“Please,” I begged when Satu dropped me on the floor. “Don’t leave me down here. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know how to use my magic or how to recall the manuscript.”
“You’re Rebecca Bishop’s daughter,” Satu said. “You have power—I can feel it—and we’ll make sure that it breaks free. If your mother were here, she would simply fly out.” Satu looked into the blackness above us, then to my ankle. “But you’re not really your mother’s daughter, are you? Not in any way that matters.”
Satu bent her knees, lifted her arms, and pushed gently against the oubliette’s stone floor. She soared up and became a blur of white and blue before disappearing. Far above me the wooden door closed.
Matthew would never find me down here. By now any trail would be long gone, our scents scattered to the four winds. The only way to get out, short of being retrieved by Satu, Peter Knox, and some unknown third witch, was to get myself out.
Standing with my weight on one foot, I bent my knees, lifted my arms, and pushed against the floor as Satu had. Nothing happened. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on the way it had felt to dance in the salon, hoping it would make me float again. All it did was make me think of Matthew, and the secrets he had kept from me. My breath turned into a sob, and when the oubliette’s dank air passed into my lungs, the resulting cough brought me to my knees.
I slept a bit, but it was hard to ignore the ghosts once they started chattering. At least they provided some light in the gloom. Every time they moved, a tiny bit of phosphorescence smudged the air, linking where they had just been to where they were going. A young woman in filthy rags sat opposite me, humming quietly to herself and staring in my direction with vacant eyes. In the center of the room, a monk, a knight in full armor, and a musketeer peered into an even deeper hole that emitted a feeling of such loss that I couldn’t bear to go near it. The monk muttered the mass for the dead, and the musketeer kept reaching into the pit as if looking for something he had lost.
My mind slid toward oblivion, losing its struggle against the combination of fear, pain, and cold. Frowning with concentration, I remembered the last passages I’d read in the
Aurora Consurgens
and repeated them aloud in the hope it would help me remain sane.
“‘It is I who mediates the elements, bringing each into agreement,’”
I mumbled through stiff lips.
“‘I make what is moist dry again, and what is dry I make moist. I make what is hard soft again, and soften that which is hard. As I am the end, so my lover is the beginning. I encompass the whole work of creation, and all knowledge is hidden in me.’”
Something shimmered against the wall nearby. Here was another ghost, come to say hello, but I closed my eyes, too tired to care, and returned to my recitation.
“‘Who will dare to separate me from my love? No one, for our love is as strong as death. ’”
My mother interrupted me.
Won’t you try to sleep, little witch?
Behind my closed eyes, I saw my attic bedroom in Madison. It was only a few days before my parents’ final trip to Africa, and I’d been brought to stay with Sarah while they were gone.
“I’m not sleepy,” I replied. My voice was stubborn and childlike. I opened my eyes. The ghosts were drawing closer to the shimmer in the shadows to my right.
My mother was sitting there, propped against the oubliette’s damp stone walls, holding her arms open. I inched toward her, holding my breath for fear she would disappear. She smiled in welcome, her dark eyes shining with unshed tears. My mother’s ghostly arms and fingers flicked this way and that as I snuggled closer to her familiar body.
Shall I tell you a story?
“It was your hands I saw when Satu worked her magic.”
Her answering laugh was gentle and made the cold stones beneath me less painful.
You were very brave.
“I’m so tired.” I sighed.
It’s time for your story, then. Once upon a time,
she began,
there was a little witch named Diana. When she was very small, her fairy godmother wrapped her in invisible ribbons that were every color of the rainbow.
I remembered this tale from my childhood, when my pajamas had been purple and pink with stars on them and my hair was braided into two long pigtails that snaked down my back. Waves of memories flooded into rooms of my mind that had sat empty and unused since my parents’ death.
“Why did the fairy godmother wrap her up?” I asked in my child’s voice.
Because Diana loved making magic, and she was very good at it, too. But her fairy godmother knew that other witches would be jealous of her power. “When you are ready,” the fairy godmother told her, “you will shrug off these ribbons. Until then you won’t be able to fly, or make magic.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested, as seven-year-olds are fond of doing. “Punish the other witches, not me.”
