A Discovery of Witches(219)

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.