“Are you going to tell me what it is?” I asked around the flavors in my mouth.
“Malmsey,” he replied with a grin. “Old, old malmsey.”
“How old?” I said suspiciously. “As old as you are?”
He laughed. “No. You don’t want to drink anything as old as I am. It’s from 1795, from grapes grown on the island of Madeira. It was quite popular once, but nobody pays much attention to it now.”
“Good,” I said with greedy satisfaction. “All the more for me.” He laughed again and sat easily in one of his Morris chairs.
We talked about his time at All Souls, about Hamish—the other Prize Fellow, it turned out—and their adventures in Oxford. I laughed at his stories of dining in hall and how he’d bolted to Woodstock after every meal to clean the taste of overcooked beef from his mouth.
“You look tired,” he finally said, standing after another glass of malmsey and another hour of conversation.
“I am tired.” Despite my fatigue, there was something I needed to tell him before he took me home. I put my glass down carefully. “I’ve made a decision, Matthew. On Monday I’ll be recalling Ashmole 782.”
The vampire sat down abruptly.
“I don’t know how I broke the spell the first time, but I’ll try to do it again. Knox doesn’t have much faith that I’ll succeed.” My mouth tightened. “What does he know? He hasn’t been able to break the spell once. And you might be able to see the words in the magical palimpsest that lie under the images.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know what you did to break the spell?” Matthew’s forehead creased with confusion. “What words did you use? What powers did you call upon?”
“I broke the spell without realizing it,” I explained.
“Christ, Diana.” He shot to his feet again. “Does Knox know that you didn’t use witchcraft?”
“If he knows, I didn’t tell him.” I shrugged. “Besides, what does it matter?”
“It matters because if you didn’t break the enchantment, then you met its conditions. Right now the creatures are waiting to observe whatever counterspell you used, copy it if they can, and get Ashmole 782 themselves. When your fellow witches discover that the spell opened for you of its own accord, they won’t be so patient and well behaved.”
Gillian’s angry face swam before my eyes, accompanied by a vivid recollection of the lengths she reported witches had gone to in order to pry secrets from my parents. I brushed the thoughts aside, my stomach rolling, and focused on the flaws in Matthew’s argument.
“The spell was constructed more than a century before I was born. That’s impossible.”
“Just because something seems impossible doesn’t make it untrue,” he said grimly. “Newton knew that. There’s no telling what Knox will do when he understands your relationship to the spell.”
“I’m in danger whether I recall the manuscript or not,” I pointed out. “Knox isn’t going to let this go, is he?”
“No,” he agreed reluctantly. “And he wouldn’t hesitate to use magic against you even if every human in the Bodleian saw him do it. I might not be able to reach you in time.”
Vampires were fast, but magic was faster.
“I’ll sit near the desk with you, then. We’ll know as soon as the manuscript’s delivered.”
“I don’t like this,” Matthew said, clearly worried. “There’s a fine line between bravery and recklessness, Diana.”
“It’s not reckless—I just want my life back.”
“What if this is your life?” he asked. “What if you can’t keep the magic away after all?”
“I’ll keep parts of it.” Remembering his kiss, and the sudden, intense feeling of vitality that had accompanied it, I looked straight into his eyes so he would know he was included. “But I’m not going to be bullied.”
Matthew was still worrying over my plan as he walked me home. When I turned in to New College Lane to use the back entrance, he caught my hand.
“Not on your life,” he said. “Did you see the look that porter gave me? I want him to know you’re safely in college.”
We navigated the uneven sidewalks of Holywell Street, past the entrance to the Turf pub, and through the New College gates. We strolled by the watchful porter, still hand in hand.
“Will you be rowing tomorrow?” Matthew asked at the bottom of my staircase.
I groaned. “No, I’ve got a thousand letters of recommendation to write. I’m going to stay in my rooms and clear my desk.”
“I’m going to Woodstock to go hunting,” he said casually.
“Good hunting, then,” I said, equally casually.
“It doesn’t bother you at all to know I’ll be out culling my own deer?” Matthew sounded taken aback.
