A Discovery of Witches (84 page)

Matthew woke me for lunch, which turned out to be vegetable soup. The look on his face suggested that I would shortly need sustenance. He was about to tell our families the plan.

“Ready,
mon coeur
?” Matthew asked. I nodded, scraping up the last of my meal. Marcus’s head swiveled in our direction. “We have something to share with you,” he announced.

The new household tradition was to proceed to the dining room whenever something important needed to be discussed. Once we were assembled, all eyes turned to Matthew.

“What have you decided?” Marcus asked without preamble.

Matthew took a deliberate breath and began. “We need to go where it won’t be easy for the Congregation to follow, where Diana will have time and teachers who can help her master her magic.”

Sarah laughed under her breath. “Where is this place, where there are powerful, patient witches who don’t mind having a vampire hanging around?”

“It’s not a particular place I have in mind,” Matthew said cryptically. “We’re going to hide Diana in time.”

Everyone started shouting at once. Matthew took my hand in his.

“
Courage,
” I murmured in French, repeating his advice when I met Ysabeau.

He snorted and gave me a grim smile.

I had some sympathy for their amazed disbelief. Last night, while I was lying in bed, my own reaction had been much the same. First I’d insisted that it was impossible, and then I’d asked for a thousand details about precisely when and where we were going.

He’d explained what he could—which wasn’t much.

“You want to use your magic, but now it’s using you. You need a teacher, one who is more adept than Sarah or Emily. It’s not their fault they can’t help you. Witches in the past were different. So much of their knowledge has been lost.”

“Where? When?” I’d whispered in the dark.

“Nothing too distant—though the more recent past has its own risks—but back far enough that we’ll find a witch to train you. First we have to talk to Sarah about whether it can be done safely. And then we need to locate three items to steer us to the right time.”

“We?” I’d asked in surprise. “Won’t I just meet you there?”

“Not unless there’s no alternative. I wasn’t the same creature then, and I wouldn’t entirely trust my past selves with you.”

His mouth had softened with relief after I nodded in agreement. A few days ago, he’d rejected the idea of timewalking. Apparently the risks of staying put were even worse.

“What will the others do?”

His thumb traveled slowly over the veins on the back of my hand. “Miriam and Marcus will go back to Oxford. The Congregation will look for you here first. It would be best if Sarah and Emily went away, at least for a little while. Would they go to Ysabeau?” Matthew wondered.

On the surface it had sounded like a ridiculous idea. Sarah and Ysabeau under the same roof? The more I’d considered it, though, the less implausible it seemed.

“I don’t know,” I’d mused. Then a new worry had surfaced. “Marcus.” I didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the Knights of Lazarus, but with Matthew gone he would have to shoulder even more responsibility.

“There’s no other way,” Matthew had said in the darkness, quieting me with a kiss.

This was precisely the point that Em now wanted to argue.

“There must be another way,” she protested.

“I tried to think of one, Emily,” Matthew said apologetically.

“Where—or should I say
when
—are you planning on going? Diana won’t exactly blend into the background. She’s too tall.” Miriam looked down at her own tiny hands.

“Regardless of whether Diana could fit in, it’s too dangerous,” Marcus said firmly. “You might end up in the middle of a war. Or an epidemic.”

“Or a witch-hunt.” Miriam didn’t say it maliciously, but three heads swung around in indignation nonetheless.

“Sarah, what do you think?” asked Matthew.

Of all the creatures in the room, she was the calmest. “You’ll take her to a time when she’ll be with witches who will help her?”

“Yes.”

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “You two aren’t safe here. Juliette Durand proved that. And if you aren’t safe in Madison, you aren’t safe anywhere.”

“Thank you.” Matthew opened his mouth to say something else, and Sarah held up her hand.

“Don’t promise me anything,” she said, voice tight. “You’ll be careful for her sake, if not for your own.”

“Now all we have to worry about is the timewalking.” Matthew turned businesslike. “Diana will need three items from a particular time and place in order to move safely.”

Sarah nodded.

“Do I count as a thing?” he asked her.

“Do you have a pulse? Of course you’re not a thing!” It was one of the most positive statements Sarah had ever made about vampires.

