Where is she?” Matthew slammed the keys to the Range Rover onto the table.

“We will find her, Matthew.” Ysabeau was trying to be calm for her son’s sake, but it had been nearly ten hours since they’d found a half-eaten apple next to a patch of rue in the garden. The two had been combing the countryside ever since, working in methodical slices of territory that Matthew divided up on a map.

After all the searching, they’d found no sign of Diana and had been unable to pick up her trail. She had simply vanished.

“It has to be a witch who took her.” Matthew ran his fingers through his hair. “I told her she’d be safe as long as she stayed inside the chвteau. I never thought the witches would dare to come here.”

His mother’s mouth tightened. The fact that witches had kidnapped Diana did not surprise her.

Matthew started handing out orders like a general on a battlefield. “We’ll go out again. I’ll drive to Brioude. Go past Aubusson, Ysabeau, and into Limousin. Marthe, wait here in case she comes back or someone calls with news.”

There would be no phone calls, Ysabeau knew. If Diana had access to a phone, she would have used it before now. And though Matthew’s preferred battle strategy was to chop through obstacles until he reached his goal, it was not always the best way to proceed.

“We should wait, Matthew.”

“Wait?” Matthew snarled. “For what?”

“For Baldwin. He was in London and left an hour ago.”

“Ysabeau, how could you tell him?” His older brother, Matthew had learned through experience, liked to destroy things. It was what he did best. Over the years he’d done it physically, mentally, and then financially, once he’d discovered that destroying people’s livelihoods was almost as thrilling as flattening a village.

“When she was not in the stables or in the woods, I felt it was time. Baldwin is better at this than you are, Matthew. He can track anything.”

“Yes, Baldwin’s always been good at pursuing his prey. Now finding my wife is only my first task. Then I’ll have to make sure she’s not his next target.” Matthew picked up his keys. “You wait for Baldwin. I’ll go out alone.”

“Once he knows that Diana belongs to you, he will not harm her. Baldwin is the head of this family. So long as this is a family matter, he has to know.”

Ysabeau’s words struck him as odd. She knew how much he distrusted his older brother. Matthew shrugged their strangeness aside. “They came into your home, Maman. It was an insult to you. If you want Baldwin involved, it’s your right.”

“I called Baldwin for Diana’s sake—not mine. She must not be left in the hands of witches, Matthew, even if she is a witch herself.”

Marthe’s nose went into the air, alert to a new scent.

“Baldwin,” Ysabeau said unnecessarily, her green eyes glittering.

A heavy door slammed overhead, and angry footsteps followed. Matthew stiffened, and Marthe rolled her eyes.

“Down here,” Ysabeau said softly. Even in a crisis, she didn’t raise her voice. They were vampires, after all, with no need for histrionics.

Baldwin Montclair, as he was known in the financial markets, strode down the hall of the ground floor. His copper-colored hair gleamed in the electric light, and his muscles twitched with the quick reflexes of a born athlete. Trained to wield a sword from childhood, he had been imposing before becoming a vampire, and after his rebirth few dared to cross him. The middle son in Philippe de Clermont’s brood of three male children, Baldwin had been made a vampire in Roman times and had been Philippe’s favorite. They were cut from the same cloth—fond of war, women, and wine, in that order. Despite these amiable characteristics, those who faced him in combat seldom lived to recount the experience.

Now he directed his anger at Matthew. They’d taken a dislike to each other the first time they’d met, their personalities at such odds that even Philippe had given up hope of their ever being friends. His nostrils flared as he tried to detect his brother’s underlying scent of cinnamon and cloves.

“Where the hell are you, Matthew?” His deep voice echoed against the glass and stone.

Matthew stepped into his brother’s path. “Here, Baldwin.”

Baldwin had him by the throat before the words were out of his mouth. Their heads close together, one dark and one bright, they rocketed to the far end of the hall. Matthew’s body smashed into a wooden door, splintering it with the impact.

“How could you take up with a witch, knowing what they did to Father?”

“She wasn’t even born when he was captured.” Matthew’s voice was tight given the pressure on his vocal chords, but he showed no fear.

“She’s a witch,” Baldwin spit. “They’re all responsible. They knew how the Nazis were torturing him and did nothing to stop it.”

“Baldwin.” Ysabeau’s sharp tone caught his attention. “Philippe left strict instructions that no revenge was to be taken if he came to harm.” Though she had told Baldwin this repeatedly, it never lessened his anger.

“The witches helped those animals capture Philippe. Once the Nazis had him, they experimented on him to determine how much damage a vampire’s body could take without dying. The witches’ spells made it impossible for us to find him and free him.”

“They failed to destroy Philippe’s body, but they destroyed his soul.” Matthew sounded hollow. “Christ, Baldwin. They could do the same to Diana.”

If the witches hurt her physically, Matthew knew she might recover. But she would never be the same if the witches broke her spirit. He closed his eyes against the painful thought that Diana might not return the same stubborn, willful creature.

“So what?” Baldwin tossed his brother onto the floor in disgust and pounced on him.

A copper kettle the size of a timpani drum crashed into the wall. Both brothers leaped to their feet.

Marthe stood with gnarled hands on ample hips, glaring at them.

“She is his wife,” she told Baldwin curtly.

“You mated with her?” Baldwin was incredulous.

“Diana is part of this family now,” Ysabeau answered. “Marthe and I have accepted her. You must as well.”

“Never,” he said flatly. “No witch will ever be a de Clermont, or welcome in this house. Mating is a powerful instinct, but it doesn’t survive death. If the witches don’t kill this Bishop woman, I will.”

Matthew lunged at his brother’s throat. There was a sound of flesh tearing. Baldwin reeled back and howled, his hand on his neck.

“You bit me!”

“Threaten my wife again and I’ll do more than that.” Matthew’s sides were heaving and his eyes were wild.

“Enough!” Ysabeau startled them into silence. “I have already lost my husband, a daughter, and two of my sons. I will not have you at each other’s throats. I will not let witches take someone from my home without my permission.” Her last words were uttered in a low hiss. “And I will not stand here and argue while my son’s wife is in the hands of my enemies.”

“In 1944 you insisted that challenging the witches wouldn’t solve anything. Now look at you,” Baldwin snapped, glaring at his brother.

“This is different,” Matthew said tightly.

“Oh, it’s different, I grant you that. You’re risking the Congregation’s interference in our family’s affairs just so you can bed one of them.”

“The decision to engage in open hostilities with the witches was not yours to make then. It was your father’s—and he expressly forbade prolonging a world war.” Ysabeau stopped behind Baldwin and waited until he turned to face her. “You must let this go. The power to punish such atrocities was placed in the hands of human authorities.”

Baldwin looked at her sourly. “You took matters into your own hands, as I recall, Ysabeau. How many Nazis did you dine on before you were satisfied?” It was an unforgivable thing to say, but he had been pushed past his normal limits.

“As for Diana,” Ysabeau continued smoothly, though her eyes sparked in warning, “if your father were alive, Lucius Sigйric Benoit Christophe Baldwin de Clermont, he would be out looking for her—witch or not. He would be ashamed of you, in here settling old scores with your brother.” Every one of the names Philippe had given him over the years sounded like a slap, and Baldwin’s head jerked back when they struck.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. “Thank you for the advice, Ysabeau, and the history lesson. Now, happily, it is my decision. Matthew will not indulge himself with this girl. End of discussion.” He felt better after exercising his authority and turned to stalk out of Sept-Tours.

“Then you leave me no choice.” Matthew’s response stopped him in his tracks.

“Choice?” Baldwin snorted. “You’ll do what I tell you to do.”

“I may not be head of the family, but this is no longer a family matter.” Matthew had, at last, figured out the point of Ysabeau’s earlier remark.

“Fine.” Baldwin shrugged. “Go on this foolish crusade, if you must. Find your witch. Take Marthe—she seems to be as enamored of her as you are. If the two of you want to pester the witches and bring the Congregation down on your heads, that’s your business. To protect the family, I’ll disown you.”

He was on his way out the door again when his younger brother laid down his trump.

“I absolve the de Clermonts of any responsibility for sheltering Diana Bishop. The Knights of Lazarus will now see to her safety, as we have done for others in the past.”

Ysabeau turned away to hide her expression of pride.

“You can’t be serious,” Baldwin hissed. “If you rally the brotherhood, it will be tantamount to a declaration of war.”

“If that’s your decision, you know the consequences. I could kill you for your disobedience, but I don’t have time. Your lands and possessions are forfeit. Leave this house, and surrender your seal of office. A new French master will be appointed within the week. You are beyond the protection of the order and have seven days to find yourself a new place to live.”

“Try to take Sept-Tours from me,” Baldwin growled, “and you’ll regret it.”

“Sept-Tours isn’t yours. It belongs to the Knights of Lazarus. Ysabeau lives here with the brotherhood’s blessing. I’ll give you one more chance to be included in that arrangement.” Matthew’s voice took on an indisputable tone of command. “Baldwin de Clermont, I call upon you to fulfill your sworn oath and enter the field of battle, where you will obey my commands until I release you.”

He hadn’t spoken or written the words for ages, but Matthew remembered each one perfectly. The Knights of Lazarus were in his blood, just as Diana was. Long-unused muscles flexed deep within him, and talents that had grown rusty began to sharpen.

“The Knights don’t come to their master’s aid because of a love affair gone wrong, Matthew. We fought at the Battle of Acre. We helped the Albigensian heretics resist the northerners. We survived the demise of the Templars and the English advances at Crйcy and Agincourt. The Knights of Lazarus were on the ships that beat back the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto, and when we refused to fight any further, the Thirty Years’ War came to an end. The brotherhood’s purpose is to ensure that vampires survive in a world dominated by humans.”

“We started out protecting those who could not protect themselves, Baldwin. Our heroic reputation was simply an unexpected by-product of that mission.”

“Father should never have passed the order on to you when he died. You’re a soldier—and an idealist—not a commander. You don’t have the stomach to make the difficult decisions.” Baldwin’s scorn for his brother was clear from his words, but his eyes were worried.

“Diana came to me seeking protection from her own people. I will see to it that she gets it—just as the Knights protected the citizens of Jerusalem, and Germany, and Occitania when they were under threat.”

“No one will believe that this isn’t personal, any more than they would have believed it in 1944. Then you said no.”

“I was wrong.”

Baldwin looked shocked.

Matthew drew a long, shuddering breath. “Once we would have responded immediately to such an outrage and to hell with the consequences. But a fear of divulging the family’s secrets and a reluctance to raise the Congregation’s ire held me back. This only encouraged our enemies to strike at this family again, and I won’t make the same mistake where Diana is concerned. The witches will stop at nothing to learn about her power. They’ve invaded our home and snatched one of their own. It’s worse than what they did to Philippe. In the witches’ eyes, he was only a vampire. By taking Diana they’ve gone too far.”

As Baldwin considered his brother’s words, Matthew’s anxiety grew more acute.

“Diana.” Ysabeau brought Baldwin back to the matter at hand.

Baldwin nodded, once.

“Thank you,” Matthew said simply. “A witch grabbed her straight up and out of the garden. Any clues there might have been about the direction they took were gone by the time we discovered she was missing.” He pulled a creased map from his pocket. “Here is where we still need to search.”

Baldwin looked at the areas that Ysabeau and his brother had already covered and the wide swaths of countryside that remained. “You’ve been searching all these places since she was taken?”

Matthew nodded. “Of course.”

Baldwin couldn’t conceal his irritation. “Matthew, will you never learn to stop and think before you act? Show me the garden.”

Matthew and Baldwin went outdoors, leaving Marthe and Ysabeau inside so that their scents wouldn’t obscure any faint traces of Diana. When the two were gone, Ysabeau began to shake from head to toe.

“It is too much, Marthe. If they have harmed her—”

“We have always known, you and I, that a day like this was coming.” Marthe put a compassionate hand on her mistress’s shoulder, then walked into the kitchens, leaving Ysabeau sitting pensively by the cold hearth.

In the garden Baldwin turned his preternaturally sharp eyes to the ground, where an apple lay next to a billowing patch of rue. Ysabeau had wisely insisted that they leave the fruit where they’d found it. Its location helped Baldwin see what his brother had not. The stems on the rue were slightly bent and led to another patch of herbs with ruffled leaves, then another.

“Which way was the wind blowing?” Baldwin’s imagination was caught already.

“From the west,” Matthew replied, trying to see what Baldwin was tracking. He gave up with a frustrated sigh. “This is taking too much time. We should split up. We can cover more ground that way. I’ll go through the caves again.”

“She won’t be in the caves,” Baldwin said, straightening his knees and brushing the scent of herbs from his hands. “Vampires use the caves, not witches. Besides, they went south.”

“South? There’s nothing to the south.”

“Not anymore,” Baldwin agreed. “But there must be something there, or the witch wouldn’t have gone in that direction. We’ll ask Ysabeau.”

One reason the de Clermont family was so long-lived was that each member had different skills in a crisis. Philippe had always been the leader of men, a charismatic figure who could convince vampires and humans and sometimes even daemons to fight for a common cause. Their brother Hugh had been the negotiator, bringing warring sides to the bargaining table and resolving even the fiercest of conflicts. Godfrey, the youngest of Philippe’s three sons, had been their conscience, teasing out the ethical implications of every decision. To Baldwin fell the battle strategies, his sharp mind quick to analyze every plan for flaws and weaknesses. Louisa had been useful as bait or as a spy, depending on the situation.

Matthew, improbably enough, had been the family’s fiercest warrior. His early adventures with the sword had made his father wild with their lack of discipline, but he’d changed. Now whenever Matthew held a weapon in his hand, something in him went cold and he fought his way through obstacles with a tenacity that made him unbeatable.