“No. Occasionally I eat partridge. Occasionally you feed on deer.” I shrugged. “I honestly don’t see the difference.”
Matthew’s eyes glittered. He stretched his fingers slightly but didn’t let go of my hand. Instead he lifted it to his lips and put a slow kiss on the tender flesh in the hollow of my palm.
“Off to bed,” he said, releasing my fingers. His eyes left trails of ice and snow behind as they lingered not only over my face but my body, too.
Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.
“Good night,” I breathed out along with my next exhale. “I’ll see you Monday.”
I climbed the narrow steps to my rooms. Whoever tightened the doorknob had made a mess of the lock, and the metal hardware and the wood were covered in fresh scratches. Inside, I switched on the lights. The answering machine was blinking, of course. At the window I raised my hand to show that I was safely inside.
When I peeked out a few seconds later, Matthew was already gone.
Chapter 15
O
n Monday morning the air had that magically still quality common in autumn. The whole world felt crisp and bright, and time seemed suspended. I shot out of bed at dawn and pulled on my waiting rowing gear, eager to be outdoors.
The river was empty for the first hour. As the sun broke over the horizon, the fog burned off toward the waterline so that I was slipping through alternate bands of mist and rosy sunshine.
When I pulled up to the dock, Matthew was waiting for me on the curving steps that led to the boathouse’s balcony, an ancient brown-and-bone-striped New College scarf hanging around his neck. I climbed out of the boat, put my hands on my hips, and stared at him in disbelief.
“Where did you get that thing?” I pointed at the scarf.
“You should have more respect for the old members,” he said with his mischievous grin, tossing one end of it over his shoulder. “I think I bought it in 1920, but I can’t honestly remember. After the Great War ended, certainly.”
Shaking my head, I took the oars into the boathouse. Two crews glided by the dock in perfect, powerful unison just as I was lifting my boat out of the water. My knees dipped slightly and the boat swung up and over until its weight rested on my head.
“Why don’t you let me help you with that?” Matthew said, rising from his perch.
“No chance.” My steps were steady as I walked the boat inside. He grumbled something under his breath.
With the boat safely in its rack, Matthew easily talked me into breakfast at Mary and Dan’s café. He was going to have to sit next to me much of the day, and I was hungry after the morning’s exertions. He steered me by the elbow around the other diners, his hand firmer on my back than before. Mary greeted me like an old friend, and Steph didn’t bother with a menu, just announced “the usual” when she came by the table. There wasn’t a hint of a question in her voice, and when the plate came—laden with eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and tomatoes—I was glad I hadn’t insisted on something more ladylike.
After breakfast I trotted through the lodge and up to my rooms for a shower and a change of clothes. Fred peered around his window to see if it was indeed Matthew’s Jaguar pulled up outside the gates. The porters were no doubt laying wagers on competing predictions regarding our oddly formal relationship. This morning was the first time I’d managed to convince my escort to simply drop me off.
“It’s broad daylight, and Fred will have kittens if you clog up his gate during delivery hours,” I protested when Matthew started to get out of the car. He’d glowered but agreed that merely pulling straight across the entrance to bar possible vehicular attack was sufficient.
This morning every step of my routine needed to be slow and deliberate. My shower was long and leisurely, the hot water slipping against my tired muscles. Still in no rush, I put on comfortable black trousers, a turtleneck to keep my shoulders from seizing up in the increasingly chilly library, and a reasonably presentable midnight blue cardigan to break up the unalleviated black. My hair was caught in a low ponytail. The short piece in the front fell forward as it always did, and I grumbled and shoved it behind my ear.
In spite of my efforts, my anxiety rose as I pushed open the library’s glass doors. The guard’s eyes narrowed at my uncharacteristically warm smile, and he took an inordinate amount of time checking my face against the picture on my reader’s card. Finally he admitted me, and I pelted up the stairs to Duke Humfrey’s.
It had been no more than an hour since I’d been with Matthew, but the sight of him stretched out among the first bay of Elizabethan desks in one of the medieval wing’s purgatorial chairs was welcome. He looked up when my laptop dropped on the scarred wooden surface.
