A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #1) - Page 10
Stil trying to shake the ice from my shoulders left by Matthew's stare, I opened the door to my rooms. Inside, the answering machine greeted me with a flashing red "13."
There were nine additional voice-mail messages on my mobile. Al of them were from Sarah and reflected an escalating concern about what her sixth sense told her was happening in Oxford.
Unable to face my al -too-prescient aunts, I turned down the volume on the answering machine, turned off the ringers on both phones, and climbed wearily into bed.
Next morning, when I passed through the porter's lodge for a run, Fred waved a stack of message slips at me.
"I'l pick them up later," I cal ed, and he flashed his thumb in acknowledgment.
My feet pounded on familiar dirt paths through the fields and marshes north of the city, the exercise helping to keep at bay both my guilt over not cal ing my aunts and the memory of Matthew's cold face.
Back in col ege I col ected the messages and threw them into the trash. Then I staved off the inevitable cal home with cherished weekend rituals: boiling an egg, brewing tea, gathering laundry, piling up the drifts of papers that littered every surface. After I'd wasted most of the morning, there was nothing left to do but cal New York. It was early there, but there was no chance that anyone was stil in bed.
"What do you think you're up to, Diana?" Sarah demanded in lieu of hel o.
"Good morning, Sarah." I sank into the armchair by the defunct fireplace and crossed my feet on a nearby bookshelf. This was going to take awhile.
"It is not a good morning," Sarah said tartly. "We've been beside ourselves. What's going on?"
Em picked up the extension.
"Hi, Em," I said, recrossing my legs. This was going to take a long while.
"Is that vampire bothering you?" Em asked anxiously.
"Not exactly."
"We know you've been spending time with vampires and daemons," my aunt broke in impatiently. "Have you lost your mind, or is something seriously wrong?"
"I haven't lost my mind, and nothing's wrong." The last bit was a lie, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
"Do you real y think you're going to fool us? You cannot lie to a fel ow witch!" Sarah exclaimed. "Out with it, Diana."
So much for that plan.
"Let her speak, Sarah," Em said. "We trust Diana to make the right decisions, remember?"
The ensuing silence led me to believe that this had been a matter of some controversy.
Sarah drew in her breath, but Em cut her off. "Where were you last night?"
"Yoga." There was no way of squirming out of this inquisition, but it was to my advantage to keep al responses brief and to the point.
"Yoga?" Sarah asked, incredulous. "Why are you doing yoga with those creatures? You know it's dangerous to mix with daemons and vampires."
"The class was led by a witch!" I became indignant, seeing Amira's serene, lovely face before me.
"This yoga class, was it his idea?" Em asked.
"Yes. It was at Clairmont's house."
Sarah made a disgusted sound.
"Told you it was him," Em muttered to my aunt. She directed her next words to me. "I see a vampire standing between you and . . . something. I'm not sure what, exactly."
"And I keep tel ing you, Emily Mather, that's nonsense.
Vampires don't protect witches." Sarah's voice was crisp with certainty.
"This one does," I said.
"What?" Em asked and Sarah shouted.
"He has been for days." I bit my lip, unsure how to tel the story, then plunged in. "Something happened at the library. I cal ed up a manuscript, and it was bewitched."
There was silence.
"A bewitched book." Sarah's voice was keen with interest. "Was it a grimoire?" She was an expert on grimoires, and her most cherished possession was the ancient volume of spel s that had been passed down in the Bishop family.
"I don't think so," I said. "Al that was visible were alchemical il ustrations."
"What else?" My aunt knew that the visible was only the beginning when it came to bewitched books.
"Someone's put a spel on the manuscript's text. There were faint lines of writing-layers upon layers of them- moving underneath the surface of the pages."
In New York, Sarah put down her coffee mug with a sharp sound. "Was this before or after Matthew Clairmont appeared?"
"Before," I whispered.
"You didn't think this was worth mentioning when you told us you'd met a vampire?" Sarah did nothing to disguise her anger. "By the goddess, Diana, you can be so reckless.
How was this book bewitched? And don't tel me you don't know."
"It smel ed funny. It felt . . . wrong. At first I couldn't lift the book's cover. I put my palm on it." I turned my hand over on my lap, recal ing the sense of instant recognition between me and the manuscript, half expecting to see the shimmer that Matthew had mentioned.
