dyck had painted Picasso’s Guernica. “Christ.” Matthew’s right hand automatically made the sign of the cross.

“Jack ran out of paper two hours ago,” Gallowglass said grimly, pointing to the easels in the front window. Each now bore a single sheet, but the drifts of paper surrounding their tripod supports suggested that these were merely a selection from a larger series of drawings.

“Matthew.” Chris came from the kitchen, sipping a cup of black coffee, the aroma of the roasted beans blending with Jack’s bitter scent.

“This is no place for a warmblood, Chris,” Matthew said, keeping a wary eye on Jack.

“I promised Miriam I’d stay.” Chris settled into a worn plantation chair and placed his coffee mug on the wide arms. When he moved, the woven seat underneath him creaked like a ship under sail. “So Jack’s another one of your grandchildren?”

“Not now, Chris. Where’s Andrew?” Matthew said, continuing to observe Jack at work.

“He’s upstairs getting more pencils.” Chris had a sip of coffee, his dark eyes taking in the details of what Jack was sketching now: a naked woman, her head thrown back in agony. “I wish like hell he would go back to drawing daffodils.”

Matthew wiped his hand across his mouth, hoping to remove the sourness that rose up from his stomach. Thank God that Diana hadn’t come with him. Jack would never be able to look her in the eyes again if he knew she’d seen this.

Moments later Hubbard returned to the living room. He put a box of fresh supplies on the stepladder where Jack balanced. Utterly absorbed in his work, Jack didn’t react to Hubbard’s presence any more than he had to Matthew’s arrival.

“You should have called me sooner.” Matthew kept his voice deliberately calm. In spite of his efforts, Jack turned glassy, unseeing eyes toward him as his blood rage responded to the tension in the air.

“Jack’s done this before,” Hubbard said. “He’s drawn on his bedroom walls and on the walls in the church undercroft. But he’s never made so many images so quickly. And never . . . him.” He looked up. Benjamin’s eyes, nose, and mouth dominated one wall, looking down on Jack with an expression that was equal parts avarice and malice. His features were unmistakable in their cruelty, and somehow more ominous for not being contained within the outlines of a human face.

Jack had moved a few feet along from Benjamin’s portrait and was now working on the last empty stretch of wall. The pictures around the room followed a rough sequence of events leading from Jack’s time in London before Hubbard had made him a vampire all the way to the present day. The easels in the window were the starting point for Jack’s troubling image cycle.

Matthew examined them. Each held what artists called a study—a single element of a larger scene that helped them to understand particular problems of composition or perspective. The first was a drawing of a man’s hand, skin cracked and coarsened through poverty and manual labor. The image of a cruel mouth with missing teeth occupied another easel. The third showed the crisscrossing laces on a man’s breeches, along with a finger hooked and ready to pull them free. The last was of a knife, pressing against a boy’s prominent hip bone until the tip slid into the skin.

Matthew put the solitary images together in his mind—hand, ear, breeches, knife—while the St.

Matthew Passion thundered in the background. He swore at the abusive scene that instantly sprang to mind.

“One of Jack’s earliest memories,” Hubbard said.

Matthew was reminded of his first encounter with Jack, when he would have taken the boy’s ear if not for Diana’s intervention. He had been yet another creature to offer Jack violence instead of compassion.

“If not for his art and music, Jack would have destroyed himself. We have often thanked God for Philippe’s gift.” Andrew gestured toward the cello propped up in the corner.

Matthew had recognized the instrument’s distinctive scroll the moment he clapped eyes on it. He and Signor Montagnana, the instrument’s Venetian maker, had dubbed the cello “the Duchess of Marlborough” for its generous, yet still elegant, curves. Matthew had learned to play on Duchess back when lutes fell out of favor and were replaced by violins, violas, and cellos. Duchess had mysteriously disappeared while he was in New Orleans disciplining Marcus’s brood of children. When Matthew returned, he had asked Philippe what had happened to the instrument. His father had shrugged and muttered something about Napoleon and the English that had made no sense at all.

“Does Jack always listen to Bach when he draws?” Matthew murmured.

“He prefers Beethoven. Jack started listening to Bach after . . . you know.” Hubbard’s mouth twisted.

“Perhaps his drawings can help us find Benjamin,” Gallowglass said.

Matthew’s eyes darted over the many faces and places that might provide vital clues.

“Chris already took pictures,” Gallowglass assured him.

“And a video,” Chris added, “once he got to . . . er, him.” Chris, too, avoided saying Benjamin’s name and simply waved to where Jack was still sketching and crooning something under his breath.

Matthew held his hand up for silence.

“‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Jack back together again.’” He shuddered and dropped what little remained of his pencil. Andrew handed him a replacement, and Jack began another detailed study of a male hand, this one reaching out in a gesture of entreaty.

“Thanks be to God. He’s nearing the end of his frenzy.” Some of the tension in Hubbard’s shoulders dissipated. “Soon Jack will be back in his right mind.”

Wanting to take advantage of the moment, Matthew moved silently to the cello. He gripped it by the neck and picked the bow off the floor where Jack had carelessly dropped it.

Matthew sat on the edge of a wooden chair, holding his ear near the instrument while he plucked and worked the bow over the strings, still able to hear the cello’s round tones over the Bach that blared from the speakers on a nearby bookcase.

“Shut that noise off,” he told Gallowglass, making a final adjustment to the tuning pegs before he began to play. For a few measures, the cello’s music clashed with the choir and orchestra. Then Bach’s great choral work fell silent. Into the void, Matthew poured music that was an intermediary step between the histrionic strains of the Passion and something that he hoped would help Jack regain his emotional bearing.

Matthew had chosen the piece carefully: the Lacrimosa from Johann Christian Bach’s Requiem.

Even so, Jack startled at the change in musical accompaniment, his hand stilling against the wall. As the music washed through him, his breathing became slower and more regular. When he resumed sketching, it was to draw the outlines of Westminster Abbey instead of another creature in pain.

While he played, Matthew bent his head in supplication. Had a choir been present, as the composer intended, they would have been singing the Latin mass for the dead. Since he was alone, Matthew made the cello’s mournful tones imitate the absent human voices.

Lacrimosa dies illa, Matthew’s cello sang.

“Tearful will be that day,

On which from the ash arises

The guilty man who is to be judged.”

Spare him therefore, God, Matthew prayed as he played the next line of music, putting his faith and anguish into every stroke of the bow.

