The Book of Life

34

Andrew Hubbard and Linda Crosby were waiting for us at the Old Lodge. In spite of my efforts to persuade my aunt to stay at Les Revenants, she insisted on coming with Fernando and me.

“You’re not doing this alone, Diana,” Sarah said in a tone that didn’t invite argument. “I don’t care that you’re a weaver or that you have Corra for help. Magic on this scale requires three witches. And not just any witches. You need spell casters.”

Linda Crosby turned up with the official London grimoire—an ancient tome that smelled darkly of belladonna and wolfsbane. We exchanged hellos while Fernando caught Andrew up on how Jack and Lobero were faring.

“Are you sure you want to get involved with this?” I asked Linda.

“Absolutely. The London coven hasn’t been involved in anything half so exciting since we were called in to help foil the 1971 attempt to steal the crown jewels.” Linda rubbed her hands together.

Andrew had, through his contacts with the London underworld of gravediggers, tube engineers, and pipe fitters, obtained detailed schematics of the warren of tunnels and shelving that constituted the book storage facilities for the Bodleian Library. He unrolled these on the long refectory table in the great hall.

“There are no students or library staff on site at the moment because of the Christmas holiday,”

Andrew said. “But there are builders everywhere.” He pointed to the schematics. “They’re converting the former underground book storage into work space for readers.”

“First they moved the rare books to the Radcliffe Science Library and now this.” I peered at the maps. “When do the work crews finish for the day?”

“They don’t,” Andrew said. “They’ve been working around the clock to minimize disruptions during the academic term.”

“What if we go to the reading room and you put in a request just as though it were an ordinary day at the Bodleian?” Linda suggested. “You know, fill out the slip, stuff it in the Lamson tube, and hope for the best. We could stand by the conveyor belt and wait for it. Maybe the library knows how to fulfill your request, even without staff.” Linda sniffed when she saw my amazed look at her knowledge of the Bodleian’s procedures. “I went to St. Hilda’s, my girl.”

“The pneumatic-tube system was shut down last July. The conveyor belt was dismantled this August.” Andrew held up his hands. “Do not harm the messenger, ladies. I am not Bodley’s librarian.”

“If Stephen’s spell is good enough, it won’t care about the equipment—just that Diana has requested something she truly needs,” Sarah said.

“The only way to know for sure is to go to the Bodleian, avoid the workers, and find a way into the Old Library.” I sighed.

Andrew nodded. “My Stan is on the excavation crew. Been digging his whole life. If you can wait until nightfall, he’ll let you in. He’ll get in trouble, of course, but it won’t be the first time, and there’s not a prison built that can hold him.”

“Good man, Stanley Cripplegate,” Linda said with a satisfied nod. “Always such a help in the autumn when you need the daffodil bulbs planted.”

Stanley Cripplegate was a tiny whippet of a man with a pronounced underbite and the sinewy outlines of someone who had been malnourished since birth. Vampire blood had given him longevity and strength, but there was only so much it could do to lengthen bones. He distributed bright yellow safety helmets to the four of us.

“Aren’t we going to be . . . er, conspicuous in this getup?” Sarah asked.

“Being as you’re ladies, you’re already conspicuous,” Stan said darkly. He whistled. “Oy! Dickie!”

“Quiet,” I hissed. This was turning out to be the loudest, most conspicuous book heist in history.

“S’all right. Dickie and me, we go way back.” Stan turned to his colleague. “Take these ladies up to the first floor, Dickie.”

Dickie deposited us, helmets and all, in the Arts End of Duke Humfrey’s reading room between the bust of King Charles I and the bust of Sir Thomas Bodley.

“Is it me, or are they watching us?” Linda said, scowling at the unfortunate monarch, hands on her hips.

King Charles blinked.

“Witches have been on the security detail since the middle of the nineteenth century. Stan warned us not to do anything we oughtn’t around the pictures, statues, and gargoyles.” Dickie shuddered. “I don’t mind most of them. They’re company on dark nights, but that one’s a right creepy old bugger.”

“You should have met his father,” Fernando commented. He swept his hat off and bowed to the blinking monarch. “Your Majesty.”

It was every library patron’s nightmare—that you were secretly being observed whenever you took a forbidden cough drop out of your pocket. In the Bodleian’s case, it turned out the readers had good reason to worry. The nerve center for a magical security system was hidden behind the eyeballs of Thomas Bodley and King Charles.

“Sorry, Charlie.” I tossed my yellow helmet in the air, and it sailed over to land on the king’s head.

I flicked my fingers, and the brim tilted down over his eyes. “No witnesses for tonight’s events.”

Fernando handed me his helmet.

“Use mine for the founder. Please.”

Once I’d obscured Sir Thomas’s sight, I began to pluck and tweak the threads that bound the statues to the rest of the library. The spell’s knots weren’t complicated—just thrice- and four-crossed bindings—but there were so many of them, all piled on top of one another like a severely overtaxed electrical panel. Finally I discovered the main knot through which all the other knots were threaded and carefully untied it. The uncanny feeling of being observed vanished.

“That’s better,” Linda murmured. “Now what?”

“I promised to call Matthew once we were inside,” I said, drawing out my phone. “Give me a minute.”

I pushed past the lattice barricade and walked down the silent, echoing main avenue of Duke Humfrey’s Library. Matthew picked up on the first ring.

“All right, mon coeur?” His voice thrummed with tension, and I briefly filled him in on our progress so far.

“How were Rebecca and Philip after I left?” I asked when my tale was told.

“Fidgety.”

“And you?” My voice softened.

“More fidgety.”

“Where are you?” I asked. Matthew had waited until after I left for England, then started driving north and east toward Central Europe.

“I just left Germany.” He wasn’t going to give me any more details in case I encountered an inquisitive witch.

“Be careful. Remember what the goddess said.” Her warning that I would have to give something up if I wanted to possess Ashmole 782 still haunted me.

“I will.” Matthew paused. “There’s something I want you to remember, too.”

“What?”

“Hearts cannot be broken, Diana. And only love makes us truly immortal. Don’t forget, ma lionne.

No matter what happens.” He disconnected the line.

His words sent a shiver of fear up my spine, setting the goddess’s silver arrow rattling. I repeated the words of the charm I’d woven to keep him safe and felt the familiar tug of the chain that bound us together.

“All is well?” Fernando asked quietly.

“As expected.” I slipped the phone back into my pocket. “Let’s get started.” We had agreed that the first thing we would try was simply to replicate the steps by which Ashmole 782 had come into my hands the first time. With Sarah, Linda, and Fernando looking on, I filled out the boxes on the call slip. I signed it, put my reader’s-card number in the appropriate blank, and carried it over to the spot in the Arts End where the pneumatic tube was located.

“The capsule is here,” I said, removing the hollow receptacle. “Maybe Andrew was wrong and the delivery system is still working.” When I opened it, the capsule was full of dust. I coughed.

“And maybe it doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Sarah said with a touch of impatience. “Load it up and let her rip.”

I put the call slip into the capsule, closed it securely, and placed it back in the compartment.

“What next?” Sarah said a few minutes later.

The capsule was right where I’d left it.

“Let’s give it a good whack.” Linda slapped the end of the compartment, causing the wooden supports it was attached to—and which held up the gallery above—to shake alarmingly. With an audible whoosh, the capsule disappeared.

“Nice work, Linda,” Sarah said with obvious admiration.

“Is that a witch’s trick?” Fernando asked, his lips twitching.

“No, but it always improves the Radio 4 signal on my stereo,” Linda said brightly.

Two hours later we were all still waiting by the conveyor belt for a manuscript that showed absolutely no sign of arriving.

Sarah sighed. “Plan B.”

Without a word Fernando unbuttoned his dark coat and slipped it from his shoulders. A pillowcase was sewn into the back lining. Inside, sandwiched between two pieces of cardboard, were the three pages that Edward Kelley had removed from the Book of Life.

“Here you are,” he said, handing over the priceless parcel.

“Where do you want to do it?” Sarah asked. “The only place that’s large enough is there,” I said, pointing to the spot between the splendid stained-glass window and the guard’s station. “No—don’t touch that!” My voice came out in a whispered shriek.

“Why not?” Fernando asked, his hands wrapped around the wooden uprights of a rolling stepladder that blocked our way.

“It’s the world’s oldest stepladder. It’s nearly as ancient as the library.” I pressed the manuscript pages to my heart. “Nobody touches it. Ever.”

“Move the damn ladder, Fernando,” Sarah instructed. “I’m sure Ysabeau has a replacement for it if it gets damaged. Push that chair out of the way while you’re at it,”

A few nail-biting moments later, I was ripping into a box of salt that Linda had carried up in a Marks & Spencer shopping bag. I whispered prayers to the goddess, asking for her help finding this lost object while I outlined a triangle with the white crystals. When that was done, I doled out the pages from the Book of Life, and Sarah, Linda, and I each stood at one of the points of the triangle. We directed the illustrations into the center, and I repeated the spell I’d written earlier:

Missing pages

Lost then found, show

Me where the book is bound.

“I still think we need a mirror,” Sarah whispered after an hour of expectant silence had passed.

“How’s the library going to show us anything if we don’t give her a place to project an apparition?”

“Should Diana have said ‘show us where the book is bound,’ not ‘show me’?” Linda looked to Sarah. “There are three of us.” I stepped out of the triangle and put the illustration of the chemical wedding on the guard’s desk.

“It’s not working. I don’t feel anything. Not the book, not any power, not magic. It’s like the whole library has gone dead.”

“Well, it’s not surprising the library is feeling poorly.” Linda clucked in sympathy. “Poor thing. All these people poking at its entrails all day.”

“There’s nothing for it, honey,” Sarah said. “On to Plan C.”

“Maybe I should try to revise the spell first.” Anything was better than Plan C. It violated the last remaining shreds of the library oath I’d taken when a student, and it posed a very real danger to the building, the books, and the nearby colleges.

But it was more than that. I was hesitating now for some of the same reasons I had hesitated when facing Benjamin in this very place. If I used my full powers here, in the Bodleian, the last remaining links to my life as a scholar would dissolve.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sarah said. “Corra will be fine.”

“She’s a firedrake, Sarah,” I retorted. “She can’t fly without causing sparks. Look at this place.”

“A tinderbox,” Linda agreed. “Still, I cannot see another way.”

“There has to be one,” I said, poking my index finger into my third eye in hopes of waking it up.

“Come on, Diana. Stop thinking about your precious library card. It’s time to kick some magical ass.”

“I need some air first.” I turned and headed downstairs. Fresh air would steady my nerves and help me think. I pounded down the wooden treads that had been laid over the stone and pushed through the glass doors and into the Old Schools Quadrangle, gulping in the cold, dust-free December air.

“Hello, Auntie.”

Gallowglass emerged from the shadows.

His mere presence told me that something terrible had happened.

His next quiet words confirmed it. “Benjamin has Matthew.”

“He can’t. I just talked to him.” The silver chain within me swayed.

“That was five hours ago,” Fernando said, checking his watch. “When you spoke, did Matthew say where he was?”

“Only that he was leaving Germany,” I whispered numbly. Stan and Dickie approached, frowns on their faces.

“Gallowglass,” Stan said with a nod.

“Stan,” Gallowglass replied.

“Problem?” Stan asked.

“Matthew’s gone off the grid,” Gallowglass explained. “Benjamin’s got him.”

“Ah.” Stan looked worried. “Benjamin always was a bastard. I don’t imagine he’s improved over the years.”

I thought of my Matthew in the hands of that monster.

I remembered what Benjamin had said about his hope that I would bear a girl.

I saw my daughter’s tiny, fragile finger touch the tip of Matthew’s nose.

“There is no way forward that doesn’t have him in it,” I said.

Anger burned through my veins, followed by a crashing wave of power—fire, air, earth, and water—that swept everything else before it. I felt a strange absence, a hollowness that told me I had lost something essential to my self.

For a moment I wondered if it were Matthew. But I could still feel the chain that bound us. What was essential was still there.

Then I realized it was not something essential I’d lost but something habitual, a burden carried so long that I had become inured to its heaviness.

Now it was gone—just as the goddess had foretold.

I whirled around, blindly seeking the library entrance in the darkness. “Where are you going, Auntie?” Gallowglass said, holding the door closed so that I couldn’t pass.

“Did you not hear me? We must go after Matthew. There’s no time to lose.”

The thick panels of glass turned to powder, and the brass hinges and handles clanged against the stone threshold. I stepped over the debris and half ran, half flew up the stairs to Duke Humfrey’s.

“Auntie!” Gallowglass shouted.

“Diana Bishop! Have you lost your mind?” Months of reduced cigarette consumption meant that Sarah was making good progress pursuing me.

“No!” I shouted back. “And if I use my magic, I won’t lose Matthew either.”

“Lose Matthew?” Sarah slid on the slick floor on her way into Duke Humfrey’s, where Fernando, Gallowglass, and I were waiting. “Who suggested such a thing?”

“The goddess. She told me I would have to give something up if I wanted Ashmole 782,” I explained. “But it wasn’t Matthew.”

The feeling of absence had been replaced by a blooming sensation of released power that banished any remaining worries.

“Corra, fly!” I spread my arms wide, and my firedrake screeched into the room, zooming around the galleries and down the long aisle that connected the Arts End and the Selden End.

“What was it, then?” Linda asked. She’d taken the stairs at a more sedate pace and arrived in time to watch Corra’s tail pat Thomas Bodley’s helmet.

“Fear.”

My mother had warned me of its power, but I had misunderstood, as children often do. I’d thought it was the fear of others that I needed to guard against, but it was my own terror. Because of that misunderstanding, I’d let the fear take root inside me until it clouded my thoughts and affected how I saw the world.

Fear had also choked out any desire to work magic. It had been my crutch and my cloak, keeping me from exercising my power completely. Fear had sheltered me from the curiosity of others and provided an oubliette where I could forget who I really was: a witch. I’d thought I’d left fear behind me months ago when I learned I was a weaver, but I had been clinging to its last vestiges without knowing it.

No more.

Corra dropped down on a current of air, extending her talons forward and beating her wings to slow herself. I grabbed the pages from the Book of Life and held them up to her nose. She sniffed.

The firedrake’s roar of outrage filled the room, rattling the stained glass. Though she had spoken to me seldom since our first encounter in Goody Alsop’s house, preferring to communicate in sounds and gestures, Corra chose to speak now.

“Death lies heavy on those pages. Weaving and bloodcraft, too.” She shook her head as if to rid her nostrils of the scent.

“Did she say bloodcraft?” Sarah’s curiosity was evident.

“We’ll ask the beastie questions later,” Gallowglass said, his voice grim.

“These pages come from a book. It’s somewhere in this library. I need to find it.” I focused on Corra rather than the background chatter. “My only hope of getting Matthew back may be inside it.”

“And if I bring you this terrible book, what then?” Corra blinked, her eyes silver and black. I was reminded of the goddess, and of Jack’s rage-filled gaze.

“You want to leave me,” I said with sudden understanding. Corra was a prisoner just as I had been a prisoner, spellbound with no means to escape.

“Like your fear, I cannot go unless you set me free,” Corra said. “I am your familiar. With my help you have learned how to spin what was, weave what is, and knot what must be. You have no more need of me.”

But Corra had been with me for months and, like my fear, I had grown used to relying on her.

“What if I can’t find Matthew without your help?”

“My power will never leave you.” Corra’s scales were brilliantly iridescent, even in the library’s darkness. I thought of the shadow of the firedrake on my lower back and nodded. Like the goddess’s arrow and my weaver’s cords, Corra’s affinity for fire and water would always be within me.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

“To ancient, forgotten places. There I will await those who will come when their weavers release them. You brought the magic back, as it was foretold. Now I will no longer be the last of my kind, but the first.” Corra’s exhale steamed in the air between us.

“Bring me the book, then go with my blessing.” I looked deep into her eyes and saw her yearning to be her own creature. “Thank you, Corra. I may have brought the magic back, but you gave it wings.”

“And now it is time for you to use them,” Corra said. With three beats of her own spangled, webbed appendages, she climbed to the rafters.

