A Discovery of Witches(14)

“Oh, that’s splendid. Thank you for understanding.” Mr. Johnson sighed with relief.

As I came into the light of the Selden End, my eyes narrowed. Clairmont looked immaculate and rested, his pale skin startling against his dark hair. This time his open-necked gray sweater had flecks of green, and his collar stood up slightly in the back. A peek under the table revealed charcoal gray trousers, matching socks, and black shoes that surely cost more than the average academic’s entire wardrobe.

The unsettled feeling returned. What was Clairmont doing in the library? Why wasn’t he in his lab?

Making no effort to muffle my footsteps, I strode in the vampire’s direction. Clairmont, seated diagonally across from me at the far end of the cluster of desks and seemingly oblivious to my approach, continued reading. I dumped my plastic bag and manuscripts onto the space marked A5, staking out the outer edges of my territory.

He looked up, brows arching in apparent surprise. “Dr. Bishop. Good morning.”

“Professor Clairmont.” It occurred to me that he’d overheard everything said about him at the reading room’s entrance, given that he had the hearing of a bat. I refused to meet his eyes and started pulling individual items out of my bag, building a small fortification of desk supplies between me and the vampire. Clairmont watched until I ran out of equipment, then lowered his eyebrows in concentration and returned to his reading.

I took out the cord for my computer and disappeared under the desk to shove it into the power strip. When I righted myself, he was still reading but was also trying not to smile.

“Surely you’d be more comfortable in the northern end,” I grumbled under my breath, rooting around for my list of manuscripts.

Clairmont looked up, dilating pupils making his eyes suddenly dark. “Am I bothering you, Dr. Bishop?”

“Of course not,” I said hastily, my throat closing at the sudden, sharp aroma of cloves that accompanied his words, “but I’m surprised you find a southern exposure comfortable.”

“You don’t believe everything you read, do you?” One of his thick, black eyebrows rose into the shape of a question mark.

“If you’re asking whether I think you’re going to burst into flames the moment the sunlight hits you, the answer is no.” Vampires didn’t burn at the touch of sunlight, nor did they have fangs. These were human myths. “But I’ve never met . . . someone like you who liked to bask in its glow either.”

Clairmont’s body remained still, but I could have sworn he was repressing a laugh. “How much direct experience have you had, Dr. Bishop, with ‘someone like me’?”

How did he know I hadn’t had much experience with vampires? Vampires had preternatural senses and abilities—but no supernatural ones, like mind reading or precognition. Those belonged to witches and, on rare occasions, could sometimes crop up in daemons, too. This was the natural order, or so my aunt had explained when I was a child and couldn’t sleep for fear that a vampire would steal my thoughts and fly out the window with them.

I studied him closely. “Somehow, Professor Clairmont, I don’t think years of experience would tell me what I need to know right now.”

“I’d be happy to answer your question, if I can,” he said, closing his book and placing it on the desk. He waited with the patience of a teacher listening to a belligerent and not very bright student.

“What is it that you want?”

Clairmont sat back in his chair, his hands resting easily on the arms. “I want to examine Dr. Needham’s papers and study the evolution of his ideas on morphogenesis.”

“Morphogenesis?”

“The changes to embryonic cells that result in differentiation—”

“I know what morphogenesis is, Professor Clairmont. That’s not what I’m asking.”

His mouth twitched. I crossed my arms protectively across my chest.

“I see.” He tented his long fingers, resting his elbows on the chair. “I came into Bodley’s Library last night to request some manuscripts. Once inside, I decided to look around a bit—I like to know my environment, you understand, and don’t often spend time here. There you were in the gallery. And of course what I saw after that was quite unexpected.” His mouth twitched again.

I flushed at the memory of how I’d used magic just to get a book. And I tried not to be disarmed by his old-fashioned use of “Bodley’s Library” but was not entirely successful.

Careful, Diana, I warned myself. He’s trying to charm you.

“So your story is that this has just been a set of odd coincidences, culminating in a vampire and a witch sitting across from each other and examining manuscripts like two ordinary readers?”

“I don’t think anyone who took the time to examine me carefully would think I was ordinary, do you?” Clairmont’s already quiet voice dropped to a mocking whisper, and he tilted forward in his chair. His pale skin caught the light and seemed to glow. “But otherwise, yes. It’s just a series of coincidences, easily explained.”

“I thought scientists didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.”

He laughed softly. “Some have to believe in them.”

Clairmont kept staring at me, which was unnerving in the extreme. The female attendant rolled the reading room’s ancient wooden cart up to the vampire’s elbow, boxes of manuscripts neatly arrayed on the trolley’s shelves.