Then there was Ysabeau. Everyone underestimated her except for Philippe, who had called her either “the general” or “my secret weapon.” She missed nothing and had a longer memory than Mnemosyne.

The brothers went back into the house. Baldwin shouted for Ysabeau and strode into the kitchen, grabbing a handful of flour from an open bowl and scattering it onto Marthe’s worktable. He traced the outline of the Auvergne into the flour and dug his thumb into the spot where Sept-Tours stood.

“Where would a witch take another witch that is south and west of here?” he asked.

Ysabeau’s forehead creased. “It would depend on the reason she was taken.”

Matthew and Baldwin exchanged exasperated looks. This was the only problem with their secret weapon. Ysabeau never wanted to answer the question you posed to her—she always felt there was a more pressing one that needed to be addressed first.

“Think, Maman,” Matthew said urgently. “The witches want to keep Diana from me.”

“No, my child. You could be separated in so many ways. By coming into my home and taking my guest, the witches have done something unforgivable to this family. Hostilities such as these are like chess,” Ysabeau said, touching her son’s cheek with a cold hand. “The witches wanted to prove how weak we have become. You wanted Diana. Now they have taken her to make it impossible for you to ignore their challenge.”

“Please, Ysabeau. Where?”

“There is nothing but barren mountains and goat tracks between here and the Cantal,” Ysabeau said.

“The Cantal?” Baldwin snapped.

“Yes,” she whispered, her cold blood chilled by the implications.

The Cantal was where Gerbert of Aurillac had been born. It was his home territory, and if the de Clermonts trespassed, the witches would not be the only forces gathering against them.

“If this were chess, taking her to the Cantal would put us in check,” Matthew said grimly. “It’s too soon for that.”

Baldwin nodded approvingly. “Then we’re missing something, between here and there.”

“There’s nothing but ruins,” Ysabeau said.

Baldwin let out a frustrated sigh. “Why can’t Matthew’s witch defend herself?”

Marthe came into the room, wiping her hands on a towel. She and Ysabeau exchanged glances. “Elle est enchantйe,” Marthe said gruffly.

“The child is spellbound,” Ysabeau agreed with reluctance. “We are certain of it.”

“Spellbound?” Matthew frowned. Spellbinding put a witch in invisible shackles. It was as unforgivable among witches as trespassing was among vampires.

“Yes. It is not that she refuses her magic. She has been kept from it—deliberately.” Ysabeau scowled at the idea.

“Why?” her son wondered. “It’s like defanging and declawing a tiger and then returning it to the jungle. Why would you leave anyone without a way to defend herself?”

Ysabeau shrugged. “I can think of many people who might want to do such a thing—many reasons, too—and I do not know this witch well. Call her family. Ask them.”

Matthew reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He had the house in Madison on speed dial, Baldwin noticed. The witches on the other end picked up on the first ring.

“Matthew?” The witch was frantic. “Where is she? She’s in terrible pain, I can feel it.”

“We know where to look for her, Sarah,” Matthew said quietly, trying to soothe her. “But I need to ask you something first. Diana doesn’t use her magic.”

“She hasn’t since her mother and father died. What does that have to do with anything?” Sarah was shouting now. Ysabeau closed her eyes against the harsh sound.

“Is there a chance, Sarah—any chance at all—that Diana is spellbound?”

The silence on the other end was absolute.

“Spellbound?” Sarah finally said, aghast. “Of course not!”

The de Clermonts heard a soft click.

“It was Rebecca,” another witch said much more softly. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell. And I don’t know what she did or how she did it, so don’t ask. Rebecca knew she and Stephen wouldn’t be coming back from Africa. She’d seen something—knew something—that frightened her to death. All she would tell me was that she was going to keep Diana safe.”

“Safe from what?” Sarah was horrified.

“Not ‘safe from what.’ Safe until.” Em’s voice dropped further. “Rebecca said she would make sure Diana was safe until her daughter was with her shadowed man.”

“Her shadowed man?” Matthew repeated.

“Yes,” Em whispered. “As soon as Diana told me she was spending time with a vampire, I wondered if you were the one Rebecca had foreseen. But it all happened so fast.”

“Do you see anything, Emily—anything at all—that might help us?” Matthew asked.

“No. There’s a darkness. Diana’s in it. She’s not dead,” she said hastily when Matthew sucked in his breath, “but she’s in pain and somehow not entirely in this world.”

As Baldwin listened, he narrowed his eyes at Ysabeau. Her questions, though maddening, had been most illuminating. He uncrossed his arms and reached into his pocket for his phone. He turned away, dialed, and murmured something into it. Baldwin then looked at Matthew and drew a finger across his throat.

“I’m going for her now,” Matthew said. “When we have news, we’ll call you.” He disconnected before Sarah or Em could pepper him with questions.

“Where are my keys?” Matthew shouted, heading for the door.

Baldwin was in front of him, barring the way.

“Calm down and think,” he said roughly, kicking a stool in his brother’s direction. “What were the castles between here and the Cantal? We only need to know the old castles, the ones Gerbert would be most familiar with.”

“Christ, Baldwin, I can’t remember. Let me through!”

“No. You need to be smart about this. The witches wouldn’t have brought her into Gerbert’s territory—not if they have any sense. If Diana is spellbound, then she’s a mystery to them, too. It will take them some time to solve it. They’ll want privacy, and no vampires interrupting them.” It was the first time Baldwin had managed to say the witch’s name. “In the Cantal the witches would have to answer to Gerbert, so they must be somewhere near the border. Think.” Baldwin’s last drop of patience evaporated. “By the gods, Matthew, you built or designed most of them.”

Matthew’s mind raced over the possibilities, discarding some because they were too close, others because they were too ruined. He looked up in shock. “La Pierre.”

Ysabeau’s mouth tightened, and Marthe looked worried. La Pierre had been the region’s most forbidding castle. It was built on a foundation of basalt that couldn’t be tunneled through and had walls high enough to resist any siege.

Overhead, there was a sound of air being compressed and moved.

“A helicopter,” Baldwin said. “It was waiting in Clermont-Ferrand to take me back to Lyon. Your garden will need work, Ysabeau, but you no doubt think it’s a small price to pay.”

The two vampires streaked out of the chвteau toward the helicopter. They jumped in and were soon flying high above the Auvergne. Nothing but blackness lay below them, punctuated here and there with a soft glow of light from a farmhouse window. It took them more than thirty minutes to arrive at the castle, and even though the brothers knew where it was, the pilot located its outlines with difficulty.

“There’s nowhere to land!” the pilot shouted.

Matthew pointed to an old road that stretched away from the castle. “What about there?” he shouted back. He was already scanning the walls for signs of light or movement.

Baldwin told the pilot to put down where Matthew had indicated, and he received a dubious look in reply.

When they were still twenty feet off the ground, Matthew jumped out and set off at a dead run toward the castle’s gate. Baldwin sighed and jumped after him, first directing the pilot not to move until they were both back on board.

Matthew was already inside, shouting for Diana. “Christ, she’ll be terrified,” he whispered when the echoes faded, running his fingers through his hair.

Baldwin caught up with him and grabbed his brother’s arm. “There are two ways to do this, Matthew. We can split up and search the place from top to bottom. Or you can stop for five seconds and figure out where you would hide something in La Pierre.”

“Let me go,” Matthew said, baring his teeth and trying to pull his arm from his brother’s grip. Baldwin’s hand only tightened.

“Think,” he commanded. “It will be quicker, I promise you.”

Matthew went over the castle’s floor plan in his mind. He started at the entrance, going up through the castle’s rooms, through the tower, the sleeping apartments, the audience chambers, and the great hall. Then he worked his way from the entrance down through the kitchens, the cellars, and the dungeons. He stared at his brother in horror.

“The oubliette.” He set off in the direction of the kitchens.

Baldwin’s face froze. “Dieu,” he whispered, watching his brother’s receding back. What was it about this witch that had made her own people throw her down a sixty-foot hole?

And if she were that precious, whoever had put Diana into the oubliette would be back.

Baldwin tore after Matthew, hoping it was not already too late to stop him from giving the witches not one but two hostages.

Diana, it’s time to wake up. My mother’s voice was low but insistent.

Too exhausted to respond, I pulled the brightly colored patchwork quilt over my head, hoping that she wouldn’t be able to find me. My body curled into a tight ball, and I wondered why everything hurt so much.

Wake up, sleepyhead. My father’s blunt fingers gripped the fabric. A jolt of joy momentarily pushed the pain aside. He pretended he was a bear and growled. Squealing with happiness, I tightened my own hands and giggled, but when he pulled at the coverings, the cold air swept around me.

Something was wrong. I opened one eye, expecting to see the bright posters and stuffed animals that lined my room in Cambridge. But my bedroom didn’t have wet, gray walls.

My father was smiling down at me with twinkling eyes. As usual, his hair was curled up at the ends and needed combing, and his collar was askew. I loved him anyway and tried to fling my arms around his neck, but they refused to work properly. He pulled me gently toward him instead, his insubstantial form clinging to me like a shield.

Fancy seeing you here, Miss Bishop. It was what he always said when I sneaked into his study at home or crept downstairs late at night for one more bedtime story.

“I’m so tired.” Even though his shirt was transparent, it somehow retained the smell of stale cigarette smoke and the chocolate caramels that he kept in his pockets.

I know, my father said, his eyes no longer twinkling. But you can’t sleep anymore.

You have to wake up. My mother’s hands were on me now, trying to extricate me from my father’s lap.

“Tell me the rest of the story first,” I begged, “and skip the bad parts.”

It doesn’t work that way. My mother shook her head, and my father sadly handed me into her arms.

“But I don’t feel well.” My child’s voice wheedled for special treatment.

My mother’s sigh rustled against the stone walls. I can’t skip the bad parts. You have to face them. Can you do that, little witch?

After considering what would be required, I nodded.

Where were we? my mother asked, sitting down next to the ghostly monk in the center of the oubliette. He looked shocked and moved a few inches away. My father stifled a smile with the back of his hand, looking at my mother the same way I looked at Matthew.

I remember, she said. Diana was locked in a dark room, all alone. She sat hour after hour and wondered how she would ever get out. Then she heard a knocking at the window. It was the prince. “I’m trapped inside by witches!” Diana cried. The prince tried to break the window, but it was made of magic glass and he couldn’t even crack it. Then the prince raced to the door and tried to open it, but it was held fast by an enchanted lock. He rattled the door in the frame, but the wood was too thick and it didn’t budge.

“Wasn’t the prince strong?” I asked, slightly annoyed that he wasn’t up to the task.

Very strong, said her mother solemnly, but he was no wizard. So Diana looked around for something else for the prince to try. She spied a tiny hole in the roof. It was just big enough for a witch like her to squeeze through. Diana told the prince to fly up and lift her out. But the prince couldn’t fly.

“Because he wasn’t a wizard,” I repeated. The monk crossed himself every time magic or a wizard was mentioned.

That’s right, my mother said. But Diana remembered that once upon a time she had flown. She looked down and found the edge of a silver ribbon. It was wound tightly around her, but when she tugged on the end, the ribbon came loose. Diana tossed it high above her head. Then there was nothing left for her body to do except follow it up to the sky. When she got close to the hole in the roof, she put her arms together, stretched them straight, and went through into the night air. “I knew you could do it,” said the prince.

“And they lived happily ever after,” I said firmly.

My mother’s smile was bittersweet. Yes, Diana. She gave my father a long look, the kind that children don’t understand until they’re older.

I sighed happily, and it didn’t matter so much that my back was on fire or that this was a strange place with people you could see right through.

It’s time, my mother said to my father. He nodded.

Above me, heavy wood met ancient stone with a deafening crash.

“Diana?” It was Matthew. He sounded frantic. His anxiety sent a simultaneous rush of relief and adrenaline through my body.

“Matthew!” My call came out as a dull croak.

“I’m coming down.” Matthew’s response, echoing down all that stone, hurt my head. It was throbbing and there was something sticky on my cheek. I rubbed some of the stickiness on to my finger, but it was too dark to see what it was.

“No,” said a deeper, rougher voice. “You can get down there, but I won’t be able to get you out. And we need to do this fast, Matthew. They’ll be back for her.”

I looked up to see who was speaking, but all that was visible was a pale white ring.

“Diana, listen to me.” Matthew boomed a little less now. “You need to fly. Can you do that?”

My mother nodded encouragingly. It’s time to wake up and be a witch. There’s no need for secrets anymore.

“I think so.” I tried to get to my feet. My right ankle gave way underneath me, and I fell hard onto my knee. “Are you sure Satu’s gone?”

“There’s no one here but me and my brother, Baldwin. Fly up and we’ll get you away.” The other man muttered something, and Matthew replied angrily.

I didn’t know who Baldwin was, and I had met enough strangers today. Not even Matthew felt entirely safe, after what Satu had said. I looked for somewhere to hide.

You can’t hide from Matthew, my mother said, casting a rueful smile at my father. He’ll always find you, no matter what. You can trust him. He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.

My father’s arms crept around her, and I remembered the feeling of Matthew’s arms. Someone who held me like that couldn’t be deceiving me.

“Diana, please try.” Matthew couldn’t keep the pleading out of his voice.

In order to fly, I needed a silver ribbon. But there wasn’t one wrapped around me. Uncertain of how to proceed, I searched for my parents in the gloom. They were paler than before.

Don’t you want to fly? my mother asked.

Magic is in the heart, Diana, my father said. Don’t forget.