“If you need old stuff to guide your way, you’re welcome to these.” Marcus pulled a thin leather cord from the neck of his shirt and lifted it over his head. It was festooned with a bizarre assortment of items, including a tooth, a coin, a lump of something that shone black and gold, and a battered silver whistle. He tossed it to Matthew.

“Didn’t you get this off a yellow-fever victim?” Matthew asked, fingering the tooth.

“In New Orleans,” Marcus replied. “The epidemic of 1819.”

“New Orleans is out of the question,” Matthew said sharply.

“I suppose so.” Marcus slid a glance my way, then returned his attention to his father. “How about Paris? One of Fanny’s earbobs is on there.”

Matthew’s fingers touched a tiny red stone set in gold filigree. “Philippe and I sent you away from Paris, and Fanny, too. They called it the Terror, remember? It’s no place for Diana.”

“The two of you fussed over me like old women. I’d been in one revolution already. Besides, if you’re looking for a safe place in the past, you’ll have a hell of a time finding one,” Marcus grumbled. His face brightened. “Philadelphia?”

“I wasn’t in Philadelphia with you, or in California,” Matthew said hastily before his son could speak. “It would be best if we head for a time and place I know.”

“Even if you know where we’re going, Matthew, I’m not sure I can pull this off.” My decision to stay clear of magic had caught up with me again.

“I think you can,” Sarah said bluntly, “you have been doing it your whole life. When you were a baby, as a child when you played hide-and-seek with Stephen, and as an adolescent, too. Remember all those mornings we dragged you out of the woods and had to clean you up in time for school? What do you imagine you were doing then?”

“Certainly not timewalking,” I said truthfully. “The science of this still worries me. Where does this body go when I’m somewhere else?”

“Who knows? But don’t worry. It’s happened to everybody. You drive to work and don’t remember how you got there. Or the whole afternoon passes and you don’t have a clue what you did. Whenever something like that happens, you can bet there’s a timewalker nearby,” explained Sarah. She was remarkably unfazed at the prospect.

Matthew sensed my apprehension and took my hand in his. “Einstein said that all physicists were aware that the distinctions between past, present, and future were only what he called ‘a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ Not only did he believe in marvels and wonders, he also believed in the elasticity of time.”

There was a tentative knock at the door.

“I didn’t hear a car,” Miriam said warily, rising to her feet.

“It’s just Sammy collecting the newspaper money.” Em slid from her chair.

We waited silently while she crossed the hall, the floorboards protesting under her feet. From the way their hands were pressed flat against the table’s wooden surface, Matthew and Marcus were both ready to fly to the door, too.

Cold air swept into the dining room.

“Yes?” Em asked in a puzzled voice. In an instant, Marcus and Matthew rose and joined her, accompanied by Tabitha, who was intent on supporting the leader of the pack in his important business.

“Not the paperboy,” Sarah said unnecessarily, looking at the empty chair next to me.

“Are you Diana Bishop?” asked a deep male voice with a familiar foreign accent of flat vowels accompanied by a slight drawl.

“No, I’m her aunt,” Em replied.

“Is there something we can do for you?” Matthew sounded cold, though polite.

“My name is Nathaniel Wilson, and this is my wife, Sophie. We were told we might find Diana Bishop here.”

“Who told you that?” Matthew asked softly.

“His mother—Agatha.” I stood, moving to the door.

His voice reminded me of the daemon from Blackwell’s, the fashion designer from Australia with the beautiful brown eyes.

Miriam tried to bar my way into the hall but stepped aside when she saw my expression. Marcus was not so easily dealt with. He grabbed my arm and held me in the shadows by the staircase.

Nathaniel’s eyes nudged gently against my face. He was in his early twenties and had familiar fair hair and chocolate-colored eyes, as well as his mother’s wide mouth and fine features. Where Agatha had been compact and trim, however, he was nearly as tall as Matthew, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of a swimmer. An enormous backpack was slung over one shoulder.

“Are you Diana Bishop?” he asked.

