A Discovery of Witches(172)

My body was rigid with anticipation, however. Pictures had fallen onto unsuspecting guests, doors and windows flapped open and closed, and lights went on and off without warning. I let out a sigh of relief when we made it to the landing without incident.

“Not many of my friends visited the house,” I explained when he raised an eyebrow. “It was easier to see them at the mall in Syracuse.”

The upstairs rooms were arranged in a square around the central staircase. Em and Sarah’s room was in the front corner, overlooking the driveway. My mother and father’s room was at the back of the house, with a view of the fields and a section of the old apple orchard that gradually gave way to a deeper wood of oaks and maples. The door was open, a light on inside. I stepped hesitantly toward the welcoming, golden rectangle and over the threshold.

The room was warm and comfortable, its broad bed loaded with quilts and pillows. Nothing matched, except for the plain white curtains. The floor was constructed out of wide pine planks with gaps large enough to swallow a hairbrush. A bathroom opened up to the right, and a radiator was popping and hissing inside.

“Lily of the valley,” Matthew commented, his nostrils flaring at all the new scents.

“My mother’s favorite perfume.” An ancient bottle of Diorissimo with a faded black-and-white houndstooth ribbon wrapped around the neck still stood on the bureau.

Matthew dropped the bags onto the floor. “Is it going to bother you to be in here?” His eyes were worried. “You could have your old room, as Sarah suggested.”

“No chance,” I said firmly. “It’s in the attic, and the bathroom is down here. Besides, there’s no way we’ll both fit in a single bed.”

Matthew looked away. “I had thought we might—”

“We’re not sleeping in separate beds. I’m no less your wife among witches than among vampires,” I interrupted, drawing him toward me. The house settled on its foundations with a tiny sigh, as if bracing itself for a long conversation.

“No, but it might be easier—”

“For whom?” I interrupted again.

“For you,” he finished. “You’re in pain. You’d sleep more soundly in bed alone.”

There would be no sleep for me at all without him at my side. Not wanting to worry him by saying so, I rested my hands on his chest in an attempt to distract him from the matter of sleeping arrangements. “Kiss me.”

His mouth tightened into a no, but his eyes said yes. I pressed my body against his, and he responded with a kiss that was both sweet and gentle.

“I thought you were lost,” he murmured when we parted, resting his forehead against mine, “forever. Now I’m afraid you might shatter into a thousand pieces because of what Satu did. If something had happened to you, I’d have gone mad.”

My scent enveloped Matthew, and he relaxed a fraction. He relaxed further when his hands slid around my hips. They were relatively unscathed, and his touch was both comforting and electrifying. My need for him had only intensified since my ordeal with Satu.

“Can you feel it?” I took his hand in mine, pressing it against the center of my chest.

“Feel what?” Matthew’s face was puzzled.

Unsure what would make an impression on his preternatural senses, I concentrated on the chain that had unfurled when he’d first kissed me. When I touched it with an imaginary finger, it emitted a low, steady hum.

Matthew gasped, a look of wonder on his face. “I can hear something. What is it?” He bent to rest his ear against my chest.

“It’s you, inside me,” I said. “You ground me—an anchor at the end of a long, silvery chain. It’s why I’m so certain of you, I suppose.” My voice dropped. “Provided I could feel you—had this connection to you—there was nothing Satu could say or do that I couldn’t endure.”

“It’s like the sound your blood makes when you talk to Rakasa with your mind, or when you called the witchwind. Now that I know what to listen for, it’s audible.”

Ysabeau had mentioned she could hear my witch’s blood singing. I tried to make the chain’s music louder, its vibrations passing into the rest of my body.

Matthew lifted his head and gave me a glorious smile. “Amazing.”

The humming grew more intense, and I lost control of the energy pulsing through me. Overhead, a score of stars burst into life and shot through the room.

“Oops.” Dozens of ghostly eyes tingled against my back. The house shut the door firmly against the inquiring looks of my ancestors, who had assembled to see the fireworks display as if it were Independence Day.

“Did you do that?” Matthew stared intently at the closed door.

“No,” I explained earnestly. “The sparklers were mine. That was the house. It has a thing about privacy.”

“Thank God,” he murmured, pulling my hips firmly to his and kissing me again in a way that had the ghosts on the other side muttering.

The fireworks fizzled out in a stream of aquamarine light over the chest of drawers.

“I love you, Matthew Clairmont,” I said at the earliest opportunity.

“And I love you, Diana Bishop,” he replied formally. “But your aunt and Emily must be freezing. Show me the rest of the house so that they can come inside.”

Slowly we went through the other rooms on the second floor, most unused now and filled with assorted bric-a-brac from Em’s yard-sale addiction and all the junk Sarah couldn’t bear to throw away for fear she might need it one day.