I shut my eyes and imagined a ribbon into place. With the end securely in my fingers, I threw it toward the white ring that flickered in the darkness. The ribbon unfurled and soared through the hole, taking my body with it.

My mother was smiling, and my father looked as proud as he had when he took the training wheels off my first bicycle. Matthew peered down, along with another face that must belong to his brother. With them were a clutch of ghosts who looked amazed that anyone, after all these years, was making it out alive.

“Thank God,” Matthew breathed, stretching his long, white fingers toward me. “Take my hand.”

The moment he had me in his grip, my body lost its weightlessness.

“My arm!” I cried out as the muscles pulled and the gash on my forearm gaped.

Matthew grabbed at my shoulder, assisted by another, unfamiliar hand. They lifted me out of the oubliette, and I was crushed for a moment against Matthew’s chest. Grabbing handfuls of his sweater, I clung to him.

“I knew you could do it,” he murmured like the prince in my mother’s story, his voice full of relief.

“We don’t have time for this.” Matthew’s brother was already running down the corridor toward the door.

Matthew gripped my shoulders and took rapid stock of my injuries. His nostrils flared at the scent of dried blood. “Can you walk?” he asked softly.

“Pick her up and get her out of here, or you’ll have more to worry about than a little blood!” the other vampire shouted.

Matthew swept me up like a sack of flour and started to run, his arm tight across my lower back. I bit my lip and closed my eyes so the floor rushing underneath me wouldn’t remind me of flying with Satu. A change in the air told me we were free. As my lungs filled, I began to shake.

Matthew ran even faster, carrying me toward a helicopter that was improbably parked outside the castle walls on a dirt road. He ducked his body protectively over mine and jumped into the helicopter’s open door. His brother followed, the lights from the cockpit controls glinting green against his bright copper hair.

My foot brushed against Baldwin’s thigh as he sat down, and he gave me a look of hatred mingled with curiosity. His face was familiar from the visions I’d seen in Matthew’s study: first in light caught in the suit of armor, then again when touching the seals of the Knights of Lazarus. “I thought you were dead.” I shrank toward Matthew.

Baldwin’s eyes widened. “Go!” he shouted to the pilot, and we lifted into the sky.

Being airborne brought back fresh memories of Satu, and my shaking increased.

“She’s gone into shock,” Matthew said. “Can this thing move faster, Baldwin?”

“Knock her out,” Baldwin said impatiently.

“I don’t have a sedative with me.”

“Yes you do.” His brother’s eyes glittered. “Do you want me to do it?”

Matthew looked down at me and tried to smile. My shaking subsided a little, but every time the helicopter dipped and swayed in the wind, it returned, along with my memories of Satu.

“By the gods, Matthew, she’s terrified,” Baldwin said angrily. “Just do it.”

Matthew bit into his lip until a drop of blood beaded up on the smooth skin. He dipped his head to kiss me.

“No.” I squirmed to avoid his mouth. “I know what you’re doing. Satu told me. You’re using your blood to keep me quiet.”

“You’re in shock, Diana. It’s all I have. Let me help you.” His face was anguished. Reaching up, I caught the drop of blood on my fingertip.

“No. I’ll do it.” There would be no more gossip among witches about my being in Matthew’s control. I sucked the salty liquid from my numb fingertip. Lips and tongue tingled before the nerves in my mouth went dead.

The next thing I knew, there was cold air on my cheeks, perfumed with Marthe’s herbs. We were in the garden at Sept-Tours. Matthew’s arms were hard underneath my aching back, and he’d tucked my head into his neck. I stirred, looked around.

“We’re home,” he whispered, striding toward the lights of the chвteau.

“Ysabeau and Marthe,” I said, struggling to lift my head, “are they all right?”

“Perfectly all right,” Matthew replied, cuddling me closer.

We passed into the kitchen corridor, which was ablaze with light. It hurt my eyes, and I turned away from it until the pain subsided. One of my eyes seemed smaller than the other, and I narrowed the larger one so they matched. A group of vampires came into view, standing down the corridor from Matthew and me. Baldwin looked curious, Ysabeau furious, Marthe grim and worried. Ysabeau took a step, and Matthew snarled.

“Matthew,” she began in a patient voice, her eyes fixed on me with a look of maternal concern, “you need to call her family. Where is your phone?”

His arms tightened. My head felt too heavy for my neck. It was easier to lean it against Matthew’s shoulder.

“It’s in his pocket, I suppose, but he’s not going to drop the witch to get it. Nor will he let you get close enough to fish it out.” Baldwin handed Ysabeau his phone. “Use this.”

Baldwin’s gaze traveled over my battered body with such close attention that it felt as if ice packs were being applied and removed, one by one. “She certainly looks like she’s been through a battle.” His voice expressed reluctant admiration.

Marthe said something in Occitan, and Matthew’s brother nodded.

“Тc,” he said, eyeing me in appraisal.

“Not this time, Baldwin,” Matthew rumbled.

“The number, Matthew,” Ysabeau said crisply, diverting her son’s attention. He rattled it off, and his mother pushed the corresponding buttons, the faint electronic tones audible.

“I’m fine,” I croaked when Sarah picked up the phone. “Put me down, Matthew.”

“No, this is Ysabeau de Clermont. Diana is with us.”

There was more silence while Ysabeau’s icicle touches swept over me. “She is hurt, but her injuries are not life-threatening. Nevertheless, Matthew should bring her home. To you.”

“No. She’ll follow me. Satu mustn’t harm Sarah and Em,” I said, struggling to break free.

“Matthew,” Baldwin growled, “let Marthe see to her or keep her quiet.”

“Stay out of this, Baldwin,” Matthew snapped. His cool lips touched my cheeks, and my pulse slowed. His voice dropped to a murmur. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

“We can protect her from vampires.” Ysabeau sounded farther and farther away. “But not from other witches. She needs to be with those who can.” The conversation faded, and a curtain of gray fog descended.

This time I came to consciousness upstairs in Matthew’s tower. Every candle was lit, and the fire was roaring in the hearth. The room felt almost warm, but adrenaline and shock made me shiver. Matthew was sitting on his heels on the floor with me propped between his knees, examining my right forearm. My blood-soaked pullover had a long slit where Satu had cut me. A fresh red stain was seeping into the darker spots.

Marthe and Ysabeau stood in the doorway like a watchful pair of hawks.

“I can take care of my wife, Maman,” Matthew said.

“Of course, Matthew,” Ysabeau murmured in her patented subservient tone.

Matthew tore the last inch of the sleeve to fully expose my flesh, and he swore. “Get my bag, Marthe.”

“No,” she said firmly. “She is filthy, Matthew.”

“Let her take a bath,” Ysabeau joined in, lending Marthe her support. “Diana is freezing, and you cannot even see her injuries. This is not helping, my child.”

“No bath,” he said decidedly.

“Why ever not?” Ysabeau asked impatiently. She gestured at the stairs, and Marthe departed.

“The water would be full of her blood,” he said tightly. “Baldwin would smell it.”

“This is not Jerusalem, Matthew,” Ysabeau said. “He has never set foot in this tower, not since it was built.”

“What happened in Jerusalem?” I reached for the spot where Matthew’s silver coffin usually hung.

“My love, I need to look at your back.”

“Okay,” I whispered dully. My mind drifted, seeking an apple tree and my mother’s voice.

“Lie on your stomach for me.”

The cold stone floors of the castle where Satu had pinned me down were all too palpable under my chest and legs. “No, Matthew. You think I’m keeping secrets, but I don’t know anything about my magic. Satu said—”

Matthew swore again. “There’s no witch here, and your magic is immaterial to me.” His cold hand gripped mine, as sure and firm as his gaze. “Just lean forward over my hand. I’ll hold you.”

Seated on his thigh, I bent from the waist, resting my chest on our clasped hands. The position stretched the skin on my back painfully, but it was better than the alternative. Underneath me, Matthew stiffened.

“Your fleece is stuck to your skin. I can’t see much with it in the way. We’re going to have to put you in the bath for a bit before it can be removed. Can you fill the tub, Ysabeau?”

His mother disappeared, her absence followed by the sound of running water.

“Not too hot,” he called softly after her.

“What happened in Jerusalem?” I asked again.

“Later,” he said, lifting me gently upright.

“The time for secrets has passed, Matthew. Tell her, and be quick about it.” Ysabeau spoke sharply from the bathroom door. “She is your wife and has a right to know.”

“It must be something awful, or you wouldn’t have worn Lazarus’s coffin.” I pressed lightly on the empty spot above his heart.

With a desperate look, Matthew began his story. It came out of him in quick, staccato bursts. “I killed a woman in Jerusalem. She got between Baldwin and me. There was a great deal of blood. I loved her, and she—”

He’d killed someone else, not a witch, but a human. My finger stilled his lips. “That’s enough for now. It was a long time ago.” I felt calm but was shaking again, unable to bear any more revelations.

Matthew brought my left hand to his lips and kissed me hard on the knuckles. His eyes told me what he couldn’t say aloud. Finally he released both my hand and my eyes and spoke. “If you’re worried about Baldwin, we’ll do it another way. We can soak the fleece off with compresses, or you could shower.”

The mere thought of water falling on my back or the application of pressure convinced me to risk Baldwin’s possible thirst. “The bath would be better.”

Matthew lowered me into the lukewarm water, fully clothed right down to my running shoes. Propped in the tub, my back drawn away from the porcelain and the water wicking slowly up my fleece pullover, I began the slow process of letting go, my legs twitching and dancing under the water. Each muscle and nerve had to be told to relax, and some refused to obey.

While I soaked, Matthew tended to my face, his fingers pressing my cheekbone. He frowned in concern and called softly for Marthe. She appeared with a huge black medical bag. Matthew took out a tiny flashlight and checked my eyes, his lips pressed tightly together.

“My face hit the floor.” I winced. “Is it broken?”

“I don’t think so, mon coeur, just badly bruised.”

Marthe ripped open a package, and a whiff of rubbing alcohol reached my nose. When Matthew held the pad on the sticky part of my cheek, I gripped the sides of the tub, my eyes smarting with tears. The pad came away scarlet.

“I cut it on the edge of a stone.” My voice was matter-of-fact in an attempt to quiet the memories of Satu that the pain brought back.

Matthew’s cool fingers traced the stinging wound to where it disappeared under my hairline. “It’s superficial. You don’t need stitches.” He reached for a jar of ointment and smoothed some onto my skin. It smelled of mint and herbs from the garden. “Are you allergic to any medications?” he asked when he was through.

I shook my head.

He again called to Marthe, who trotted in with her arms full of towels. He rattled off a list of drugs, and Marthe nodded, jiggling a set of keys she pulled out of her pocket. Only one drug was familiar.

“Morphine?” I asked, my pulse beginning to race.

“It will alleviate the pain. The other drugs will combat swelling and infection.”

The bath had lulled some of my anxiety and lessened my shock, but the pain was getting worse. The prospect of banishing it was enticing, and I reluctantly agreed to the drug in exchange for getting out of the bath. Sitting in the rusty water was making me queasy.

Before climbing out, though, Matthew insisted on looking at my right foot. He hoisted it up and out of the water, resting the sole of my shoe against his shoulder. Even that slight pressure had me gasping.

“Ysabeau. Can you come here, please?”

Like Marthe, Ysabeau was waiting patiently in the bedroom in case her son needed help. When she came in, Matthew had her stand behind me while he snapped the water-soaked shoelaces with ease and began to pry the shoe from my foot. Ysabeau held my shoulders, keeping me from thrashing my way out of the tub.

I cried during Matthew’s examination—even after he stopped trying to pull the shoe off and began to rip it apart by tearing as precisely as a dressmaker cutting into fine cloth. He tore my sock off, too, and ripped along the seam of my leggings, then peeled the fabric away to reveal the ankle. It had a ring around it as though it had been closed in a manacle that had burned through the skin, leaving it black and blistered in places with odd white patches.

Matthew looked up, his eyes angry. “How was this done?”

“Satu hung me upside down. She wanted to see if I could fly.” I turned away uncertainly, unable to understand why so many people were furious with me over things that weren’t my fault.

Ysabeau gently took my foot. Matthew knelt beside the tub, his black hair slicked back from his forehead and his clothing ruined from water and blood. He turned my face toward him, looking at me with a mixture of fierce protectiveness and pride.

“You were born in August, yes? Under the sign of Leo?” He sounded entirely French, most of the Oxbridge accent gone.

I nodded.

“Then I will have to call you my lioness now, because only she could have fought as you did. But even la lionne needs her protectors.” His eyes flickered toward my right arm. My gripping the tub had made the bleeding resume. “Your ankle is sprained, but it’s not serious. I’ll bind it later. Now let’s see to your back and your arm.”

Matthew scooped me out of the tub and set me down, instructing me to keep the weight off my right foot. Marthe and Ysabeau steadied me while he cut off my leggings and underclothes. The three vampires’ premodern matter-of-factness about bodies left me strangely unconcerned at standing half naked in front of them. Matthew lifted the front hem of my soggy pullover, revealing a dark purple bruise that spread across my abdomen.

“Christ,” he said, his fingers pushing into the stained flesh above my pubic bone. “How the hell did she do that?”

“Satu lost her temper.” My teeth chattered at the memory of flying through the air and the sharp pain in my gut. Matthew tucked the towel around my waist.

“Let’s get the pullover off,” he said grimly. He went behind me, and there was a sting of cold metal against my back.

“What are you doing?” I twisted my head, desperate to see. Satu had kept me on my stomach for hours, and it was intolerable to have anyone—even Matthew—behind me. The trembling in my body intensified.