When he reached the end of the Lacrimosa, Matthew took up the strains of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata no. 1 in F Major. Beethoven had written the piece for piano as well as for cello, but Matthew hoped Jack was familiar enough with the music to fill in the missing notes.

The strokes of Jack’s charcoal pencil slowed further, becoming gentler with each passing measure.

Matthew recognized the torch of the Statue of Liberty, the steeple of the Center Church in New Haven.

Jack’s temporary madness might be slowing to a close as he moved toward the present day, but Matthew knew he was not free of it yet.

One image was missing.

To help nudge Jack along, Matthew turned to one of his favorite pieces of music: Fauré’s inspiring, hopeful Requiem. Long before he’d met Diana, one of his great joys had been to go to New College and listen to the choir perform the piece. It was not until the strains of the last section, In Paradisum, that the image Matthew had been waiting for took shape under Jack’s hand. By that point Jack was sketching in time to the stately music, his body swaying to the cello’s peaceful song.

“May the ranks of angels receive you, and with Lazarus,

Once a poor man, may you have eternal rest.”

Matthew knew these verses by heart, for they accompanied the corpse from church to grave—a place of peace that was too often denied to a creature like him. Matthew had sung these same words over Philippe’s body, wept through them when Hugh had died, punished himself with them when Eleanor and Cecilia had perished, and repeated them for fifteen centuries as he mourned Blanca and Lucas, his warmblooded wife and child.

Tonight, however, the familiar words led Jack—and Matthew with him—to a place of second chances. Matthew watched, riveted, as Jack brought Diana’s familiar, lovely face to life against the wall’s creamy surface. Her eyes were wide and full of joy, her lips parted in astonishment and lifting into the beginning of a smile. Matthew had missed the precious moments when Diana first recognized Jack. He witnessed them now.

Seeing her portrait confirmed what Matthew already suspected: that it was Diana who had the power to bring Jack’s life full circle. Matthew might make Jack feel safe the way a father should, but it was Diana who made him feel loved.

Matthew continued to move the bow against the strings, his fingers pressing and plucking to draw the music out. At last Jack stopped, the pencil dropping from his nerveless hands and clattering to the floor.

“You are one hell of an artist, Jack,” Chris said, leaning forward in his seat to better view Diana’s image.

Jack’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion, and he looked around for Chris. Though they were hazy with exhaustion, there was no sign of blood rage in his eyes. They were once again brown and green.

“Matthew.” Jack jumped off the top of the scaffold, soaring through the air and landing with the silence of a cat. “Good morning, Jack.” Matthew put the cello aside.

“The music—was it you?” Jack asked with a confused frown.

“I thought you might benefit from something less Baroque,” Matthew said, rising to his feet. “The seventeenth century can be a bit florid for vampires. It’s best taken in small doses.” His glance flickered to the wall, and Jack drew a shaking hand across his forehead as he realized what he’d done.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stricken. “I’ll paint over it, Gallowglass. Today. I promise.”

“No!” Matthew, Gallowglass, Hubbard, and Chris said in unison.

“But the walls,” Jack protested. “I’ve ruined them.”

“No more so than da Vinci or Michelangelo did,” Gallowglass said mildly. “Or Matthew, come to think of it, with his doodles on the emperor’s palace in Prague.” Humor illuminated Jack’s eyes for a moment before the light dimmed once more.

“A running deer is one thing. But nobody could possibly want to see these pictures—not even me,”

Jack said, staring at a particularly gruesome drawing of a decaying corpse floating faceup in the river.

“Art and music must come from the heart,” Matthew said, gripping his great-grandson by the shoulder. “Even the darkest places need to be brought into the light of day, or else they’ll grow until they swallow a man whole.”

Jack’s expression was bleak. “What if they already have?”

“You wouldn’t have tried to save that woman if you were dark through and through.” Matthew pointed to a desolate figure looking up at an outstretched hand. The hand matched Jack’s, right down to the scar at the base of the thumb.

“But I didn’t save her. She was too frightened to let me help her. Afraid of me!” Jack tried to jerk away, his elbow cracking with the strain, but Matthew refused to let him go.

“It was her darkness that stopped her—her fear—not yours,” Matthew insisted.

“I don’t believe you,” Jack said, stubbornly holding on to the notion that his blood rage made him guilty, no matter what. Matthew got a small taste of what Philippe and Ysabeau had endured with his own steadfast refusals to accept absolution.

“That’s because you’ve got two wolves fighting inside you. We all do.” Chris joined Matthew.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked, his expression wary.

“It’s an old Cherokee legend—one that my grandmother, Nana Bets, learned from her grandmother.”

“You don’t look like a Cherokee,” Jack said, eyes narrowing.

“You’d be surprised by what’s in my blood. I’m mostly French and African, with a little bit of English, Scottish, Spanish, and Native American thrown into the mix. I’m a lot like you, really.

Phenotype can be misleading,” Chris said with a smile. Jack looked confused, and Matthew made a mental note to buy him a basic biology textbook.

“Uh-huh,” Jack said skeptically, and Chris laughed. “And the wolves?”

“According to my grandmother’s people, two wolves live inside every creature: one evil and the other good. They spend all their time trying to destroy each other.”

It was, Matthew thought, as good a description of blood rage as he was ever likely to hear from someone not afflicted with the disease.

“My bad wolf is winning.” Jack looked sad.

“He doesn’t have to,” Chris promised. “Nana Bets said the wolf who wins is the wolf you feed. The evil wolf feeds on anger, guilt, sorrow, lies, and regret. The good wolf needs a diet of love and honesty, spiced up with big spoonfuls of compassion and faith. So if you want the good wolf to win, you’re going to have to starve the other one.”

“What if I can’t stop feeding the bad wolf?” Jack looked worried. “What if I fail?”

“You won’t fail,” Matthew said firmly.

“We won’t let you,” Chris said, nodding in agreement. “There are five of us in this room. Your big bad wolf doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Five?” Jack whispered, looking around at Matthew and Gallowglass, Hubbard and Chris. “You’re all going to help me?”

“Every last one of us,” Chris promised, taking Jack’s hand. When Chris jerked his head at him, Matthew obediently rested his own hand on top.

“All for one and all that jazz.” Chris turned to Gallowglass. “What are you waiting for? Get over here and join us.”

“Bah. The Musketeers were all tossers,” Gallowglass said, scowling as he stalked toward them. In spite of his dismissive words, Matthew’s nephew laid his huge paw atop theirs. “Don’t be telling Baldwin about this, young Jack, or I’ll give your evil wolf a double helping of dinner.”