A woman’s face peeped out from Nathaniel’s side. It was sweet and round, with intelligent brown eyes and a dimpled chin. She was in her early twenties as well, and the gentle, insidious pressure of her glance indicated she, too, was a daemon.

As she studied me, a long, brown braid tumbled over her shoulder. “That’s her,” the young woman said, her soft accent betraying that she was born in the South. “She looks just as she did in my dreams.”

“It’s all right, Matthew,” I said. These two daemons posed no more danger to me than did Marthe or Ysabeau.

“So you’re the vampire,” Nathaniel said, giving Matthew an appraising look. “My mother warned me about you.”

“You should listen to her,” Matthew suggested, his voice dangerously soft.

Nathaniel seemed unimpressed. “She told me you wouldn’t welcome the son of a Congregation member. But I’m not here on their behalf. I’m here because of Sophie.” He drew his wife under his arm in a protective gesture, and she shivered and crept closer. Neither was dressed for autumn in New York. Nathaniel was wearing an old barn jacket, and Sophie had on nothing warmer than a turtleneck and a hand-knit cardigan that brushed her knees.

“Are they both daemons?” Matthew asked me.

“Yes,” I replied, though something made me hesitate.

“Are you a vampire as well?” Nathaniel asked Marcus.

Marcus gave him a wolfish grin. “Guilty.”

Sophie was still nudging me with her characteristic daemonic glance, but there was the faintest tingle on my skin. Her hand crept possessively around her belly.

“You’re pregnant!” I cried.

Marcus was so surprised that he loosened his grip on me. Matthew caught me as I went by. The house, agitated by the appearance of two visitors and Matthew’s sudden lunge, made its displeasure clear by banging the keeping room’s doors tightly closed.

“What you feel—it’s me,” Sophie said, moving an inch closer to her husband. “My people were witches, but I came out wrong.”

Sarah came into the hall, saw the visitors, and threw up her hands. “Here we go again. I told you daemons would be showing up in Madison before long. Still, the house usually knows our business better than we do. Now that you’re here, you might as well come inside, out of the cold.”

The house groaned as if it were heartily sick of us when the daemons entered.

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to reassure them. “The house told us you were coming, no matter what it sounds like.”

“My granny’s house was just the same.” Sophie smiled. “She lived in the old Norman place in Seven Devils. That’s where I’m from. It’s officially part of North Carolina, but my dad said that nobody bothered to tell the folks in town. We’re kind of a nation unto ourselves.”

The keeping-room doors opened wide, revealing my grandmother and three or four more Bishops, all of whom were watching the proceedings with interest. The boy with the berry basket waved. Sophie shyly waved back.

“Granny had ghosts, too,” she said calmly.

The ghosts, combined with two unfriendly vampires and an overly expressive house, were too much for Nathaniel.

“We aren’t staying longer than we have to, Sophie. You came to give something to Diana. Let’s get it over with and be on our way,” Nathaniel said. Miriam chose that minute to step out of the shadows by the dining room, her arms crossed over her chest. Nathaniel took a step backward.

“First vampires. Now daemons. What next?” Sarah muttered. She turned to Sophie. “So you’re about five months along?”

“The baby quickened last week,” Sophie replied, both hands resting on her belly. “That’s when Agatha told us where we could find Diana. She didn’t know about my family. I’ve been having dreams about you for months. And I don’t know what Agatha saw that made her so scared.”

“What dreams?” Matthew said, his voice quick.

“Let’s have Sophie sit down before we subject her to an inquisition.” Sarah quietly took charge. “Em, can you bring us some of those cookies? Milk, too?”

Em headed toward the kitchen, where we could hear the distant clatter of glasses.

“They could be my dreams, or they could be hers.” Sophie gazed at her belly as Sarah led her and Nathaniel deeper into the house. She looked back over her shoulder at Matthew. “She’s a witch, you see. That’s probably what worried Nathaniel’s mom.”

All eyes dropped to the bump under Sophie’s blue sweater.

“The dining room,” Sarah said in a tone that brooked no nonsense. “Everybody in the dining room.”

Matthew held me back. “There’s something too convenient about their showing up right now. No mention of timewalking in front of them.”