"And?" Sarah asked.
"It tingled against my hand, then sighed and . . . relaxed. I could feel it, through the leather and the wooden boards."
"How did you manage to unravel this spel ? Did you say any words? What were you thinking?" Sarah's curiosity was now thoroughly roused.
"There was no witchcraft involved, Sarah. I needed to look at the book for my research, and I laid my palm flat on it, that's al ." I took a deep breath. "Once it was open, I took some notes, closed it, and returned the manuscript."
"You returned it?" There was a loud clatter as Sarah's phone hit the floor. I winced and held the receiver away from my head, but her colorful language was stil audible.
"Diana?" Em said faintly. "Are you there?"
"I'm here," I said sharply.
"Diana Bishop, you know better." Sarah's voice was reproachful. "How could you send back a magical object you didn't ful y understand?"
My aunt had taught me how to recognize enchanted and bewitched objects-and what to do with them. You were to avoid touching or moving them until you knew how their magic worked. Spel s could be delicate, and many had protective mechanisms built into them.
"What was I supposed to do, Sarah?" I could hear my defensiveness. "Refuse to leave the library until you could examine it? It was a Friday night. I wanted to go home."
"What happened when you returned it?" Sarah said tightly.
"The air might have been a little funny," I admitted. "And the library might have given the impression it shrank for just a moment."
"You sent the manuscript back and the spel reactivated,"
Sarah said. She swore again. "Few witches are adept enough to set up a spel that automatical y resets when it's broken. You're not dealing with an amateur."
"That's the energy that drew them to Oxford," I said, suddenly understanding. "It wasn't my opening the manuscript. It was the resetting of the spel . The creatures aren't just at yoga, Sarah. I'm surrounded by vampires and daemons in the Bodleian. Clairmont came to the library on Monday night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the manuscript after he heard two witches talking about it. By Tuesday the library was crawling with them."
"Here we go again," Sarah said with a sigh. "Before the month's out, daemons wil be showing up in Madison looking for you."
"There must be witches you can rely on for help." Em was making an effort to keep her voice level, but I could hear the concern in it.
"There are witches," I said haltingly, "but they're not helpful. A wizard in a brown tweed coat tried to force his way into my head. He would have succeeded, too, if not for Matthew."
"The vampire put himself between you and another witch?" Em was horrified. "That's not done. You never interfere in business between witches if you're not one of us."
"You should be grateful!" I might not want to be lectured by Clairmont or have breakfast with him again, but the vampire deserved some credit. "If he hadn't been there, I don't know what would have happened. No witch has ever been so . . . invasive with me before."
"Maybe you should get out of Oxford for a while," Em suggested.
"I'm not going to leave because there's a witch with no manners in town."
Em and Sarah whispered to each other, their hands over the receivers.
"I don't like this one bit," my aunt final y said in a tone that suggested that the world was fal ing apart. "Bewitched books? Daemons fol owing you? Vampires taking you to yoga? Witches threatening a Bishop? Witches are supposed to avoid notice, Diana. Even the humans are going to know something's going on."
"If you stay in Oxford, you'l have to be more inconspicuous," Em agreed. "There's nothing wrong with coming home for a while and letting the situation cool off, if that becomes impossible. You don't have the manuscript anymore. Maybe they'l lose interest."
None of us believed that was likely.
"I'm not running away."
"You wouldn't be," Em protested.
"I would." And I wasn't going to display a shred of cowardice so long as Matthew Clairmont was around.
"He can't be with you every minute of every day, honey,"
Em said sadly, hearing my unspoken thoughts.
"I should think not," Sarah said darkly.
"I don't need Matthew Clairmont's help. I can take care of myself," I retorted.
"Diana, that vampire isn't protecting you out of the goodness of his heart," Em said. "You represent something he wants. You have to figure out what it is."
"Maybe he is interested in alchemy. Maybe he's just bored."
"Vampires do not get bored," Sarah said crisply, "not when there's a witch's blood around."
There was nothing to be done about my aunt's prejudices. I was tempted to tel her about yoga class, where for over an hour I'd been gloriously free from fear of other creatures. But there was no point.
