“Christ,” Matthew said. “They were babes. What business did they have with the dead?”
“Apparently they wanted to know if Bobby Woodruff liked Mary Bassett,” I said, peering at the cramped script.
“Why didn’t they just ask Bobby Woodruff?” Matthew wondered.
I flipped through the pages. Binding spells, banishing spells, protection spells, charms to summon the elemental powers—they were all in there, along with love magic and other coercive enchantments.
My fingers stopped. Matthew sniffed.
Something thin and almost transparent was pressed onto one of the pages in the back of the book.
Scrawled above it in a more mature version of the same round hand were the words:
Diana:
Happy Birthday! I kept this for you.
It was our first indication that you were going to be a great witch.
Maybe you’ll need it one day.
Lots of love, Mom
“It’s my caul.” I looked up at Matthew. “Do you think it’s meaningful that I got it back on the same day the babies quickened?”
“No,” Matthew said. “It’s far more likely that the house gave it back to you tonight because you finally stopped running from what your mother and father knew since the very beginning.”
“What’s that?” I frowned.
“That you were going to possess an extraordinary combination of your parents’ very different magical abilities,” he replied.
The tenth knot burned on my wrist. I turned over my hand and looked at its writhing shape.
“That’s why I can tie the tenth knot,” I said, understanding for the first time where the power came from. “I can create because my father was a weaver, and I can destroy because my mother had the talent for higher, darker magics.”
“A union of opposites,” Matthew said. “Your parents were an alchemical wedding, too. One that produced a marvelous child.”
I closed the spell book carefully. It would take me months—years, perhaps—to learn from my mother’s mistakes and create spells of my own that would achieve the same ends. With one hand pressing my mother’s spell book to my sternum and the other pressed against my abdomen, I leaned back and listened to the slow beating of Matthew’s heart.
“‘Do not refuse me because I am dark and shadowed,’” I whispered, remembering a line from an alchemical text I’d studied in Matthew’s library. “That line from the Aurora Consurgens used to remind me of you, but now it makes me think of my parents, as well as my own magic and how hard I resisted it.” Matthew’s thumb stroked my wrist, bringing the tenth knot to brilliant, colorful life.
“This reminds me of another part of the Aurora Consurgens,” he murmured. “‘As I am the end, so
my lover is the beginning. I encompass the whole work of creation, and all knowledge is hidden in me.’”
“What do you think it means?” I turned my head so I could see his expression.
He smiled, and his arms circled my waist, one hand now resting on the babies. They moved as if recognizing their father’s touch. “That I am a very lucky man,” Matthew replied.
12
I woke up to Matthew’s cool hands sliding under my pajama top, his lips soothing against my damp neck.
“Happy birthday,” he murmured.
“My own private air conditioner,” I said, snuggling against him. A vampire husband brought welcome relief in tropical conditions. “What a thoughtful present.”
“There are more,” he said, giving me a slow, wicked kiss.
“Fernando and Sarah?” I was almost past caring who might hear our lovemaking, but not quite.
“Outside. In the garden hammock. With the paper.”
“We’ll have to be quick, then.” The local papers were short on news and long on advertisements.
They took ten minutes to read—fifteen if you were shopping the back-to-school sales or wanted to know which of the three grocery chains had the best deal on bleach.
“I went out for the New York Times this morning,” he said.
“Always prepared, aren’t you?” I reached down and touched him. Matthew swore. In French.
“You’re just like Verin. Such a Boy Scout.”
“Not always,” he said, closing his eyes. “Not now, certainly.”
“Awfully sure of yourself, too.” My mouth slid along his in a teasing kiss. “The New York Times.
What if I were tired? Cranky? Or hormonal? The Albany paper would have been more than enough to keep them busy then.”
“I was relying on my presents to sweeten you up.”
“Well, I don’t know.” A sinuous twist of my hand elicited another French curse. “Why don’t I finish unwrapping this one? Then you can show me what else you’ve got.”
By eleven o’clock on my birthday morning, the mercury had already climbed above ninety degrees. The August heat wave showed