The world isn’t fair, is it?
my mother asked.
I shook my head glumly.
No matter how hard Diana tried, she couldn’t shake her ribbons off. In time she forgot all about them. And she forgot her magic, too.
“I would never forget my magic,” I insisted.
My mother frowned.
But you have,
she said in her soft whisper. Her story continued.
One day, long after, Diana met a handsome prince who lived in the shadows between sunset and moonrise.
This had been my favorite part. Memories of other nights flooded forth. Sometimes I had asked for his name, other times I’d proclaimed my lack of interest in a stupid prince. Mostly I wondered why anyone would want to be with a useless witch.
The prince loved Diana, despite the fact that she couldn’t seem to fly. He could see the ribbons binding her, though nobody else could. He wondered what they were for and what would happen if the witch took them off. But the prince didn’t think it was polite to mention them, in case she felt self-conscious.
I nodded my seven-year-old head, impressed with the prince’s empathy, and my much older head moved against the stone walls, too.
But he did wonder why a witch wouldn’t want to fly, if she could.
Then,
my mother said, smoothing my hair,
three witches came to town. They could see the ribbons, too, and suspected that Diana was more powerful than they were. So they spirited her away to a dark castle. But the ribbons wouldn’t budge, even though the witches pulled and tugged. So the witches locked her in a room, hoping she’d be so afraid she’ d take the ribbons off herself.
“Was Diana all alone?”
All alone,
my mother said.
“I don’t think I like this story.” I pulled up my childhood bedspread, a patchwork quilt in bright colors that Sarah had bought at a Syracuse department store in anticipation of my visit, and slid down to the floor of the oubliette. My mother tucked me against the stones.
“Mama?”
Yes, Diana?
“I did what you told me to do. I kept my secrets—from everybody.”
I know it was difficult.
“Do you have any secrets?” In my mind I was running like a deer through a field, my mother chasing me.
Of course,
she said, reaching out and flicking her fingers so that I soared through the air and landed in her arms.
“Will you tell me one of them?”
Yes.
Her mouth was so close to my ear that it tickled.
You. You are my greatest secret.
“But I’m right here!” I squealed, squirming free and running in the direction of the apple tree. “How can I be a secret if I’m right here?”
My mother put her fingers to her lips and smiled.
Magic
.
Chapter 30
W
here is she?” Matthew slammed the keys to the Range Rover onto the table.
“We will find her, Matthew.” Ysabeau was trying to be calm for her son’s sake, but it had been nearly ten hours since they’d found a half-eaten apple next to a patch of rue in the garden. The two had been combing the countryside ever since, working in methodical slices of territory that Matthew divided up on a map.
After all the searching, they’d found no sign of Diana and had been unable to pick up her trail. She had simply vanished.
“It has to be a witch who took her.” Matthew ran his fingers through his hair. “I told her she’d be safe as long as she stayed inside the château. I never thought the witches would dare to come here.”
His mother’s mouth tightened. The fact that witches had kidnapped Diana did not surprise her.
Matthew started handing out orders like a general on a battlefield. “We’ll go out again. I’ll drive to Brioude. Go past Aubusson, Ysabeau, and into Limousin. Marthe, wait here in case she comes back or someone calls with news.”
There would be no phone calls, Ysabeau knew. If Diana had access to a phone, she would have used it before now. And though Matthew’s preferred battle strategy was to chop through obstacles until he reached his goal, it was not always the best way to proceed.
“We should wait, Matthew.”
“Wait?” Matthew snarled. “For what?”
“For Baldwin. He was in London and left an hour ago.”
“Ysabeau, how could you tell him?” His older brother, Matthew had learned through experience, liked to destroy things. It was what he did best. Over the years he’d done it physically, mentally, and then financially, once he’d discovered that destroying people’s livelihoods was almost as thrilling as flattening a village.
“When she was not in the stables or in the woods, I felt it was time. Baldwin is better at this than you are, Matthew. He can track anything.”
