A Discovery of Witches(235)

Marcus snorted and punched the number eight on his phone. “It’s done,” he said briefly to the person on the other end. There was a short exchange of words. “Thank you.”

“Nathaniel has accepted his position,” Matthew murmured, the corners of his mouth twitching. “His French is surprisingly good.”

Marcus scowled at his father, walked away to say a few more words to the daemon, and returned.

Between father and son there was a long look, the clasp of hand to elbow, the press of a hand on the back—a pattern of leave-taking based on hundreds of similar farewells. For me there was a gentle kiss, a murmured “Be well,” and then Marcus, too, was gone.

I reached for Matthew’s hand.

We were alone.





Chapter 42

It’s just us and the ghosts now.” My stomach rumbled.

“What’s your favorite food?” he asked.

“Pizza,” I said promptly.

“You should have it while you can. Order some, and we’ll pick it up.”

We hadn’t been beyond the immediate environs of the Bishop house since our arrival, and it felt strange to be driving around the greater Madison area in a Range Rover next to a vampire. We took the back way to Hamilton, passing south over the hills into town before swinging north again to get the pizza. During the drive I pointed out where I’d gone swimming as a child and where my first real boyfriend had lived. The town was covered with Halloween decorations—black cats, witches on brooms, even trees decorated in orange and black eggs. In this part of the world, it wasn’t just witches who took the celebration seriously.

When we arrived at the pizza place, Matthew climbed out with me, seemingly unconcerned that witches or humans might see us. I stretched up to kiss him, and he returned it with a laugh that was almost lighthearted.

The college student who rang us up looked at Matthew with obvious admiration when she handed him the pie.

“Good thing she isn’t a witch,” I said when we got back into the car. “She would have turned me into a newt and flown off with you on her broomstick.”

Fortified with pizza—pepperoni and mushroom—I tackled the mess left in the kitchen and the family room. Matthew brought out handfuls of paper from the dining room and burned them in the kitchen fireplace.

“What do we do with these?” he asked, holding up my mother’s letter, the mysterious three-line epigram, and the page from Ashmole 782.

“Leave them in the keeping room,” I told him. “The house will take care of them.”

I continued to putter, doing laundry and straightening up Sarah’s office. It was not until I went up to put our clothes away that I noticed both computers were missing. I went pounding downstairs in a panic.

“Matthew! The computers are gone!”

“Hamish has them,” he said, catching me in his arms and smoothing my hair against the back of my head. “It’s all right. No one’s been in the house.”

My shoulders sagged, heart still hammering at the idea of being surprised by another Domenico or Juliette.

He made tea, then rubbed my feet while I drank it. All the while he talked about nothing important—houses in Hamilton that had reminded him of some other place and time, his first sniff of a tomato, what he thought when he’d seen me row in Oxford—until I relaxed into the warmth and comfort.

Matthew was always different when no one else was around, but the contrast was especially marked now that our families had left. Since arriving at the Bishop house, he’d gradually taken on the responsibility for eight other lives. He’d watched over all of them, regardless of who they were or how they were related to him, with the same ferocious intensity. Now he had only one creature to manage.

“We haven’t had much time to just talk,” I reflected, thinking of the whirlwind of days since we’d met. “Not just the two of us.”

“The past weeks have been almost biblical in their tests. I think the only thing we’ve escaped is a plague of locusts.” He paused. “But if the universe does want to test us the old-fashioned way, this counts as the end of our trial. It will be forty days this evening.”

So little time, for so much to have happened.

I put my empty mug on the table and reached for his hands. “Where are we going, Matthew?”

“Can you wait a little longer, mon coeur?” He looked out the window. “I want this day to last. And it will be dark soon enough.”

“You like playing house with me.” A piece of hair had fallen onto his forehead, and I brushed it back.

“I love playing house with you,” he said, capturing my hand.

We talked quietly for another half hour, before Matthew glanced outdoors again. “Go upstairs and take a bath. Use every drop of water in the tank and take a long, hot shower, too. You may crave pizza every now and then in the days to come. But that will be nothing compared to your longing for hot water. In a few weeks, you will cheerfully commit murder for a shower.”

Matthew brought up my Halloween costume while I bathed: a calf-length black dress with a high neck, sharp-toed boots, and a pointy hat.

“What, may I ask, are these?” He brandished a pair of stockings with red and white horizontal stripes.

“Those are the stockings Em mentioned.” I groaned. “She’ll know if I don’t wear them.”