“What about you, Andrew?” Chris called across the room.

“I believe the saying is ‘Un pour tous, tous pour un,’ not ‘All for one and all that jazz.’”

Matthew winced. The words were right enough, but Hubbard’s Cockney accent made them practically unintelligible. Philippe should have delivered a French tutor along with the cello.

Hubbard’s gaunt hand was the last to join the pile. Matthew saw his thumb move top to bottom, then right to left, as the priest bestowed his blessing on their strange pact. They were an unlikely band, Matthew thought: three creatures related by blood, a fourth bound by loyalty, and a fifth who had joined them for no apparent reason other than that he was a good man.

He hoped that, together, they would be enough to help Jack heal.

In the aftermath of his furious activity, Jack had wanted to talk. He sat with Matthew and Hubbard in the living room, surrounded by his past, and shifted the burden of some of his harrowing experiences onto Matthew’s shoulders. On the subject of Benjamin, however, he was mute. Matthew wasn’t surprised.

How could words convey the horror Jack had endured at Benjamin’s hands?

“Come on, Jackie,” Gallowglass interrupted, holding up Lobero’s leash. “Mop needs a walk.”

“I’d like a bit of fresh air, too.” Andrew unfolded from a strange red chair that looked like a piece of modern sculpture but that Matthew had discovered was surprisingly comfortable. As the front door closed, Chris sauntered into the living room with a fresh cup of coffee. Mathew didn’t know how the man survived with so much caffeine in his veins.

“I talked to your son tonight—your other son, Marcus.” Chris took up his usual seat in the plantation chair. “Nice guy. Smart, too. You must be proud of him.”

“I am,” Matthew said warily. “Why did Marcus call?”

“We called him.“ Chris sipped at his coffee. “Miriam thought he should see the video. Once he had, Marcus agreed we should take some more blood from Jack. We took two samples.”

“You what?” Matthew was aghast.

“Hubbard gave me permission. He is Jack’s next of kin,” Chris replied calmly.

“You think I’m worried about informed consent?” Matthew was barely able to keep his temper in check. “Drawing blood from a vampire in the grip of blood rage—you could have been killed.”

“It was a perfect opportunity to monitor the changes that take place in a vampire’s body chemistry at the onset of blood rage,” Chris said. “We’ll need that information if we want to have a shot at coming up with a medicine that might lessen the symptoms.”

Matthew frowned. “Lessen the symptoms? We’re looking for a cure.”

Chris reached down and picked up a folder. He offered it to Matthew. “The latest findings.”

Both Hubbard and Jack had been swabbed and given blood samples. They’d been rushed through processing, and their genome report was due any day. Matthew took the folder with nerveless fingers, afraid of what he might find inside it.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Chris said with heartfelt regret.

Matthew’s eyes raced over the results, flipping the pages.

“Marcus identified them. No one else would have. We weren’t looking in the right place,” Chris said.

Matthew couldn’t absorb what he was seeing. It changed . . . everything.

“Jack has more of the triggers in his noncoding DNA than you do.” Chris paused. “I have to ask, Matthew. Are you sure you can trust Jack around Diana?”

Before Matthew could respond, the front door opened. There was none of the usual chatter that accompanied Jack’s appearance, or Gallowglass’s cheerful whistling, or Andrew’s pious sermonizing.

The only sound was Lobero’s low whine.

Matthew’s nostrils flared, and he leaped to his feet, the test results scattering around him. Then he was gone, moving to the doorway in a flash.

“What the hell?” Chris said behind him.

“We met someone while we were out walking,” Gallowglass said, leading a reluctant Lobero into the house.

21

“Move,” Baldwin commanded, holding Jack by the scruff of his neck. Matthew had seen that hand tear another vampire’s head clean off.

Jack hadn’t witnessed that brutal episode, but he knew he was at Baldwin’s mercy just the same.

The boy was white-skinned and wide-eyed, with enormous black pupils. Not surprisingly, he obeyed Baldwin without hesitation.

Lobero knew it, too. Gallowglass still held the leash, but the dog circled the Gael’s feet with eyes fixed on his master.

“It’s okay, Mop,” Jack assured his dog in a whisper, but Lobero was having none of it.

“Trouble, Matthew?” Chris was so close that Matthew could feel his breath.

“There’s always trouble,” Matthew said grimly.

“Go home,” Jack urged Chris. “Take Mop, too, and—” Jack stopped with a wince. Blood suffused the skin on his neck where Baldwin’s fingertips were leaving a dark bruise.

“They’re staying,” Baldwin hissed.

Jack had made a strategic error. Baldwin delighted in destroying what other people loved. Some experience in his past must have shaped the impulse, but Matthew had never discovered what it was.

Baldwin would never let Chris or Mop go now. Not until he got what he came for.

“And you don’t give orders. You take them.” Baldwin was careful to keep the boy between him and Matthew as he pushed him toward the living room. It was a devastatingly simple and effective tactic, one that brought back painful memories.

Jack is not Eleanor, Matthew told himself. Jack was a vampire, too. But he was Matthew’s blood, and Baldwin could use him to bring Matthew to heel.

“That stunt you pulled in the square will be the last time you challenge me, mongrel.” Baldwin’s shirt showed teeth marks at the shoulder, and there were beads of blood around the torn fabric.

Christ. Jack had bitten Baldwin.

“But I’m not yours.” Jack sounded desperate. “Tell him that I belong to you, Matthew!”

“And who do you think Matthew belongs to?” Baldwin whispered in his ear, quietly menacing.

“Diana,” Jack snarled, turning on his captor.

“Diana?” Baldwin’s laugh was mocking, and the blow he gave Jack would have flattened a warmblood twice his size and weight. Jack’s knees met the hard wooden floors. “Get in here, Matthew.

And shut that dog up.”

“Disavow Jack before the de Clermont sire and I’ll see you to hell personally,” Hubbard hissed, grabbing at Matthew’s sleeve as he went past.

Matthew looked at him coldly, and Hubbard dropped his arm.

“Let him go. He’s my blood,” Matthew said, stalking into the room. “Then go back to Manhattan where you belong, Baldwin.”

“Oh,” Chris said in a tone that suggested he finally saw the light. “Of course. You live on Central Park, don’t you?”

Baldwin didn’t reply. In fact, he owned most of that stretch of Fifth Avenue and liked to keep a close eye on his investments. Recently he had been developing his hunting ground in the Meatpacking District, filling it with nightclubs to complement the butcher shops, but as a rule he preferred not to reside where he fed.

