“Hi!” Marcus waved happily from a high catwalk that circled the room and supported still more boxes and stacks. The dire revelations that Ysabeau feared apparently hadn’t happened yet. “Hamish was just about to come and get you.”
Marcus vaulted over the catwalk railing and landed softly next to Phoebe. With no ladder or staircase in sight, there was no way to get to that level of storage except to climb using the rough stones for handholds and no way to get down except to jump. Vampire security at its finest.
“What are you looking for?” Matthew said with just the right touch of curiosity. Marcus would never suspect that he had been tipped off.
“A way to get Baldwin off our backs, of course,” Marcus said. He handed a worn notebook to Hamish. “There you go. Godfrey’s notes on vampire law.”
Hamish turned the pages, clearly searching for some useful piece of legal information. Godfrey had been the youngest of Philippe’s three male children, known for his formidable, devious intellect. A sense of foreboding began to take root.
“And have you found it?” Matthew said, glancing at the scroll.
“Come and see.” Marcus beckoned us toward the table.
“You’ll love this, Diana,” Sarah said, adjusting her reading glasses. “Marcus said it’s a de Clermont family tree. It looks really old.”
“It is,” I said. The genealogy was medieval, with brightly colored likenesses of Philippe and Ysabeau standing in separate square boxes at the top of the page. Their hands were clasped across the space that divided them. Ribbons of color connected them to the roundels below. Each bubble contained a name. Some were familiar to me—Hugh, Baldwin, Godfrey, Matthew, Verin, Freyja, Stasia. Many were not.
“Twelfth century. French. In the style of the workshop at Saint-Sever,” Phoebe said, confirming my sense of the age of the work.
“It all started when I complained to Gallowglass about Baldwin’s interference. He told me that Philippe was nearly as bad and that when Hugh got fed up, he struck out on his own with Fernando,” Marcus explained. “Gallowglass called their family a scion and said sometimes scions were the only way to keep the peace.”
The look of suppressed fury on Matthew’s face suggested that peace was the last thing Gallowglass was going to enjoy once his uncle found him.
“I remembered reading something about scions back when Grandfather hoped I would turn to law and take on Godfrey’s old duties,” Marcus said.
“Found it,” Hamish said, his finger tapping against the page. “‘Any male with full-blooded children of his own can establish a scion, provided he has the approval of his sire or the head of his clan. The new scion will be considered a branch of the original family, but in all other ways the new scion’s sire shall exercise his will and power freely.’ That sounds straightforward enough, but since Godfrey was involved, there must be more to it.”
“Forming a scion—a distinct branch of the de Clermont family under your authority—will solve all of our problems!” Marcus said.
“Not all clan leaders welcome scions, Marcus,” Matthew warned.
“Once a rebel, always a rebel,” Marcus said with a shrug. “You knew that when you made me.”
“And Phoebe?” Matthew’s brows lifted. “Does your fiancée share your revolutionary sentiments? She might not like the idea of being cast out of Sept-Tours without a penny after all of your assets are seized by your uncle.”
“What do you mean?” Marcus said, uneasy.
“Hamish can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the next section of Godfrey’s book lays out the penalties associated with establishing a scion without your sire’s permission,” Matthew replied.
“You’re my sire,” Marcus said, his chin set in stubborn lines.
“Only in the biological sense: I provided you with my blood so you could be reborn a vampire.” Matthew rammed his hands through his hair, a sign that his own frustration was mounting. “And you know how I detest the term ‘sire’ used in that context. I consider myself your father—not your blood donor.”
“I’m asking you to be more than that,” Marcus said. “Baldwin is wrong about the covenant and wrong about the Congregation. If you establish a scion, we could chart our own path, make our own decisions.”
“Is there some problem with you establishing your own scion, Matt?” Hamish asked. “Now that Diana’s pregnant, I would think you’d be eager to get out from under Baldwin’s thumb.”
“It’s not as simple as you think,” Matthew told him. “And Baldwin may have reservations.”
“What’s this, Phoebe?” Sarah’s finger pointed to a rough patch in the parchment under Matthew’s name. She was more interested in the genealogy than the legal complexities.
Phoebe took a closer look. “It’s an erasure of some sort. There used to be another roundel there. I can almost make out the name. Beia—oh, it must be Benjamin. They’ve used common medieval abbreviations and substituted an i for a j.”
“They scratched out the circle but forgot to get rid of the little red line that connects him to Matthew. Based on that, this Benjamin is one of Matthew’s children,” Sarah said.
The mention of Benjamin’s name made my blood run cold. Matthew did have a son of that name. He was a terrifying creature.
Phoebe unrolled another scroll. This genealogy looked ancient, too, though not quite as old as the one we’d all been studying. She frowned.
“This looks to be from a century later.” Phoebe put the parchment on the table. “There’s no erasure on this one and no mention of a Benjamin either. He just disappears without a trace.”
“Who’s Benjamin?” asked Marcus, though I couldn’t imagine why. Surely he must know the identities of Matthew’s other children.
“Benjamin does not exist.” Ysabeau’s expression was guarded, and she had chosen her words carefully.
My brain tried to process the implications of Marcus’s question and Ysabeau’s odd response. If Matthew’s son didn’t know about Benjamin . . .
“Is that why his name is erased?” Phoebe asked. “Did someone make a mistake?”
“Yes, he was a mistake,” Matthew said, his voice hollow.
“But Benjamin does exist,” I said, meeting Matthew’s gray-green eyes. They were shuttered and remote. “I met him in sixteenth-century Prague.”
“Is he alive now?” Hamish asked.
“I don’t know. I thought he was dead shortly after I made him in the twelfth century,” Matthew replied. “Hundreds of years later, Philippe heard of someone who fit Benjamin’s description, but he dropped out of sight again before we could be sure. There were rumors of Benjamin in the nineteenth century, but I never saw any proof.”