“Why is Corra flying around up here?” Sarah hissed. “Send her down the conveyor-belt shaft and into the library’s underground storage rooms. That’s where the book is.”

“Stop trying to shape the magic, Sarah.” Goody Alsop had taught me the dangers of thinking you were smarter than your own power. “Corra knows what she’s doing.”

“I hope so,” Gallowglass said, “for Matthew’s sake.”

Corra sang out notes of water and fire, and a low, hushed chattering filled the air.

“Do you hear it?” I asked, looking around for the source. It wasn’t the pages on the guard’s desk, though they were starting to murmur, too.

My aunt shook her head.

Corra circled the oldest part of Duke Humfrey’s. The murmurs grew louder with every beat of her wings.

“I hear it,” Linda said, excited. “A hum of conversation. It’s coming from that direction.”

Fernando hopped over the lattice barrier into the main aisle of Duke Humfrey’s. I followed after him.

“The Book of Life can’t be up here,” Sarah protested. “Someone would have noticed.”

“Not if it’s hiding in plain sight,” I said, pulling priceless books off a nearby shelf, opening them to examine their contents, then sliding each back into place only to grasp another. The voices still cried out, calling to me, begging me to find them.

“Auntie? I think Corra found your book.” Gallowglass pointed.

Corra was perched on the barred cage of the book hold, where the manuscripts were locked away and stored for patrons to use the following day. Her head was inclined as though she were listening to the still-chattering voices. She cooed and clucked in response, her head bobbing up and down.

Fernando had followed the sound to the same place and was standing behind the call desk where Sean spent his days. He was looking up at one of the shelves. There, next to an Oxford University telephone directory, sat a gray cardboard box so ordinary in appearance that it was begging not to be noticed—though it was pretty eye-catching at the moment, with light seeping out from the joins at the corners. Someone had clipped a curling note to it: “Boxed. Return to stacks after inspection.”

“It can’t be.” But every instinct told me it was.

I held up my hand, and the box tipped backward and landed in my palm. I lowered it carefully to the desk. When I took my hands from it, the lid blew off, landing several feet away. Inside, the metal clasps were straining to hold the book closed.

Gently, aware of the many creatures within it, I lifted Ashmole 782 out of its protective carton and laid it down on the wooden surface. I rested my hand flat on the cover. The chattering ceased.

Choose, the many voices said as one.

“I choose you,” I whispered to the book, releasing the clasps on Ashmole 782. Their metal was warm and comforting to the touch. My father, I thought.

Linda thrust the pages that belonged in the Book of Life in my direction.

Slowly, deliberately, I opened the book to the first page. The three stubs that remained from where Edward Kelley had damaged the books were just visible. I fitted the illustration of the chemical wedding into the spine, pressing the edge to its stub. It knit itself together before my eyes, its severed threads joining up once more.

Lines of text raced across the page.

I took up the illumination of the orobouros and the firedrake shedding their blood to create new life and put it in its place.

A strange keening rose from the book. Corra chattered in warning.

Without hesitation and without fear, I slid the final page into Ashmole 782. The Book of Life was once more whole and complete.

A bloodcurdling howl tore what remained of the night in two. A wind rose at my feet, climbing up my body and lifting the hair away from my face and shoulders like strands of fire.

The force of the air turned the pages of the book, flipping them faster and faster. I tried to stop their progress, pressing my fingers against the emerging text so that I could read the words. But there were too many to comprehend. Chris’s student was right. The Book of Life wasn’t simply a text.

It was a vast repository of knowledge: creature names and their stories, births and deaths, curses and spells, miracles wrought by magic and blood.

It was the story of us—weavers and the vampires who carried blood rage in their veins and the extraordinary children who were born to them.

It told me not only of my predecessors going back countless generations. It told me how such a miraculous creation was possible.

I struggled to absorb the tale the Book of Life told as the pages turned.

Here begins the lineage of the ancient tribe known as the Bright Born. Their father was

Eternity and their mother Change, and Spirit nurtured them in her womb. . . .

My mind raced, trying to identify the alchemical text that was so similar.

. . . for when the three became one, their power was boundless as the night. . . .

And it came to pass that the absence of children was a burden to the Athanatoi. They sought the

daughters. . . .

Whose daughters? I tried to stop the pages, but it was impossible.

. . . discovered that the mystery of bloodcraft was known to the Wise Ones.

What was bloodcraft?

On and on went the words, racing, twining, twisting. Words split in two, formed other words, mutating and reproducing at a furious pace.

There were names, faces, and places torn from nightmares and woven into the sweetest of dreams.

Their love began with absence and desire, two hearts becoming one. . . .

I heard a whisper of longing, a cry of pleasure, as the pages continued to turn.

. . . when fear overcame them, the city was bathed in the blood of the Bright Born.

A howl of terror rose from the page, followed by a child’s frightened whimper.

. . . the witches discovered who among them had lain with the Athanatoi. . . .

I pressed my hands against my ears, wanting to block out the drumbeat litany of names and more names.

Lost . . .

Forgotten . . .

Feared . . .

Outcast . . .

Forbidden . . .

As the pages flew before my eyes, I could see the intricate weaving that had made the book, the ties that bound each page to lineages whose roots lay in the distant past.

When the last page turned, it was blank.

Then new words began to appear there as though an unseen hand were still writing, her job not yet complete.

And thus the Bright Born became the Children of the Night.

Who will end their wandering? the unseen hand wrote.

Who will carry the blood of the lion and the wolf?

Seek the bearer of the tenth knot, for the last shall once more be the first.

My mind was dizzy with half-remembered words spoken by Louisa de Clermont and Bridget Bishop, snatches of alchemical poetry from the Aurora Consurgens, and the steady flood of information from the Book of Life.

A new page grew out of the spine of the book, extending itself like Corra’s wing, unfurling like a leaf on the bough of a tree. Sarah gasped. An illumination, the colors shining with silver, gold, and precious stones crushed into the pigment, bloomed from the page.

“Jack’s emblem!” Sarah cried.

It was the tenth knot, fashioned from a firedrake and an orobouros eternally bound. The landscape that surrounded them was fertile with flowers and greenery so lush that it might have been paradise.

The page turned, and more words flowed forth from their hidden source.

Here continues the lineage of the most ancient Bright Born.

The unseen hand paused, as if dipping a pen in fresh ink.

Rebecca Arielle Emily Marthe Bishop-Clairmont, daughter of Diana Bishop, last of her line,

and Matthew Gabriel Philippe Bertrand Sébastien de Clermont, first of his line. Born under

the rule of the serpent.

Philip Michael Addison Sorley Bishop-Clairmont, son of the same Diana and Matthew.

Born under the protection of the archer.

Before the ink could possibly be dry, the pages flipped madly back to the beginning.

While we watched, a new branch sprouted from the trunk of the tree at the center of the first image.

Leaves, flowers, and fruit burst forth along its length.

The Book of Life clapped shut, the clasps engaging. The chattering ceased, leaving the library silent. I felt power surge within me, rising to unprecedented levels.

“Wait,” I said, scrambling to open the book again so that I could study the new image more closely.

The Book of Life resisted me at first, but it sprang open once I wrestled with it.

It was empty. Blank. Panic swept through me.

“Where did it all go?” I turned the pages. “I need the book to get Matthew back!” I looked up at Sarah. “What did I do wrong?”

“Oh, Christ.” Gallowglass was white as snow. “Her eyes.”

I twisted to glance over my shoulder, expecting to see some spectral librarian glaring at me.

“There’s nothing behind you, honey. And the book hasn’t gone far.” Sarah swallowed hard. “It’s inside you.” I was the Book of Life.

35

“You are so pathetically predictable.” Benjamin’s voice penetrated the dull fog that had settled over Matthew’s brain. “I can only pray that your wife is equally easy to manipulate.”

A searing pain shot through his arm, and Matthew cried out, unable to stop himself. The reaction only encouraged Benjamin. Matthew pressed his lips together, determined not to give his son further satisfaction.

A hammer struck iron—a familiar, homely sound he remembered from his childhood. Matthew felt the ring of the metal as a vibration in the marrow of his bones.

“There. That should hold you.” Cold fingers gripped his chin. “Open your eyes, Father. If I have to open them for you, I don’t think you will like it.”

Matthew forced his lids open. Benjamin’s inscrutable face was inches away. His son made a soft, regretful sound.

“Too bad. I’d hoped you would resist me. Still, this is only the first act.” Benjamin twisted Matthew’s head down.

A long, red-hot iron spike was driven through Matthew’s right forearm and into the wooden chair beneath him. As it cooled, the stench of burning flesh and bone lessened somewhat. He did not have to see the other arm to know that it had undergone a similar treatment.

“Smile. We don’t want the family back home to miss a minute of our reunion.” Benjamin grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head up. Matthew heard the whirring of a camera.

“A few warnings: First, that spike has been positioned carefully between the ulna and the radius.

The hot metal will have fused to the surrounding bones just enough that if you struggle, they will splinter. I’m led to believe it’s quite painful.” Benjamin kicked the chair leg, and Matthew’s jaw clamped shut as a terrible pain shot down into his hand. “See? Second, I have no interest in killing you.

There is nothing you can do, say, or threaten that will make me deliver you into death’s gentler hands. I want to banquet on your agony and savor it.”

Matthew knew that Benjamin was expecting him to ask a particular question, but his thick tongue would not obey his brain’s commands. Still he persisted. Everything depended on it.

“Where. Is. Diana?”

“Peter tells me she is in Oxford. Knox may not be the most powerful witch to have ever lived, but he has ways of tracking her location. I would let you talk to him directly, but that would spoil the unfolding drama for our viewers back home. By the way, they can’t hear you. Yet. I’m saving that for when you break down and beg.” Benjamin had carefully position himself so his back was to the camera.

That way, his lips couldn’t be read.

“Diana. Not. Here?” Matthew formed each syllable carefully. He needed whoever might be watching to know that his wife was still free.

“The Diana you saw was a mirage, Matthew,” Benjamin chortled. “Knox cast a spell, projecting an image of her into that empty room upstairs. Had you watched for a bit longer, you would have seen it loop back to the beginning, like a film.”

Matthew had known it was an illusion. The image of Diana was blond, for Knox had not seen his wife since they’d returned from the past. Even had the hair color been right, Matthew would have known that it was not really Diana, for no spark of animation or warmth drew him to her. Matthew had entered Benjamin’s compound knowing he would be taken. It was the only way to force Benjamin to make his next move and bring his twisted game to a close.

“If only you had been immune to love, you might have been a great man. Instead you are ruled by that worthless emotion.” Benjamin leaned closer, and Matthew could smell the scent of blood on his lips. “It is your great weakness, Father.” Matthew’s hand clenched reflexively at the insult, and his forearm paid the price, the ulna cracking like arid clay beneath a baking sun.

“That was foolish, wasn’t it? You accomplished nothing. Your body is already suffering enormous stress, your mind filled with anxieties about your wife and children. It will take you twice as long to heal under these conditions.” Benjamin forced Matthew’s jaws open, studying his gums and tongue. “You’re thirsty. Hungry, too. I have a child downstairs—a girl, three or four. When you’re ready to feed on her, let me know. I’m trying to determine if the blood of virgins is more restorative than the blood of whores.

So far the data is inconclusive.” Benjamin made a note on a medical chart attached to a clipboard.

“Never.”

“Never is a long time. Your father taught me that,” Benjamin said. “We’ll see how you feel later.

No matter what you decide, your responses will help me answer another research question: How long does it take to starve the piety out of a vampire so that he stops believing that God will save him?”

A very long time, Matthew thought.

“Your vital signs are still surprisingly strong, considering all the drugs I’ve pumped into your system. I like the disorientation and sluggishness they provoke. Most prey experience acute anxiety when their reactions and instincts are dulled. I see some evidence of that here, but not enough for my purposes. I’ll have to up the dose.” Benjamin threw the clipboard onto a small metal cabinet on wheels.

It looked to be from World War II. Matthew noticed the metal chair next to the cabinet. The coat on it looked familiar.

His nostrils flared.

Peter Knox. He wasn’t in the room now, but he was nearby. Benjamin was not lying about that.

“I’d like to get to know you better, Father. Observation can only help me to discover surface truths.

Even ordinary vampires keep so many secrets. And you, my sire, are anything but ordinary.” Benjamin advanced on him. He tore open Matthew’s shirt, exposing his neck and shoulders. “Over the years I’ve learned how to maximize the information I glean from a creature’s blood. It’s all about the pace, you see. One must not rush. Or be too greedy.”

“No.” Matthew had expected that Benjamin would violate his mind, but it was impossible not to react instinctively against the intrusion. He scrambled against the chair. One forearm snapped. Then the other.

“If you break the same bones over and over, they never heal. Think about that, Matthew, before you try to escape from me again. It’s futile. And I can drive spikes between your tibia and fibula to prove it.”

Benjamin’s sharp nail scored Matthew’s skin. The blood welled to the surface, cold and wet.

“Before we are done, Matthew, I will know everything about you and your witch. Given enough time—and vampires have plenty of that—I will be able to witness every touch you’ve bestowed upon her. I will know what brings her pleasure as well as pain. I will know the power she wields and the secrets of her body. Her vulnerabilities will be as open to me as if her soul were a book.” Benjamin stroked Matthew’s skin, gradually increasing the circulation to his neck. “I could smell her fear in the Bodleian, of course, but now I want to understand it. So afraid, yet so remarkably brave. It will be thrilling to break her.”

Hearts cannot be broken, Matthew reminded himself.

“As I learn about your mate, I will discover so much about you as well,” Benjamin continued.

“There is no better way to know a man than to understand his woman. I learned that from Philippe, as well.”

The gears in Matthew’s brain clinked and clunked. Some awful truth was fighting to make itself known.

“Was Philippe able to tell you about the time he and I spent together during the war? It didn’t go according to my plans. Philippe spoiled so many of them when he visited the witch in the camp—an old Gypsy woman,” Benjamin explained. “Someone tipped him off to my presence, and as usual Philippe took matters into his own hands. The witch stole most of his thoughts, scrambled the rest like eggs, and then hanged herself. It was a setback, to be sure. He had always had such an orderly mind. I had been looking forward to exploring it, in all its complex beauty.”

Matthew’s roar of protest came out as a croak, but the screaming in his head went on and on. This he had not expected.

It had been Benjamin—his son—who had tortured Philippe during the war and not some Nazi functionary.

Benjamin struck Matthew across the face, breaking his cheekbone.

“Quiet. I am telling you a bedtime story.” Benjamin’s fingers pressed into the broken bones of Matthew’s face, playing them like an instrument whose only music was pain. “By the time the commander at Auschwitz released Philippe into my custody, it was too late. After the witch there was only one coherent thing left in that once brilliant mind: Ysabeau. She can be surprisingly sensual, I discovered, for someone so cold.”

As much as Matthew wanted to stop his ears against the words, there was no way to do so.

“Philippe hated his own weakness, but he could not let her go,” Benjamin continued. “Even in the midst of his madness, weeping like a baby, he thought of Ysabeau—all the while knowing I was sharing in his pleasure.” Benjamin smiled, displaying his sharp teeth. “But that’s enough family talk for now. Prepare yourself, Matthew. This is going to hurt.”

36

On the plane home, Gallowglass had warned Marcus that something unexpected had happened to me at the Bodleian.

“You will find Diana . . . altered,” Gallowglass said carefully into the phone.

Altered. It was an apt description for a creature who was composed of knots, cords, chains, wings, seals, weapons, and now, words and a tree. I didn’t know what that made me, but it was a far cry from what I had been before.

Even though he’d been warned of the change, Marcus was visibly shocked when I climbed out of the car at Sept-Tours. Phoebe accepted my metamorphosis with greater equanimity, as she did most things.

“No questions, Marcus,” Hamish said, taking my elbow. He’d seen on the plane what questions did to me. No disguising spell could hide the way my eyes went milky white and displayed letters and symbols at even the hint of a query, more letters appearing on my forearms and the backs of my hands.