“Stop, Matthew,” Ysabeau said urgently. “She cannot bear it.”

A pair of scissors clattered to the floor.

“It’s all right.” Matthew nestled his body against mine like a protective shell. He crossed his arms over my chest, completely enfolding me. “I’ll do it from the front.”

Once the shaking subsided, he came around and resumed cutting the fabric away from my body. The cold air on my back told me that there wasn’t much of it left in any case. He sliced through my bra, then got the front panel of the pullover off.

Ysabeau gasped as the last shreds fell from my back.

“Maria, Deu maire.” Marthe sounded stunned.

“What is it? What did she do?” The room was swinging like a chandelier in an earthquake. Matthew whipped me around to face his mother. Grief and sympathy were etched on her face.

“La sorciиre est morte,” Matthew said softly.

He was already planning on killing another witch. Ice filled my veins, and there was blackness at the edges of my vision.

Matthew’s hands held me upright. “Stay with me, Diana.”

“Did you have to kill Gillian?” I sobbed.

“Yes.” His voice was flat and dead.

“Why did you let me hear this from someone else? Satu told me you’d been in my rooms—that you were using your blood to drug me. Why, Matthew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I was afraid of losing you. You know so little about me, Diana. Secrecy, the instinct to protect—to kill if I must. This is who I am.”

I turned to face him, wearing nothing but a towel around my waist. My arms were crossed over my bare chest, and my emotions careened from fear to anger to something darker. “So you’ll kill Satu also?”

“Yes.” He made no apologies and offered no further explanation, but his eyes were full of barely controlled rage. Cold and gray, they searched my face. “You’re far braver than I am. I’ve told you that before. Do you want to see what she did to you?” Matthew asked, gripping my elbows.

I thought for a moment, then nodded.

Ysabeau protested in rapid Occitan, and Matthew stopped her with a hiss.

“She survived the doing of it, Maman. The seeing of it cannot possibly be worse.”

Ysabeau and Marthe went downstairs to fetch two mirrors while Matthew patted my torso with feather-light touches of a towel until it was barely damp.

“Stay with me,” he repeated every time I tried to slip away from the rough fabric.

The women returned with one mirror in an ornate gilt frame from the salon and a tall cheval glass that only a vampire could have carried up to the tower. Matthew positioned the larger mirror behind me, and Ysabeau and Marthe held the other in front, angling it so that I could see both my back and Matthew, too.

But it couldn’t be my back. It was someone else’s—someone who had been flayed and burned until her skin was red, and blue, and black. There were strange marks on it, too—circles and symbols. The memory of fire erupted along the lesions.

“Satu said she was going to open me up,” I whispered, mesmerized. “But I kept my secrets inside, Mama, just like you wanted.”

Matthew’s attempt to catch me was the last thing I saw reflected in the mirror before the blackness overtook me.

I awoke next to the bedroom fire again. My lower half was still wrapped up in a towel, and I was sitting on the edge of one damask-covered chair, bent over at the waist, with my torso draped across a stack of pillows on another damask-covered chair. All I could see was feet, and someone was applying ointment to my back. It was Marthe, her rough strength clearly distinguishable from Matthew’s cool touches.

“Matthew?” I croaked, swiveling my head to the side to look for him.

His face appeared. “Yes, my darling?”

“Where did the pain go?”

“It’s magic,” he said, attempting a lopsided grin for my benefit.

“Morphine,” I said slowly, remembering the list of drugs he’d given to Marthe.

“That’s what I said. Everyone who has ever been in pain knows that morphine and magic are the same. Now that you’re awake, we’re going to wrap you up.” He tossed a spool of gauze to Marthe, explaining that it would keep down the swelling and further protect my skin. It also had the benefit of binding my breasts, since I would not be wearing a bra in the near future.

The two of them unrolled miles of white surgical dressing around my torso. Thanks to the drugs, I underwent the process with a curious sense of detachment. It vanished, however, when Matthew began to rummage in his medical bag and talk about sutures. As a child I’d fallen and stuck a long fork used for toasting marshmallows into my thigh. It had required sutures, too, and my nightmares had lasted for months. I told Matthew my fears, but he was resolute.

“The cut on your arm is deep, Diana. It won’t heal properly unless it’s sutured.”

Afterward the women got me dressed while Matthew drank some wine, his fingers shaking. I didn’t have anything that fastened up the front, so Marthe disappeared once more, returning with her arms full of Matthew’s clothing. They slid me into one of his fine cotton shirts. It swam on me but felt silky against my skin. Marthe carefully draped a black cashmere cardigan with leather-covered buttons—also Matthew’s—around my shoulders, and she and Ysabeau snaked a pair of my own stretchy black pants up my legs and over my hips. Then Matthew lowered me into a nest of pillows on the sofa.

“Change,” Marthe ordered, pushing him in the direction of the bathroom.

Matthew showered quickly and emerged from the bathroom in a fresh pair of trousers. He dried his hair roughly by the fire before pulling on the rest of his clothes.

“Will you be all right if I go downstairs for a moment?” he asked. “Marthe and Ysabeau will stay with you.”

I suspected his trip downstairs involved his brother, and I nodded, still feeling the effects of the powerful drug.

While he was gone, Ysabeau muttered every now and again in a language that was neither Occitan nor French, and Marthe clucked and fussed. They’d removed most of the ruined clothes and bloody linen from the room by the time Matthew reappeared. Fallon and Hector were padding along at his side, their tongues hanging out.

Ysabeau’s eyes narrowed. “Your dogs do not belong in my house.”

Fallon and Hector looked from Ysabeau to Matthew with interest. Matthew clicked his fingers and pointed to the floor. The dogs sank down, their watchful faces turned to me.

“They’ll stay with Diana until we leave,” he said firmly, and though his mother sighed, she didn’t argue with him.

Matthew picked up my feet and slid his body underneath them, his hands lightly stroking my legs. Marthe plunked down a glass of wine in front of him, then thrust a mug of tea into my hands. She and Ysabeau withdrew, leaving us alone with the watchful dogs.

My mind drifted, soothed by the morphine and the hypnotic touch of Matthew’s fingers. I sorted through my memories, trying to distinguish what was real from what I’d only imagined. Had my mother’s ghost really been in the oubliette, or was that a recollection of our time together before Africa? Or was it my mind’s attempt to cope with stress by fracturing off into an imaginary world? I frowned.

“What is it, ma lionne?” Matthew asked, his voice concerned. “Are you in pain?”

“No. I’m just thinking.” I focused on his face, pulling myself through the fog to his safer shores. “Where was I?”

“La Pierre. It’s an old castle that no one has lived in for years.”

“I met Gerbert.” My brain was playing hopscotch, not wanting to linger in one place for too long.

Matthew’s fingers stilled. “He was there?”

“Only in the beginning. He and Domenico were waiting when we arrived, but Satu sent them away.”

“I see. Did he touch you?” Matthew’s body tensed.

“On the cheek.” I shivered. “He had the manuscript, Matthew, long, long ago. Gerbert boasted about how he’d taken it from Spain. It was under a spell even then. He kept a witch enthralled, hoping she would be able to break the enchantment.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

I thought it was too soon and was about to tell him so, but the story spilled out. When I recounted Satu’s attempts to open me so that she could find the magic inside, Matthew rose and replaced the pillows supporting my back with his own body, cradling the length of me between his legs.

He held me while I spoke, and when I couldn’t speak, and when I cried. Whatever Matthew’s emotions when I shared Satu’s revelations about him, he held them firmly in check. Even when I told him about my mother sitting under an apple tree whose roots spread across La Pierre’s stone floors, he never pressed for more details, though he must have had a hundred unanswered questions.

It was not the whole tale—I left out my father’s presence, my vivid memories of bedtime stories, and running through the fields behind Sarah’s house in Madison. But it was a start, and the rest of it would come in time.

“What do we do now?” I asked when finished. “We can’t let the Congregation harm Sarah or Em—or Marthe and Ysabeau.”

“That’s up to you,” Matthew replied slowly. “I’ll understand if you’ve had enough.” I craned my neck to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes, staring resolutely out the window into the darkness.

“You told me we were mated for life.”

“Nothing will change the way I feel about you, but you aren’t a vampire. What happened to you today—” Matthew stopped, started again. “If you’ve changed your mind about this—about me—I’ll understand.”

“Not even Satu could change my mind. And she tried. My mother sounded so certain when she told me that you were the one I’d been waiting for. That was when I flew.” That wasn’t exactly it—my mother had said that Matthew was the one we had been waiting for. But since it made no sense, I kept it to myself.

“You’re sure?” Matthew tilted my chin up and studied my face.

“Absolutely.”

His face lost some of its anguish. He bent his head to kiss me, then drew back.

“My lips are the only part of me that doesn’t hurt.” Besides, I needed to be reminded that there were creatures in the world who could touch me without causing pain.

He pressed his mouth gently against mine, his breath full of cloves and spice. It took away the memories of La Pierre, and for a few moments I could close my eyes and rest in his arms. But an urgent need to know what would happen next pulled me back to alertness.

“So . . . what now?” I asked again.

“Ysabeau is right. We should go to your family. Vampires can’t help you learn about your magic, and the witches will keep pursuing you.”

“When?” After La Pierre, I was oddly content to let him do whatever he thought best.

Matthew twitched slightly underneath me, his surprise at my compliance evident. “We’ll join Baldwin and take the helicopter to Lyon. His plane is fueled and ready to leave. Satu and the Congregation’s other witches won’t come back here immediately, but they will be back,” he said grimly.

“Ysabeau and Marthe will be safe at Sept-Tours without you?”

Matthew’s laughter rumbled under me. “They’ve been in the thick of every major armed conflict in history. A pack of hunting vampires or a few inquisitive witches are unlikely to trouble them. I have something to see to, though, before we leave. Will you rest, if Marthe stays with you?”

“I’ll need to get my things together.”

“Marthe will do it. Ysabeau will help, if you’ll let her.”

I nodded. The idea of Ysabeau’s returning to the room was surprisingly comforting.

Matthew rearranged me on the pillows, his hands tender. He called softly to Marthe and Ysabeau and gestured the dogs to the stairs, where they took up positions reminiscent of the lions at the New York Public Library.

The two women moved silently about the room, their quiet puttering and snippets of conversation providing a soothing background noise that finally lulled me to sleep. When I woke several hours later, my old duffel bag was packed and waiting by the fire and Marthe was bent over it tucking a tin inside.

“What’s that?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“Your tea. One cup every day. Remember?”

“Yes, Marthe.” My head fell back on the pillows. “Thank you. For everything.”

Marthe’s gnarled hands stroked my forehead. “He loves you. You know this?” Her voice was gruffer than usual.

“I know, Marthe. I love him, too.”

Hector and Fallon turned their heads, their attention caught by a sound on the stairs that was too faint for me to hear. Matthew’s dark form appeared. He came to the sofa and took stock of me and nodded with approval after he felt my pulse. Then he scooped me into his arms as if I weighed nothing, the morphine ensuring that there was no more than an unpleasant tug on my back as he carried me down the stairs. Hector and Fallon brought up the rear of our little procession as we descended.

His study was lit only by firelight, and it cast shadows on the books and objects there. His eyes flickered to the wooden tower in a silent good-bye to Lucas and Blanca.

“We’ll be back—as soon as we can,” I promised.

Matthew smiled, but it never touched his eyes.

Baldwin was waiting for us in the hall. Hector and Fallon milled around Matthew’s legs, keeping anyone from getting close. He called them off so Ysabeau could approach.

She put her cold hands on my shoulders. “Be brave, daughter, but listen to Matthew,” she instructed, giving me a kiss on each check.

“I’m so sorry to have brought this trouble to your house.”

“Hein, this house has seen worse,” she replied before turning to Baldwin.

“Let me know if you need anything, Ysabeau.” Baldwin brushed her cheeks with his lips.

“Of course, Baldwin. Fly safely,” she murmured as he walked outside.

“There are seven letters in Father’s study,” Matthew told her when his brother was gone. He spoke low and very fast. “Alain will come to fetch them. He knows what to do.” Ysabeau nodded, her eyes bright.

“And so it begins again,” she whispered. “Your father would be proud of you, Matthew.” She touched him on the arm and picked up his bags.

We made our way—a line of vampires, dogs, and witch—across the chвteau’s lawns. The helicopter’s blades started moving slowly when we appeared. Matthew took me by the waist and lifted me into the cabin, then climbed in behind me.

We lifted off and hovered for a moment over the chвteau’s illuminated walls before heading east, where the lights of Lyon were visible in the dark morning sky.

My eyes remained firmly closed on the way to the airport. It would be a long time before I flew without thinking of Satu.

In Lyon everything was blindingly fast and efficient. Clearly Matthew had been arranging matters from Sept-Tours and had informed the authorities that the plane was being used for medical transport. Once he’d flashed his identification and airport personnel got a good look at my face, I was whisked into a wheelchair against my objections and pushed toward the plane while an immigration officer followed behind, stamping my passport. Baldwin strode in front, and people hastily got out of our way.

The de Clermont jet was outfitted like a luxury yacht, with chairs that folded down flat to make beds, areas of upholstered seating and tables, and a small galley where a uniformed attendant waited with a bottle of red wine and some chilled mineral water. Matthew got me settled in one of the recliners, arranging pillows like bolsters to take pressure off my back. He claimed the seat nearest me. Baldwin took charge of a table large enough to hold a board meeting, where he spread out papers, logged on to two different computers, and began talking incessantly on the phone.

After takeoff Matthew ordered me to sleep. When I resisted, he threatened to give me more morphine. We were still negotiating when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Marcus,” he said, glancing at the screen. Baldwin looked up from his table.