“Yes, Baldwin’s always been good at pursuing his prey. Now finding my wife is only my first task. Then I’ll have to make sure she’s not his next target.” Matthew picked up his keys. “You wait for Baldwin. I’ll go out alone.”
“Once he knows that Diana belongs to you, he will not harm her. Baldwin is the head of this family. So long as this is a family matter, he has to know.”
Ysabeau’s words struck him as odd. She knew how much he distrusted his older brother. Matthew shrugged their strangeness aside. “They came into your home,
Maman.
It was an insult to you. If you want Baldwin involved, it’s your right.”
“I called Baldwin for Diana’s sake—not mine. She must not be left in the hands of witches, Matthew, even if she is a witch herself.”
Marthe’s nose went into the air, alert to a new scent.
“Baldwin,” Ysabeau said unnecessarily, her green eyes glittering.
A heavy door slammed overhead, and angry footsteps followed. Matthew stiffened, and Marthe rolled her eyes.
“Down here,” Ysabeau said softly. Even in a crisis, she didn’t raise her voice. They were vampires, after all, with no need for histrionics.
Baldwin Montclair, as he was known in the financial markets, strode down the hall of the ground floor. His copper-colored hair gleamed in the electric light, and his muscles twitched with the quick reflexes of a born athlete. Trained to wield a sword from childhood, he had been imposing before becoming a vampire, and after his rebirth few dared to cross him. The middle son in Philippe de Clermont’s brood of three male children, Baldwin had been made a vampire in Roman times and had been Philippe’s favorite. They were cut from the same cloth—fond of war, women, and wine, in that order. Despite these amiable characteristics, those who faced him in combat seldom lived to recount the experience.
Now he directed his anger at Matthew. They’d taken a dislike to each other the first time they’d met, their personalities at such odds that even Philippe had given up hope of their ever being friends. His nostrils flared as he tried to detect his brother’s underlying scent of cinnamon and cloves.
“Where the hell are you, Matthew?” His deep voice echoed against the glass and stone.
Matthew stepped into his brother’s path. “Here, Baldwin.”
Baldwin had him by the throat before the words were out of his mouth. Their heads close together, one dark and one bright, they rocketed to the far end of the hall. Matthew’s body smashed into a wooden door, splintering it with the impact.
“How could you take up with a witch, knowing what they did to Father?”
“She wasn’t even born when he was captured.” Matthew’s voice was tight given the pressure on his vocal chords, but he showed no fear.
“She’s a witch,” Baldwin spit. “They’re all responsible. They knew how the Nazis were torturing him and did nothing to stop it.”
“Baldwin.” Ysabeau’s sharp tone caught his attention. “Philippe left strict instructions that no revenge was to be taken if he came to harm.” Though she had told Baldwin this repeatedly, it never lessened his anger.
“The witches helped those animals capture Philippe. Once the Nazis had him, they experimented on him to determine how much damage a vampire’s body could take without dying. The witches’ spells made it impossible for us to find him and free him.”
“They failed to destroy Philippe’s body, but they destroyed his soul.” Matthew sounded hollow. “Christ, Baldwin. They could do the same to Diana.”
If the witches hurt her physically, Matthew knew she might recover. But she would never be the same if the witches broke her spirit. He closed his eyes against the painful thought that Diana might not return the same stubborn, willful creature.
“So what?” Baldwin tossed his brother onto the floor in disgust and pounced on him.
A copper kettle the size of a timpani drum crashed into the wall. Both brothers leaped to their feet.
Marthe stood with gnarled hands on ample hips, glaring at them.
“She is his wife,” she told Baldwin curtly.
“You
mated
with her?” Baldwin was incredulous.
“Diana is part of this family now,” Ysabeau answered. “Marthe and I have accepted her. You must as well.”
“Never,” he said flatly. “No witch will ever be a de Clermont, or welcome in this house. Mating is a powerful instinct, but it doesn’t survive death. If the witches don’t kill this Bishop woman, I will.”