I expressed silent thanks that my children would never know me any different and would therefore think it normal to have a palimpsest for a mother.

“No questions,” Marcus quickly agreed.

“The children are in Matthew’s study with Marthe. They have been restless for the past hour, as if they knew you were coming,” Phoebe said, following me into the house.

“I’ll see Becca and Philip first.” In my eagerness I flew up the stairs rather than walking. There seemed little point in doing anything else.

My time with the children was soul-shaking. On the one hand, they made me feel closer to Matthew. But with my husband in danger, I couldn’t help noticing how much the shape of Philip’s blue eyes resembled that of his father’s. There was a similarly stubborn cast to his chin, too, young and immature though it was. And Becca’s coloring—her hair as dark as a raven’s wing, eyes that were not the usual baby blue but already a brilliant gray-green, milky skin—was eerily like Matthew’s. I cuddled them close, whispering promises into their ears about what their father would do with them when he returned home.

When I had spent as much time with them as I dared, I returned downstairs, slowly and on foot this time, and demanded to see the video feed.

“Ysabeau is in the family library, watching it now.” Miriam’s palpable worry made my blood run colder than anything had since Gallowglass materialized at the Bodleian.

I steeled myself for the sight, but Ysabeau slammed the laptop shut as soon as I entered the room.

“I told you not to bring her here, Miriam.”

“Diana has a right to know,” Miriam said.

“Miriam is right, Granny.” Gallowglass gave his grandmother a quick kiss in greeting. “Besides, Auntie won’t obey your orders any more than you obeyed Baldwin when he tried to keep you from Philippe until his wounds healed.” He pried the laptop from Ysabeau’s fingers and opened the lid.

What I saw made me utter a strangled sound of horror. Were it not for Matthew’s distinctive gray green eyes and black hair, I might not have known him.

“Diana.” Baldwin strode into the room, his expression carefully schooled to show no reaction to my appearance. But he was a soldier, and he understood that pretending something hadn’t happened didn’t make it go away. He reached out with surprising gentleness and touched my hairline. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” When my body had absorbed the Book of Life, a tree had appeared on it as well. Its trunk covered the back of my neck, perfectly aligned with the column of my spine. Its roots spread across my shoulders. The tree’s branches fanned out under my hair, covering my scalp. The tips of the branches peeked out along my hairline, behind my ears, and around the edges of my face. Like the tree on my spell box, the roots and branches were strangely intertwined along the sides of my neck in a pattern resembling Celtic knotwork.

“Why are you here?” I asked. We hadn’t heard from Baldwin since the christening.

“Baldwin was the first to see Benjamin’s message,” Gallowglass explained. “He contacted me straightaway, then shared the news with Marcus.”

“Nathaniel had beaten me to it. He traced Matthew’s last cell communication—a call made to you—to a location inside Poland,” Baldwin said.

“Addie saw Matthew in Dresden, en route to Berlin,” Miriam reported. “He asked her for information about Benjamin. While he was with her, Matthew got a text. He left immediately.”

“Verin joined Addie there. They’ve picked up Matthew’s trail. One of Marcus’s knights spotted him leaving what we used to call Breslau.” Baldwin glanced at Ysabeau. “He was traveling southeast.

Matthew must have wandered into a trap.”

“He was going north until then. Why did he change direction?” Marcus frowned.

“Matthew may have gone to Hungary,” I said, trying to envision all this on the map. “We found a letter from Godfrey that mentioned Benjamin’s connections there.”

Marcus’s phone rang.

“What do you have?” Marcus listened for a moment, then went to one of the other laptops dotting the surface of the library table. Once the screen illuminated, he keyed in a Web address. Close-up shots from the video feed appeared, the images enhanced to provide greater clarity. One was of a clipboard.

Another, a corner of fabric draped over a chair. The third, a window. Marcus put down his cell phone and turned on the speaker.

“Explain, Nathaniel,” he ordered, sounding more like Nathaniel’s commanding officer than his friend.

“The room is pretty barren—there’s not much in the way of clues that might help us get a better fix on Matthew’s location. These items seemed to have the most potential.”

“Can you zoom in on the clipboard?”

On the other side of the world, Nathaniel manipulated the image.

“That’s the kind we used for medical charts. They were on every hospital ward, hanging on the bedrails.” Marcus tilted his head.

“What do you see?” Nathaniel asked.

“It’s an intake form. Benjamin’s done what any doctor would—taken Matthew’s height, weight, blood pressure, pulse.” Marcus paused. “And he’s indicated the medications Matthew is on.”

“Matthew’s not on any medications,” I said.

“He is now,” Marcus said shortly.

“But vampires can only feel the effects of drugs if . . .” I trailed off.

“If they ingest them through a warmblood. Benjamin has been feeding him—or force-feeding him—spiked blood.” Marcus braced his arms against the table and swore. “And the drugs in question are not exactly palliative for a vampire.”

“What is he on?” My mind felt numb, and the only parts of me that seemed to be alive were the cords running through my body like roots, like branches.

“A cocktail of ketamine, opiates, cocaine, and psilocybin.” Marcus’s tone was flat and impassive, but his right eyelid twitched.

“Psilocybin?” I asked. The others I was at least familiar with.

“A hallucinogen derived from mushrooms.”

“That combination will make Matthew insane,” Hamish said.

“Killing Matthew would be too quick for Benjamin’s purposes,” Ysabeau said. “What about this fabric?” She pointed to the screen.

“I think it’s a blanket. It’s mostly out of the picture frame, but I included it anyway,” Nathaniel said. “There are no landmarks outside,” Baldwin observed. “All you can see is snow and trees. It could be a thousand places in Central Europe at this time of year.”

Matthew’s head turned slightly.

“Something’s happening,” I said, pulling the laptop toward me.

Benjamin led a girl into the room. She couldn’t have been more than four and had on a long white nightgown with lace at the collar and cuffs. The cloth was stained with blood.

The girl wore a dazed expression, her thumb in her mouth.

“Phoebe, take Diana to the other room.” Baldwin’s order was immediate.

“No. I’m staying here. Matthew won’t feed on her. He won’t.” I shook my head.

“He’s out of his mind with pain, blood loss, and drugs,” Marcus said gently. “Matthew’s not responsible for his actions.”

“My husband will not feed on a child,” I said with absolute conviction.

Benjamin arranged the toddler on Matthew’s knee and stroked the girl’s neck. The skin was torn, and blood had caked around the wound.

Matthew’s nostrils flared in instinctive recognition that sustenance was nearby. He turned his head from the girl deliberately.

Baldwin’s eyes never left the screen. He watched his brother first warily, then with amazement. As the seconds ticked by, his expression became one of respect.

“Look at that control,” Hamish murmured. “Every instinct in him must be screaming for blood and survival.”

“Still think Matthew doesn’t have what it takes to lead his own family?” I asked Baldwin.

Benjamin’s back was turned to us, so we couldn’t see his reaction, but the vampire’s frustration was evident in the violent blow he slammed across Matthew’s face. No wonder my husband’s features didn’t look familiar. Then Benjamin roughly grabbed the child and held her so that her neck was directly under Matthew’s nose. The video feed had no sound, but the child’s face twisted as she screamed in terror. Matthew’s lips moved, and the child’s head turned, her sobs quieting slightly. Next to me Ysabeau began to sing.

“‘Der Mond ist aufgegangen,

Die goldnen Sternlein prangen

Am Himmel hell und klar.’”

Ysabeau sang the words in time to the movement of Matthew’s mouth.

“Don’t, Ysabeau,” Baldwin bit out.

“What is that?” I asked, reaching to touch my husband’s face. Even in his torment, he remained shockingly expressionless.

“It’s a German hymn. Some of the verses have become a popular lullaby. Philippe used to sing it after . . . he came home.” Baldwin’s face was ravaged for a moment with grief and guilt.

“It is a song about God’s final judgement,” Ysabeau said.

Benjamin’s hands moved. When they stilled, the child’s body hung limply, head bent back at an impossible angle. Though he hadn’t killed the child, Matthew hadn’t been able to save her, either. Hers was another death Matthew would carry with him forever. Rage burned in my veins, clear and bright.

“Enough. This ends. Tonight.” I grabbed a set of keys that someone had thrown on the table. I didn’t care which car they belonged to, though I hoped it was Marcus’s—and therefore fast. “Tell Verin I’m on my way.”

“No!” Ysabeau’s anguished cry stopped me in my tracks. “The window. Can you enlarge that part of the picture for me, Nathaniel?”

“There’s nothing out there but snow and trees,” Hamish said, frowning.

“The wall next to the window. Focus there,” Ysabeau pointed to the grimy wall on the screen as though Nathaniel could somehow see her. Even though he couldn’t, Nathaniel obligingly zoomed in.

As a clearer picture emerged, I couldn’t imagine what Ysabeau thought she saw. The wall was stained with damp and had not been painted for some time. It might once have been white, like the tiles, but it was grayish now. The image on the screen continued to resolve and sharpen as Nathaniel worked.

Some of the grimy smudges turned out to be a series of numbers marching down the wall. “My clever child,” Ysabeau said, her eyes running red with blood and grief. She stood, her limbs trembling. “That monster. I will tear him to pieces.”

“What is it, Ysabeau?” I asked.

“The clue was in the song. Matthew knows we are watching him,” Ysabeau said.

“What is it, Grand-mère?” Marcus repeated, peering at the image. “Is it the numbers?”

“One number. Philippe’s number.” Ysabeau pointed to the last in the series.

“His number?” Sarah asked.

“It was given to him at Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the Nazis captured Philippe trying to liberate Ravensbrück, they sent him there,” Ysabeau said.

These were names out of nightmares, places that would forever be synonymous with the savagery of mankind.

“The Nazis tattooed it on Philippe—over and over again.” The fury built in Ysabeau’s voice, making it ring like a warning bell. “It is how they discovered he was different.”

“What are you saying?” I couldn’t believe it, and yet . . .

“It was Benjamin who tortured Philippe,” Ysabeau said.

Philippe’s image swam before me—the hollow eye socket where Benjamin had blinded him, the horrible scars on his face. I remembered the shaky handwriting on the letter he’d left for me, his body too damaged to control a pen’s movement.

And the same creature who had done that to Philippe now had my husband.

“Get out of my way.” I tried to push past Baldwin as I raced for the door. But Baldwin held me tight.

“You aren’t going to wander into the same trap that he did, Diana,” Baldwin said. “That’s exactly what Benjamin wants.”

“I’m going to Auschwitz. Matthew is not going to die there, where so many died before,” I said, twisting in Baldwin’s grip. “Matthew isn’t at Auschwitz. Philippe was moved from there to Majdanek on the outskirts of Lublin soon after he was captured. It’s where we found my father. I went over every inch of the camp searching for other survivors. There was no room like that in it.”

“Then Philippe was taken somewhere else before being sent to Majdanek—to another labor camp.

One run by Benjamin. It was he who tortured Philippe. I am certain of it,” Ysabeau insisted.

“How could Benjamin be in charge of a camp?” I’d never heard of such a thing. Nazi concentration camps were run by the SS.

“There were tens of thousands of them, all over Germany and Poland—labor camps, brothels, research facilities, farms,” Baldwin explained. “If Ysabeau is right, Matthew could be anywhere.”

Ysabeau turned on Baldwin. “You are free to stay here and wonder where your brother is, but I am going to Poland with Diana. We will find Matthew ourselves.”

“Nobody is going anywhere.” Marcus slammed his hand on the table. “Not without a plan. Where exactly was Majdanek?”

“I’ll pull up a map.” Phoebe reached for the computer.

I stilled her hand. There was something disturbingly familiar about that blanket. . . . It was tweed, a heathery brown with a distinctive weave.

“Is that a button?” I looked more closely. “That’s not a blanket. It’s a jacket.” I stared at it some more. “Peter Knox wore a jacket like that. I remember the fabric from Oxford.”

“Vampires won’t be able to free Matthew if Benjamin has witches like Knox with him, too!” Sarah exclaimed.

“This is like 1944 all over again,” Ysabeau said quietly. “Benjamin is playing with Matthew—and with us.”

“If so, then Matthew’s capture was not his goal.” Baldwin crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at the screen. “The trap Benjamin set was meant to snare another.”

“He wants Auntie,” Gallowglass said. “Benjamin wants to know why she can bear a vampire’s child.”

Benjamin wants me to bear his child, I thought.

“Well, he’s not going to experiment on Diana to find out,” Marcus said emphatically. “Matthew would rather die where he is than let that happen.”

“There’s no need for experiments. I already know why weavers can have children with blood-rage vampires.” The answer was running up my arms in letters and symbols from languages long dead or never spoken except by witches performing spells. The cords in my body were twisting and turning into brightly hued helices of yellow and white, red and black, green and silver.

“So the answer was in the Book of Life,” Sarah said, “just as the vampires thought it would be.”

“And it all began with a discovery of witches.” I pressed my lips together to avoid revealing any more. “Marcus is right. If we go after Benjamin without a plan and the support of other creatures, he will win. And Matthew will die.”

“I’m sending you a road map of southern and eastern Poland now,” Nathaniel said over the speaker.

Another window opened on the screen. “Here is Auschwitz.” A purple flag appeared. “And here is Majdanek.” A red flag marked a location on the outskirts of a city so far to the east it was practically in Ukraine. There were miles and miles of Polish ground in between.

“Where do we start?” I asked. “At Auschwitz and move east?”

“No. Benjamin will not be far from Lublin,” Ysabeau insisted. “The witches we interrogated when Philippe was found said the creature who tortured him had long-standing ties to that region. We assumed they were talking about a local Nazi recruit.”

“What else did the witches say?” I asked.

“Only that Philippe’s captor had tortured the witches of Chelm before turning his attentions to my husband,” Ysabeau said. “They called him ‘the Devil.’”

Chelm. Within seconds I found the city. Chelm was just to the east of Lublin. My witch’s sixth sense told me that Benjamin would be there—or very close. “That’s where we should start looking,” I said, touching the city on the map as though somehow Matthew could feel my fingers. On the video feed, I saw that he had been left alone with a dead child.

His lips were still moving, still singing . . . to a girl who would never hear anything again.

“Why are you so sure?” Hamish asked.

“Because a witch I met in sixteenth-century Prague was born there. The witch was a weaver—like me.” As I spoke, names and family lineages emerged on my hands and arms, the marks as black as any tattoo. They appeared for only a moment before fading into invisibility, but I knew what they signaled:

Abraham ben Elijah was probably not the first—nor the last—weaver in the city. Chelm was where Benjamin had started his mad attempts to breed a child.

On the screen, Matthew looked down at his right hand. It was spasming, the index finger tapping irregularly on the arm of the chair.

“It looks as though the nerves in his hand have been damaged,” Marcus said, watching his father’s fingers twitch.

“That’s not involuntary movement.” Gallowglass bent until his chin practically rested on the keyboard. “That’s Morse code.”

“What is he saying?” I was frantic at the thought that we might already have missed part of the message.

“D. Four. D. Five. C. Four.” Gallowglass spelled out each letter in turn. “Christ. Matthew’s making no sense at all. D. X—”

“C4,” Hamish said, his voice rising. “DXC4.” He whooped in excitement. “Matthew didn’t walk into a trap. He sprang it deliberately.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“D4 and D5 are the first two moves of the Queen’s Gambit—it’s one of the classic openings in chess.” Hamish went to the fire, where a heavy chess set waited on a table. He moved two pawns, one white and then one black. “White’s next move forces Black to either put his key pieces in jeopardy and gain greater freedom or play it safe and limit his maneuverability.” Hamish moved another white pawn next to the first.

“But when Matthew is White, he never initiates the Queen’s Gambit, and when he’s Black, he declines it. Matthew always plays it safe and protects his queen,” Baldwin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “He defends her at all costs.”

“I know. That’s why he loses. But not this time.” Hamish picked up the black pawn and knocked over the white pawn that was diagonal to it in the center of the board. “DXC4. Queen’s Gambit accepted.”

“I thought Diana was the white queen,” Sarah said, studying board. “But you’re making it sound like Matthew is playing Black.”