"Enough." I was firm. "Matthew Clairmont won't get any closer, and you needn't worry about me fiddling with more bewitched manuscripts. But I'm not leaving Oxford, and that's final."
"Al right," Sarah said. "But there's not much we can do from here if things go wrong."
"I know, Sarah."
"And the next time you get handed something magical- whether you expected it or not-behave like the witch you are, not some sil y human. Don't ignore it or tel yourself you're imagining things." Wil ful ignorance and dismissing the supernatural were at the top of Sarah's list of human pet peeves. "Treat it with respect, and if you don't know what to do, ask for help."
"Promise," I said quickly, wanting to get off the phone.
But Sarah wasn't through yet.
"I never thought I'd see the day when a Bishop relied on a vampire for protection, rather than her own power," she said. "My mother must be turning in her grave. This is what comes from avoiding who you are, Diana. You've got a mess on your hands, and it's al because you thought you could ignore your heritage. It doesn't work that way."
Sarah's bitterness soured the atmosphere in my room long after I'd hung up the phone.
The next morning I stretched my way through some yoga poses for half an hour and then made a pot of tea. Its vanil a and floral aromas were comforting, and it had just enough caffeine to keep me from dozing in the afternoon without keeping me awake at night. After the leaves steeped, I wrapped the white porcelain pot in a towel to hold in the heat and carried it to the chair by the fireplace reserved for my deep thinking.
Calmed by the tea's familiar scent, I pul ed my knees up to my chin and reviewed my week. No matter where I started, I found myself returning to my last conversation with Matthew Clairmont. Had my efforts to prevent magic from seeping into my life and work meant nothing?
Whenever I was stuck with my research, I imagined a white table, gleaming and empty, and the evidence as a jigsaw puzzle that needed to be pieced together. It took the pressure off and felt like a game.
Now I tumbled everything from the past week onto that table-Ashmole 782, Matthew Clairmont, Agatha Wilson's wandering attention, the tweedy wizard, my tendency to walk with my eyes closed, the creatures in the Bodleian, how I'd fetched Notes and Queries from the shelf, Amira's yoga class. I swirled the bright pieces around, putting some together and trying to form a picture, but there were too many gaps, and no clear image emerged.
Sometimes picking up a random piece of evidence helped me figure out what was most important. Putting my imaginary fingers on the table, I drew out a shape, expecting to see Ashmole 782.
Matthew Clairmont's dark eyes looked back at me.
Why was this vampire so important?
The pieces of my puzzle started to move of their own volition, swirling in patterns that were too fast to fol ow. I slapped my imaginary hands on the table, and the pieces stopped their dance. My palms tingled with recognition.
This didn't seem like a game anymore. It seemed like magic. And if it was, then I'd been using it in my schoolwork, in my col ege courses, and now in my scholarship. But there was no room in my life for magic, and my mind closed resolutely against the possibility that I'd been violating my own rules without knowing it.
The next day I arrived in the library's cloakroom at my normal time, went up the stairs, rounded the corner near the col ection desk, and braced myself to see him.
Clairmont wasn't there.
"Do you need something?" Miriam said in an irritable voice, scraping her chair against the floor as she stood.
"Where is Professor Clairmont?"
"He's hunting," Miriam said, eyes snapping with dislike, "in Scotland."
Hunting. I swal owed hard. "Oh. When wil he be back?"
"I honestly don't know, Dr. Bishop." Miriam crossed her arms and put out a tiny foot.
"I was hoping he'd take me to yoga at the Old Lodge tonight," I said faintly, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for stopping.
Miriam turned and picked up a bal of black fluff. She tossed it at me, and I grabbed it as it flew by my hip. "You left that in his car on Friday."
"Thank you." My sweater smel ed of carnations and cinnamon.
"You should be more careful with your things," Miriam muttered. "You're a witch, Dr. Bishop. Take care of yourself and stop putting Matthew in this impossible situation."
I turned on my heel without comment and went to pick up my manuscripts from Sean.
"Everything al right?" he asked, eyeing Miriam with a frown.
"Perfectly." I gave him my usual seat number and, when he stil looked concerned, a warm smile.
How dare Miriam speak to me like that? I fumed while settling into my workspace.