“No wonder you’re such an entitled bastard,” Chris said. “Well, buddy, you’re in New Haven now.

We play by different rules here.”

“Rules?” Baldwin drawled. “In New Haven?”

“Yeah. All for one and all that jazz.” It was Chris’s call to arms. Matthew was so close that he could feel Chris’s muscles bunch and was prepared when the small knife went past his ear. The thin blade was so insignificant that it would barely have damaged a human’s skin, never mind Baldwin’s tough hide. Matthew reached up and pinched it between his fingertips before it could reach its target. Chris scowled at him reproachfully, and Matthew shook his head.

“Don’t.” Matthew might have let Chris get in a solid punch, but Baldwin had narrower views when it came to the privileges that should be afforded to warmbloods. He turned to Baldwin. “Leave. Jack is my blood and my problem.”

“And miss all the fun?” Baldwin bent Jack’s head to the side. Jack looked up at Baldwin, his expression black and deadly. “Quite a resemblance, Matthew.”

“I like to think so,” Matthew said coolly, giving Jack a tight smile. He took Lobero’s lead from Gallowglass. The dog quieted immediately. “Baldwin might be thirsty. Offer him a drink, Gallowglass.”

Maybe that would sweeten Baldwin’s mood long enough to get Jack safely away. Matthew could send him to Marcus’s house with Hubbard. It was a better alternative than Diana’s house on Court Street. If his wife got wind of Baldwin’s presence, she’d be on Wooster Square with a firedrake and a lightning bolt.

“I’ve got a full larder,” Gallowglass said. “Coffee, wine, water, blood. I’m sure I could scare up some hemlock and honey if you’d prefer that, Uncle.”

“What I require only the boy can provide.” Without warning or preamble, Baldwin’s teeth ripped into Jack’s neck. His bite was savage, deliberately so.

This was vampire justice—swift, unbending, remorseless. For minor infractions the sire’s punishment would consist only of this public show of submission. Through that blood the sire received a thin trickle of his progeny’s innermost thoughts and memories. The ritual stripped a vampire’s soul bare, making him shamefully vulnerable. Acquiring another creature’s secrets, by whatever means, sustained a vampire in much the same way the hunt did, nourishing that part of his soul that forever sought to possess more. If the offenses were more significant, the ritual of submission would be followed by death. Killing another vampire was physically taxing, emotionally draining, and spiritually devastating. It was why most vampire sires appointed one of their kin to do it for them. Though Philippe and Hugh had polished the de Clermonts’ façade to a high sheen over the centuries, it was Matthew who had performed all of the house’s dirty maintenance.

There were hundreds of ways to kill a vampire, and Matthew knew them all. You could drink a vampire dry as he had Philippe. You could weaken a vampire physically by releasing his blood slowly and putting him in the dreaded state of suspension known as thrall. Unable to fight back, the vampire could be tortured into a confession or mercifully allowed to die. There was beheading and evisceration, though some preferred the more old-fashioned method of punching through the rib cage and wrenching out the heart. You could sever the carotid and the aorta, a method that Gerbert’s lovely assassin, Juliette, had tried and failed to use on him.

Matthew prayed that taking Jack’s blood and his memories would suffice for Baldwin tonight.

Too late, he remembered that Jack’s memories held tales best left untold.

Too late, he caught the scent of honeysuckle and summer storms.

Too late, he saw Diana release Corra.

Diana’s firedrake rose up from her mistress’s shoulders and into the air. Corra swooped down on Baldwin with a shriek, rear talons extended and wings aflame. Baldwin grabbed the firedrake by the foot with his free hand, wresting her body away. Corra hurtled into the wall, her wing crumpling at the impact. Diana bent double, grabbing at her own arm in sudden pain, but it didn’t shake her resolve.

“Take your hands. Off. My. Son.” Diana’s skin was gleaming, the subtle nimbus that was always visible without her disguising spell now appearing as a distinctive, prismatic light. Rainbows of color shot under her skin—not just the hands but up her arms, along the tendons of her neck, twisting and spiraling as though the cords in her fingers had extended through her whole body.

When Lobero lunged at the end of his lead, trying to get to Corra, Matthew let the dog go. Lobero crouched over the firedrake, licking at her face and nudging her with his nose as she struggled to get up and go to Diana’s aid.

But Diana didn’t need help—not from Matthew, not from Lobero, not even from Corra. His wife straightened, splayed out her left hand with the palm facing down, and directed her fingers at the floor.

The wooden planks shattered and split, re-forming into thick canes that rose up and wound themselves around Baldwin’s feet, keeping him in place. Lethally long, sharp thorns sprang out of the shoots, digging through his clothes and into flesh.

Diana fixed her gaze on Baldwin, reached out with her right hand, and pulled. Jack’s wrist jerked out and to the side as if he were tethered to her. The rest of him followed, and in moments he was lying in a heap on the floor, out of Baldwin’s reach.

Matthew adopted a similar pose to Lobero’s, standing over Jack’s body to shield him.

“Enough, Baldwin.” Matthew’s hand sliced through the air.

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” Jack whispered, remaining on the floor. “He came out of nowhere and went straight for Gallowglass. When I’m surprised—” He stopped with a shudder, his knees drawing close to his chest. “I didn’t know who he was.”

Miriam came into the room. After studying the scene, she took charge. She pointed Gallowglass and Hubbard in Jack’s direction and cast a worried look at Diana, who stood unmoving and unblinking, as though she had taken root in the living room.

“Is Jack okay?” Chris asked, his voice strained.

“He’ll be fine. Every vampire alive has been bitten by their sire at least once,” Miriam said, trying to put his mind at rest. Chris didn’t seem comforted by this revelation about vampire family life.

Matthew helped Jack up. The bite mark on his neck was shallow and would heal quickly, but at the moment it looked gruesome. Matthew touched it briefly, hoping to reassure Jack that he would, as Miriam promised, be fine.

“Can you see to Corra?” Matthew asked Miriam as he handed Jack off to Gallowglass and Hubbard.

Miriam nodded.

Matthew was already crossing the room, his hands wrapping around Baldwin’s throat.

“I want your word that if Diana lets you go, you will not touch her for what happened here tonight.” Matthew’s fingers tightened. “If not, I will kill you, Baldwin. Make no mistake about that.”

“We’re not finished here, Matthew,” Baldwin warned.