Matthew pushed the green button. “Hello, Marcus. I’m on a plane headed for New York with Baldwin and Diana.” He spoke quickly, giving Marcus no chance to reply. His son couldn’t have managed more than a few words before being disconnected.

No sooner had Matthew punched the phone’s red button than lines of text began to light up his screen. Text messaging must have been a godsend for vampires in need of privacy. Matthew responded, his fingers flying over the keys. The screen went dark, and he gave me a tight smile.

“Everything all right?” I asked mildly, knowing the full story would have to wait until we were away from Baldwin.

“Yes. He was just curious where we were.” This seemed doubtful, given the hour.

Drowsiness made it unnecessary for Matthew to make any further requests that I sleep. “Thank you for finding me,” I said, my eyes drifting closed.

His only response was to bow his head and rest it silently on my shoulder.

I didn’t wake until we landed at La Guardia, where we pulled in to the area reserved for private aircraft. Our arrival there and not at a busier, more crowded airport on the other side of town was yet another example of the magical efficiency and convenience of vampire travel. Matthew’s identification worked still more magic, and the officials sped us through. Once we’d cleared customs and immigration, Baldwin surveyed us, me in my wheelchair and his brother standing grimly behind.

“You both look like hell,” he commented.

“Ta gueule,” Matthew said with a false smile, his voice acid. Even with my limited French, I knew this wasn’t something you would say in front of your mother.

Baldwin smiled broadly. “That’s better, Matthew. I’m glad to see you have some fight left in you. You’re going to need it.” He glanced at his watch. It was as masculine as he was, the type made for divers and fighter pilots, with multiple dials and the ability to survive negative G-force pressure. “I have a meeting in a few hours, but I wanted to give you some advice first.”

“I’ve got this covered, Baldwin,” Matthew said in a dangerously silky voice.

“No, you don’t. Besides, I’m not talking to you.” Baldwin crouched down, folding his massive body so he could lock his uncanny, light brown eyes on mine. “Do you know what a gambit is, Diana?”

“Vaguely. It’s from chess.”

“That’s right,” he replied. “A gambit lulls your opponent into a sense of false safety. You make a deliberate sacrifice in order to gain a greater advantage.”

Matthew growled slightly.

“I understand the basic principles,” I said.

“What happened at La Pierre feels like a gambit to me,” Baldwin continued, his eyes never wavering. “The Congregation let you go for some reason of their own. Make your next move before they make theirs. Don’t wait your turn like a good girl, and don’t be duped into thinking your current freedom means you’re safe. Decide what to do to survive, and do it.”

“Thanks.” He might be Matthew’s brother, but Baldwin’s close physical presence was unnerving. I extended my gauze-wrapped right arm to him in farewell.

“Sister, that’s not how family bids each other adieu.” Baldwin’s voice was softly mocking. He gave me no time to react but gripped my shoulders and kissed me on the cheeks. As his face passed over mine, he deliberately breathed in my scent. It felt like a threat, and I wondered if he meant it as such. He released me and stood. “Matthew, а bientфt.”

“Wait.” Matthew followed his brother. Using his broad back to block my view, he handed Baldwin an envelope. The curved sliver of black wax on it was visible despite his efforts.

“You said you wouldn’t obey my orders. After La Pierre you might have reconsidered.”

Baldwin stared at the white rectangle. His face twisted sourly before falling into lines of resignation. Taking the envelope, he bowed his head and said, “Je suis а votre commande, seigneur.”

The words were formal, motivated by protocol rather than genuine feeling. He was a knight, and Matthew was his master. Baldwin had bowed—technically—to Matthew’s authority. But just because he had followed tradition, that did not mean he liked it. He raised the envelope to his forehead in a parody of a salute.

Matthew waited until Baldwin was out of sight before returning to me. He grasped the handles of the wheelchair. “Come, let’s get the car.”

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Matthew had made advance arrangements for our arrival. We picked up a Range Rover at the terminal curb from a man in uniform who dropped the keys into Matthew’s palm, stowed our bags in the trunk, and left without a word. Matthew reached into the backseat, plucked out a blue parka designed for arctic trekking rather than autumn in New York, and arranged it like a down-filled nest in the passenger seat.

Soon we were driving through early-morning city traffic and then out into the countryside. The navigation system had been programmed with the address of the house in Madison and informed us that we should arrive in a little more than four hours. I looked at the brightening sky and started worrying about how Sarah and Em would react to Matthew.

“We’ll be home just after breakfast. That will be interesting.” Sarah was not at her best before coffee—copious amounts of it—had entered her bloodstream. “We should call and let them know when to expect us.”

“They already know. I called them from Sept-Tours.”

Feeling thoroughly managed and slightly muzzy from morphine and fatigue, I settled back for the drive.

We passed hardscrabble farms and small houses with early-morning lights twinkling in kitchens and bedrooms. Upstate New York is at its best in October. Now the trees were on fire with red and gold foliage. After the leaves fell, Madison and the surrounding countryside would turn rusty gray and remain that way until the first snows blanketed the world in pristine white batting.

We turned down the rutted road leading to the Bishop house. Its late-eighteenth-century lines were boxy and generous, and it sat back from the road on a little knoll, surrounded by aged apple trees and lilac bushes. The white clapboard was in desperate need of repainting, and the old picket fence was falling down in places. Pale plumes rose in welcome from both chimneys, however, filling the air with the autumn scent of wood smoke.

Matthew pulled in to the driveway, which was pitted with ice-crusted potholes. The Range Rover rumbled its way over them, and he parked next to Sarah’s beat-up, once-purple car. A new crop of bumper stickers adorned the back. MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM, a perennial favorite, was stuck next to I’M PAGAN AND I VOTE. Another proclaimed WICCAN ARMY: WE WILL NOT GO SILENTLY INTO THE NIGHT. I sighed.

Matthew turned off the car and looked at me. “I’m supposed to be the nervous one.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Not as nervous as you are.”

“Coming home always makes me behave like a teenager. All I want to do is hog the TV remote and eat ice cream.” Though trying to be bright and cheerful for his sake, I was not looking forward to this homecoming.

“I’m sure we can arrange for that,” he said with a frown. “Meanwhile stop pretending nothing has happened. You’re not fooling me, and you won’t fool your aunts either.”

He left me sitting in the car while he carried our luggage to the front door. We’d amassed a surprisingly large amount of it, including two computer bags, my disreputable Yale duffel, and an elegant leather valise that might have been mistaken for a Victorian original. There was also Matthew’s medical kit, his long gray coat, my bright new parka, and a case of wine. The last was a wise precaution on Matthew’s part. Sarah’s taste ran to harder stuff, and Em was a teetotaler.

Matthew returned and lifted me out of the car, my legs swinging. Safely on the steps, I gingerly put weight on my right ankle. We both faced the house’s red, eighteenth-century door. It was flanked by tiny windows that offered a view of the front hall. Every lamp in the house was lit to welcome us.

“I smell coffee,” he said, smiling down at me.

“They’re up, then.” The catch on the worn, familiar door latch released at my touch. “Unlocked as usual.” Before losing my nerve, I warily stepped inside. “Em? Sarah?”

A note in Sarah’s dark, decisive handwriting was taped to the staircase’s newel post.

“Out. Thought the house needed some time alone with you first. Move slowly. Matthew can stay in Em’s old room. Your room is ready.” There was a postscript, in Em’s rounder scrawl. “Both of you use your parents’ room.”

My eyes swept over the doors leading from the hall. They were all standing open, and there was no banging upstairs. Even the coffin doors into the keeping room were quiet, rather than swinging wildly on their hinges.

“That’s a good sign.”

“What? That they’re out of the house?” Matthew looked confused.

“No, the silence. The house has been known to misbehave with new people.”

“The house is haunted?” Matthew looked around with interest.

“We’re witches—of course the house is haunted. But it’s more than that. The house is . . . alive. It has its own ideas about visitors, and the more Bishops there are, the worse it acts up. That’s why Em and Sarah left.”

A phosphorescent smudge moved in and out of my peripheral vision. My long-dead grandmother, whom I’d never met, was sitting by the keeping room’s fireplace in an unfamiliar rocking chair. She looked as young and beautiful as in her wedding picture on the landing upstairs. When she smiled, my own lips curved in response.

“Grandma?” I said tentatively.

He’s a looker, isn’t he? she said with a wink, her voice rustling like waxed paper.

Another head popped around the doorframe. I’ll say, the other ghost agreed. Should be dead, though.

My grandmother nodded. Suppose so, Elizabeth, but he is what he is. We’ ll get used to him.

Matthew was staring in the direction of the keeping room. “Someone is there,” he said, full of wonder. “I can almost smell them and hear faint sounds. But I can’t see them.”

“Ghosts.” Reminded of the castle dungeons, I looked around for my mother and father.

Oh, they’re not here, my grandmother said sadly.

Disappointed, I turned my attention from my dead family to my undead husband. “Let’s go upstairs and put the bags away. That will give the house a chance to know you.”

Before we could move another inch, a charcoal ball of fur rocketed out of the back of the house with a blood-chilling yowl. It stopped abruptly one foot away from me and transformed into a hissing cat. She arched her back and screeched again.

“Nice to see you too, Tabitha.” Sarah’s cat detested me, and the feeling was mutual.

Tabitha lowered her spine into its proper alignment and stalked toward Matthew.

“Vampires are more comfortable with dogs, as a rule,” he commented as Tabitha wound around his ankles.

With unerring feline instincts, Tabitha latched onto Matthew’s discomfort and was now determined to change his mind about her species. She butted her head against his shin, purring loudly.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. For Tabitha this was an astonishing display of affection. “She really is the most perverse cat in the history of the world.”

Tabitha hissed at me and resumed her sybaritic attention to Matthew’s lower legs.

“Just ignore her,” I recommended, hobbling toward the stairs. Matthew swept up the bags and followed.

Gripping the banister, I made a slow ascent. Matthew took each step with me, his face alight with excitement and interest. He didn’t seem at all alarmed that the house was giving him the once-over.

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.

Matthew helped me up the stairs to the attic bedroom where I’d endured my adolescence. It still had posters of musicians tacked to the walls and sported the strong shades of purple and green that were a teenager’s attempt at a sophisticated color scheme.

Downstairs, we explored the big formal rooms built to receive guests—the keeping room on one side of the front door and the office and small parlor opposite. We passed through the rarely used dining room and into the heart of the house—a family room large enough to serve as TV room and eating area, with the kitchen at the far end.

“It looks like Em’s taken up needlepoint—again,” I said, picking up a half-finished canvas with a basket of flowers on it. “And Sarah’s fallen off the wagon.”

“She’s a smoker?” Matthew gave the air a long sniff.

“When she’s stressed. Em makes her smoke outside—but you can still smell it. Does it bother you?” I asked, acutely aware of how sensitive he might be to the odor.

“Dieu, Diana, I’ve smelled worse,” he replied.

The cavernous kitchen retained its wall of brick ovens and a gigantic walk-in fireplace. There were modern appliances, too, and old stone floors that had endured two centuries of dropped pans, wet animals, muddy shoes, and other more witchy substances. I ushered him into Sarah’s adjacent workroom. Originally a freestanding summer kitchen, it was now connected to the house and still equipped with cranes for holding cauldrons of stew and spits for roasting meat. Herbs hung from the ceiling, and a storage loft held drying fruits and jars of her lotions and potions. The tour over, we returned to the kitchen

“This room is so brown.” I studied the decor while flicking the porch light on and off again, the Bishops’ long-standing signal that it was safe to enter. There was a brown refrigerator, brown wooden cabinets, warm red-brown brick, a brown rotary-dial phone, and tired brown-checked wallpaper. “What it needs is a fresh coat of white paint.”

Matthew’s chin lifted, and his eyes panned to the back door.

“February would be ideal for the job, if you’re offering to do the work,” a throaty voice said from the mudroom. Sarah rounded the corner, wearing jeans and an oversize plaid flannel shirt. Her red hair was wild and her cheeks bright with the cold.

“Hello, Sarah,” I said, backing up toward the sink.

“Hello, Diana.” Sarah stared fixedly at the bruise under my eye. “This is the vampire, I take it?”

“Yes.” I hobbled forward again to make the introductions. Sarah’s sharp gaze turned to my ankle. “Sarah, this is Matthew Clairmont. Matthew, my aunt, Sarah Bishop.”

Matthew extended his right hand. “Sarah,” he said, meeting her eyes without hesitation.

Sarah pursed her lips in response. Like me, she had the Bishop chin, which was slightly too long for the rest of her face. It was now jutting out even more.

“Matthew.” When their hands met, Sarah flinched. “Yep,” she said, turning her head slightly, “he’s definitely a vampire, Em.”

“Thanks for the help, Sarah,” Em grumbled, walking in with an armful of small logs and an impatient expression. She was taller than me or Sarah, and her shining silver cap of hair somehow made her look younger than the color would suggest. Her narrow face broke into a delighted smile when she saw us standing in the kitchen.

Matthew jumped to take the wood away from her. Tabitha, who had been absent during the first flurry of greeting, hampered his progress to the fireplace by tracing figure eights between his feet. Miraculously, the vampire made it to the other side of the room without stepping on her.

“Thank you, Matthew. And thank you for bringing her home as well. We’ve been so worried.” Em shook out her arms, bits of bark flying from the wool of her sweater.

“You’re welcome, Emily,” he said, his voice irresistibly warm and rich. Em already looked charmed. Sarah was going to be tougher, although she was studying Tabitha’s efforts to scale Matthew’s arm with amazement.

