“That’s older than old. I just can’t believe there’s a vampire at Yale.”
“You’ve obviously never been to the astronomy department,” Game Boy said. “There are four vampires on the faculty there. And that new professor in economics—the woman they hired away from MIT—is definitely a vamp. Rumor has it there are a few in the chemistry department, but they keep to themselves.”
“There are witches at Yale, too.” My voice was quiet, and I avoided Shotgun’s eyes. “We’ve lived alongside humans for millennia. Surely you’ll want to study all three creature chromosomes, Professor Roberts?”
“I will.” Chris’s smile was slow and heartfelt. “Are you volunteering your DNA, Professor Bishop?”
“Let’s take one creature chromosome at a time.” Matthew gave Chris a warning look. He might be willing to let students pore over his genetic information, but Matthew remained unconvinced about letting them pry into mine.
Jonathan looked at me appraisingly. “So it’s witches who sparkle?”
“It’s really more of a glimmer,” I said. “Not all witches have it. I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess.”
Saying the words felt freeing, and when nobody ran screaming from the room, I was flooded with a wave of relief and hope. I also had an insane urge to giggle.
“Lights, please.” Chris said.
The lights came up gradually.
“You said we were working on several projects?” Beaker prompted.
“You’ll be analyzing this, too.” I reached into my messenger bag and drew out a large manila envelope. It was stiffened with cardboard inserts so that the contents wouldn’t be bent and damaged. I untied the strings and pulled out the page from the Book of Life. The brightly colored illustration of the mystical union of Sol and Luna shone in the lab’s fluorescent lights. Someone whistled. Shotgun straightened, his eyes fixed on the page.
“Hey, that’s the chemical wedding of mercury and sulfur,” Jonathan said. “I remember seeing that in class, Professor Bishop.”
I gave my former student an approving nod.
“Shouldn’t that be in the Beinecke?” Shotgun asked Matthew. “Or somewhere else that’s safe?”
The emphasis he placed on “safe” was so slight that I thought I might have imagined it. The expression on Matthew’s face told me I hadn’t.
“Surely it’s safe here, Richard?” The prince-assassin was back in Matthew’s smile. It made me uncomfortable to see Matthew’s lethal personae among the flasks and test tubes.
“What are we supposed to do with it?” Mulder asked, openly curious.
“Analyze its DNA,” I replied. “The illumination is on skin. I’d like to know how old the skin is— and the type of creature it came from.”
“I just read about this kind of research,” Jonathan said. “They’re doing mtDNA analysis on medieval books. They hope it will help to date them and determine where they were made.”
Mitochondrial DNA recorded what an organism had inherited from all its maternal ancestors.
“Maybe you could pull those articles for your colleagues, in case they’re not as well read as you are.” Matthew looked pleased that Jonathan was up to date on the literature. “But we’ll be extracting nuclear DNA as well as mtDNA.”
“That’s impossible,” Shotgun protested. “The parchment has gone through a chemical process to turn skin into a writing surface. Both its age and the changes it underwent during manufacture would damage the DNA—if you could even extract enough to work with.”
“It’s difficult, but not impossible,” Matthew corrected. “I’ve worked extensively with old, fragile, and damaged DNA. My methods should work with this sample, too.”
There were excited looks around the room as the implications of the two research plans sank in.
Both projects represented the kind of work that all scientists hoped to do, no matter what stage of their career they were in.
“You don’t think cows or goats gave their hide for that page, do you, Dr. Bishop?” Beaker’s uneasy voice quieted the room.
“No. I think it was a daemon, a human, a vampire, or a witch.” I was pretty sure it wasn’t human skin but couldn’t rule it out entirely.
“Human?” Scully’s eyes popped at the idea. The prospect of other creatures being flayed to make a book didn’t seem to alarm her.
“Anthropodermic bibliopegy,” Mulder whispered. “I thought it was a myth.”
“Technically it’s not anthropodermic bibliopegy,” I said. “The book this came from isn’t just bound in creature remains—it’s completely constructed from it.”
“Why?” Bones asked. “Why not?” Daisy replied enigmatically. “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Matthew said, plucking the page from my fingers. “We’re scientists. The whys come after the whats.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” Chris said. “You all