“I know.” Matthew locked his eyes on his brother until the man nodded.

Then he turned to Diana. The colors pulsing beneath her skin reminded him of the shining ball of energy she had gifted him in Madison before either of them knew she was a weaver. The colors were brightest at her fingertips, as though her magic were waiting there, ready to be released. Matthew knew how unpredictable his own blood rage could be when it was that close to the surface, and he treated his wife with caution.

“Diana?” Matthew smoothed the hair back from her face, searching her blue-and-gold irises for signs of recognition. Instead he saw infinity, her eyes fixed on some invisible vista. He changed tack, trying to bring her back to the here and now.

“Jack is with Gallowglass and Andrew, ma lionne. Baldwin will not harm him tonight.” Matthew’s words were carefully chosen. “You should take him back home.”

Chris started, ready to voice a protest.

“Perhaps Chris will go with you,” Matthew continued smoothly. “Corra and Lobero, too.”

“Corra.” Diana croaked. Her eyes flickered, but not even concern for her firedrake could break her mesmerized stare. Matthew wondered what she saw that the rest of them did not and why it held such a powerful attraction for her. He felt a disturbing flicker of jealousy.

“Miriam is with Corra.” Matthew found himself unable to look away from the navy depths of her eyes.

“Baldwin . . . hurt her.” Diana sounded confused, as though she had forgotten that vampires were not like other creatures. She rubbed absently at her arm.

Just when Matthew thought whatever it was that held her might give way to reason, Diana’s anger caught again. He could smell it—taste it.

“He hurt Jack.” Diana’s fingers opened wide in a sudden spasm. No longer concerned with the wisdom of getting between a weaver and her power, Matthew caught them before they could work magic.

“Baldwin will let you take Jack home. In return you have to release Baldwin. We can’t have the two of you at war. The family wouldn’t survive it.” Based on what he’d seen tonight, Diana was as single-minded as Baldwin when it came to destroying the obstacles in her way.

Matthew lifted her hands and brushed the knuckles with his lips. “Remember when we talked about our children in London? We spoke then about what they would need.”

That got Diana’s attention. At last. Her eyes focused on him.

“Love,” she whispered. “A grown-up to take responsibility for them. A soft place to land.”

“That’s right.” Matthew smiled. “Jack needs you. Release Baldwin from your spell.”

Diana’s magic gave way in a shudder that passed through her from feet to head. She flicked her fingers in Baldwin’s direction. The thorns withdrew from his skin. The canes loosened, retracting back into the splintered floorboards surrounding the vampire. Soon he was free and Gallowglass’s house was returned to its normal, disenchanted state.

While her spell slowly unraveled, Diana went to Jack and cupped his face. The skin on his neck was already starting to knit together, but it would take several days to heal completely. Her generous mouth became a thin line.

“Don’t worry,” Jack told her, covering the wound self-consciously.

“Come on, Jackie. Diana and I will take you to Court Street. You must be famished.” Gallowglass clapped his hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack was exhausted but tried to look less wan for Diana’s sake.

“Corra,” Diana said, beckoning to her firedrake. Corra limped toward her, gaining strength as she drew closer to her mistress. When the weaver and the firedrake were nearly touching, Corra faded into invisibility as she and Diana became one.

“Let Chris help you home,” Matthew said, careful to keep his broad frame between his wife and the disturbing images on the walls. She was, thankfully, too tired to do more than glance at them.

Matthew was pleased to see that Miriam had rounded up everyone in the house except Baldwin.

They were huddled in the entrance—Chris, Andrew, Lobero, and Miriam—waiting for Diana, Gallowglass, and Jack. The more creatures there to support the boy, the better.

Watching them go took every ounce of control Matthew had. He forced himself to wave encouragingly at Diana when she turned for one more glimpse of him. Once they disappeared between the houses on Court Street, he returned to Baldwin.

His brother was staring up at the last section of the murals, his shirt dotted with dark stains where Jack’s teeth and Diana’s briars had pierced the skin.

“Jack is the vampire murderer. I saw it in his thoughts, and now I see it here on the walls. We’ve been looking for him for more than a year. How has he evaded the Congregation all this time?” Baldwin asked.

“He was with Benjamin. Then he was on the run.” Matthew deliberately avoided looking at the horrifying images that surrounded Benjamin’s disembodied features. They were, he supposed, no more hideous than other brutal acts that vampires had perpetrated over the years. What made them so unbearable was that Jack had done them.

“Jack has to be stopped.” Baldwin’s tone was matter-of-fact.

“God forgive me.” Matthew lowered his head.

“Philippe was right. Your Christianity really does make you perfect for your job.” Baldwin snorted.

“What other faith promises to wash away your sins if only you confess them?”

Sadly, Baldwin had never grasped the concept of atonement. His view of Matthew’s faith was purely transactional—you went to church, confessed, and walked out a clean man. But salvation was more complicated. Philippe had come to understand that in the end, although he had long found Matthew’s constant search for forgiveness irritating and irrational.

“You know very well there’s no place for him among the de Clermonts—not if his disease is as serious as these pictures suggest.” Baldwin saw in Jack what Benjamin had seen: a dangerous weapon, one that could be shaped and twisted to make it as deadly as possible. Unlike Benjamin, Baldwin had a conscience. He would not use the weapon that had come so unexpectedly into his hand, but neither would he allow it to be used by another.

Matthew’s head remained bowed, weighted down with memories and regret. Baldwin’s next words were expected, but Matthew felt them as a blow nevertheless.

“Kill him,” commanded the head of the de Clermont family.

When Matthew returned home to the brightly painted red door with the white trim and the black pediment, it opened wide.

Diana had been waiting. She had changed into something that would ward off the chill and was bundled into one of his old cardigans, lessening the scent of the others she’d come into contact with that night. Even so, Matthew’s kiss of greeting was rough and possessive, and he only reluctantly drew away.

“What’s wrong?” Diana’s fingers went to Philippe’s arrowhead. It had become a reliable signal that her anxiety was climbing. The smudges of color on their tips told the same tale, growing more visible with every passing moment.

Matthew looked heavenward, hoping to find some guidance. What he saw instead was a sky totally devoid of stars. The reasonable, human part of him knew that this was due to the city’s bright lights and tonight’s full moon. But the vampire within was instinctively alarmed. There was nothing to orient him in such a place, no markers to guide his way.