My fingers itched as if hundreds of insects were crawling under the skin. Tiny sparks of blue-green were arcing between my fingertips, leaving traces of energy as they erupted from the edges of my body. I clenched my hands and quickly sat on top of them.
This was not good. Like al members of the university, I'd sworn an oath not to bring fire or flame into Bodley's Library. The last time my fingers had behaved like this, I was thirteen and the fire department had to be cal ed to extinguish the blaze in the kitchen.
When the burning sensation abated, I looked around careful y and sighed with relief. I was alone in the Selden End. No one had witnessed my fireworks display. Pul ing my hands from underneath my thighs, I scrutinized them for further signs of supernatural activity. The blue was already diminishing to a silvery gray as the power retreated from my fingertips.
I opened the first box only after ascertaining I wouldn't set fire to it and pretended that nothing unusual had happened.
Stil , I hesitated to touch my computer for fear that my fingers would fuse to the plastic keys.
Not surprisingly, it was difficult to concentrate, and that same manuscript was stil before me at lunchtime. Maybe some tea would calm me down.
At the beginning of term, one would expect to see a handful of human readers in Duke Humfrey's medieval wing. Today there was only one: an elderly human woman examining an il uminated manuscript with a magnifying glass. She was squashed between an unfamiliar daemon and one of the female vampires from last week. Gil ian Chamberlain was there, too, glowering at me along with four other witches as if I'd let down our entire species.
Hurrying past, I stopped at Miriam's desk. "I presume you have instructions to fol ow me to lunch. Are you coming?"
She put down her pencil with exaggerated care. "After you."
Miriam was in front of me by the time I reached the back staircase. She pointed to the steps on the other side. "Go down that way."
"Why? What difference does it make?"
"Suit yourself." She shrugged.
One flight down I glanced through the smal window stuck into the swinging door that led to the Upper Reading Room, and I gasped.
The room was ful to bursting with creatures. They had segregated themselves. One long table held nothing but daemons, conspicuous because not a single book-open or closed-sat in front of them. Vampires sat at another table, their bodies perfectly stil and their eyes never blinking. The witches appeared studious, but their frowns were signs of irritation rather than concentration, since the daemons and vampires had staked out the tables closest to the staircase.
"No wonder we're not supposed to mix. No human could ignore this," Miriam observed.
"What have I done now?" I asked in a whisper.
"Nothing. Matthew's not here," she said matter-of-factly.
"Why are they so afraid of Matthew?"
"You'l have to ask him. Vampires don't tel tales. But don't worry," she continued, baring her sharp, white teeth, "these work perfectly, so you've got nothing to fear."
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I clattered down the stairs, pushing through the tourists in the quadrangle. At Blackwel 's, I swal owed a sandwich and a bottle of water.
Miriam caught my eye as I passed by her on the way to the exit. She put aside a murder mystery and fol owed me.
"Diana," she said quietly as we passed through the library's gates, "what are you up to?"
"None of your business," I snapped.
Miriam sighed.
Back in Duke Humfrey's, I located the wizard in brown tweed. Miriam watched intently from the center aisle, stil as a statue.
"Are you in charge?"
He tipped his head to the side in acknowledgment.
"I'm Diana Bishop," I said, sticking out my hand.
"Peter Knox. And I know very wel who you are. You're Rebecca and Stephen's child." He touched my fingertips lightly with his own. There was a nineteenth-century grimoire sitting in front of him, a stack of reference books at his side.
The name was familiar, though I couldn't place it, and hearing my parents' names come out of this wizard's mouth was disquieting. I swal owed, hard. "Please clear your . . .
friends out of the library. The new students arrive today, and we wouldn't want to frighten them."
"If we could have a quiet word, Dr. Bishop, I'm sure we could come to some arrangement." He pushed his glasses up over the bridge of his nose. The closer I was to Knox, the more danger I felt. The skin under my fingernails started to prickle ominously.
"You have nothing to fear from me," he said sorrowful y.
"That vampire, on the other hand-"
"You think I found something that belongs to the witches,"
I interrupted. "I no longer have it. If you want Ashmole 782, there are request slips on the desk in front of you."
"You don't understand the complexity of the situation."
"No, and I don't want to know. Please, leave me alone."