I tried to retreat into the shadows before Em got a clear look at my face, but I was too late. She gasped, horrified. “Oh, Diana.”

Sarah pulled out a stool. “Sit,” she ordered.

Matthew crossed his arms tightly, as if resisting the temptation to interfere. His wolfish need to protect me had not diminished just because we were in Madison, and his strong dislike of creatures getting too near me was not reserved for other vampires.

My aunt’s eyes traveled from my face down over my collarbones. “Let’s get the shirt off,” she said.

I reached for the buttons dutifully.

“Maybe you should examine Diana upstairs.” Em shot a worried look at Matthew.

“I don’t imagine he’ll get an eyeful of anything he hasn’t already seen. You aren’t hungry, are you?” Sarah said without a backward glance.

“No,” Matthew said drily, “I ate on the plane.”

My aunt’s eyes tingled across my neck. So did Em’s.

“Sarah! Em!” I was indignant.

“Just checking,” Sarah said mildly. The shirt was off now, and she took in the gauze wrapping on my forearm, my mummified torso, and the other cuts and bruises.

“Matthew’s already examined me. He’s a doctor, remember?”

Her fingers probed my collarbone. I winced. “He missed this, though. It’s a hairline fracture.” She moved up to the cheekbone. I winced again. “What’s wrong with her ankle?” As usual, I hadn’t been able to conceal anything from Sarah.

“A bad sprain accompanied by superficial first- and second-degree burns.” Matthew was staring at Sarah’s hands, ready to haul her off if she caused me too much discomfort.

“How do you get burns and a sprain in the same place?” Sarah was treating Matthew like a first-year medical student on grand rounds.

“You get them from being hung upside down by a sadistic witch,” I answered for him, squirming slightly as Sarah continued to examine my face.

“What’s under that?” Sarah demanded, as if I hadn’t spoken, pointing to my arm.

“An incision deep enough to require suturing,” Matthew replied patiently.

“What have you got her on?”

“Painkillers, a diuretic to minimize swelling, and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.” There was the barest trace of annoyance in his voice.

“Why is she wrapped up like a mummy?” Em asked, chewing on her lip.

The blood drained from my face. Sarah stopped what she was doing and gave me a probing look before she spoke.

“Let’s wait on that, Em. First things first. Who did this to you, Diana?”

“A witch named Satu Jдrvinen. I think she’s Swedish.” My arms crossed protectively over my chest.

Matthew’s mouth tightened, and he left my side long enough to pile more logs on the fire.

“She’s not Swedish, she’s Finnish,” Sarah said, “and quite powerful. The next time I see her, though, she’ll wish she’d never been born.”

“There won’t be much left of her after I’m done,” Matthew murmured, “so if you want a shot at her, you’ll have to reach her before I do. And I’m known for my speed.”

Sarah gave him an appraising look. Her words were only a threat. Matthew’s were something else entirely. They were a promise. “Who treated Diana besides you?”

“My mother and her housekeeper, Marthe.”

“They know old herbal remedies. But I can do a bit more.” Sarah rolled up her sleeves.

“It’s a little early in the day for witchcraft. Have you had enough coffee?” I looked at Em imploringly, silently begging her to call Sarah off.

“Let Sarah fix it, honey,” Em said, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. “The sooner she does, the sooner you’ll be fully healed.”

Sarah’s lips were already moving. Matthew edged closer, fascinated. She laid her fingertips on my face. The bone underneath tingled with electricity before the crack fused with a snap.

“Ow!” I held my cheek.

“It will only sting for a bit,” Sarah said. “You were strong enough to withstand the injury—you should have no problem with the cure.” She studied my cheek for a moment and nodded with satisfaction before turning to my collarbone. The electrical twinge required to mend it was more powerful, no doubt because the bones were thicker.

“Get her shoe off,” she instructed Matthew, headed for the stillroom. He was the most overqualified medical assistant ever known, but he obeyed her orders without a grumble.

When Sarah returned with a pot of one of her ointments, Matthew had my foot propped up on his thigh. “There are scissors in my bag upstairs,” he told my aunt, sniffing curiously as she unscrewed the pot’s lid. “Shall I go get them?”

“Don’t need them.” Sarah muttered a few words and gestured at my ankle. The gauze began to unwind itself.

“That’s handy,” Matthew said enviously.

“Show-off,” I said under my breath.

All eyes returned to my ankle when the gauze was finished rolling itself into a ball. It still looked nasty and was starting to ooze. Sarah calmly recited fresh spells, though the red spots on her cheeks hinted at her underlying fury. When she had finished, the black and white marks were gone, and though there was still an angry ring around my ankle, the joint itself was noticeably smaller in size.

“Thanks, Sarah.” I flexed my foot while she smeared fresh ointment over the skin.

“You won’t be doing any yoga for a week or so—and no running for three, Diana. It needs rest and time to fully recover.” She muttered some more and beckoned to a fresh roll of gauze, which started to wind around my foot and ankle.

“Amazing,” Matthew said again, shaking his head.

“Do you mind if I look at the arm?”

“Not at all.” He sounded almost eager. “The muscle was slightly damaged. Can you mend that, as well as the skin?”

“Probably,” Sarah said with just a hint of smugness. Fifteen minutes and a few muffled curses later, there was nothing but a thin red line running down my arm to indicate where Satu had sliced it open.

“Nice work,” Matthew said, turning my arm to admire Sarah’s skill.

“You, too. That was fine stitching.” Sarah drank thirstily from a glass of water.

I reached for Matthew’s shirt.

“You should see to her back as well.”

“It can wait.” I shot him an evil look. “Sarah’s tired, and so am I.”

Sarah’s eyes moved from me to the vampire. “Matthew?” she asked, relegating me to the bottom of the pecking order.

“I want you to treat her back,” he said without taking his eyes off me.

“No,” I whispered, clutching his shirt to my chest.

He crouched in front of me, hands on my knees. “You’ve seen what Sarah can do. Your recovery will be faster if you let her help you.”

Recovery? No witchcraft could help me recover from La Pierre.

“Please, mon coeur.” Matthew gently extricated his balled-up shirt from my hands.

Reluctantly I agreed. There was a tingle of witches’ glances when Em and Sarah moved around to study my back, and my instincts urged me to run. I reached blindly for Matthew instead, and he clasped both my hands in his.

“I’m here,” he assured me while Sarah muttered her first spell. The gauze wrappings parted along my spine, her words slicing through them with ease.

Em’s sharp intake of breath and Sarah’s silence told me when the marks were visible.

“This is an opening spell,” Sarah said angrily, staring at my back. “You don’t use this on living beings. She could have killed you.”

“She was trying to get my magic out—like I was a piсata.” With my back exposed, my emotions were swinging wildly again, and I nearly giggled at the thought of hanging from a tree while a blindfolded Satu swatted me with a stick. Matthew noticed my mounting hysteria.

“The quicker you can do this, the better, Sarah. Not to rush you, of course,” he said hastily. I could easily imagine the look he’d received. “We can talk about Satu later.”

Every bit of witchcraft Sarah used reminded me of Satu, and having two witches stand behind me made it impossible to keep my thoughts from returning to La Pierre. I burrowed more deeply inside myself for protection and let my mind go numb. Sarah worked more magic. But I could take no more and set my soul adrift.

“Are you almost done?” Matthew said, his voice taut with concern.

“There are two marks I can’t do much with. They’ll leave scars. Here,” Sarah said, tracing the lines of a star between my shoulder blades, “and here.” Her fingers moved down to my lower back, moving from rib to rib and scooping down to my waist in between.

My mind was no longer blank but seared with a picture to match Sarah’s gestures.

A star hanging above a crescent moon.

“They suspect, Matthew!” I cried, frozen to the stool with terror. Matthew’s drawerful of seals swam through my memories. They had been hidden so completely, I knew instinctively that the order of knights must be just as deeply concealed. But Satu knew about them, which meant the other witches of the Congregation probably did, too.

“My darling, what is it?” Matthew pulled me into his arms.

I pushed against his chest, trying to make him listen. “When I refused to give you up, Satu marked me—with your seal.”

He turned me inside his arms, protecting as much of my exposed flesh as he could. When he’d seen what was inscribed there, Matthew went still. “They no longer suspect. At last, they know.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded Sarah.

“May I have Diana’s shirt, please?”

“I don’t think the scars will be too bad,” my aunt said somewhat defensively.

“The shirt.” Matthew’s voice was icy.

Em tossed it to him. Matthew pulled the sleeves gently over my arms, drawing the edges together in front. He was hiding his eyes, but the vein in his forehead was pulsing.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He took my face in his hands. “Any vampire would know you were mine—with or without this brand on your back. Satu wanted to make sure that every other creature knew who you belonged to, as well. When I was reborn, they used to shear the hair from the heads of women who gave their bodies to the enemy. It was a crude way of exposing traitors. This is no different.” He looked away. “Did Ysabeau tell you?”

“No. I was looking for paper and found the drawer.”

“What the hell is going on?” Sarah snapped.

“I invaded your privacy. I shouldn’t have,” I whispered, clutching at his arms.

He drew away and stared at me incredulously, then crushed me to his chest without any concern for my injuries. Mercifully, Sarah’s witchcraft meant that there was very little pain. “Christ, Diana. Satu told you what I did. I followed you home and broke in to your rooms. Besides, how can I blame you for finding out on your own what I should have told you myself?”

A thunderclap echoed through the kitchen, setting the pots and pans clanging.

When the sound had faded into silence, Sarah spoke. “If someone doesn’t tell us what is going on immediately, all hell is going to break loose.” A spell rose to her lips.

My fingertips tingled, and winds circled my feet. “Back off, Sarah.” The wind roared through my veins, and I stepped between Sarah and Matthew. My aunt kept muttering, and my eyes narrowed.

Em put her hand on Sarah’s arm in alarm. “Don’t push her. She’s not in control.”

I could see a bow in my left hand, an arrow in my right. They felt heavy, yet strangely familiar. A few steps away, Sarah was in my sights. Without hesitation, my arms rose and drew apart in preparation to shoot.

My aunt stopped muttering in midspell. “Holy shit,” she breathed, looking at Em in amazement.

“Honey, put the fire down.” Em made a gesture of surrender.

Confused, I reexamined my hands. There was no fire in them.

“Not inside. If you want to unleash witchfire, we’ll go outside,” said Em.

“Calm down, Diana.” Matthew pinned my elbows to my sides, and the heaviness associated with the bow and arrow dissolved.

“I don’t like it when she threatens you.” My voice sounded echoing and strange.

“Sarah wasn’t threatening me. She just wanted to know what we were talking about. We need to tell her.”

“But it’s a secret,” I said, confused. We had to keep our secrets—from everyone—whether they involved my abilities or Matthew’s knights.

“No more secrets,” he said firmly, his breath against my neck. “They’re not good for either of us.” When the winds died down, he spun me tightly against him.

“Is she always like that? Wild and out of control?” Sarah asked.

“Your niece did brilliantly,” Matthew retorted, continuing to hold me.

Sarah and Matthew faced off across the kitchen floor.

“I suppose,” she admitted with poor grace when their silent battle had concluded, “though you might have told us you could control witchfire, Diana. It’s not exactly a run-of-the-mill ability.”

“I can’t control anything.” Suddenly I was exhausted and didn’t want to be standing up anymore. My legs agreed and began to buckle.

“Upstairs,” he said, his tone brooking no argument. “We’ll finish this conversation there.”

In my parents’ room, after giving me another dose of painkillers and antibiotics, Matthew tucked me into bed. Then he told my aunts more about Satu’s mark. Tabitha condescended to sit on my feet as he did so in order to be closer to the sound of Matthew’s voice.

“The mark Satu left on Diana’s back belongs to an . . . organization that my family started many years ago. Most people have long forgotten it, and those who haven’t think it doesn’t exist anymore. We like to preserve that illusion. With the star and moon on her back, Satu marked your niece as my property and made it known that the witches had discovered my family’s secret.”

“Does this secret organization have a name?” Sarah asked.

“You don’t have to tell them everything, Matthew.” I reached for his hand. There was danger associated with disclosing too much about the Knights of Lazarus. I could feel it, seeping around me like a dark cloud, and I didn’t want it to enfold Sarah and Em, too.

“The Knights of Lazarus of Bethany.” He said it quickly, as if afraid he’d lose his resolve. “It’s an old chivalric order.”

“Not really.” Matthew’s mouth twitched. “The Knights of Lazarus date back to the Crusades.”

“Didn’t we watch a television program about the Crusades that had an order of knights in it?” Em asked Sarah.

“The Templars. But all those conspiracy theories are nonsense. There’s no such thing as Templars now,” Sarah said decidedly.

“There aren’t supposed to be witches and vampires either, Sarah,” I pointed out.

Matthew reached for my wrist, his fingers cool against my pulse.

“This conversation is over for the present,” he said firmly. “There’s plenty of time to talk about whether the Knights of Lazarus exist or not.”

Matthew ushered out a reluctant Em and Sarah. Once my aunts were in the hall, the house took matters into its own hands and shut the door. The lock scraped in the frame.

“I don’t have a key for that room,” Sarah called to Matthew.

Unconcerned, Matthew climbed onto the bed, pulling me into the crook of his arm so that my head rested on his heart. Every time I tried to speak, he shushed me into silence.

“Later,” he kept repeating.

His heart pulsed once and then, several minutes later, pulsed again.

Before it could pulse a third time, I was sound asleep.

A combination of exhaustion, medication, and the familiarity of home kept me in bed for hours. I woke on my stomach, one knee bent and arm outstretched, searching vainly for Matthew.