“Come.” Matthew picked up Diana’s coat from the chair in the front hall, took his wife’s hand, and led her down the steps. “Where are we going?” she said, struggling to keep up. “To a place where I can see the stars,” Matthew replied.

22

Matthew headed north and west and out of the city with Diana beside him. He drove uncharacteristically fast, and in less than fifteen minutes they were on a quiet lane tucked into the shadow of the peaks known locally as the Sleeping Giant. Matthew pulled in to an otherwise dark driveway and shut off the car’s ignition. A porch light came on, and an elderly man peered into the darkness.

“That you, Mr. Clairmont?” The man’s voice was faint and thready but there was still a sharp intelligence in his eyes.

“It is, Mr. Phelps,” Matthew said with a nod. He circled the car and helped Diana down. “My wife and I are going up to the cottage.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Mr. Phelps said, touching his forehead with his hand. “Mr.

Gallowglass called to warn me you might be stopping by to check on things. He said not to worry if I heard somebody out here.”

“I’m sorry we woke you,” Diana said.

“I’m an old man, Mrs. Clairmont. I don’t get much shut-eye these days. I figure I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Mr. Phelps said with a wheezing laugh. “You’ll find everything you need up on the mountain.”

“Thank you for watching over the place,” Matthew said.

“It’s a family tradition,” Mr. Phelps replied. “You’ll find Mr. Whitmore’s Ranger by the shed, if you don’t want to use my old Gator. I don’t imagine your wife will want to walk all that way. The park gates are closed, but you know how to get in. Have a nice night.”

Mr. Phelps went back inside, the screen hitting the doorframe with a snap of aluminum and mesh.

Matthew took Diana by the elbow and steered her toward what looked like a a cross between a golf cart with unusually rugged tires and a dune buggy. He let go of her only long enough to round the vehicle and climb in.

The gate into the park was so well hidden it was all but invisible, and the dirt trail that served as a road was unlit and unmarked, but Matthew found both with ease. He navigated a few sharp turns, climbing steadily as they traveled up the side of the mountain, passing through the edges of heavy forest until they reached an open field with a small wooden house tucked under the trees. The lights were on inside, making it as golden and inviting as a cottage in a fairy tale.

Matthew stopped Marcus’s Ranger and engaged the brake. He took a deep breath to drink in the night scents of mountain pine and dew-touched grass. Below, the valley looked bleak. He wondered if it was his mood or the silvered moonlight that rendered it so unwelcoming.

“The ground is uneven. I don’t want you to fall.” Matthew held out his hand, giving Diana the choice whether to take it or not.

After a concerned look, she put her hand in his. Matthew scanned the horizon, unable to stop searching for new threats. Then his attention turned skyward.

“The moon is bright tonight,” he mused. “Even here it’s hard to see the stars.”

“That’s because it’s Mabon,” Diana said quietly.

“Mabon?” Matthew looked startled.

She nodded. “One year ago you walked into the Bodleian Library and straight into my heart. As soon as that wicked mouth of yours smiled, the moment your eyes lightened with recognition even though we’d never met before, I knew that my life would never be the same.”

Diana’s words gave Matthew a momentary reprieve from the relentless agitation that Baldwin’s order and Chris’s news had set off in him, and for a brief moment the world was poised between absence and desire, between blood and fear, between the warmth of summer and the icy depths of winter.

“What’s wrong?” Diana searched his face. “Is it Jack? The blood rage? Baldwin?”

“Yes. No. In a way.” Matthew drove his hands through his hair and whirled around to avoid her keen gaze. “Baldwin knows that Jack killed those warmbloods in Europe. He knows that Jack is the vampire murderer.”

“Surely this isn’t the first time a vampire’s thirst for blood had resulted in unexpected deaths,”

Diana said, trying to defuse the situation.

“This time it’s different.” There was no easy way to say it. “Baldwin ordered me to kill Jack.”

“No. I forbid it.” Diana’s words echoed, and a wind kicked up from the east. She whirled around, and Matthew caught her. She struggled in his grip, sending a gray-and-brown twist of air howling around his feet.

“Don’t walk away from me.” He wasn’t sure he could control himself if she did. “You must listen to reason.”

“No.” Still she tried to avoid him. “You can’t give up on him. Jack won’t always have blood rage.

You’re going to find a cure.”

“Blood rage has no cure.” Matthew would have given his life to change that fact.

“What?” Diana’s shock was evident.

“We’ve been running the new DNA samples. For the first time, we’re able to chart a multigenerational pedigree that extends beyond Marcus. Chris and Miriam traced the blood-rage gene from Ysabeau through me and Andrew down to Jack.” Matthew had Diana’s complete attention now.

“Blood rage is a developmental anomaly,” he continued. “There’s a genetic component, but the blood-rage gene appears to be triggered by something in our noncoding DNA. Jack and I have that something. Maman, Marcus, and Andrew don’t.”

“I don’t understand,” Diana whispered.

“During my rebirth something already in my noncoding, human DNA reacted to the new genetic information flooding my system,” Matthew said patiently. “We know that vampire genes are brutal— they push aside what’s human in order to dominate the newly modified cells. But they don’t replace everything. If they did, my genome and Ysabeau’s would be identical. Instead I am her child—a combination of the genetic ingredients I inherited from my human parents as well as what I inherited from her.”

“So you had blood rage before Ysabeau made you vampire?” Diana was understandably confused.

“No. But I possessed the triggers the blood-rage gene needed to express itself,” Matthew said.

“Marcus has identified specific noncoding DNA that he believes plays a role.”

“In what he calls junk DNA?” Diana asked.

Matthew nodded.

“Then a cure is still possible,” she insisted. “In a few years—”

“No, mon coeur.” He couldn’t allow her hopes to rise. “The more we understand the blood-rage gene and learn about the noncoding genes, the better the treatment might become, but this is not a disease we can cure. Our only hope is to prevent it and, God willing, lessen its symptoms.”

“Until you do, you can teach Jack how to control it.” Diana’s face remained set in stubborn lines.

“There’s no need to kill him.”

“Jack’s symptoms are far worse than mine. The genetic factors that appear to trigger the disease are present at much higher levels in him.” Matthew blinked back the blood tears that he could feel forming.

“He won’t suffer any pain or fear. I promise you.”

“But you will. You say I pay a price for dealing with matters of life and death? So do you. Jack will be gone, but you will live on, hating yourself,” Diana said. “Think of what Philippe’s death has cost you.”

Matthew could think of little else. He had killed other creatures since his father’s death, but only to settle his own scores. Until tonight the last de Clermont sire to command him to kill had been Philippe.