“Is he here?” I whispered, reluctant to say Knox’s name.
Matthew nodded grimly. “In the Selden End.”
“Well, he can wait down there all day as far as I’m concerned,” I said under my breath, picking up a blank request slip from the shallow rectangular tray on the desk. On it I wrote
“Ashmole MS 782,”
my name, and my reader number.
Sean was at the collection desk. “I’ve got two items on reserve,” I told him with a smile. He went into the cage and returned with my manuscripts, then held out his hand for my new request. He put the slip into the worn, gray cardboard envelope that would be sent to the stacks.
“May I talk to you a minute?” Sean asked.
“Sure.” I gestured to indicate that Matthew should stay where he was and followed Sean through the swinging gate into the Arts End, which, like the Selden End, ran perpendicular to the length of the old library. We stood beneath a bank of leaded windows that let in the weak morning sunshine.
“Is he bothering you?”
“Professor Clairmont? No.”
“It’s none of my business, but I don’t like him.” Sean looked down the central aisle as if he expected Matthew to pop out and glare at him. “The whole place has been full of strange ducks over the last week or so.”
Unable to disagree, I resorted to muffled noises of sympathy.
“You’d let me know if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course, Sean. But Professor Clairmont’s okay. You don’t have to worry about him.”
My old friend looked unconvinced.
“Sean may know I’m different—but it seems I’m not as different as you,” I told Matthew after returning to my seat.
“Few are,” he said darkly, picking up his reading.
I turned on my computer and tried to concentrate on my work. It would take hours for the manuscript to appear. But thinking about alchemy was harder than ever, caught as I was between a vampire and the call desk. Every time new books emerged from the stacks, I looked up.
After several false alarms, soft steps approached from the Selden End. Matthew tensed in his chair.
Peter Knox strolled up and stopped. “Dr. Bishop,” he said coolly.
“Mr. Knox.” My voice was equally chilly, and I returned my attention to the open volume before me. Knox took a step in my direction.
Matthew spoke quietly, without raising his eyes from the Needham papers. “I’d stop there unless Dr. Bishop wishes to speak with you.”
“I’m very busy.” A sense of pressure wound around my forehead, and a voice whispered in my skull. Every ounce of my energy was devoted to keeping the witch out of my thoughts. “I said I’m busy,” I repeated stonily.
Matthew put his pencil down and pushed away from the desk.
“Mr. Knox was just leaving, Matthew.” Turning to my laptop, I typed a few sentences of utter nonsense.
“I hope you understand what you’re doing,” Knox spit.
Matthew growled, and I laid a hand lightly on his arm. Knox’s eyes fixed on the spot where the bodies of a witch and a vampire touched.
Until that moment Knox had only suspected that Matthew and I were too close for the comfort of witches. Now he was sure.
You’ve told him what you know about our book.
Knox’s vicious voice sounded through my head, and though I tried to push against his intrusion, the wizard was too strong. When he resisted my efforts, I gasped in surprise.
Sean looked up from the call desk in alarm. Matthew’s arm was vibrating, his growl subsiding into a somehow more menacing purr.
“Who’s caught human attention now?” I hissed at the witch, squeezing Matthew’s arm to let him know I didn’t need his help.
Knox smiled unpleasantly. “You’ve caught the attention of more than humans this morning, Dr. Bishop. Before nightfall every witch in Oxford will know you’re a traitor.”
Matthew’s muscles coiled, and he reached up to the coffin he wore around his neck.
Oh, God,
I thought,
he’s going to kill a witch in the Bodleian.
I placed myself squarely between the two of them.
“Enough,” I told Knox quietly. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to tell Sean you’re harassing me and have him call security.”
“The light in the Selden End is rather glaring today,” Knox said at last, breaking the standoff. “I believe I’ll move to this part of the library.” He strolled away.
Matthew lifted my hand from his arm and began to pack up his belongings. “We’re leaving.”
“No we’re not. We are not leaving until we get that manuscript.”
“Were you listening?” Matthew said hotly. “He threatened you! I don’t need this manuscript, but I do need—” He stopped abruptly.