"Physical y you are very like your mother." Knox's eyes swept over my face. "But you have some of Stephen's stubbornness as wel , I see."
I felt the usual combination of envy and irritation that accompanied a witch's references to my parents or family history-as if they had an equal claim to mine.
"I'l try," he continued, "but I don't control those animals."
He waved across the aisle, where one of the Scary Sisters was watching Knox and me with interest. I hesitated, then crossed over to her seat.
"I'm sure you heard our conversation, and you must know I'm under the direct supervision of two vampires already," I said. "You're welcome to stay, if you don't trust Matthew and Miriam. But clear the others out of the Upper Reading Room."
"Witches are hardly ever worth a moment of a vampire's time, but you are ful of surprises today, Diana Bishop. Wait until I tel my sister Clarissa what she's missed." The female vampire's words came out in a lush, unhurried drawl redolent of impeccable breeding and a fine education. She smiled, teeth gleaming in the low light of the medieval wing.
"Chal enging Knox-a child like you? What a tale I'l have to tel ."
I dragged my eyes away from her flawless features and went off in search of a familiar daemonic face.
The latte-loving daemon was drifting around the computer terminals wearing headphones and humming under his breath to some unheard music as the end of the cord was swinging freely around the tops of his thighs.
Once he pul ed the white plastic disks from his ears, I tried to impress upon him the seriousness of the situation.
"Listen, you're welcome to keep surfing the Net up here.
But we've got a problem downstairs. It's not necessary for two dozen daemons to be watching me."
The daemon made an indulgent sound. "You'l know soon enough."
"Could they watch me from farther away? The Sheldonian? The White Horse?" I was trying to be helpful. "If not, the human readers wil start asking questions."
"We're not like you," he said dreamily.
"Does that mean you can't help or you won't?" I tried not to sound impatient.
"It's al the same thing. We need to know, too."
This was impossible. "Whatever you can do to take some of the pressure off the seats would be greatly appreciated."
Miriam was stil watching me. Ignoring her, I returned to my desk.
At the end of the completely unproductive day, I pinched the bridge of my nose, swore under my breath, and packed up my things.
The next morning the Bodleian was far less crowded.
Miriam was scribbling furiously and didn't look up when I passed. There was stil no sign of Clairmont. Even so, everybody was observing the rules that he had clearly, if silently, laid down, and they stayed out of the Selden End.
Gil ian was in the medieval wing, crouched over her papyri, as were both Scary Sisters and a few daemons. With the exception of Gil ian, who was doing real work, the rest went through the motions with perfect respectability. And when I stuck my head around the swinging door into the Upper Reading Room after a hot cup of tea at midmorning, only a few creatures looked up. The musical, coffee-loving daemon was among them. He tipped his fingers and winked at me knowingly.
I got a reasonable amount of work done, although not enough to make up for yesterday. I began by reading alchemical poems-the trickiest of texts-that were attributed to Mary, the sister of Moses. "Three things if you three hours attend," read one part of the poem, "Are chained together in the End." The meaning of the verses remained a mystery, although the most likely subject was the chemical combination of silver, gold, and mercury.
Could Chris produce an experiment from this poem? I wondered, noting the possible chemical processes involved.
When I turned to another, anonymous poem, entitled "Verse on the Threefold Sophic Fire," the similarities between its imagery and an il umination I'd seen yesterday of an alchemical mountain, riddled with mines and miners digging in the ground for precious metals and stones, were unmistakable.
Within this Mine two Stones of old were found, Whence this the Ancients called Holy Ground; Who knew their Value, Power and Extent, And Nature how with Nature to Ferment For these if you Ferment with Natural Gold Or Silver, their hid Treasures they unfold.
I stifled a groan. My research would become exponential y more complicated if I had to connect not only art and science but art and poetry.
"It must be hard to concentrate on your research with vampires watching you."
Gil ian Chamberlain was standing next to me, her hazel eyes sparking with suppressed malevolence.
"What do you want, Gil ian?"
"I'm just being friendly, Diana. We're sisters, remember?"
Gil ian's shiny black hair swung above her col ar. Its smoothness suggested that she was not troubled by surges of static electricity. Her power must be regularly released. I shivered.