And the death Philippe had ordered was his own.

“Jack is suffering, Diana. This would mean an end to it.” Matthew used the same words Philippe had to convince his wife to admit the inevitable.

“For him maybe. Not for us.” Diana’s hand strayed to the round swell of her belly. “The twins could have blood rage. Will you kill them, too?”

She waited for him to deny it, to tell her that she was insane to even think of such a thing. But he didn’t.

“When the Congregation discovers what Jack has done—and it’s only a matter of time before they do—they will kill him. And they won’t care how frightened he is or how much pain they cause. Baldwin will try to kill Jack before it comes to that, to keep the Congregation out of the family business. If he tries to run, Jack could fall into Benjamin’s hands. If he does, Benjamin will exact a terrible revenge for Jack’s betrayal. Death would be a blessing then.” Matthew’s face and voice were impassive, but the agony that flashed through Diana’s eyes would haunt him forever.

“Then Jack will disappear. He’ll go far away, where nobody can find him.”

Matthew smothered his impatience. He’d known that Diana was stubborn when he first met her. It was one of the reasons he loved her—even though at times it drove him to distraction. “A lone vampire cannot survive. Like wolves, we have to be part of a pack or we go mad. Think of Benjamin, Diana, and what happened when I abandoned him.”

“We’ll go with him,” she said, grasping at straws in her efforts to save Jack.

“That would only make it easier for Benjamin or the Congregation to hunt him down.”

“Then you must establish a scion immediately, as Marcus suggested,” Diana said. “Jack will have a whole family to protect him.”

“If I do, I’ll have to acknowledge Benjamin. That would expose not only Jack’s blood rage but my own. It would put Ysabeau and Marcus in terrible danger—the twins, too. And it’s not just them who will suffer if we stand against the Congregation without Baldwin’s support.” Matthew drew a ragged breath. “If you’re at my side—my consort—the Congregation will demand your submission as well as mine.”

“Submission?” Diana said faintly.

“This is war, Diana. That’s what happens to women who fight. You heard my mother’s tale. Do you think your fate would be any different at the vampires’ hands?”

She shook her head.

“You must believe me: We are far better off remaining in Baldwin’s family than striking out on our own,” he insisted. “You’re wrong. The twins and I will never be entirely safe under Baldwin’s rule.

Neither will Jack. Standing our ground is the only possible way forward. Every other road just leads back into the past,” Diana said. “And we know from experience that the past is never more than a temporary reprieve.”

“You don’t understand the forces that would gather against us if I do this. Everything my children and grandchildren have done or will ever do is laid at my doorstep under vampire law. The vampire murders? I committed them. Benjamin’s evil deeds? I am guilty of them.” Matthew had to make Diana see what this decision might cost.

“They can’t blame you for what Benjamin and Jack did,” Diana protested.

“But they can.” Matthew cradled her hands between his. “I made Benjamin. If I hadn’t, none of these crimes would have taken place. It was my job, as Benjamin’s sire and Jack’s grandsire, to curb them if possible or to kill them if not.”

“That’s barbaric.” Diana tugged at her hands. He could feel the power burning under her skin.

“No, that’s vampire honor. Vampires can survive among warmbloods because of three systems of belief: law, honor, and justice. You saw vampire justice at work tonight,” Matthew said. “It’s swift—and brutal. If I stand as sire of my own scion, I’ll have to mete it out, too.”

“Rather you than Baldwin,” Diana retorted. “If he’s in charge, I’ll always wonder if this is the day he will grow tired of protecting me and the twins and order our deaths.”

His wife had a point. But it put Matthew in an impossible situation. To save Jack, Matthew would have to disobey Baldwin. If he disobeyed Baldwin, he would have no choice but to become the sire of his own scion. That would require convincing a pack of rebellious vampires to accept his leadership and risk their own extermination by exposing the blood rage in their ranks. It would be a bloody, violent, and complicated process.

“Please, Matthew,” Diana whispered. “I beg you: Do not follow Baldwin’s order.”

Matthew examined his wife’s face. He took into account the pain and desperation he saw in her eyes. It was impossible to say no.

“Very well,” Matthew replied reluctantly. “I’ll go to New Orleans—on one condition.”

Diana’s relief was evident. “Anything. Name it.”

“You don’t come with me.” Matthew kept his voice even, though the mere mention of being away from his mate was enough to send the blood rage surging through his veins.

“Don’t you dare order me to stay here!” Diana said, her own anger flaring.

“You can’t be anywhere near me while I do this.” Centuries of practice made it possible for Matthew to keep his own feelings in check, in spite of his wife’s agitation. “I don’t want to go anywhere without you. Christ, I can barely let you out of my sight. But having you in New Orleans while I battle my own grandchildren would put you in terrible danger. And it wouldn’t be Baldwin or the Congregation who would be putting your safety at risk. It would be me.”

“You would never hurt me.” Diana had clung to this belief from the beginning of their relationship.

It was time to tell her the truth.

“Eleanor thought that—once. Then I killed her in a moment of madness and jealousy. Jack’s not the only vampire in this family whose blood rage is set off by love and loyalty.” Matthew met his wife’s eyes.

“You and Eleanor were merely lovers. We’re mates.” Diana’s expression revealed her dawning understanding. “All along you’ve said I shouldn’t trust you. You swore you would kill me yourself before you let anyone else touch me.”

“I told you the truth.” Matthew’s fingertips traced the line of Diana’s cheekbone, sweeping up to catch the tear that threatened to fall from the corner of her eye.

“But not the whole truth. Why didn’t you tell me that our mating bond was going to make your blood rage worse?” Diana cried.

“I thought I could find a cure. Until then, I thought I could manage my feelings,” Matthew replied.

“But you have become as vital to me as breath and blood. My heart no longer knows where I end and you begin. I knew that you were a powerful witch from the moment I saw you, but how could I have imagined that you would have so much power over me?”

Diana answered him not with words but with a kiss that was startling in its intensity. Matthew’s response matched it. When they drew apart they were both shaken. Diana touched her lips with trembling fingers. Matthew rested his head atop hers, his heart—her heart—thudding with emotion.

“Founding a new scion will require my complete attention, as well as complete control,” Matthew said when at last he was able to speak. “If I succeed—”

“You must,” Diana said firmly. “You will.”

“Very well, ma lionne. When I succeed, there will still be times when I’ll have to handle matters on my own,” Matthew explained. “It isn’t that I distrust you, but I cannot trust myself.”

