“No, I have never worked there,” I said, adding, “but I believe I know the owner.”
“Señor Gonçalves nominated me for this job after I was made redundant,” Rima said. “The Congregation’s former librarian retired quite unexpectedly in July, after suffering a heart attack. The librarians are, by tradition, human. Sieur Baldwin took on the task of replacing him.”
The librarian’s heart attack—and Rima’s appointment—had come a few weeks after Baldwin found out about my blood vow. I strongly suspected that my new brother had engineered the whole business. The de Clermonts’ king became more interesting by the hour.
“You are keeping us waiting, Professor Bishop,” Gerbert said testily, though based on the hum of conversation among the delegates he was the only creature who minded.
“Allow Professor Bishop a chance to get her bearings. It is her first meeting,” said the dimpled witch in a broad Scots accent. “Are you able to remember yours, Gerbert, or is that happy day lost in the mists of time?”
“Give that witch a chance and she’ll spellbind us all,” Gerbert said. “Do not underestimate her, Janet. Knox’s assessment of her childhood power and potential was grossly misleading, I fear.”
“Thank you kindly, but I don’t believe it’s I who needs the warning,” Janet said with a twinkle in her gray eyes.
I took the folio from Rima and passed her the folded document that gave the Bishop-Clairmont family official standing in the vampire world.
“Can you file that, please?” I asked.
“Happily, Madame de Clermont,” Rima said. “The Congregation librarian is also its secretary. I’ll take whatever actions the document requires while you are meeting.”
Having handed off the papers that formally established the Bishop-Clairmont scion, I circumnavigated the table, the black cloak billowing around my feet.
“Nice tats,” Agatha whispered as I walked by, pointing to her own hairline. “Great cape, too.”
I smiled at her without comment and kept going. When I reached my chair, I wrestled with the damp cloak, not wanting to relinquish the tote bag while I did so. Finally I managed to get it off and hung it over the back of my chair.
“There are hooks by the door,” Gerbert said.
I turned to face him. His eyes widened. My jacket had long sleeves to hide the Book of Life’s text, but my eyes were fully on view. And I’d deliberately pulled my hair back into a long red braid that revealed the tips of the branches that covered my scalp.
“My power is unsettled at the moment, and some people are made uncomfortable by my appearance,” I said. “I prefer to keep my cloak nearby. Or I can use a disguising spell like Satu. But hiding in plain sight is as much a lie as any spoken form of deceit.”
I looked at each creature of the Congregation in turn, daring any of them to react to the letters and symbols that I knew were passing across my eyes.
Satu glanced away, but not quickly enough to mask her frightened look. The sudden movement stretched her poor excuse for a disguising spell. I searched for the spell’s signature, but there was none. Satu’s disguising spell had not been cast. She herself had woven it—and not very skillfully.
I know your secret, sister, I said silently.
And I have long suspected yours, Satu replied, her voice as bitter as wormwood.
Oh, I’ve picked up a few more along the way, I said.
After my slow survey of the room, only Agatha risked asking a question.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
“I chose my path.” I dropped the tote bag on the table and lowered myself into the chair. The bag was bound to me so tightly that even at this short distance I could feel the tug.
“What’s that?” Domenico asked suspiciously.
“A Bodleian Library tote bag.” I had taken it from the library shop when we retrieved the Book of Life, making sure to leave a twenty-pound note under the pencil cup near the till. Fittingly, the canvas bag had the library oath emblazoned upon it in red and black letters.
Domenico opened his mouth to ask another question, but I silenced him with a look. I had waited long enough for today’s meeting to begin. Domenico could ask me questions after Matthew was free.
“I call this meeting to order. I am Diana Bishop, Philippe de Clermont’s blood-sworn daughter, and I represent the de Clermonts.” I turned to Domenico. He crossed his arms and refused to speak. I continued.
“This is Domenico Michele, and Gerbert of Aurillac is to my left. I know Agatha Wilson from Oxford, and Satu Järvinen and I spent some time together in France.” My back smarted with the memory of her fire. “I’m afraid the rest of you will have to introduce yourselves.”
“I am Osamu Watanabe,” said the young male daemon sitting next to Agatha. “You look like a manga character. Can I draw you later?”
“Sure,” I said, hoping that the character in question didn’t turn out to be evil.
“Tatiana Alkaev,” said a platinum blond daemon with the dreamy blue eyes. All she needed was a sleigh pulled by white horses and she would be the perfect heroine in a Russian fairy tale. “You’re full of answers, but I have no questions at this time.”
“Excellent.” I turned to the witch with the forbidding expression and the execrable taste in clothing. “And you?”
“I am Sidonie von Borcke,” she said, putting on a pair of reading glasses and opening her leather folio with a snap. “And I have no knowledge of this so-called blood vow.”
“It’s in the librarian’s report. Second page, at the bottom, in the addendum, third line,” Osamu said helpfully. Sidonie glared at him. “I seem to recall that it begins ‘Additions to vampire pedigrees (alphabetical): Almasi, Bettingcourt, de Clermont, Díaz—”
“Yes, I see it now, Mr. Watanabe,” Sidonie snapped.
“I believe it’s my turn to be introduced, dear Sidonie.” The white-haired witch smiled beneficently. “I am Janet Gowdie, and meeting you is a long-awaited pleasure. I knew your father and mother. They were a great credit to our people, and I still feel their loss keenly.”
“Thank you,” I said, moved by the woman’s simple tribute.
“We were told the de Clermonts had a motion for us to consider?” Janet gently steered the meeting back on track.
I gave her a grateful look. “The de Clermonts formally request the assistance of the Congregation in tracking down a member of the Bishop-Clairmont scion, Benjamin Fox or Fuchs. Mr. Fox contracted blood rage from his father, my husband, Matthew Clairmont, and has been kidnapping and raping witches for centuries in an attempt to impregnate them, mostly in the area surrounding the Polish city of Chelm. Some of you may remember complaints made by the Chelm coven, which the Congregation ignored. To date, Benjamin’s desire to create a witch-vampire child has been thwarted, in large part because he does not know what the witches discovered long ago—namely, that vampires with blood rage can reproduce biologically, but only with a particular kind of witch called a weaver.”