“He is,” Hamish said. “I think he’s telling us the child was Benjamin’s white pawn—the player he sacrificed, believing that it would give him an advantage over Matthew. Over us.”

“Does it?” I asked.

“That depends on what we do next,” Hamish said. “In chess, Black would either continue to attack pawns to gain an advantage in the endgame or get more aggressive and move in his knights.”

“Which would Matthew do?” Marcus asked.

“I don’t know,” Hamish said. “Like Baldwin said, Matthew never accepts the Queen’s Gambit.”

“It doesn’t matter. He wasn’t trying to dictate our next move. He was telling us not to protect his queen.” Baldwin swung his head around and addressed me directly. “Are you ready for what comes next?”

“Yes.”

“You hesitated once before,” Baldwin said. “Marcus told me what happened the last time you faced Benjamin in the library. This time, Matthew’s life depends on you.”

“It won’t happen again.” I met his gaze, and Baldwin nodded.

“Will you be able to track Matthew, Ysabeau?” Baldwin asked. “Better than Verin,” she replied.

“Then we will leave at once,” Baldwin said. “Call your knights to arms, Marcus. Tell them to meet me in Warsaw.”

“Kuźma is there,” Marcus said. “He will marshal the knights until I arrive.”

“You cannot go, Marcus,” Gallowglass said. “You must stay here, with the babes.”

“No!” Marcus said. “He’s my father. I can scent him just as easily as Ysabeau. We’ll need every advantage.”

“You aren’t going, Marcus. Neither is Diana.” Baldwin braced his arms on the table and fixed his eyes on Marcus and me. “Everything until now has been a skirmish—a preamble to this moment.

Benjamin has had almost a thousand years to plan his revenge. We have hours. We all must be where we are most needed—not where our hearts lead us.“ “My husband needs me,” I said tightly.

“Your husband needs to be found. Others can do that, just as others can fight,” Baldwin replied.

“Marcus must stay here, because Sept-Tours has the legal status of sanctuary only if the grand master is within its walls.”

“And we saw how much good that did us against Gerbert and Knox,” Sarah said bitterly.

“One person died.” Baldwin’s voice was as cold and clear as an icicle. “It was regrettable, and a tragic loss, but if Marcus had not been here, Gerbert and Domenico would have overrun the place with their children and you would all be dead.”

“You don’t know that,” Marcus said.

“I do. Domenico boasted of their plans. You will stay here, Marcus, and protect Sarah and the children so that Diana can do her job.”

“My job?” My brows lifted.

“You, sister, are going to Venice.”

A heavy iron key flew through the air. I put my hand up, and it landed in my palm. The key was heavy and ornate, with an exquisite bow wrought in the shape of the de Clermont orobouros, a long stem, and a chunky bit with complicated star-shaped wards.

“What’s in Venice?” I owned a house there, I dimly recalled. Perhaps this was the key to it?

No one answered. Every vampire in the room was staring at my hand in shock. I turned it this way and that, but there didn’t seem to be anything odd about it other than the normal rainbow colors, marked wrist, and odd bits of lettering. It was Gallowglass who regained his tongue first.

“You cannot send Auntie in there,” he said, giving Baldwin a combative shove. “What are you thinking, man?”

“That she is a de Clermont—and that I am more useful tracking Matthew with Ysabeau and Verin than I am sitting in a council chamber arguing about the terms of the covenant.” Baldwin turned glittering eyes on me. He shrugged. “Maybe Diana can change their mind.”

“Wait.” Now it was my turn to look amazed. “You can’t—”

“Want you to sit in the de Clermont seat at the Congregation’s table?” Baldwin’s lip curved. “Oh, but I do, sister.”

“I’m not a vampire!”

“Nothing says you have to be. The only way that Father would agree to the covenant was if there were always a de Clermont among the Congregation members. The council cannot meet without one of us present. But I’ve gone over the original treaty. It does not stipulate that the family’s representative must be a vampire.” Baldwin shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I would think that Philippe foresaw this day and planned it all.”

“What do you expect Auntie to do?” Gallowglass demanded. “She’s may be a weaver, but she’s no miracle worker.”

“Diana needs to remind the Congregation that this is not the first time complaints have been made about a vampire in Chelm,” Baldwin said.

“The Congregation has known about Benjamin and done nothing?” I couldn’t believe it. “They didn’t know it was Benjamin, but they knew that something was wrong there,” Baldwin replied. “Not even the witches cared enough to investigate. Knox may not be the only witch working with Benjamin.”

“If so, we’ll not get far in Chelm without the Congregation’s support,” Hamish said.

“And if the witches there have been Benjamin’s victims, a group of vampires will need the Chelm coven’s blessing if we want to succeed, as well as the Congregation’s support,” Baldwin added.

“That means persuading Satu Järvinen to side with us,” Sarah pointed out, “not to mention Gerbert and Domenico.”

“It is impossible, Baldwin. There is too much bad blood between the de Clermonts and the witches,” Ysabeau agreed. “They will never help us save Matthew.”

“Impossible n’est pas français,” I reminded her. “I’ll handle Satu. By the time I join you, Baldwin, you’ll have the full support of the Congregation’s witches. The daemons’, too. I make no promises about Gerbert and Domenico.”

“That’s a tall order,” Gallowglass warned.

“I want my husband back.” I turned to Baldwin. “What now?”

“We’ll go straight to Matthew’s house in Venice. The Congregation has demanded that you and Matthew appear before them. If they see the two of us arrive, they’ll assume I’ve done their bidding,”

Baldwin said.

“Will she be in any danger there?” Marcus asked.

“The Congregation wants a formal proceeding. We will be watched—closely—but no one will want to start a war. Not before the meeting is over, at any rate. I will go with Diana as far as Isola della Stella where the Congregation headquarters, Celestina, is located. After that, she can take two attendants with her into the cloister. Gallowglass? Fernando?” Baldwin turned to his nephew and his brother’s mate.

“With pleasure,” Fernando replied. “I haven’t been to a Congregation meeting since Hugh was alive.”

“Of course I’m going to Venice,” Gallowglass growled. “If you think Auntie’s going without me, you’re daft.”

“I thought as much. Remember: They can’t start the meeting without you, Diana. The council chamber’s door won’t unlock without the de Clermont key,” Baldwin explained.

“Oh. So that’s why the key is enchanted,” I said.

“Enchanted?” Baldwin asked.

“Yes. A protection spell was forged into the key when it was made.” The witches who had done it were skilled, too. Over the centuries the spell’s gramarye had hardly weakened at all.

“The Congregation moved into Isola della Stella in 1454. The keys were made then and have been handed down ever since,” Baldwin said.

“Ah. That explains it. The spell was cast to ensure that you don’t duplicate the key. If you tried, it would destroy itself.” I turned the key over in my palm. “Clever.”

“Are you sure about this, Diana?” Baldwin studied me closely. “There’s no shame in admitting you’re not ready to confront Gerbert and Satu again. We can come up with another plan.”

I turned and met Baldwin’s gaze without flinching.

“I’m sure.”

“Good.” He reached for a sheet of paper that was waiting on the table. A de Clermont ouroboros was pressed into a disk of black wax at the bottom, next to Baldwin’s decisive signature. He handed it to me. “You can present this to the librarian when you arrive.”

It was his formal recognition of the Bishop-Clairmont scion.

“I didn’t need to see Matthew with that girl to know he was ready to lead his own family,” Baldwin said in answer to my amazed expression.

“When?” I asked, unable to say more.

“The moment he let you intervene between us in the church—and didn’t succumb to his blood rage,” Baldwin replied. “I’ll find him, Diana. And I’ll bring him home.”

“Thank you.” I hesitated, then said the word that was not only on my tongue but in my heart. “Brother.”

37

The sea and sky were leaden and the wind fierce when the de Clermont plane touched down at the Venice airport.

“Fine Venetian weather, I see.” Gallowglass buffered me from the blasts as we descended the airplane stairs behind Baldwin and Fernando.

“At least it’s not raining,” Baldwin said, scanning the tarmac.

Of the many things I’d been warned about, the fact that the house might have an inch or two of water in the ground floor was the least of my concerns. Vampires could have a maddening sense of what was truly important.

“Can we please go?” I said, marching toward the waiting car.

“It won’t make it five o’clock any sooner,” Baldwin observed as he followed me. “They refuse to change the meeting time. It’s tr—”

“Tradition. I know.” I climbed into the waiting car.

The car took us only as far as an airport dock, where Gallowglass helped me into a small, fast boat.

It had the de Clermont crest on its gleaming helm and tinted windows on the cabin. Soon we were at another dock, this one floating in front of a fifteenth-century palazzo on the curve of the Grand Canal.

Ca’ Chiaromonte was an appropriate dwelling for someone like Matthew who had played a pivotal role in Venetian business and political life for centuries. Its three floors, Gothic façade, and sparkling windows screamed wealth and status. Had I been here for any other reason than to save Matthew, I would have reveled in its beauty, but today the place felt as gloomy as the weather outside. A stout, dark-haired man with a prominent nose, round glasses with thick lenses, and a long-suffering expression was there to greet us.

“Benvegnùa, madame,” he said with a bow. “It is an honor to welcome you to your home. And it is always a pleasure to see you again, Ser Baldovino.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Santoro. We need coffee. And something stronger for Gallowglass.” Baldwin handed the man his gloves and coat and guided me toward the palazzo’s open door. It was tucked inside a small portico that was, as predicted, a few inches underwater despite the sandbags that had been arranged in piles by the door. Inside, a floor of terra-cotta and white tiles stretched into the distance, with another door at the far end. The dark wood paneling was illuminated by candles set into sconces with mirrored backs to magnify the light. I peeled off the hood on my heavy raincoat, unwound my scarf, and surveyed my surroundings.

“D’accordo, Ser Baldovino.” Santoro sounded about as sincere as Ysabeau. “And for you, Madame Chiaromonte? Milord Matteo has good taste in wine. A glass of Barolo, perhaps?”I shook my head.

“It’s Ser Matteo now,” Baldwin said from the end of the corridor. Santoro’s jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised, you old goat. You’ve been encouraging Matthew to rebel for centuries.”

Baldwin stomped up the stairs.

I fumbled with the buttons on my sodden coat. It wasn’t raining at the moment, but the air was thick with moisture. Venice, I had discovered, was mostly water, valiantly (if vainly) held together with bricks and mortar. While I did so, I stole a look at the rich furniture in the hall. Fernando saw my wandering attention.”

“Venetians understand two languages, Diaan: wealth and power. The de Clermonts speak both— fluently,” he said. “Besides, the city would have collapsed into the sea long ago if not for Matthew and Baldwin, and the Venetians know it. Neither of them have reason to hide here.” Fernando took my coat and handed it to Santoro. “Come, Diana, let me show you upstairs.”

The bedroom that had been prepared for me was decorated in reds and golds, and the fire in the tiled fireplace was lit, but the flames and bright colors could not warm me. Five minutes after the door closed behind Fernando, I found my way back downstairs.

I sank onto a padded bench in one of the lantern-like bay windows that jutted over the Grand Canal. A fire crackled in one of the house’s cavernous fireplaces. A familiar motto—WHAT NOURISHES ME DESTROYS ME—was carved into the wooden mantel. It reminded me of Matthew, of our time in London, of past deeds that even now threatened my family.

“Please, Auntie. You must rest,” Gallowglass murmured with concern once he’d discovered me there. “It’s hours until the Congregation will hear your case.”

But I refused to move. Instead, I sat among the leaded windows, each one capturing a fractured glimpse of the city outside, and listened to the bells mark the slow passing of the hours.

“It’s time.” Baldwin put his hand on my shoulder.

I stood and turned to face him. I was wearing the brightly embroidered Elizabethan jacket I’d worn home from the past along with a thick black turtleneck and wool trousers. I was dressed for Chelm so I could be ready to leave the moment the proceedings were over.

“You have the key?” Baldwin asked.

I slid it out of my pocket. Fortunately, the coat had been designed to hold an Elizabethan housewife’s many keys. Even so, the key to the Congregation chamber was so large it was a tight fit.

“Let’s go, then,” Baldwin said.

We found Gallowglass downstairs with Fernando. Both were draped in black cloaks, and Gallowglass settled a matching black velvet garment over my shoulders. It was ancient and heavy. My fingers traced Matthew’s insignia on the folds of fabric that covered my right arm.

The fierce wind had not abated, and I gripped the bottom of my hood to keep it from blowing open.

Fernando and Gallowglass swept into the launch, which lifted and fell with the swell of the waves in the canal. Baldwin kept a firm grip on my elbow as we walked over the slippery surface. I hopped aboard the launch just as the deck tipped precipitously toward the landing, aided by the sudden application of Gallowglass’s boot to a metal cleat on the side of the boat. I ducked into the cabin, and Gallowglass clambered aboard behind me.

We sped through the mouth of the Grand Canal, zipping across the stretch of water in front of San Marco and ducking into a smaller canal that cut through the Castello district and returned us to the lagoon north of the city. We passed by San Michele, with its high walls and cypress trees shielding the gravestones. My fingers twisted, spinning the black and blue cords within me as I murmured a few words to remember the dead.

As we crossed the lagoon, we passed some inhabited islands, like Murano and Burano, and others occupied only by ruins and dormant fruit trees. When the stark walls protecting the Isola della Stella came into view, my flesh tingled. Baldwin explained that the Venetians thought the place was cursed. It was no wonder. There was power here, both elemental magic and the residue left by centuries of spells cast to keep the place secure and turn away curious human eyes.

“The island is going to sense that I shouldn’t be entering through a vampire’s door,” I told Baldwin.

I could hear the spirits the witches had bound to the place as they swept around the perimeter making security checks. Whoever warded Isola della Stella and Celestina was far more sophisticated than the witch who had installed the magical surveillance system I’d dismantled at the Bodleian.

“Move quickly, then. Congregation rules forbid expulsion of anyone who reaches the cloister that lies at the center of Celestina. If you have the key, you have the right to enter with two companions. It’s always been this way,” Baldwin said calmly.

Santoro cut the engines, and the boat moved smoothly into the protected landing. As we passed under the archway, I saw the faint outlines of the de Clermont ouroboros on the keystone. Time and salt air had softened the chiseled insignia, and to a casual viewer it would have looked like nothing more than a shadow. Inside, the steps that led to the high marble landing were thick with algae. A vampire might risk the climb, but not a witch. Before I could figure out a solution, Gallowglass had sprung from the boat and was on the landing. Santoro tossed a length of rope to him, and Gallowglass tied the boat to a bollard with practiced speed. Baldwin turned to issue his last-minute instructions.

“Once you reach the council chamber, take your seat without engaging in conversation. It’s become common practice for the members to chat endlessly before we convene, but this is no ordinary meeting.

The de Clermont representative is always the presiding member. Call the creatures to order as quickly as you can.”

“Right.” This was the part of the day I relished least. “Does it matter where I sit?”

“Your seat is opposite the door—between Gerbert and Domenico.” With that, Baldwin gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Buona fortuna, Diana.”

“Bring him home, Baldwin.” I clutched at his sleeve for a moment. It was the last sign of weakness I could afford.

“I will. Benjamin expected his father to look for him, and he believes you will run after him,”

Baldwin said. “He will not be expecting me.”

High above, bells tolled.

“We must go.” Fernando said.

“Take care of my sister,” Baldwin told him.

“I am taking care of my sire’s mate,” Fernando replied, “so you need not worry. I will guard her with my life.”

Fernando grasped me around the waist and lifted me up, while Gallowglass reached down and snagged me by the arm. In two seconds I was standing on the landing, Fernando beside me. Baldwin hopped from the launch to a smaller speedboat. With a salute he maneuvered his new vessel to the mouth of the slip. He would wait there until the bells rang five o’clock, signaling the beginning of the meeting. The door that stood between the Congregation and me was heavy and black with age and moisture.

