A Discovery of Witches(80)

“That’s wishful thinking, Diana. Knox wants to understand the secrets of Ashmole 782 as much as you or I do.” Matthew’s normally impeccable appearance was suffering. He’d run his fingers through his hair until it stood up like a scarecrow’s in places.

“How can you both be so certain there are secrets in the hidden text?” I wondered, moving toward the fireplace. “It’s an alchemy book. Maybe that’s all it is.”

“Alchemy is the story of creation, told chemically. Creatures are chemistry, mapped onto biology.”

“But when Ashmole 782 was written, they didn’t know about biology or share your sense of chemistry.”

Matthew eyes collapsed into slits. “Diana Bishop, I’m shocked at your narrow-mindedness.” He meant it, too. “The creatures who made the manuscript might not have known about DNA, but what proof do you have that they weren’t asking the same questions about creation as a modern scientist?”

“Alchemical texts are allegories, not instruction manuals.” I redirected the fear and frustration of the past several days at him. “They may hint at larger truths, but you can’t build a reliable experiment from them.”

“I never said you could,” he replied, his eyes still dark with suppressed anger. “But we’re talking about potential readers who are witches, daemons, and vampires. A little supernatural reading, a bit of otherworldly creativity, and some long memories to fill in the blanks may give creatures information we don’t want them to have.”

“Information you don’t want them to have!” I remembered my promise to Agatha Wilson, and my voice rose. “You’re as bad as Knox. You want Ashmole 782 to satisfy your own curiosity.” My hands itched as I grabbed at my things.

“Calm down.” There was an edge to his voice that I didn’t like.

“Stop telling me what to do.” The itching sensation intensified.

My fingers were brilliant blue and shooting out little arcs of fire that sputtered at the edges like the sparklers on birthday cakes. I dropped my computer and held them up.

Matthew should have been horrified. Instead he looked intrigued.

“Does that happen often?” His voice was carefully neutral.

“Oh, no.” I ran for the kitchen, trailing sparks.

Matthew beat me to the door. “Not water,” he said sharply. “They smell electrical.”

Ah. That explained the last time I set fire to the kitchen.

I stood mutely, holding my hands up between us. We watched for a few minutes while the blue left my fingertips and the sparks went out entirely, leaving behind a definite smell of bad electrical wiring.

When the fireworks ended, Matthew was lounging against the kitchen doorframe with the nonchalant air of a Renaissance aristocrat waiting to have his portrait painted.

“Well,” he said, watching me with the stillness of an eagle ready to pounce on his prey, “that was interesting. Are you always like that when you get angry?”

“I don’t do angry,” I said, turning away from him. His hand shot out and whirled me back around to face him.

“You’re not getting off that easy.” Matthew’s voice was soft, but the sharp edge was back. “You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it.”

“Let me go!” My mouth contorted into what Sarah called my “sour-puss.” It was enough to make my students quake. Right now I hoped it would make Matthew curl up into a ball and roll away. At the very least, I wanted him to take his hand off my arm so I could get out of there.

“I warned you. Friendships with vampires are complicated. I couldn’t let you go now—even if I wanted to.”

My eyes lowered deliberately to his hand. Matthew removed it with a snort of impatience, and I turned to pick up my bag.

You really shouldn’t turn your back on a vampire if you’ve been arguing.

Matthew’s arms shot around me from behind, pressing my back against his chest so hard that I could feel every flexed muscle. “Now,” he said directly into my ear, “we’re going to talk like civilized creatures about what happened. You are not running away from this—or from me.”

“Let me go, Matthew.” I struggled in his arms.

“No.”

No man had ever refused when I asked him to stop doing something—whether it was blowing his nose in the library or trying to slip a hand up my shirt after a movie. I struggled again. Matthew’s arms got tighter.

“Stop fighting me.” He sounded amused. “You’ll get tired long before I do, I assure you.”

In my women’s self-defense class, they’d taught me what to do if grabbed from behind. I lifted my foot to stomp on his. Matthew moved out of the way, and it smashed into the floor instead.

“We can do this all afternoon if you want,” he murmured. “But I honestly can’t recommend it. My reflexes are much faster than yours.”

“Let me go and we can talk,” I said through clenched teeth.

He laughed softly, his spicy breath tickling the exposed skin at the base of my skull. “That wasn’t a worthy attempt at negotiation, Diana. No, we’re going to talk like this. I want to know how often your fingers have turned blue.”

“Not often.” My instructor had recommended I relax if grabbed from behind and slip out of an assailant’s arms. Matthew’s grip on me only tightened. “A few times, when I was a child, I set fire to things—the kitchen cabinets, but that may have been because I tried to put my hands out in the sink and the fire got worse. My bedroom curtains, once or twice. A tree outside the house—but it was just a small tree.”