Too groggy to sit up, I turned my head toward the door. A large key sat in the lock, and there were low voices on the other side. As the muzziness of sleep slowly gave way to awareness, the mumbling became clearer.

“It’s appalling,” Matthew snapped. “How could you let her go on this way?”

“We didn’t know about the extent of her power—not absolutely,” Sarah said, sounding equally furious. “She was bound to be different, given her parents. I never expected witchfire, though.”

“How did you recognize she was trying to call it, Emily?” Matthew softened his voice.

“A witch on Cape Cod summoned it when I was a child. She must have been seventy,” Em said. “I never forgot what she looked like or what it felt like to be near that kind of power.”

“Witchfire is lethal. No spell can ward it off, and no witchcraft can heal the burns. My mother taught me to recognize the signs for my own protection—the smell of sulfur, the way a witch’s arms moved,” said Sarah. “She told me that the goddess is present when witchfire is called. I thought I’d go to my grave without witnessing it, and I certainly never expected my niece to unleash it on me in my own kitchen. Witchfire—and witchwater, too?”

“I hoped the witchfire would be recessive,” Matthew confessed. “Tell me about Stephen Proctor.” Until recently, the authoritative tone he adopted in moments like this had seemed a vestige of his past life as a soldier. Now that I knew about the Knights of Lazarus, I understood it as part of his present, too.

Sarah was not accustomed to having anyone use that tone with her, however, and she bristled. “Stephen was private. He didn’t flaunt his power.”

“No wonder the witches went digging to discover it, then.”

My eyes closed tightly against the sight of my father’s body, opened up from throat to groin so that other witches could understand his magic. His fate had nearly been mine.

Matthew’s bulk shifted in the hall, and the house protested at the unusual weight. “He was an experienced wizard, but he was no match for them. Diana might have inherited his abilities—and Rebecca’s, too, God help her. But she doesn’t have their knowledge, and without it she’s helpless. She might as well have a target painted on her.”

I continued eavesdropping shamelessly.

“She’s not a transistor radio, Matthew,” Sarah said defensively. “Diana didn’t come to us with batteries and an instruction manual. We did the best we could. She became a different child after Rebecca and Stephen were killed, withdrawing so far that no one could reach her. What should we have done? Forced her to face what she was so determined to deny?”

“I don’t know.” Matthew’s exasperation was audible. “But you shouldn’t have left her like this. That witch held her captive for more than twelve hours.”

“We’ll teach her what she needs to know.”

“For her sake, it had better not take too long.”

“It will take her whole life,” Sarah snapped. “Magic isn’t macramй. It takes time.”

“We don’t have time,” Matthew hissed. The creaking of the floorboards told me Sarah had taken an instinctive step away from him. “The Congregation has been playing cat-and-mouse games, but the mark on Diana’s back indicates those days are over.”

“How dare you call what happened to my niece a game?” Sarah’s voice rose.

“Shh,” Em said. “You’ll wake her.”

“What might help us understand how Diana is spellbound, Emily?” Matthew was whispering now. “Can you remember anything about the days before Rebecca and Stephen left for Africa—small details, what they were worried about?”

Spellbound.

The word echoed in my mind as I slowly drew myself upright. Spellbinding was reserved for extreme circumstances—life-threatening danger, madness, pure and uncontrollable evil. Merely to threaten it earned you the censure of other witches.

Spellbound?

By the time I got to my feet, Matthew was at my side. He was frowning. “What do you need?”

“I want to talk to Em.” My fingers were snapping and turning blue. So were my toes, sticking out of the bandages that protected my ankle. The gauze on my foot snagged an old nail head poking up from the floor’s pine boards as I pushed past him.

Sarah and Em were waiting on the landing, trepidation on their faces.

“What’s wrong with me?” I demanded.

Emily crept into the crook of Sarah’s arm. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“You said I’m spellbound. That my own mother did it.” I was some kind of monster. It was the only possible explanation.

Emily heard my thoughts as if I’d spoken them aloud. “You’re not a monster, honey. Rebecca did it because she was afraid for you.”

“She was afraid of me, you mean.” My blue fingers provided an excellent reason for someone to be terrified. I tried to hide them but didn’t want to singe Matthew’s shirt, and resting them on the old wooden stair rail risked setting the whole house on fire.

Watch the rug, girl! The tall female ghost from the keeping room was peeking around Sarah and Em’s door and pointing urgently at the floor. I lifted my toes slightly.

“No one is afraid of you.” Matthew stared with frosty intensity at my back, willing me to face him.

“They are.” I pointed a sparkling finger at my aunts, eyes resolutely in their direction.

So am I, confessed another dead Bishop, this one a teenage boy with slightly protruding teeth. He was carrying a berry basket and wore a pair of ripped britches.

My aunts took a step backward as I continued to glare at them.

“You have every right to be frustrated.” Matthew moved so that he was standing just behind me. The wind rose, and touches of snow from his glance glazed my thighs, too. “Now the witchwind has come because you feel trapped.” He crept closer, and the air around my lower legs increased slightly. “See?”

Yes, that roiling feeling might be frustration rather than anger. Distracted from the issue of spellbinding, I turned to ask him more about his theories. The color in my fingers was already fading, and the snapping sound was gone.

“You have to try to understand,” Em pleaded. “Rebecca and Stephen went to Africa to protect you. They spellbound you for the same reason. All they wanted was for you to be safe.”

The house moaned through its timbers and held its breath, its old wooden joists creaking.

Coldness spread through me from the inside out.

“Is it my fault they died? They went to Africa and someone killed them—because of me?” I looked at Matthew in horror.

Without waiting for an answer, I made my way blindly to the stairs, unconcerned with the pain in my ankle or anything else except fleeing.

“No, Sarah. Let her go,” Matthew said sharply.

The house opened all the doors before me and slammed them behind as I went through the front hall, the dining room, the family room, and into the kitchen. A pair of Sarah’s gardening boots slipped over my bare feet, their rubber surfaces cold and smooth. Once outside, I did what I’d always done when the family was too much for me and went into the woods.

My feet didn’t slow until I had made it through the scraggy apple trees and into the shadows cast by the ancient white oaks and sugar maples. Out of breath and shaking with shock and exhaustion, I found myself at the foot of an enormous tree almost as wide as it was tall. Low, sprawling branches nearly touched the ground, their red and purple deeply lobed leaves standing out against the ashy bark.

All through my childhood and adolescence, I’d poured out my heart-break and loneliness underneath its limbs. Generations of Bishops had found the same solace here and carved their initials into the tree. Mine were gouged with a penknife next to the “RB” my mother had left before me, and I traced their curves before curling up in a ball near the rough trunk and rocking myself like a child.

There was a cool touch on my hair before the blue parka settled over my shoulders. Matthew’s solid frame lowered to the ground, his back scraping against the tree’s bark.

“Did they tell you what’s wrong with me?” My voice was muffled against my legs.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, mon coeur.”

“You have a lot to learn about witches.” I rested my chin on my knees but still wouldn’t look at him. “Witches don’t spellbind someone without a damn good reason.”

Matthew was quiet. I slid a sidelong glance in his direction. His legs were just visible from the corner of my eye—one stretched forward and the other bent—as was a long, white hand. It was draped loosely over his knee.

“Your parents had a damn good reason. They were saving their daughter’s life.” His voice was quiet and even, but there were stronger emotions underneath. “It’s what I would have done.”

“Did you know I was spellbound, too?” It wasn’t possible for me to keep from sounding accusatory.

“Marthe and Ysabeau figured it out. They told me just before we left for La Pierre. Emily confirmed their suspicions. I hadn’t had a chance to tell you.”

“How could Em keep this from me?” I felt betrayed and alone, just as I had when Satu told me about what Matthew had done.

“You must forgive your parents and Emily. They were doing what they thought was best—for you.”

“You don’t understand, Matthew,” I said, shaking my head stubbornly. “My mother tied me up and went to Africa as if I were an evil, deranged creature who couldn’t be trusted.”

“Your parents were worried about the Congregation.”

“That’s nonsense.” My fingers tingled, and I pushed the feeling back toward my elbows, trying to control my temper. “Not everything is about the damn Congregation, Matthew.”

“No, but this is. You don’t have to be a witch to see it.”

My white table appeared before me without warning, events past and present scattered on its surface. The puzzle pieces began to arrange themselves: my mother chasing after me while I clapped my hands and flew over the linoleum floor of our kitchen in Cambridge, my father shouting at Peter Knox in his study at home, a bedtime story about a fairy godmother and magical ribbons, both my parents standing over my bed saying spells and working magic while I lay quietly on top of the quilt. The pieces clicked into place, and the pattern emerged.

“My mother’s bedtime stories,” I said, turning to him in amazement. “She couldn’t tell me her plans outright, so she turned it all into a story about evil witches and enchanted ribbons and a fairy godmother. Every night she told me, so that some part of me would remember.”

“And do you remember anything else?”

“Before they spellbound me, Peter Knox came to see my father.” I shuddered, hearing the doorbell ringing and seeing again the expression on my father’s face when he opened the door. “That creature was in my house. He touched my head.” Knox’s hand resting on the back of my skull had produced an uncanny sensation, I recalled.

“My father sent me to my room, and the two of them fought. My mother stayed in the kitchen. It was strange that she didn’t come to see what was going on. Then my father went out for a long time. My mother was frantic. She called Em that night.” The memories were coming thick and fast now.

“Emily told me Rebecca’s spell was cast so that it would hold until the ‘shadowed man’ came. Your mother thought I would be able to protect you from Knox and the Congregation.” His face darkened.

“Nobody could have protected me—except me. Satu was right. I’m a sorry excuse for a witch.” My head went back to my knees again. “I’m not like my mother at all.”

Matthew stood, extending one hand. “Get up,” he said abruptly.

I slid my hand into his, expecting him to comfort me with a hug. Instead he pushed my arms into the sleeves of the blue parka and stepped away.

“You are a witch. It’s time you learned how to take care of yourself.”

“Not now, Matthew.”

“I wish we could let you decide, but we can’t,” he said brusquely. “The Congregation wants your power—or the knowledge of it at the very least. They want Ashmole 782, and you’re the only creature in more than a century to see it.”

“They want you and the Knights of Lazarus, too.” I was desperate to make this about something besides me and my ill-understood magic.

“They could have brought down the brotherhood before. The Congregation has had plenty of chances.” Matthew was obviously sizing me up and gauging my few strengths and considerable weaknesses. It made me feel vulnerable. “But they don’t really care about that. They don’t want me to have you or the manuscript.”

“But I’m surrounded by protectors. You’re with me—Sarah and Em, too.”

“We can’t be with you every moment, Diana. Besides, do you want Sarah and Emily to risk their lives to save yours?” It was a blunt question, and his face twisted. He backed away from me, eyes narrowed to slits.

“You’re frightening me,” I said as his body lowered into a crouch. The final, lingering touches of morphine drifted through my blood, chased away by the first rush of adrenaline.

“No I’m not.” He shook his head slowly, looking every inch a wolf as his hair swayed around his face. “I’d smell it if you were truly frightened. You’re just off balance.”

A rumbling began in the back of Matthew’s throat that was a far cry from the sounds he made when he felt pleasure. I took a wary step away from him.

“That’s better,” he purred. “At least you have a taste of fear now.”

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

He was gone without a word.

I blinked. “Matthew?”

Two cold patches bored into the top of my skull.

Matthew was hanging like a bat between two tree limbs, his arms outstretched like wings. His feet were hooked around another branch. He watched me intently, little flickers of frost my only indication of the changes in his focus.

“I’m not a colleague you’re having an argument with. This isn’t an academic dispute—this is life or death.”

“Come down from there,” I said sharply. “You’ve made your point.”

I didn’t see him land at my side, but I felt his cold fingers at my neck and chin, twisting my head to the side and exposing my throat. “If I were Gerbert, you’d be dead already,” he hissed.

“Stop it, Matthew.” I struggled to break free but made no progress.

“No.” His grip tightened. “Satu tried to break you, and you want to disappear because of it. But you have to fight back.”

“I am.” I pushed against his arms to prove my point.

“Not like a human,” Matthew said contemptuously. “Fight back like a witch.”

He vanished again. This time he wasn’t in the tree, nor could I feel his cold eyes on me.

“I’m tired. I’m going back to the house.” After I’d taken only three steps in that direction, there was a whoosh. Matthew had slung me over his shoulder, and I was moving—fast—the opposite way.

“You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Sarah and Em will be out here if you keep this up.” One of them was bound to sense that something was wrong. And if they didn’t, Tabitha would surely kick up a fuss.

“No they won’t.” Matthew set me on my feet deeper in the woods. “They promised not to leave the house—not if you screamed, no matter what danger they sensed.”

I crept backward, wanting to put some distance between me and his huge black eyes. The muscles in his legs coiled to spring. When I turned to make a run for it, he was already in front of me. I turned in the opposite direction, but he was there. A breeze stirred around my feet.

“Good,” he said with satisfaction. Matthew’s body lowered into the same position he’d taken stalking the stag at Sept-Tours, and the menacing growl started up again.

The breeze moved around my feet in gusts, but it didn’t increase. The tingling descended from my elbows into my nails. Instead of pushing back my frustration, I let the feeling mount. Arcs of blue electricity moved between my fingers.

“Use your power,” he rasped. “You can’t fight me any other way.”

My hands waved in his direction. It didn’t seem very threatening, but it was all I could think of. Matthew proved just how worthless my efforts were by pouncing on me and spinning me around before vanishing into the trees.