The lock was uncannily shiny in comparison and looked as though it had been recently polished. I suspected that magic kept it gleaming, and a brush of my fingers confirmed my suspicion. But this was just a benign protection spell to prevent the elements from damaging the metal. Based on what I’d seen from the windows of Ca’ Chiaromonte, an enterprising Venetian witch could make a fortune enchanting the plaster and bricks in the city to stop them from crumbling.

The key felt warm as my hand closed around it. I drew it from my pocket, slipped the end of the stem and the bit into the lock, and turned. The mechanism inside the lock activated quickly and without complaint.

I grasped the heavy ring and pulled the door open. Beyond, there was a dark corridor with a veined marble floor. I could see no more than a yard ahead of me in the gloom.

“Let me show you the way,” Fernando said, taking my arm.

After the gloom of the corridor, I was temporarily blinded when we reached the dim light of the cloister. When my eyes focused, I saw rounded archways that were supported by graceful double columns. In the center of the space was a marble wellhead—a reminder that the cloister had been constructed long before modern conveniences like electricity and running water. In the days when travel was difficult and dangerous, the Congregation had met for months on end, living on the island until their business was finished.

The low murmur of conversation stopped. I pulled the hooded cloak around me, hoping to hide whatever markings of power might be visible on my skin. The thick folds also masked the tote bag slung over my shoulder. Quickly I surveyed the crowd. Satu stood alone. She avoided my eyes, but I was aware of her discomfort at seeing me again. More than that, the witch felt . . . wrong somehow, and my stomach flipped in a minor version of the revulsion I felt when another witch lied to me. Satu was wearing a disguising spell, but it did no good. I knew what she was hiding.

The other creatures present huddled into groups according to species. Agatha Wilson was standing with her two fellow daemons. Domenico and Gerbert were together, exchanging surprised looks. The Congregation’s remaining two witches were both women. One was stern-looking, with a tight braided bun woven from brown hair threaded with gray. She wore the ugliest dress I had ever seen, accented by an ornate choker. A small portrait miniature adorned the center of the gold-and-enameled necklace—an ancestor, no doubt. The other witch was pleasantly round-faced, with pink cheeks and white hair. Her skin was remarkably unlined, which made it impossible to determine her age. Something about this witch tugged at me, too, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The flesh on my arms prickled, warning me that the Book of Life held an answer to my unspoken questions, but I couldn’t take the time to decipher it now.

“I am pleased to see that the de Clermonts have bowed to the Congregation’s request to see this witch.” Gerbert appeared before me. I had not seen him since La Pierre. “We meet again, Diana Bishop.”

“Gerbert,” I met his gaze unflinchingly, though it made my flesh shrink. His lips curled.

“I see you are the same proud creature you were before.” Gerbert turned to Gallowglass. “To see such a noble lineage as the de Clermonts brought to confusion and ruin by a girl!”

“They used to say something similar about Granny,” Gallowglass shot back. “If we can survive Ysabeau we can survive this ‘girl.’”

“You may think differently once you learn the extent of the witch’s offenses,” Gerbert replied.

“Where is Baldwin?” Domenico joined us, a scowl on his face.

Gears whirred and clanged overhead.

“Saved by the bell,” Gallowglass said. “Stand aside, Domenico.”

“A change of de Clermont representative at this late hour, and without notification, is most irregular, Gallowglass,” Gerbert said.

“What are you waiting for, Gallowglass? Unlock the door,” Domenico commanded.

“It’s not me who holds the key,” Gallowglass said, his voice soft. “Come, Auntie. You have a meeting to attend.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have the key?” Gerbert asked, his voice so sharp the sound cut through the enchanted carillon playing overhead. “You are the only de Clermont present.”

“Not so. Baldwin recognized Diana Bishop as a blood-sworn daughter of Philippe de Clermont weeks ago.” Gallowglass gave Gerbert a mocking smile.

Across the cloister, one of the witches gasped and whispered to her neighbor.

“That’s impossible,” Domenico said. “Philippe de Clermont has been dead for more than half a century. How—”

“Diana Bishop is a timewalker.” Gerbert looked at me in loathing. Across the courtyard the white haired witch’s dimples grew deeper. “I should have guessed. This is all part of some vast enchantment she has been working. I warned you that this witch must be stopped. Now we will pay the price for your failure to act appropriately.” He pointed an accusing finger at Satu.

The first toll of the hours sounded.

“Time to go,” I said briskly. “We wouldn’t want to be late and disrupt the Congregation’s traditions.” Their failure to agree to an earlier meeting time still rankled.

As I approached the door, the weight of the key filled my palm. There were nine locks, and every one had a key in it, save one. I slipped the metal bit into the remaining keyhole and twisted it with a flick of my wrist. The locking mechanisms whirred and clicked. Then the door swung open.

“After you.” I stepped aside so the others could file by. My first Congregation meeting was about to begin.

The council chamber was magnificent, decorated with brilliant frescoes and mosaics that were illuminated from the light of torches and hundreds of candles. The vaulted ceiling seemed miles above, and a gallery circled the room three or four stories up. That lofty space was where the Congregation’s records were kept. Thousands of years of records, based on a quick visual inventory of the shelves. In addition to books and manuscripts, there were earlier writing technologies, including scrolls and glass frames of the kind that held papyrus fragments. Banks of shallow drawers suggested there might even be clay tablets up there.

My eyes dropped to survey the meeting room, dominated by a large oval table surrounded by high backed chairs. Like the locks, and the keys that opened them, each chair was inscribed with a symbol.

Mine was right where Baldwin had promised it would be: on the far side of the room, opposite the door.

A young human woman stood inside, presenting each Congregation member who entered with a leather folio. At first I thought it must contain the meeting’s agenda. Then I noticed that each folio was a different thickness, as though items had been requested from the shelves above according to the members’ specific instructions.

I was the last to enter the room, and the door clanged shut behind me.

“Madame de Clermont,” the woman said, her dark eyes brimming with intelligence. “I am Rima Jaén, the Congregation’s librarian. Here are the documents Sieur Baldwin requested for the meeting. If there is anything more you require, you have only to let me know.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the materials from her.

She hesitated. “Pardon my presumption, madame, but have we met? You seem so familiar. I know you are a scholar. Have you ever visited the Gonçalves archive in Seville?”

“No, I have never worked there,” I said, adding, “but I believe I know the owner.”

“Señor Gonçalves nominated me for this job after I was made redundant,” Rima said. “The Congregation’s former librarian retired quite unexpectedly in July, after suffering a heart attack. The librarians are, by tradition, human. Sieur Baldwin took on the task of replacing him.”

The librarian’s heart attack—and Rima’s appointment—had come a few weeks after Baldwin found out about my blood vow. I strongly suspected that my new brother had engineered the whole business.

The de Clermont’s king became more interesting by the hour.

“You are keeping us waiting, Professor Bishop,” Gerbert said testily, though based on the hum of conversation among the delegates he was the only creature who minded.

“Allow Professor Bishop a chance to get her bearings. It is her first meeting,” said the dimpled witch in a broad Scots accent. “Are you able to remember yours, Gerbert, or is that happy day lost in the mists of time?”

“Give that witch a chance and she’ll spellbind us all,” Gerbert said. “Do not underestimate her, Janet. Knox’s assessment of her childhood power and potential was grossly misleading, I fear.”

“Thank you kindly, but I don’t believe it’s I who need the warning,” Janet said with a twinkle in her gray eyes.

I took the folio from Rima and passed her the folded document that gave the Bishop-Clairmont family official standing in the vampire world.

“Can you file that, please?” I asked.

“Happily, Madame de Clermont,” Rima said. “The Congregation librarian is also its secretary. I’ll take whatever actions the document requires while you are meeting.”

Having handed off the papers that formally established the Bishop-Clairmont scion, I circumnavigated the table, the black cloak billowing around my feet.

“Nice tats,” Agatha whispered as I walked by, pointing to her own hairline. “Great coat, too.”

I smiled at her without comment and kept going. When I reached my chair, I wrestled with the damp cloak, not wanting to relinquish the tote bag while I did so. Finally I managed to get it off and hung it over the back of my chair.

“There are hooks by the door,” Gerbert said.

I turned to face him. His eyes widened. My jacket had long sleeves to hide the Book of Life’s text, but my eyes were fully on view. And I’d deliberately pulled my hair back into a long red braid that revealed the tips of the branches that covered my scalp.

“My power is unsettled at the moment, and some people are made uncomfortable by my appearance,” I said. “I prefer to keep my cloak nearby. Or I can use a disguising spell like Satu. But hiding in plain sight is as much a lie as any spoken form of deceit.”

I looked at each creature of the Congregation in turn, daring any of them to react to the letters and symbols that I knew were passing across my eyes.

Satu glanced away, but not quickly enough to mask her frightened look. The sudden movement stretched her poor excuse for a disguising spell. I searched for the spell’s signature, but there was none.

Satu’s disguising spell had not been cast. She herself had woven it—and not very skillfully.

I know your secret, sister, I said silently.

And I have long suspected yours, Satu replied, her voice as bitter as wormwood.

Oh, I’ve picked up a few more along the way, I said.

After my slow survey of the room, only Agatha risked asking a question.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

“I chose my path.” I dropped the tote bag on the table and lowered myself into the chair. The bag was bound to me so tightly that even at this short distance I could feel the tug.

“What’s that?” Domenico asked suspiciously.

“A Bodleian Library tote bag.” I had taken it from the library shop when we retrieved the Book of Life, making sure to leave a twenty-pound note under the pencil cup near the till. Fittingly, it had the library oath emblazoned upon it in red and black letters.

Domenico opened his mouth to ask another question, but I silenced him with a look. I had waited long enough for today’s meeting to begin. Domenico could ask me questions after Matthew was free.

“I call this meeting to order. I am Diana Bishop, Philippe de Clermont’s blood-sworn daughter, and I represent the de Clermonts.” I turned to Domenico. He crossed his arms and refused to speak. I continued.

“This is Domenico Michele, and Gerbert of Aurillac is to my left. I know Agatha Wilson from Oxford, and Satu Järvinen and I spent some time together in France, didn’t we?” My back smarted with the memory of her fire. “I’m afraid the rest of you will have to introduce yourselves.”

“I am Osamu Watanabe,” said the young male daemon sitting next to Agatha. “You look like a manga character. Can I draw you later?”

“Sure,” I said, hoping that the character in question didn’t turn out to be evil.

“Tatiana Alkaev,” said the platinum blonde with the dreamy blue eyes. All she needed was a sleigh pulled by white horses and she would be the perfect heroine in a Russian fairy tale. “You’re full of answers, but I have no questions at this time.”

“Excellent.” I turned to the witch with the forbidding expression and the execrable taste in clothing.

“And you?”

“I am Sidonie von Borcke,” she said, putting on a pair of reading glasses and opening her leather folio with a snap. “And I have no knowledge of this so-called blood vow.”

“It’s in the librarian’s report. Second page, at the bottom, in the addendum, third line,” Osamu said helpfully. Sidonie glared at him. “I seem to recall that it begins ‘Additions to vampire pedigrees (alphabetical): Almasi, Bettingcourt, de Clermont, Díaz—”

“Yes, I see it now, Mr. Watanabe,” Sidonie snapped.

“I believe it’s my turn to be introduced, dear Sidonie.” The white-haired witch smiled beneficently.

“I am Janet Gowdie, and meeting you is a long-awaited pleasure. I knew your father and mother. They were a great credit to our people, and I still feel their loss keenly.”

“Thank you,” I said, moved by the woman’s simple tribute.

“We were told the de Clermonts had a motion for us to consider?” Janet gently steered the meeting back on track.

I gave her a grateful look. “The de Clermonts formally request the assistance of the Congregation in tracking down a member of the Bishop-Clairmont scion, Benjamin Fox or Fuchs. Mr. Fox contracted blood rage from his father, my husband, Matthew Clairmont, and has been kidnapping and raping witches for centuries in an attempt to impregnate them, mostly in the area surrounding the Polish city of Chelm. Some of you may remember complaints made by the Chelm coven, which the Congregation ignored. To date, Benjamin’s desire to create a witch-vampire child has been thwarted, in large part because he does not know what the witches discovered long ago—namely, that vampires with blood rage can reproduce biologically, but only with a particular kind of witch called a weaver.”

The room was completely quiet. I took a deep breath and continued.

“My husband, in an attempt to draw Benjamin into the open, went into Poland where he disappeared. We believe Benjamin has captured him and is holding him in a facility that served as a Nazi labor camp or research facility during the Second World War. The Knights of Lazarus have pledged to get my husband back, but the de Clermonts will need witches and daemons to come to our aid as well.

Benjamin must be stopped.”

I looked around the room once more. Every person in it save Janet Gowdie was slack-jawed with amazement.

“Discussion? Or should we move straight to the vote?” I asked, eager to forstall a long debate.

After a long silence, the Congregation chamber was filled with an indignant clamor as the representatives began to shout questions at me and accusations at each other. “Discussion it is,” I said.

38

“You must eat something,” Gallowglass insisted, pressing a sandwich into my hand.

“I have to go back in there. The second vote will take place soon.” I pushed the sandwich away.

Baldwin had, among his many other instructions, reminded me about the Congregation’s elaborate voting procedures: three votes on any motion, with discussion in between. It was normal for the votes to swing wildly from one position to the other as Congregation members considered—or pretended to consider—opposing views.

I lost the first vote, eight opposed and one—me—in favor. Some voted against me on procedural grounds, since Matthew and I had violated the covenant and the Congregation had already voted to uphold that ancient pact. Others voted it down because the scourge of blood rage threatened the health and safety of all warmbloods—daemon, human, and witch. Newspaper reports of the vampire murders were produced and read aloud. Tatiana objected to rescuing the witches of Chelm, who, she tearfully claimed, had cast a spell on her vacationing grandmother that made her break out in boils. No amount of explaining could convince Tatiana that she was actually thinking of Cheboksary, even though Rima procured aerial photographs to prove that Chelm was not a beachfront spot on the Volga.

“Is there word from Baldwin or Verin?” I asked. Isola della Stella suffered from poor cell-phone reception, and within the walls of Celestina the only way to catch a signal was by standing in the exposed center of the cloister in a steady downpour.

“None.” Gallowglass put a mug of tea in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “Drink.”

Worry for Matthew and impatience with the Congregation’s Byzantine rules and regulations made my stomachf flip. I handed the mug back to Gallowglass, untouched.

“Don’t take the Congregation’s decision to heart, Auntie. My father always said that the first vote was all about posturing and that more often than not the second vote reversed the first.”

I picked up the Bodleian tote bag, nodded, and returned to the council chamber. The hostile looks I received from Gerbert and Domenico once I was inside made me wonder if Hugh had been an optimist when it came to Congregation politics.

“Blood rage!” Gerbert hissed, grabbing at my arm. “How did the de Clermonts keep this from us?”

“I don’t know, Gerbert,” I replied, shaking off his grip. “Ysabeau lived under your roof for weeks and you never discovered it.”

“It’s half past ten.” Sidonie von Borcke strode into the room. “We adjourn at midnight. Let’s conclude this sordid business and move on to more important matters—like our investigation of the Bishop family’s covenant violations.”

There was nothing more pressing than ridding the world of Benjamin but I bit my tongue and took my chair, resting the tote bag on the table in front of me. Domenico reached for it, still curious about its contents.

“Don’t.” I looked at him. Apparently my eyes spoke volumes, for he withdrew his hand quickly.

“So, Sidonie, am I to understand you’re calling the question?” I asked her abruptly. In spite of her calls for a quick resolution, she was proving to be a major impediment to the deliberations, drawing out every exchange with irrelevant detail until I was ready to scream.

“Not at all,” she huffed. “I merely wish us to consider the matter with proper efficiency.”

“I remain opposed to intervening in what is clearly a family problem,” Gerbert said. “Madame de Clermont’s proposal seeks to open this unfortunate matter to greater scrutiny. Already the Knights of Lazarus are on the scene and looking for her husband. It is best to let matters take their course.”

“And the blood rage?” It was the first time Satu had said anything with the exception of her “No”

when called upon in the first vote.