“Like you’ve handled Jack,” Diana said. Matthew nodded.

“Being apart from you will be a living hell, but being distracted would be unspeakably dangerous.

As for my control . . . well, I think we know just how little I have when you are around.” He brushed her lips with another kiss, this one seductive. Diana’s cheeks reddened and Matthew smiled.

“What will I do while you’re in New Orleans?” Diana asked. “There must be some way I can help you.”

“Find that missing page from Ashmole 782,” Matthew replied. “We’ll need the Book of Life for leverage—no matter what happens with Marcus’s children.” The fact that the search would keep Diana from being directly involved in the disaster should this harebrained scheme fail was an added benefit.

“Phoebe will help you look for the third illumination. Go to Sept-Tours. Wait there for me.”

“How will I know you’re all right?” Diana asked. The reality of their impending separation was beginning to sink in. “I’ll find a way. But no phone calls. No emails. We can’t leave a trail of evidence for the Congregation to follow if Baldwin—or one of my own blood—turns me in,” Matthew said. “You have to remain in his good graces, at least until you are recognized as a de Clermont.”

“But that’s months away!” Diana’s expression turned desperate. “What if the children are born early?”

“Marthe and Sarah will deliver them,” he said gently. “There’s no telling how long this will take, Diana.” It could be years, Matthew thought.

“How will I make the children understand why their father isn’t with them?” she asked.

“You will tell the twins I had to stay away because I loved them—and their mother—with all my heart.” Matthew’s voice broke. He pulled her into his arms, holding her as though that might delay her inevitable departure.

“Matthew?” The familiar voice came out of the darkness.

“Marcus?” Diana had not heard his approach, though Matthew had picked up first his scent and then the soft sound of his son’s footsteps as he climbed the mountain.

“Hello, Diana.” Marcus stepped out of the shadows and into a patch of moonlight.

She frowned with concern. “Is something wrong at Sept-Tours?”

“Everything in France is fineI thought Matthew needed me here,” Marcus said.

“And Phoebe?” Diana asked.

“With Alain and Marthe.” Marcus sounded tired. “I couldn’t help but overhear your plans. There will be no turning back once we put them in motion. Are you sure about forming a scion, Matthew?”

“No,” Matthew said, unable to lie. “But Diana is.” He looked at his wife. “Chris and Gallowglass are waiting for you down the path. Go now, mon coeur.”

“This minute?” For a moment Diana looked frightened at the enormity of what they were about to do.

“It will never be any easier. You’re going to have to walk away from me. Don’t look back. And for God’s sake don’t run.” Matthew would never be able to control himself if she did.

“But—” Diana pressed her lips together. She nodded and dashed the back of her hand against her cheek, brushing away sudden tears.

Matthew put more than a thousand years of longing into one last kiss.

“I’ll never—” Diana began.

“Hush.” He silenced her with another touch of his lips. “No nevers for us, remember?”

Matthew set her away from him. It was only a few inches, but it might have been a thousand leagues. As soon as he did, his blood howled. He turned her so she could see the two faint circles of light from their friends’ flashlights.

“Don’t make this harder on him,” Marcus told Diana softly. “Go now. Slowly.”

For a few seconds, Matthew wasn’t sure she would be able to do it. He could see the gold and silver threads hanging from her fingertips, sparking and shimmering as if trying to fuse together something that had been suddenly, horribly broken. She took a tentative step. Then another. Matthew saw the muscles in her back trembling as she struggled to keep her composure. Her head dropped. Then she squared her shoulders and slowly walked in the opposite direction.

“I knew from the goddamn beginning you were going to break her heart,” Chris called to Matthew when she reached him. He drew Diana into his arms.

But it was Matthew’s heart that was breaking, taking with it his composure, his sanity, and his last traces of humanity.

Marcus watched him without blinking as Gallowglass and Chris led Diana away. When they disappeared from sight, Matthew leaped forward. Marcus caught him, hoping to God that he would be able to restrain his father by himself.

“Are you going to make it without her?” Marcus asked him. He had been away from Phoebe for less than twelve hours and already he was uneasy.

“I have to,” Matthew said, though at the moment he couldn’t imagine how. “Does Diana know what being apart will do to you?” Marcus still had nightmares about Ysabeau and how much she had suffered during Philippe’s capture and death. It had been like watching someone go through the worst withdrawal imaginable—the shaking, the irrational behavior, the physical pain.

And his grandparents were among the fortunate few vampires who, though mated, could be separated for periods of time. Matthew’s blood rage made that impossible. Even before Matthew and Diana were fully mated, Ysabeau had warned Marcus that his father was not to be trusted if something were to happen to Diana.

“Does she know?” Marcus repeated.

“Not entirely. She knows what will happen to me if I stay here and obey my brother, though.”

Matthew shook off his son’s arm. “You don’t have to go along with this—with me. You still have a choice. Baldwin will take you in, so long as you beg for his forgiveness.”

“I made my choice in 1781, remember?” Marcus’s eyes were silver in the moonlight. “Tonight you’ve proved it was the right one.”

“There are no guarantees this will work,” Matthew warned. “Baldwin might refuse to sanction the scion. The Congregation could get wind of what we’re doing before we’re through. God knows your own children have reason to oppose it.”

“They’re not going to make it easy for you, but my children will do what I tell them to do.

Eventually. Besides,” Marcus said, “you’re under my protection now.”

Matthew looked at him in surprise.

“The safety of you, your mate, and those twins she’s carrying is now the Knights of Lazarus’s top priority,” Marcus explained. “Baldwin can threaten all he wants, but I have more than a thousand vampires, daemons, and yes, even witches, under my command.”

“They’ll never obey you,” Matthew said, “not when they find out what you’re asking them to fight for.”

“How do you think I recruited them in the first place?” Marcus shook his head. “Do you really think you’re the only two creatures on the planet who have reason to dislike the covenant’s restrictions?”

But Matthew was too distracted to respond. He already felt the first, restless impulse to go after Diana. Soon he wouldn’t be able to sit still for more than a few moments before his instincts demanded he go to her. And it would only get worse from there.

“Come on.” Marcus put his arm across his father’s shoulders. “Jack and Andrew are waiting for us.

I suppose the damn dog will have to come to New Orleans, too.”

Still Matthew didn’t respond. He was listening for Diana’s voice, her distinctive step, the rhythm of her heartbeat. There was only silence, and stars too faint to show him the way home.