“You’re dead—again.” His voice came from somewhere to my right.

“Whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working!” I shouted in his direction.

“I’m right behind you,” he purred into my ear.

My scream split the silence of the forest, and the winds rose around me in a cyclonic cocoon. “Stay away!” I roared.

Matthew reached for me with a determined look, his hands shooting through my windy barrier. I flung mine in his direction, instinct taking over, and a rush of air knocked him back on his heels. He looked surprised, and the predator appeared in the depths of his eyes. He came at me again in another attempt to break the wind’s hold. Though I concentrated on pushing him back, the air didn’t respond as I wanted it to.

“Stop trying to force it,” Matthew said. He was fearless and had made his way through the cyclone, his fingers digging into my upper arms. “Your mother spellbound you so that no one could force your magic—not even you.”

“Then how do I call it when needed and control it when it’s not?”

“Figure it out.” Matthew’s snowy gaze flickered over my neck and shoulders, instinctively locating my major veins and arteries.

“I can’t.” A wave of panic engulfed me. “I’m not a witch.”

“Stop saying that. It’s not true, and you know it.” He dropped me abruptly. “Close your eyes. Start walking.”

“What?”

“I’ve watched you for weeks, Diana.” The way he was moving was completely feral, the smell of cloves so overpowering that my throat closed. “You need movement and sensory deprivation so that all you can do is feel.” He gave me a push, and I stumbled. When I turned back, he was gone.

My eyes circled the forest. The woods were eerily silent, the animals shielding themselves from the powerful predator in their midst.

Closing my eyes, I began to breathe deeply. A breeze ruffled past me, first in one direction, then in another. It was Matthew, taunting me. I focused on my breathing, trying to be as still as the rest of the creatures in the forest, then set out.

There was a tightness between my eyes. I breathed into it, too, remembering Amira’s yoga instruction and Marthe’s advice to let the visions pass through me. The tightness turned to tingling and the tingling to a sense of possibility as my mind’s eye—a witch’s third eye—opened fully for the first time.

It took in everything that was alive in the forest—the vegetation, the energy in the earth, the water moving underneath the ground—each vital force distinct in color and shade. My mind’s eye saw the rabbits crouched in the hollow of a tree, their hearts thundering in fear as they smelled the vampire. It detected the barn owls, their late-afternoon naps brought to a premature end by this creature who swung from tree limbs and jumped like a panther. The rabbits and owls knew they couldn’t escape him.

“King of the beasts,” I whispered.

Matthew’s low chuckle sounded through the trees.

No creature in the forest could fight Matthew and win. “Except me,” I breathed.

My mind’s eye swept over the forest. A vampire is not fully alive, and it was hard to find him amid the dazzling energy that surrounded me. Finally I located his shape, a concentration of darkness like a black hole, the edges glowing red where his preternatural life force met the vitality of the world. Instinctively turning my face in his direction alerted him to my scrutiny and he slid away, fading into the shadows between the trees.

With both eyes closed and my mind’s eye open, I started walking, hoping to lure him into following. Behind me his darkness detached from a maple tree in a gash of red and black amid the green. This time my face remained pointed in the opposite direction.

“I see you, Matthew,” I said softly.

“Do you, ma lionne? And what will you do about it?” He chuckled again but kept stalking me, the distance between us constant.

With each step my mind’s eye grew brighter, its vision more acute. There was a brushy shrub to my left, and I leaned to the right. Then there was a rock in front of me, its sharp gray edges protruding from the soil. I picked up my foot to keep from tripping.

The movement of air across my chest told me there was a small clearing. It wasn’t just the life of the forest that was speaking to me now. All around me the elements were sending messages to guide my way. Earth, air, fire, and water connected with me in tiny pinpricks of awareness that were distinct from the life in the forest.

Matthew’s energy focused in on itself and become darker and deeper. Then his darkness—his absence of life—arced through the air in a graceful pounce that any lion would have envied. He stretched his arms to grab me.

Fly, I thought, a second before his fingers touched my skin.

The wind rose from my body in a sudden whoosh of power. The earth released me with a gentle push upward. Just as Matthew had promised, it was easy to let my body follow where my thoughts had led. It took no more effort than following an imaginary ribbon up to the sky.

Far below, Matthew somersaulted in midair and landed lightly on his feet precisely where I’d stood a few moments before.

I soared above the treetops, my eyes wide. They felt full of the sea, as vast as the horizon, and bright with sunlight and stars. My hair floated on the currents of air, the ends of each strand turning into tongues of flame that licked my face without burning. The tendrils caressed my cheeks with warmth as the cold air swept past. A raven swooped by me in flight, amazed at this strange new creature sharing her airspace.

Matthew’s pale face was turned up to me, his eyes full of wonder. When our gazes connected, he smiled.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. There was a surge of desire, strong and visceral, and a rush of pride that he was mine.

My body dove toward him, and Matthew’s face turned in an instant from wonder to wariness. He snarled, unsure of me, his instincts warning that I might attack.

Pulling back on my nosedive, I descended more slowly until our eyes were level, my feet streaming behind in Sarah’s rubber boots. The wind whipped a lock of my flaming hair in his direction.

Don’t harm him. My every thought was focused on his safety. Air and fire obeyed me, and my third eye drank in his darkness.

“Stay away from me,” he growled, “just for a moment.” Matthew was struggling to master his predatory instincts. He wanted to hunt me now. The king of beasts didn’t like to be bested.

Paying no attention to his warning, I lowered my feet until they floated a few inches above the ground and held out my hand, palm upturned. My mind’s eye filled with the image of my own energy: a shifting mass of silver and gold, green and blue, shimmering like a morning star. I scooped some of it up, watching as it rolled from my heart through my shoulder and arm.

A pulsing, swirling ball of sky, sea, earth, and fire sat in my palm. The ancient philosophers would have called it a microcosm—a little world that contained fragments of me as well as the larger universe.

“For you,” I said, voice hollow. My fingers tipped toward him.

Matthew caught the ball as it fell. It moved like quicksilver, molding itself to his cold flesh. My energy came to a quivering rest in the scoop of his hand.

“What is it?” he asked, distracted from his urge to hunt by the gleaming substance.

“Me,” I said simply. Matthew fixed his attention on my face, his pupils engulfing the gray-green irises in a wave of black. “You won’t hurt me. I won’t hurt you either.”

The vampire cradled my microcosm carefully in his hand, afraid to spill a drop.

“I still don’t know how to fight,” I said sadly. “All I can do is fly away.”

“That’s the most important lesson a warrior learns, witch.” Matthew’s mouth turned what was usually a derogatory term among vampires into an endearment. “You learn how to pick your battles and let go of those you can’t win, to fight another day.”

“Are you afraid of me?” I asked, my body still hovering.

“No,” he said.

My third eye tingled. He was telling the truth. “Even though I have that inside me?” My glance flickered to the glowing, twitching mass in his hand.

Matthew’s face was guarded and careful. “I’ve seen powerful witches before. We still don’t know all that’s inside you, though. We have to find out.”

“I never wanted to know.”

“Why, Diana? Why wouldn’t you want these gifts?” He drew his hand tighter, as if my magic might be snatched away and destroyed before he understood its possibilities.

“Fear? Desire?” I said softly, touching his strong cheekbones with the tips of my fingers, shocked anew at the power of my love for him. Remembering what his daemon friend Bruno had written in the sixteenth century, I quoted it again. “‘Desire urges me on, as fear bridles me.’ Doesn’t that explain everything that happens in the world?”

“Everything but you,” he told me, his voice thick. “There’s no accounting for you.”

My feet touched the ground, and I pulled my fingers from his face, slowly unfurling them. My body seemed to know the smooth movement, though my mind was quick to register its strangeness. The piece of myself that I’d given to Matthew leaped from his hand into mine. My palm closed around it, the energy quickly reabsorbed. There was the tingle of a witch’s power, and I recognized it as my own. I hung my head, frightened by the creature I was becoming.

Matthew’s fingertip drew aside my curtain of hair. “Nothing will hide you from this magic—not science, not willpower, not concentration. It will always find you. And you can’t hide from me either.”

“That’s what my mother said in the oubliette. She knew about us.” Frightened by the memory of La Pierre, my mind’s eye closed protectively. I shivered, and Matthew drew me near. It was no warmer in his cold arms, but it felt far safer.

“Perhaps that made it easier for them, to know you wouldn’t be alone,” Matthew said softly. His lips were cool and firm, and my own parted to draw him closer. He buried his face in my neck, and I heard him take in my scent with a sharp inhalation. He pulled away with reluctance, smoothing my hair and tucking the parka more closely around me.

“Will you train me to fight, like one of your knights?”

Matthew’s hands stilled. “They knew how to defend themselves long before coming to me. But I’ve trained warriors in the past—humans, vampires, daemons. Even Marcus, and God knows he was a challenge. Never a witch, though.”

“Let’s go home.” My ankle was still throbbing, and I was ready to drop with fatigue. After a few halting steps, Matthew swung me onto his back like a child and walked through the twilight with my arms clasped around his neck. “Thank you again for finding me,” I whispered when the house came into view. He knew this time I wasn’t talking about La Pierre.

“I’d stopped looking long ago. But there you were in the Bodleian Library on Mabon. A historian. A witch, no less.” Matthew shook his head in disbelief.

“That’s what makes it magic,” I said, planting a soft kiss above his collar. He was still purring when he put me down on the back porch.

Matthew went to the woodshed to get more logs for the fire, leaving me to make peace with my aunts. Both of them looked uneasy.

“I understand why you kept it secret,” I explained, giving Em a hug that made her gasp with relief, “but Mom told me the time for secrets was over.”

“You’ve seen Rebecca?” Sarah said carefully, her face white.

“In La Pierre. When Satu tried to frighten me into cooperating with her.” I paused. “Daddy, too.”

“Was she . . . were they happy?” Sarah had to choke out the words. My grandmother was standing behind her, watching with concern.

“They were together,” I said simply, looking out the window to see if Matthew was headed back to the house.

“And they were with you,” Em said firmly, her eyes full. “That means they were more than happy.”

My aunt opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and closed it again.

“What, Sarah?” I said, putting a hand on her arm.

“Did Rebecca speak to you?” Her voice was hushed.

“She told me stories. The same stories she told me when I was a little girl—about witches and princes and a fairy godmother. Even though she and Daddy spellbound me, Mom tried to find a way to make me remember my magic. But I wanted to forget.”

“That last summer, before your mom and dad went to Africa, Rebecca asked me what made the most lasting impression on children. I told her it was the stories their parents read to them at night, and all the messages about hope and strength and love that were embedded in them.” Em’s eyes were spilling over now, and she dashed her tears away.

“You were right,” I said softly.

Though the three witches had made amends, when Matthew came into the kitchen, his arms laden with wood, Sarah pounced on him.

“Don’t ever ask me to ignore Diana’s cries for help, and don’t you ever threaten her again—no matter what the reason. If you do, I’ll put a spell on you that will make you wish you’d never been reborn. Got that, vampire?”

“Of course, Sarah,” Matthew murmured blandly, in perfect imitation of Ysabeau.

We ate dinner at the table in the family room. Matthew and Sarah were in an uneasy state of dйtente, but open warfare threatened when my aunt saw that there wasn’t a scrap of meat in sight.

“You’re smoking like a chimney,” Em said patiently when Sarah grumbled about the lack of “real” food. “Your arteries will thank me.”

“You didn’t do it for me,” Sarah said, shooting Matthew an accusatory glance. “You did it so he wouldn’t feel the urge to bite Diana.”

Matthew smiled mildly and pulled the cork from a bottle he’d brought in from the Range Rover. “Wine, Sarah?”

She eyed the bottle suspiciously. “Is that imported?”

“It’s French,” he said, pouring the deep red liquid into her water tumbler.

“I don’t like the French.”

“Don’t believe everything you read. We’re much nicer than we’re made out to be,” he said, teasing her into a grudging smile. “Trust me, we’ll grow on you.” As if to prove it, Tabitha jumped onto his shoulder from the floor and sat there like a parrot for the rest of the meal.

Matthew drank his wine and chatted about the house, asking Sarah and Em about the state of the farm and the place’s history. I was left with little to do but watch them—these three creatures I loved so much—and wolf down large quantities of chili and cornbread.

When at last we went up to bed, I slipped between the sheets naked, desperate to feel Matthew’s cool body against mine. He joined me, drawing me toward his bare flesh.

“You’re warm,” he said, snuggling more tightly against me.

“Mmm. You smell good,” I said, my nose pressed against his chest. The key turned itself in the lock. It had been there when I woke up that afternoon. “Was the key in the bureau?”

“The house had it.” His laughter rumbled underneath me. “It shot out of the floorboards next to the bed at an angle, hit the wall over the light switch, and slid down. When I didn’t pick it up straightaway, it flew across the room and landed in my lap.”

I laughed while his fingers drifted around my waist. He studiously avoided Satu’s marks.

“You have your battle scars,” I said, hoping to soothe him. “Now I have mine.”

His lips found mine unerringly in the darkness. One hand moved to the small of my back, covering the crescent moon. The other traveled between my shoulder blades, blotting out the star. No magic was necessary to understand his pain and regret. It was everywhere evident—in his gentle touch, the words he murmured in the darkness, and his body that was so solid next to mine. Gradually he let go of the worst of his fear and anger. We touched with mouths and fingers, our initial urgency slowing to prolong the joy of reunion.

Stars burst into life at the peak of my pleasure, and a few still hung beneath the ceiling, sparkling and sputtering out the remainder of their brief lives while we lay in each other’s arms and waited for the morning to find us.