“Blood rage is a matter for the vampires to handle. We will discipline the de Clermont family for their serious lapse in judgment and take appropriate measures to locate and exterminate all who might be infected.” Gerbert tented his fingers and looked around the table. “You can all rest easy on that score.”

“I agree with Gerbert. Furthermore, no scion can be established under a diseased sire,” Domenico said. “It’s unthinkable. Matthew Clairmont must be put to death, and all his children with him.” The vampire’s eyes gleamed.

Osamu raised his hand and waited to be recognized.

“Yes, Mr. Watanabe?” I nodded in his direction.

“What’s a weaver?” he asked. “And what do they have in common with vampires who have blood rage?”

“What makes you think they have anything in common?” Sidonie snapped.

“It’s only logical that blood-rage vampires and weaving witches have something in common. How could Diana and Matthew have had children otherwise?” Agatha looked at me expectantly. Before I could answer, Gerbert stood and loomed over me.

“Is that what Matthew discovered in the Book of Life?” he demanded. “Did you unearth a spell that joins the two species?”

“Sit down, Gerbert.” Janet had been knitting steadily for hours, looking up every now and again to make a judicious comment or smile benignly.

“The witch must answer!” Gerbert exclaimed. “What spell is at work here, and how did you perform it?”

“The answer is in the Book of Life.” I dragged the tote bag toward me and drew out the volume that had been hidden for so long in the Bodleian Library.

There were gasps of astonishment around the table.

“This is a trick,” Sidonie pronounced. She rose and made her way around the table. “If that is the witches’ lost book of spells, I demand to examine it.”

“It’s the vampire’s lost history,” Domenico growled as she went past his chair.

“Here.” I handed the Book of Life to Sidonie.

The witch tried to spring the clasps, pushing and tugging at the metal fittings, but the book refused to cooperate with her. I held out my hands and the book flew across the space between us, eager to be back where it belonged. Sidonie and Gerbert exchanged a long look.

“You open it, Diana,” Agatha said, her eyes round. I thought back to what she’d said in Oxford all those months ago—that Ashmole 782 belonged to the daemons as well as the witches and vampires.

Somehow, she had already divined a sense of the contents.

I placed the Book of Life on the table while the Congregation gathered around me. The clasps opened immediately at my touch. Whispers and sighs filled the air, followed by the eldritch traces left by the spirits of the creatures who were bound to the pages.

“Magic isn’t permitted on Isola della Stella,” Domenico protested, an edge of panic in his voice.

“Tell her, Gerbert!”

“If I were working magic, Domenico, you’d know it,” I retorted.

Domenico paled as the wraiths grew more coherent, taking on elongated human form with hollow, dark eyes.

I flipped the book open. Everybody bent forward for a closer look.

“There’s nothing there,” Gerbert said, his face twisted with fury. “The book is blank. What have you done to our book of origins?”

“This book smells . . . odd,” Domenico said, giving the air a suspicious sniff. “Like dead animals.”

“No, it smells of dead creatures.” I ruffled the pages so that the scent rose in the air. “Daemons.

Vampires. Witches. They’re all in there.”

“You mean . . .” Tatiana looked horrified.

“That’s right.” I nodded. “That’s parchment made from creature skin. The leaves are sewn together with creature hair, too.”

“But where is the text?” Gerbert asked, his voice rising. “The Book of Life is supposed to hold the key to many mysteries. It’s our sacred text—the vampire’s history.”

“Here is your sacred text.” I pushed up my sleeves. Letters and symbols swirled and ran just under my skin, coming to the surface like bubbles on a pond, only to dissolve. I had no idea what my eyes were doing, but I suspected they were full of characters, too. Satu backed away from me.

“You bewitched it,” Gerbert snarled.

“The Book of Life was bewitched long ago,” I said. “All I did was open it.”

“And it chose you.” Osamu reached out a finger to touch the letters on my arm. A few of them gathered around the point where his skin touched mine before they danced away again.

“Why did the book choose Diana Bishop?” Domenico snarled.

“Because I’m a weaver—a maker of spells—and there are precious few of us left.” I sought out Satu once more. Her lips were pressed together, and her eyes begged me to remain silent. “We had too much creative power, and our fellow witches killed us.”

“The same power that makes it possible for you to create new spells gives you the ability to create new life,” Agatha said, her excitement evident.

“It’s a special blessing the goddess bestows on female weavers,” I replied. “Not all weavers are women, of course. My father was a weaver, too.”

“It’s impossible,” Domenico snarled. “This is more of the witch’s treachery. I’ve never heard of a weaver, and the ancient scourge of blood rage has mutated into an even more dangerous form. As for children born to witches and vampires, we cannot allow such an evil to take root. They would be monsters, beyond reason or control.”

“I must take issue with you on that point, Domenico,” Janet said.

“On what grounds?” he said with a touch of impatience.

“On the grounds that I am such a creature and am neither evil nor monstrous.”

For the first time since my arrival, the attention of the room was directed elsewhere. “My grandmother was the child of a weaver and a vampire.” Janet’s gray eyes latched onto mine.

“Everyone in the Highlands called him Nickie-Ben.”

“Benjamin,” I breathed.

“Aye.” Janet nodded. “Young witches were told to be careful on moonless nights, lest Nickie-Ben catch them. My great-granny, Isobel Gowdie, didn’t listen. They had a mad love affair. The legends say he bit her on the shoulder. When Nickie-Ben went away, he left something behind without knowing it: a daughter. I am named after her.”

I looked down at my arms. In a kind of magical Scrabble, letters rose and arranged themselves into a name: JANET GOWDIE, DAUGHTER OF ISOBEL GOWDIE AND BENJAMIN FOX. Janet’s grandmother had been one of the Bright Born.

“When was your grandmother conceived?” An account of a Bright Born’s life might tell me something about my own children’s futures.

“In 1662,” Janet said. “Granny Janet died in 1912, bless her, at the age of two hundred and fifty.

She kept her beauty right until the end, but then, unlike me, Granny Janet was more vampire than witch.

She was proud to have inspired the legends of the baobhan sith, having lured many a man to her bed only to cause each of them death and ruin after Nickie-Ben left her. And it was fearful to behold Granny Janet’s temper when she was crossed.”

“But that would make you . . .” My eyes were round.

“I’ll be one hundred and seventy next year,” Janet said. She murmured a few words and her white hair was revealed to be a dusky black. Another murmured spell dissolved the wrinkles on her face, leaving her skin a luminous, pearly white.

Janet Gowdie looked no more than thirty. My children’s lives began to take shape in my imagination.

“And your mother?” I asked.

“My mam lived for a full two hundred years. With each passing generation, our lives get shorter.”

“How do you hide what you are from the humans?” Osamu asked.

“Same way the vampires do, I suppose. A bit of luck. A bit of help from our fellow witches. A bit of human willingness to turn away from the truth,” Janet replied.

“This is utter nonsense,” Sidonie said hotly. “You are a famous witch, Janet. Your spell-casting ability is renowned. And you come from a distinguished line of witches. Why you would want to sully your family’s reputation with this story is beyond me.”

“And there it is,” I said, my voice soft.

“There what is?” Sidonie sounded like a testy schoolmarm.

“The disgust. The fear. The dislike of anybody who doesn’t conform to your simple-minded expectations of the world and how it should work.”

“Listen to me, Diana Bishop—”

But I was through listening to Sidonie or anybody else who used the covenant as a shield to hide their own inner darkness.

“No. You listen to me,” I said. “My parents were witches. I’m the blood-sworn daughter of a vampire. My husband, and the father of my children, is a vampire. Janet, too, is descended from a witch and a vampire. When will you stop pretending that there’s some pure-blooded witch ideal in the world?”

Sidonie stiffened. “There is such an ideal. It is how our power has been maintained.”

“No. It’s how our power has died,” I retorted. “If we keep abiding by the covenant, in a few generations we won’t have any power left. The whole purpose of that agreement was to keep the species from mixing and reproducing.”

“More nonsense!” Sidonie cried. “The covenant’s purpose is first and foremost to keep us safe.”

“No. The covenant was drawn up to prevent the birth of children like Janet: powerful, long-lived, neither witch nor vampire nor daemon but something in between,” I said. “It’s what all creatures have feared. It’s what Benjamin wants to control. We cannot let him.”

“In between?” Janet arched her brows. They were, now that I was seeing her clearly, as black as night. “Is that the answer, then?”

“Answer to what?” Domenico demanded.

But I was not ready to share that secret from the Book of Life. Not until Miriam and Chris had found the scientific evidence to back up what the manuscript had revealed. Once again I was saved from answering by the ringing of Celestina’s bells.

“It is nearly midnight. We must adjourn—for now,” Agatha Wilson said, her eyes shining. “I call the question. Will the Congregation support the de Clermonts in their efforts to rid the world of Benjamin Fox?”

Everyone returned to their seats and we went around the table one by one, casting our votes.

This time the vote was more encouraging: four in favor and five opposed. I had made progress in the second vote, earning the support of Agatha, Osamu, and Janet, but not enough to guarantee the outcome when the third, and final, vote was taken tomorrow. Especially not when my old enemies, Gerbert, Domenico, and Satu, were among the holdouts.

“The meeting will resume tomorrow afternoon at five o’clock.” Aware of every minute that Matthew was spending in Benjamin’s custody, I had argued once more for an earlier meeting time. And once more, my request had been denied.

Wearily I gathered up my leather folio—which I’d never opened—and the Book of Life. The past seven hours had been grueling. I couldn’t stop thinking about Matthew and what he was enduring while the Congregation hemmed and hawed. And I was worried about the children, too, who were without both of their parents.I waited for the room to empty. Janet Gowdie and Gerbert were the last to leave.

“Gerbert?” I called.

He stopped on his way out the door, his back to me.

“I haven’t forgotten what happened in May,” I said, the power burning brightly in my hands.

“Nor have I.” Gerbert’s head swung around. “Peter said you and Matthew were hiding something. I should have listened to him.”

“Why? Didn’t Benjamin already tip you off about what the witches discovered?” I asked.

But Gerbert hadn’t lived so long to be caught so easily. His lip curled.

“Until next evening,” he said, giving Janet and me a small, formal bow.

“We should call him Nickie-Bertie,” Janet commented. “He and Benjamin would make a right pair of devils.”

I smiled.

“Are you free tomorrow for lunch?” Janet Gowdie asked as we walked out of the meeting chamber and into the cloister, her rich Scots voice reminding me of Gallowglass.

“Me?” Even after all that had happened tonight, I was surprised she would be seen with a de Clermont.

“Neither of us fits into one of the Congregation’s tiny boxes, Diana,” Janet said, her smooth skin dimpling with amusement.

Gallowglass and Fernando were waiting for me under the cloister’s arcade. Gallowglass frowned to see me in a witch’s company.

“All right, Auntie?” he asked, uneasy. “We should go. It’s getting late.”

“I just want to have a quick word with Janet before we leave.” I searched Janet’s face, looking for a sign that she might be trying to win my friendship for some nefarious purpose, but all I saw was concern. “Why are you helping me?” I asked bluntly.

“I promised Philippe I would,” Janet said. She dropped her knitting bag at her feet and drew up the sleeve of her shirt. “You are not the only one whose skin tells a tale, Diana Bishop.”

Tattooed on her arm was a number. Gallowglass swore. I gasped. “Were you at Auschwitz with Philippe?” My heart was in my mouth.

“No. I was at Ravensbrück,” she said. “I was working in France for the SOE—the Special Operations Executive—when I was captured. Philippe was trying to liberate the camp. He managed to get a few of us out before the Nazis caught him. “Do you know where Philippe was held after Auschwitz?” I asked, my tone urgent.

“No, though we did look for him. Was it Nickie-Ben who had him?” Janet’s eyes were dark with sympathy.

“Yes,” I replied. “We think he was somewhere near Chelm.”

“Benjamin had witches working for him then, too. I remember wondering at the time why everything within fifty miles of Chelm was lost in a dense fog. We couldn’t find our way through it, no matter how we tried.” Janet’s eyes filled. “I am sorry we failed Philippe. We will do better this time. ’Tis a matter of Bishop-Clairmont family honor. And I am Matthew de Clermont’s kin, after all.”

“Tatiana will be the easiest to sway,” I said.

“Not Tatiana,” Janet said with a shake of her head. “She is infatuated with Domenico. Her sweater does more than enhance her figure. It also hides Domenico’s bites. We must persuade Satu instead.”

“Satu Järvinen will never help me,” I said, thinking of the time we’d spent together at La Pierre.

“Oh, I think she will,” Janet said. “Once we explain that we’ll offer her up to Benjamin in exchange for Matthew if she doesn’t. Satu is a weaver like you, after all. Perhaps Finnish weavers are more fertile than those from Chelm.”

Satu was staying at a small establishment on a quiet campo on the opposite side of the Grand Canal from Ca’ Chiaromonte. It looked perfectly ordinary from the outside, with brightly painted flower boxes and stickers on the windows indicating its rating relative to other area establishments (four stars) and the credit cards it accepted (all of them).

Inside, however, the veneer of normalcy proved thin.

The proprietress, Laura Malipiero, sat behind a desk in the front lobby swathed in purple and black velvet, shuffling a tarot deck. Her hair was wild and curly, with streaks of white through the black. A garland of black paper bats was draped over the mailboxes, and the scent of sage and dragon’s-blood incense hung in the air. “We’re full,” she said, not looking up from her cards. A cigarette was clasped in the corner of her mouth. It was purple and black, just like her outfit. At first I didn’t think it was lit. Signorina Malipiero was sitting under a sign that read VIETATO FUMARE, after all. But then the witch took a deep drag on it.

There was indeed no smoke, though the tip glowed.

“They say she’s the richest witch in Venice. She made her fortune selling enchanted cigarettes.”

Janet eyed her with disapproval. She had donned her disguising spell again and to the casual observer looked to be a frail nonagenarian rather than a slender thirty-something.

“I’m sorry, sisters, but the Regata delle Befane is this week, and there isn’t a room to be had in this part of Venice.” Signorina Malipiero’s attention remained on her cards.

I’d seen notices all over town announcing the annual Epiphany gondola race to see who could get from San Tomà to the Rialto the fastest. There were two races, of course: the official regatta in the morning and the far more exciting and dangerous one at midnight that involved not just brute strength but magic, too.

“We aren’t interested in a room, Signorina Malapiero. I’m Janet Gowdie, and this is Diana Bishop.

We’re here to see Satu Järvinen on Congregation business—if she’s not practicing for the gondola race, that is.”

The Venetian witch looked up in shock, her dark eyes huge and her cigarette dangling.

“Room 17, is it? No need to trouble yourself. We can show ourselves up.” Janet beamed at the stunned witch and bundled me off in the direction of the stairs.

“You, Janet Gowdie, are a bulldozer,” I said breathlessly as she hustled me down the corridor. “Not to mention a mind reader.” It was such a useful magical talent.

“What a lovely thing to say, Diana.” Janet knocked on the door. “Cameriera!”

There was no answer. And after yesterday’s marathon Congregation meeting, I was tired of waiting.

I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and murmured an opening spell. The door swung open. Satu Järvinen was waiting for us inside, both hands up, ready to work magic. I snared the threads that surrounded her and pulled them tight, binding her arms to her sides. Satu gasped.

“What do you know about being a weaver?” I demanded.

“Not as much as you do,” Satu replied.

“Is this why you treated me so badly at La Pierre?” I asked.

Satu’s expression was steely. Her actions had been taken in the interest of self-preservation. She felt no remorse. “I won’t let you expose me. They’ll kill us all if they find out what weavers can do,” Satu said.

“They’ll kill me anyway for loving Matthew. What do I have to lose?”

“Your children,” Satu spit.

That, it turned out, was going too far.

“I bind thee, Satu Järvinen, delivering you into the hands of the goddess without power or craft, for you have proved yourself unfit to possess them.” With the index finger of my left hand, I pulled the threads one more inch and knotted them tight. My finger flared darkly purple in the color of justice.

Satu’s power left her in a whoosh, sucking the air out of the room.

“You can’t spellbind me!” she cried. “It’s forbidden!”