"I have no sisters, Gil ian. I'm an only child."
"It's a good thing, too. Your family has caused more than enough trouble. Look at what happened at Salem. It was al Bridget Bishop's fault." Gil ian's tone was vicious.
Here we go again, I thought, closing the volume before me. As usual, the Bishops were proving to be an irresistible topic of conversation.
"What are you talking about, Gil ian?" My voice was sharp. "Bridget Bishop was found guilty of witchcraft and executed. She didn't instigate the witch-hunt-she was a victim of it, just like the others. You know that, as does every other witch in this library."
"Bridget Bishop drew human attention, first with those poppets of hers and then with her provocative clothes and immorality. The human hysteria would have passed if not for her."
"She was found innocent of practicing witchcraft," I retorted, bristling.
"In 1680-but no one believed it. Not after they found the poppets in her cel ar wal , pins stuck through them and the heads ripped off. Afterward Bridget did nothing to protect her fel ow witches from fal ing under suspicion. She was so independent." Gil ian's voice dropped. "That was your mother's fatal flaw, too."
"Stop it, Gil ian." The air around us seemed unnatural y cold and clear.
"Your mother and father were standoffish, just like you, thinking they didn't need the Cambridge coven's support after they got married. They learned, didn't they?"
I shut my eyes, but it was impossible to block out the image I'd spent most of my life trying to forget: my mother and father lying dead in the middle of a chalk-marked circle somewhere in Nigeria, their bodies broken and bloody. My aunt wouldn't share the details of their death at the time, so I'd slipped into the public library to look them up. That's where I'd first seen the picture and the lurid headline that accompanied it. The nightmares had gone on for years afterward.
"There was nothing the Cambridge coven could do to prevent my parents' murder. They were kil ed on another continent by fearful humans." I gripped the arms of my chair, hoping that she wouldn't see my white knuckles.
Gil ian gave an unpleasant laugh. "It wasn't humans, Diana. If it had been, their kil ers would have been caught and dealt with." She crouched down, her face close to mine. "Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor were keeping secrets from other witches. We needed to discover them.
Their deaths were unfortunate, but necessary. Your father had more power than we ever dreamed."
"Stop talking about my family and my parents as though they belong to you," I warned. "They were kil ed by humans."
There was a roaring in my ears, and the coldness that surrounded us was intensifying.
"Are you sure?" Gil ian whispered, sending a fresh chil into my bones. "As a witch, you'd know if I was lying to you."
I governed my features, determined not to show my confusion. What Gil ian said about my parents couldn't be true, and yet there were none of the subtle alarms that typical y accompanied untruths between witches-the spark of anger, an overwhelming feeling of contempt.
"Think about what happened to Bridget Bishop and your parents the next time you turn down an invitation to a coven gathering," Gil ian murmured, her lips so close to my ear that her breath swept against my skin. "A witch shouldn't keep secrets from other witches. Bad things happen when she does."
Gil ian straightened and stared at me for a few seconds, the tingle of her glance growing uncomfortable the longer it lasted. Staring fixedly at the closed manuscript before me, I refused to meet her eyes.
After she left, the air's temperature returned to normal.
When my heart stopped pounding and the roaring in my ears abated, I packed my belongings with shaking hands, badly wanting to be back in my rooms. Adrenaline was coursing through my body, and I wasn't sure how long it would be possible to fend off my panic.
I managed to get out of the library without incident, avoiding Miriam's sharp glance. If Gil ian was right, it was the jealousy of fel ow witches that I needed to be wary of, not human fear. And the mention of my father's hidden powers made something half remembered flit at the edges of my mind, but it eluded me when I tried to fix it in place long enough to see it clearly.
At New Col ege, Fred hailed me from the porter's lodge with a fistful of mail. A creamy envelope, thick with a distinctive woven feeling, lay on top.
It was a note from the warden, summoning me for a drink before dinner.
In my rooms I considered cal ing his secretary and feigning il ness to get out of the invitation. My head was reeling, and there was little chance I could keep down even a drop of sherry in my present state.
But the col ege had behaved handsomely when I'd requested a place to stay. The least I could do was express my thanks personal y. My sense of professional obligation began to supplant the anxiety stirred up by Gil ian. Holding on to my identity as a s