A Discovery of Witches(69)

“Besides, you told me witches are dying out. I’m the last Bishop. Maybe my blood will help you figure out why.”

We stared at each other, vampire and witch, while Miriam and Marcus waited patiently. Finally Matthew made a sound of exasperation. “Bring me a specimen kit,” he told Marcus.

“I can do it,” Marcus said defensively, snapping the wrist on his latex gloves. Miriam tried to hold him back, but Marcus kept coming at me with a box of vials and sharps.

“Marcus,” Miriam warned.

Matthew grabbed the equipment from Marcus and stopped the younger vampire with a startling, deadly look. “I’m sorry, Marcus. But if anyone is going to take Diana’s blood, it’s going to be me.”

Holding my wrist in his cold fingers, he bent my arm up and down a few times before extending it fully and resting my hand gently on the stainless surface. There was something undeniably creepy about having a vampire stick a needle into your vein. Matthew tied a piece of rubber tubing above my elbow.

“Make a fist,” he said quietly, pulling on his gloves and preparing the hollow needle and the first vial.

I did as he asked, clenching my hand and watching the veins bulge. Matthew didn’t bother with the usual announcement that I would feel a prick or a sting. He just leaned down without ceremony and slid the sharp metal instrument into my arm.

“Nicely done.” I loosened my fist to get the blood flowing freely.

Matthew’s wide mouth tightened while he changed vials. When he was finished, he withdrew the needle and tossed it into a sealed biohazard container. Marcus collected the vials and handed them to Miriam, who labeled them in a tiny, precise script. Matthew put a square of gauze over the stick site and held it there with strong, cold fingers. With his other hand, he picked up a roll of adhesive tape and attached it securely across the pad.

“Date of birth?” Miriam asked crisply, pen poised above the test tube.

“August thirteenth, 1976.”

Miriam stared. “August thirteenth?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Just being sure,” she murmured.

“In most cases we like to take a cheek swab, too.” Matthew opened a package and removed two white pieces of plastic. They were shaped like miniature paddles, the wide ends slightly rough.

Wordlessly I opened my mouth and let Matthew twirl first one swab, then the other, against the inside of my cheek. Each swab went into a different sealed plastic tube. “All done.”

Looking around the lab, at the quiet serenity of stainless steel and blue lights, I was reminded of my alchemists, toiling away over charcoal fires in dim light with improvised equipment and broken clay crucibles. What they would have given for the chance to work in a place like this—with tools that might have helped them understand the mysteries of creation.

“Are you looking for the first vampire?” I asked, gesturing at the file drawers.

“Sometimes,” Matthew said slowly. “Mostly we’re tracking how food and disease affect the species, and how and when certain family lines go extinct.”

“And is it really true we’re four distinct species, or do daemons, humans, vampires, and witches share a common ancestor?” I’d always wondered if Sarah’s insistence that witches shared little of consequence with humans or other creatures was based on anything more than tradition and wishful thinking. In Darwin’s time many thought that it was impossible for a pair of common human ancestors to have produced so many different racial types. When some white Europeans looked at black Africans, they embraced the theory of polygenism instead, which argued that the races had descended from different, unrelated ancestors.

“Daemons, humans, vampires, and witches vary considerably at the genetic level.” Matthew’s eyes were piercing. He understood why I was asking, even though he refused to give me a straight answer.

“If you prove we aren’t different species, but only different lineages within the same species, it will change everything,” I warned.

“In time we’ll be able to figure out how—if—the four groups are related. We’re still a long way from that point, though.” He stood. “I think that’s enough science for today.”

After saying good-bye to Miriam and Marcus, Matthew drove me to New College. He went to change and returned to pick me up for yoga. We rode to Woodstock in near silence, both lost in our own thoughts.

At the Old Lodge, Matthew let me out as usual, unloaded the mats from the trunk, and slung them over his shoulder.

A pair of vampires brushed by. One touched me briefly, and Matthew’s hand was lightning fast as he laced his fingers through mine. The contrast between us was so striking, his skin so pale and cold, and mine so alive and warm in comparison.

Matthew held on to me until we got inside. After class we drove back to Oxford, talking first about something Amira had said, then about something one of the daemons had inadvertently done or not done that seemed to perfectly capture what it was to be a daemon. Once inside the New College gates, Matthew uncharacteristically turned off the car before he let me out.

Fred looked up from his security monitors when the vampire went to the lodge’s glass partition. The porter slid it open. “Yes?”

“I’d like to walk Dr. Bishop to her rooms. Is it all right if I leave the car here, and the keys, too, in case you need to shift it?”