“Report me to the Congregation,” I said. “But before you do, know this: Nobody will be able to break the knot that binds you—except me. And what use will you be to the Congregation in this state? If you want to keep your seat, you’ll have to keep your silence—and hope that Sidonie von Borcke doesn’t notice.”

“You will pay for this, Diana Bishop!” Satu promised.

“I already have,” I said. “Or have you forgotten what you did to me in the name of sisterly solidarity?”

I advanced on her slowly. “Being spellbound is nothing compared to what Benjamin will do to you if he discovers that you are a weaver. You’ll have no way to defend yourself and will be entirely at his mercy. I’ve seen what Benjamin does to the witches he tries to impregnate. Not even you deserve that.”

Satu’s eyes flickered with fear.

“Vote for the de Clermont motion this afternoon.” I released Satu’s arms, but not the binding spell that limited her power.

Satu tried and failed to use her magic against me.

“Your power is gone. I wasn’t lying. Sister.” I turned and stalked away. At the doorway I stopped and turned. “And don’t ever threaten my children again. If you do, you’ll be begging me to throw you down a hole and forget about you.”

Gerbert tried to delay the final vote on procedural grounds, arguing that the current constitution of the governing council did not meet the criteria set out in foundational documents dating from the Crusader period. These stipulated the presence of three vampires, three witches, and three daemons.

Janet stopped me from strangling the creature by quickly explaining that since she and I were both part vampire and part witch, the Congregation was equally balanced. While she argued percentages, I examined Gerbert’s so-called foundational documents and discovered words such as “unalienable” that were decidedly eighteenth-century in their tone. Presented with a list of the linguistic anachronisms in this supposedly Crusader document, Gerbert scowled at Domenico and said these were obviously later transcriptions of lost originals.

No one believed him.

Janet and I won the vote: six to three. Satu voted as we told her to do, her attitude subdued and defeated. Even Tatiana joined our ranks thanks to Osamu, who had devoted his morning to mapping the precise location of not only Chelm but every Russian city beginning with Ch just to prove that the Polish city’s witches had nothing to do with her grandmother’s skin affliction. When the two entered the council chamber hand in hand, I figured she might have switched not only sides but boyfriends.

Once the vote was tallied and recorded, we didn’t linger to celebrate. Instead Gallowglass, Janet, Fernando, and I took off in the de Clermont launch, headed across the lagoon for the airport.

As planned, I sent a three-letter text to Hamish with the results of the vote: QGA. It stood for Queen’s Gambit Accepted, a code to indicate that the Congregation had been persuaded to support Matthew’s rescue. We did not know if anyone was monitoring our communications, but we’d decided to be cautious.

His response was immediate.

Well done. Standing by for your arrival.

I checked in with Marcus, who reported that the twins were always hungry and had completely monopolized Phoebe’s attention. As for Jack, Marcus said he was as well as could be expected.

After my exchange with Marcus, I sent a text to Ysabeau.

Worried about the bishop pair.

It was another chess reference. We had dubbed Gerbert, onetime bishop of Rome, and his sidekick Domenico the “bishop pair” because they always seemed to be working together. After their latest defeat, they were bound to retaliate. Gerbert might already have warned Knox that I had won the vote and we were on our way.

Ysabeau took longer to reply than Marcus had.

The bishop pair cannot checkmate the king unless the queen and her rook allow it.

There was a long pause, then another message.

And I will die first.

39

The air bit through my thick cloak, making me withdraw from the blast of wind that threatened to split me in two. I had never experienced cold like this and wondered how anyone survived a winter in Chelm.

“There.” Baldwin pointed to a low huddle of buildings in the valley below.

“Benjamin has at least a dozen of his children with him.” Verin stood at my elbow, a pair of binoculars in her fingers. She offered them to me, in case my warmblooded eyes weren’t strong enough to see where my husband was being kept, but I refused them.

I knew exactly where Matthew was. The closer I got to him, the more agitated my power became, leaping to the surface of my skin in an attempt to escape. That, and my witch’s third eye, more than made up for any warmblooded deficiencies.

“We’ll wait until twilight to strike. That’s when a detail of Benjamin’s children go out to hunt.”

Baldwin looked grim. “They’ve been preying on Lublin, bringing back the homeless and the weak for their father to feed on.”

“Wait?” I’d done nothing but for three days. “I’m not going to wait another moment!”

“He is still alive, Diana.” Ysabeau’s response should have brought me comfort, but it only made the ice around my heart thicken at the thought of what Matthew would continue to suffer for the next six hours as we waited for darkness to fall.

“We can’t attack the compound when it’s at full strength,” Baldwin said. “We must be strategic about this, Diana—not emotional.”

Think and stay alive. Relucantly, I turned away from dreams of Matthew’s quick release to focus on the challenges before us. “Janet said Knox put wards around the main building.”

Baldwin nodded. “We were waiting for you to disarm them.”

“How will the knights get into position without Benjamin knowing?” I asked.

“Tonight the Knights of Lazarus will use the tunnels to enter Benjamin’s compound from below.”

Fernando’s expression was calculating. “Twenty, maybe thirty, should be enough.”

“Chelm is built on chalk, you see, and the ground beneath it is honeycombed with tunnels,”

Hamish explained, unrolling a small, crudely drawn map. “The Nazis destroyed some of them, but Benjamin kept these open. They connect his compound and the town and provide a way for him and his children to prey on the city without ever appearing aboveground.”

“No wonder Benjamin was so hard to track down,” Gallowglass murmured, looking at the underground maze.

“Where are the knights now?” I had yet to see the massing of troops I’d been told were in Chelm.

“Standing by,” Hamish replied.

“Fernando will decide when to send them into the tunnels. As Marcus’s marshal, the decision is his,” Baldwin said, acknowledging Fernando with a nod.

“Actually, it’s mine,” Marcus said, appearing suddenly against the snow.

“Marcus!” I pushed my hood back, terror gripping me. “What’s happened to Rebecca and Philip?

Where are they?”

“Nothing has happened. The twins are at Sept-Tours with Sarah, Phoebe, and three dozen knights— all of them handpicked for their loyalty to the de Clermonts and their dislike of Gerbert and the Congregation. Miriam and Chris are there, too.” Marcus took my hands in his. “I couldn’t sit in France waiting for news. Not when I could be helping to free my father. And Matthew might need my help after that, too.”

Marcus was right. Matthew would need a doctor—a doctor who understood vampires and how to heal them.

“And Jack?” It was all I could squeeze out, though Marcus’s words had helped my heart rate return to something approaching normal.

“He’s fine, too,” Marcus said firmly. “Jack had one bad episode last night when I told him he couldn’t come along, but Marthe turns out to be something of a hellcat when provoked. She threatened to keep Jack from seeing Philip, and that sobered him right up. He never lets the child out of his sight.

Jack says it’s his job to protect his godson, no matter what.” Marcus turned to Fernando. “Walk me through your plan.”

Fernando went over the operation in detail: where the knights would be positioned, when they would move on the compound, the roles that Gallowglass, Baldwin, Hamish, and now Marcus would play.

Even though it all sounded flawless, I was still worried.

“What is it, Diana?” Marcus asked, sensing my concern.

“So much of our strategy relies on the element of surprise,” I said. “What if Gerbert has already tipped off Knox and Benjamin? Or Domenico? Even Satu might have decided she was safer from Benjamin if she could gain Knox’s trust.”

“Don’t worry, Auntie,” Gallowglass assured me, his blue eyes taking on a stormy cast. “Gerbert, Domenico, and Satu are all sitting on Isola della Stella. The Knights of Lazarus have them surrounded.

There’s no way for them to get off the island.”

Gallowglass’s words did little to lessen my concern. The only thing that could help was freeing Matthew and putting an end to Benjamin’s machinations—for good.

“Ready to examine the wards?” Baldwin asked, knowing that giving me something to do would help keep my anxiety in check.

After swapping my highly visible black cloak for a pale gray parka that blended into the snow, Baldwin and Gallowglass took me within shouting distance of Benjamin’s compound. In silence I took stock of the wards that protected the place. There were a few alarm spells, a trigger spell that I suspected would unleash some kind of elemental conflagration or storm, and a handful of diversions that were designed to do nothing more than delay an attacker until a proper defense could be mounted. Knox had used spells that were complicated, but they were old and worn, too. It wouldn’t take much to pick apart the knots and leave the place unguarded.

“I’ll need two hours and Janet,” I whispered to Baldwin as we withdrew.

Together Janet and I freed the compound from its invisible barbed-wire perimeter. There was one alarm spell we had to leave in place, however. It was linked directly back to Knox, and I feared that even tinkering with the knots would alert him to our presence.

“He’s a clever bugger,” Janet said, wiping a tired hand across her eyes.

“Too clever for his own good. His spells were lazy,” I said. “Too many crossings, not enough threads.”

“When this is all over, we are going to have several evenings by the fireside where you explain what you just said,” Janet warned.

“When this is over, and Matthew is home, I’ll happily sit by the fireside for the rest of my life,” I replied.

Gallowglass’s hovering presence reminded me that time was passing.

“Time to go,” I said briskly, nodding toward the silent Gael.

Gallowglass insisted we eat something and took us to a café in Chelm. There I managed to swallow down some tea and two bites of hot-milk cake while the warmth from the clanging radiator thawed my extremities.

As the minutes ticked by, the regular metallic sounds from the café’s heating system began to sound like warning bells. Finally Gallowglass announced that the hour had come when we were to meet up with Marcus’s army.

He took us to a prewar house on the outskirts of town. Its owner had been happy to hand over the keys and head to warmer climes in exchange for a hefty cash vacation fund and the promise that his leaking roof would be fixed when he returned. The vampire knights who were assembled in the cellar were mostly unfamiliar to me, though I did recognize a few faces from the twins’ christening. As I looked at them, rugged of line and quietly ready for whatever awaited them below, I was struck by the fact that these were warriors who had fought in modern world wars and revolutions, as well as medieval Crusades. They were some of the finest soldiers who had ever lived, and like all soldiers they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for something greater than themselves.

Fernando gave his final orders while Gallowglass opened a makeshift door. Beyond it was a small ledge and a rickety ladder that led down into darkness.

“Godspeed,” Gallowglass whispered as the first of the vampires dropped out of sight and landed silently on the ground below.

We waited while the knights chosen to destroy Benjamin’s hunting party did their work. Still nervous that someone might alert him to our presence and that he might respond by taking Matthew’s life, I stared fixedly at the earth between my feet.

It was excruciating. There was no way to receive any progress reports. For all we knew, Marcus’s knights could have met with unexpected resistance. Benjamin might have sent out more of his children to hunt. He might have sent out none.

“This is the hell of war,” said Gallowglass. “It’s not the fighting or even the dying that destroys you. It’s the wondering.”

No more than an hour later—though it felt like days—Giles pushed open the door. His shirt was stained with gore. There was no way to determine how much of it belonged to him and what might be traces of Benjamin’s now-dead children. He beckoned us forward.

“Clear,” he told Gallowglass. “But be careful. The tunnels echo, so watch your step.”

Gallowglass handed Janet down and then me, making no use of the waiting ladder with its rusted metal treads that might give us away. It was so dark in the tunnel that I couldn’t see the faces of the vampires who caught us, but I could smell the battle on them. We hurried along the tunnel with as much speed as our need for silence allowed. Given the darkness, I was glad to have a vampire on each arm to steer me around the bends and would have fallen several times without the assistance of their keen eyes and quick reflexes.

Baldwin and Fernando were waiting for us at the intersection of three tunnels. Two blood-spattered mounds covered with tarps and a powdery white substance that gave off a faint glow marked where Benjamin’s children had met their death.

“We covered the heads and bodies with quicklime to mask the scent,” Fernando said. “It won’t eliminate it completely, but it should buy us some time.”

“How many?” Gallowglass asked.

“Nine,” Baldwin replied. One of his hands was completely clean and bore a sword, the other was caked with substances I preferred not to identify. The contrast made my stomach heave.

“How many are still inside?” Janet murmured.

“At least another nine, probably more.” Baldwin didn’t look worried at the prospect. “If they’re anything like this lot, you can expect them to be cocksure and clever.”

“Dirty fighters, too,” Fernando said.

“As expected,” Gallowglass said, his tone easy and relaxed. “We’ll be waiting for your signal to move into the compound. Good luck, Auntie.”

Baldwin whisked me away before I could say a word of farewell to Gallowglass and Fernando.

Perhaps it was better that way, since the single glance I cast over my shoulder captured faces that were etched with exhaustion.

The tunnel that Baldwin took us through led to the gates outside the compound where Ysabeau and Hamish were waiting. With all the wards down save the one on the gate that led directly to Knox, the only risk was that a vampire’s keen eyes would spot us.

Janet reduced that possibility with an all-encompassing disguising spell that concealed not only me but everybody within twenty feet. “Where’s Marcus?” I had expected to see him here.

Hamish pointed.

Marcus was already inside the perimeter, propped in the crook of a tree, a rifle aimed at a window.

He must have breached the compound’s stone walls by swinging from tree limb to tree limb. With no wards to worry about, provided he didn’t use the gate, Marcus had taken advantage of the pause in the action and would now provide cover for us as we went through the gate and entered the front door.

“Sharpshooter,” commented Baldwin.

“Marcus learned to handle a gun as a warmblood. He hunted squirrels when he was a child,” added Ysabeau. “Smaller and faster than vampires, I’m told.”

Marcus never acknowledged our presence, but he knew we were there. Janet and I set to work on the final knots that bound the alarm spell to Knox. She cast an anchoring spell, the kind witches used to shore up the foundations of their houses and keep their children from wandering away, and as I unbound the ward, I redirected its energy toward her. Our hope was that the spell wouldn’t even notice that the heavy object it now guarded was a granite boulder and not a massive iron gate.

It worked.

We would have been inside the house in moments if not for the inconvenient interruption of one of Benjamin’s sons, who came out to catch a cigarette only to discover the front gate standing open. His eyes widened.

A small hole appeared in his forehead.

One eye disappeared. Then another.

Benjamin’s son clutched at his throat. Blood welled between his fingers, and he emitted a strange whistling sound.

“Hello, salaud. I’m your grandmother.” Ysabeau thrust a dagger into the man’s heart.

The simultaneous loss of blood from so many places made it easy for Baldwin to grab the man’s head and twist it, breaking his neck and killing the vampire instantly. With another wrench his head came off his shoulders.

It had taken about forty-five seconds from the time Marcus fired his first shot to the moment Baldwin put the vampire’s head facedown in the snow.

Then the dogs started to bark.

“Merde,” Ysabeau whispered.

“Now. Go.” Baldwin took my arm, and Ysabeau took charge of Janet. Marcus tossed his rifle to Hamish, who caught it easily. He let forth a piercing whistle.

“Shoot anything that comes out of that door,” Marcus ordered. “I’m going after the dogs.”

Unsure whether the whistle was meant to call the fierce-sounding canines or the waiting Knights of Lazarus, I hurried along into the compound’s main building. It was no warmer inside than out. An emaciated rat scurried down the hall, which was lined with identical doors.

“Knox knows we’re here,” I said. There was no need for quiet or a disguising spell now.

“So does Benjamin,” Ysabeau said grimly.

As planned, we parted ways. Ysabeau went in search of Matthew. Baldwin, Janet, and I were after Benjamin and Knox. With luck we would find them all in the same place and converge upon them, supported by the Knights of Lazarus once they breached the lower levels of the compound and made their way upstairs.

A soft cry drew us to one of the closed doors. Baldwin flung it open.

It was the room we’d seen on the video feed: the grimy tiles, drain in the floor, windows overlooking the snow, numbers written with a grease pencil on the walls, even the chair with a tweed coat lying over the back.

Matthew was sitting in another chair, his eyes black and his mouth open in a soundless scream. His ribs had been spread open with a metal device, exposing his slow-beating heart, the regular sound of which had brought me such comfort whenever he drew me close.

“Fuck.” Baldwin rushed toward him. “It’s not Matthew,” I said.

Ysabeau’s shriek in the distance told me she had stumbled onto a similar scene.

“It’s not Matthew,” I repeated, louder this time. I went to the next door and twisted the knob.

There was Matthew, sitting in the same chair. His hands—his beautiful, strong hands that touched me with such love and tenderness—had been severed at the wrists and were sitting in a surgical basin in his lap.

No matter which door we opened, we found Matthew in some horrific tableau of pain and torment.

And every illusory scene had been staged especially for me.

After my hopes had been raised and dashed a dozen times, I blew all the doors in the house off their hinges with a single word. I didn’t bother looking inside any of the open rooms. Apparitions could be quite convincing, and Knox’s were very good indeed. But they were not flesh and blood. They were not my Matthew, and I was not deceived by them even though those I had seen would remain with me forever.

“Matthew will be with Benjamin. Find him.” I walked away without waiting for Baldwin or Janet to agree. “Where are you, Mr. Knox?”

“Dr. Bishop.” Knox was waiting for me when I rounded the corner. “Come. Have a drink with me.

You won’t be leaving this place, and it may be your last chance to enjoy the comforts of a warm room— until you conceive Benjamin’s child, that is.”

Behind me I slammed down an impenetrable wall of fire and water so that no one could follow.

Then I threw up another behind Knox, boxing us into a small section of the corridor.

“Nicely done. Your spell-casting talents have emerged, I see,” said Knox.

“You will find me . . . altered,” I said, using Gallowglass’s phrase. The magic was waiting inside me, begging to fly. But I kept it under control, and the power obeyed me. I felt it there, still and watchful.

“Where have you been?” Knox asked. “Lots of places. London. Prague. France.” I felt the tingle of magic in my fingertips. “You’ve been to France, too.”

“I went looking for your husband and his son. I found a letter, you see. In Prague.” Knox’s eyes gleamed. “Imagine my surprise, stumbling upon Emily Mather—never a terribly impressive witch— binding your mother’s spirit inside a stone circle.”

Knox was trying to distract me.

“It reminded me of the stone circle I cast in Nigeria to bind your parents. Perhaps that was Emily’s intention.”

Words crawled beneath my skin, answering the silent questions his words engendered.

“I should never have let Satu do the honors where you were concerned, my dear. I’ve always suspected that you were different,” Knox said. “Had I opened you up last October, as I did your mother and father all those years ago, you could have been spared so much heartache.”

But there had been more in the past fourteen months than heartache. There had been unexpected joy, too. I clung to that now, anchoring myself to it as firmly as if Janet were working her magic.

“You’re very quiet, Dr. Bishop. Have you nothing to say?”

“Not really. I prefer actions to words these days. They save time.”

At last I released the magic spooled tightly within me. The net I’d made to capture Knox was black and purple, woven through with strands of white, silver, and gold. It spread out in wings from my shoulder blades, reminding me of the absent Corra, whose power, as she promised, was still mine.

“With knot of one, the spell’s begun.” My netlike wings spread wider.

“Very impressive bit of illusory work, Dr. Bishop.” Knox’s tone was patronizing. “A simple banishing spell will—”

“With knot of two, the spell be true.” The silver and gold threads in my net gleamed bright, balancing the dark and light powers that marked the crossroads of the higher magics.

“It’s too bad Emily didn’t have your skill,” Knox said. “She might have gotten more out of your mother’s bound spirit than the gibberish I found when I stole her thoughts at Sept-Tours.”

“With knot of three, the spell is free.” The giant wings beat once, sending a soft eddy of air through the magical box I’d constructed. They gently separated from my body, rising higher until they hovered over Knox. He cast a look upward, then resumed.

“Your mother babbled to Emily about chaos and creativity and repeated the words of that charlatan Ursula Shipton’s prophecy: Old worlds die and new be born. That’s all I got out of Rebecca in Nigeria, too. Being with your father weakened her abilities. She needed a husband who could challenge her.”

“With knot of four, the power is stored.” A dark, potent spiral slowly unwound at the spot where the two wings met.

“Shall we open you up and see if you are more like your mother or your father?” Knox’s hand made a lazy gesture, and I felt his magic cut a searing path across my chest.

“With knot of five, this spell will thrive.” The purple threads in the net tightened around the spiral.

“With knot of six, this spell I fix.” The gold threads gleamed. A casual brush of my hand sealed the wound in my chest.

“Benjamin was quite interested in what I told him about your mother and father. He has plans for you, Diana. You will carry Benjamin’s children, and they will become like the witches of old: powerful, wise, long-lived. There will be no more hiding in the shadows for us then. We will rule over the other warmbloods, as we should.”

“With knot of seven, the spell will waken.” A low keening filled the air, reminiscent of the sound the Book of Life made in the Bodleian. Then it had been a cry of terror and pain. Now it sounded like a call for vengeance.

For the first time, Knox looked worried.

“You cannot escape from Benjamin, any more than Emily could escape from me at Sept-Tours. She tried, of course, but I prevailed. All I wanted was the witch’s spell book. Benjamin said Matthew once had it.” Knox’s eyes took on a fevered glint. “When I possess it, I will have the upper hand over the vampires, too. Even Gerbert will bow to me then.”

“With knot of eight, the spell will wait.” I pulled the net into the twisted shape that signified infinity. As I manipulated the threads, my father’s shadowy form appeared.

“Stephen.” Knox licked his lips. “This is an illusion, too.”

My father ignored him, crossing his arms and looking at me sharply. “You ready to finish this, peanut?”

“I am, Dad.”

“You don’t have the power to finish me,” Knox snarled. “Emily discovered that when she tried to keep me from having knowledge of the lost book of spells. I took her thoughts and stopped her heart.

Had she only cooperated—”

“With knot of nine, the spell is mine.”

The keening rose into a shriek as all the chaos contained in the Book of Life and all the creative energy that bound the creatures together in one place burst from the web I’d made and engulfed Peter Knox. My father’s hands were among those that reached out of the dark void to grasp him while he struggled, keeping him in a whirling vortex of power that would eat him alive.

Knox cried out in terror as the spell drained his life away. He unraveled before my eyes as the spirits of all the weavers who had come before me, including my father, deliberately unpicked the threads that made up this damaged creature, reducing Knox to a lifeless shell.

I knew that one day I would pay a price for what I’d done to a fellow witch. But I had avenged Emily, whose life had been taken for no other reason than a dream of power.

I had avenged my mother and father, who loved their daughter enough to die for her.

I drew the goddess’s arrow from my spine. A bow crafted from rowan and trimmed with silver and gold appeared in my left hand.

Vengeance had been mine. Now it was time for the goddess’s justice.

I turned to my father, a question in my eyes. “He’s upstairs. Third floor. Sixth door on the left.” My father smiled. “Whatever price the goddess exacted from you, Matthew is worth it. Just as you were.”

“He’s worth everything,” I said, lowering the magical walls I’d built and leaving the dead behind so I could find the living.

Magic, like any resource, is not infinite in its supply. The spell I’d used to eliminate Knox had drained me of a significant amount of power. But I’d taken the risk knowing that without Knox, Benjamin had only physical strength and cruelty in his arsenal.

I had love and nothing more to lose.

Even without the goddess’s arrow, we were evenly matched.

The house had far fewer rooms in it now that Knox’s illusions were gone. Instead of an unending array of identical doors, the house now showed its true character: filthy, rife with the scents of death and fear, a place of horror.

My feet raced up the stairs. I couldn’t spare an ounce of magic now. I had no idea where any of the others were. But I did know where to find Matthew. I pushed open the door.

“There you are. We’ve been expecting you.” Benjamin was standing behind a chair.

This time the creature in it was undeniably the man I loved. His eyes were black and filled with blood rage and pain, but they flickered in recognition.

“Queen’s Gambit complete,” I said.

Relieved, Matthew’s eyes drifted closed.

“I hope you know better than to shoot that arrow,” Benjamin said. “In case you’re not as well versed in anatomy as you are in chemistry, I’ve made sure that Matthew will die instantly if my hand isn’t here to support this.”

This was a large iron spike Benjamin had driven into Matthew’s neck.

“You remember when Ysabeau poked her finger into me at the Bodleian? It created a seal. That’s what I’ve done here.” Benjamin wiggled the spike a bit, and Matthew howled. A few drops of blood appeared. “My father doesn’t have much blood left in him. I’ve fed him nothing but shards of glass for two days and he’s been slowly bleeding out internally.”

It was then I noticed the pile of dead children in the corner.

“Earlier meals,” Benjamin said in response to my glance. “It was a challenge to come up with ways to torment Matthew, since I wanted to make sure he still had eyes to see me take you, and ears to hear your screams. But I found a way.”

“You are a monster, Benjamin.”

“Matthew made me one. Now, don’t waste any more of your energy. Ysabeau and Baldwin are bound to be here soon. This is the very room where I kept Philippe, and I left a trail of bread crumbs to make sure my grandmother finds it. Baldwin will be so surprised to hear who it was that killed his father, don’t you think? I saw it all in Matthew’s thoughts. As for you . . . well, you cannot imagine the things Matthew would like to do to you in the privacy of his bed. Some of them made me blush, and I’m not exactly prudish.”

I felt Ysabeau’s presence behind me. A rain of photographs fell upon the floor. Pictures of Philippe.

Here. In agony. I shot a look of fury at Benjamin.

“I would like nothing more than to shred you to pieces with my bare hands, but I would not deprive Philippe’s daughter of the pleasure.” Ysabeau’s voice was cold and serrated. It rasped against my ears almost painfully.

“Oh, she’ll have pleasure with me, Ysabeau. I assure you of that.” Benjamin whispered something in Matthew’s ear, and I saw Matthew’s hand twitch as if he wanted to strike his son but his broken bones and shredded muscles made that impossible. “Here’s Baldwin. It’s been a long time, Uncle. I have something to tell you—a secret Matthew has been keeping. He keeps so many, I know, but this is a juicy one, I promise.” Benjamin paused for effect. “Philippe did not die because of me. It was Matthew who killed him.”

Baldwin stared at him impassively. “Do you want to take a shot at him before my children send you to hell to see your father?”

Benjamin asked.

“Your children won’t be sending me anywhere. And if you think I am surprised by this supposed secret, you are even more delusional than I feared,” Baldwin said. “I know Matthew’s work when I see it. He’s almost too good at what he does.”

“Drop that.” Benjamin’s voice cracked like a whip as his cold, unfathomable eyes settled on my left hand.

While the two of them were having their discussion, I’d taken the opportunity to lift the bow.

“Drop it now or he dies.” Benjamin withdrew the spike slightly, and the blood flowed.

I dropped the bow with a clatter.

“Smart girl,” he said, thrusting the spike home again. Matthew moaned. “I liked you even before I learned you were a weaver. So that’s what makes you special? Matthew has been shamefully reluctant to determine the limits of your power, but never fear. I’ll make sure we know exactly how far your abilities extend.”

Yes, I was a smart girl. Smarter than Benjamin knew. And I understood the limits of my power better than anyone else ever would. As for the goddess’s bow, I didn’t need it. What I needed in order to destroy Benjamin was still in my other hand.

I lifted my pinkie slightly so that it brushed Ysabeau’s thigh in warning.

“With knot of ten, it begins again.”

My words came out like a breath, insubstantial and easy to ignore, just as the tenth knot was a seemingly a simple loop. As they traveled into the room, my spell took on the weight and power of a living thing. I extended my left arm straight as though it still held the goddess’s bow. My left index finger burned a bright purple.

My right hand drew back in a lightning-quick move, fingers curled loosely around the white fletchings on the golden arrow’s shaft. I stood squarely at the crossroads between life and death. And I did not hesitate.

“Justice,” I said, and unfurled my fingers.

Benjamin’s eyes widened.

The arrow sprang from my hand through the center of the spell, picking up momentum as it flew. It hit Benjamin’s chest with audible force, cleaving him wide open and bursting his heart. A blinding wave of power engulfed the room. Silver and gold threads shot everywhere, accompanied by strands of purple and green. The sun king. The moon queen. Justice. The goddess.

With an otherworldly cry of frustrated anguish, Benjamin loosened his fingers, and the blood covered spike began to slip.

Working quickly, I twisted the threads surrounding Matthew into a single rope that caught the end of the spike. I pulled it taut, keeping it in place as Benjamin’s blood poured forth and he dropped heavily to the floor.

The few bare lightbulbs in the room flickered, then went out. I’d had to draw on every bit of energy in the place to kill Knox and then Benjamin. All that was left now was the power of the goddess: the shimmering rope hanging in the middle of the room, the words moving underneath my skin, the power snapping at the ends of my fingers.

It was over.

Benjamin was dead and could no longer torment anyone.

And Matthew, though broken, was alive.

After Benjamin fell, everything seemed to happen at once. Ysabeau pulled the vampire’s dead body away. Baldwin was at Matthew’s side, calling for Marcus and checking on his injuries. Verin and Gallowglass and Hamish burst into the room. Fernando followed soon thereafter.

I stood in front of Matthew and cradled his head against my heart, sheltering him from further harm. With one hand I held up the iron implement that was keeping him alive. “We need to move him, Diana.” Marcus’s calm voice couldn’t disguise his urgency. He put his hand around the spike, ready to take my place.

“Don’t let her see me,” Matthew’s voice was raw and guttural. His skeletal hand twitched on the arm of the chair in protest, but it was not able to do more. “I beg you. Not like this.”

With nearly every inch of Matthew’s body injured, there were precious few places I could touch him that wouldn’t compound his pain. I located a few centimeters of undamaged flesh gleaming in the glow cast by the Book of Life and dropped a kiss as soft as down on the tip of his nose.

Unsure if he could hear me, and knowing that his eyes were swollen shut, I let my breath wash over him, bathing him in my scent. Matthew’s nostrils flared a fraction, signaling that he had registered my proximity. Even that little movement made him wince, and I had to steel myself not to cry out at what Benjamin had done to him.

“You can’t hide from me, my love,” I said instead, praying to the goddess that my words reached him. “I see you, Matthew. And you will always be perfect in my eyes.”

His breath came out in a ragged gasp, his lungs unable to expand fully because of the pressure from broken ribs. With a herculean effort, Matthew cracked one eye open. It was filmed over with blood, the pupil shot wide and enormous from blood rage and trauma.

“It’s dark.” Matthew’s voice took on a frantic edge, as though he feared that the darkness signaled his death. “Why is it so dark?”

“It’s all right. Look.” I blew on my fingertip, and a blue-gold star appeared on the tip of my finger.

“See. This will light our way.”

It was a risk, and I knew it. He might not be able to see the small ball of fire, and then his panic would only increase. Matthew peered at my finger and flinched slightly as the light came into focus. His pupil tightened a tiny amount in response, which I took as a good sign.

His next breath was less ragged as his anxiety subsided.

“He needs blood,” Baldwin said, keeping his voice level and low. I tried to push my sleeve up without lowering my gleaming finger, which Matthew was staring at fixedly.

“Not yours,” Ysabeau said, stilling my efforts. “Mine.”

Matthew’s agitation rose again. It was like watching Jack struggle to rein in his emotions.

“Not here,” he said. “Not with Diana watching.”

“Not here,” Gallowglass agreed, giving my husband back some small measure of control.

“Let his brothers take care of him, Diana.” Baldwin lowered my hand.

And so I let Gallowglass, Fernando, Baldwin, and Hamish lace their arms together into a sling while Marcus held the iron spike in place.

“My blood is strong, Diana,” Ysabeau promised, gripping my hand tightly. “It will heal him.”

I nodded. But I had told Matthew the truth earlier: In my eyes he would always be perfect. His outward wounds didn’t matter to me. It was the wounds to his heart, mind, and soul that had me worried, for no amount of vampire blood could heal those.

“Love and time,” I murmured, as though trying to figure out the components of a spell, watching from a distance as the men settled an unconscious Matthew into the cargo hold of one of the cars that were waiting for us. “That’s what he needs.”

Janet came up and put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Matthew Clairmont is an ancient vampire,” she observed, “and he has you. So I’m thinking love and time will do the trick.”