He looked at me in confusion.
“It’s got enough magical wards on it to repel an army,” I explained.
The package was thin and rectangular. An odd assortment of wrapping paper had been patched together to cover it: pink paper with storks, paper covered with primary-colored inchworms forming the shape of the number four, garish Christmas-tree wrapping paper, and silver foil with embossed wedding bells. A bouquet of bright bows covered its surface.
“Where did it come from?” Matthew asked.
“The house, I think.” I poked it with my finger. “I recognize some of the wrapping paper from birthdays past.”
“Are you sure it’s for you?” He looked dubious.
I nodded. The package was definitely for me. Gingerly I picked it up. The bows, all of which had been used before and therefore lacked adhesive, slipped off and rained down on the kitchen island.
“Shall I get Sarah?” Matthew asked.
“No. I’ve got it covered.” My hands were tingling, and every rainbow stripe was in evidence as I removed the wrapping paper.
Inside was a composition book—the kind with a black-and-white cover and pages sewn together with thick string. Someone had glued a magenta daisy over the white box for your name, and WIDE RULE had been edited to read WITCHES RULE.
“‘Rebecca Bishop’s Book of Shadows,’” I said, reading aloud from the words written in thick black ink on the daisy. “This is my mother’s missing spell book—the one she used for the higher magics.”
I cracked open the cover. After all our problems with Ashmole 782, I was braced for anything from mysterious illustrations to encoded script. Instead I found my mother’s round, childish handwriting.
“To summon a spirit recently dead and question it” was the first spell in the book.
“Mom certainly believed in starting with a bang,” I said, showing Matthew the words on the page. The notes beneath the spell recorded the dates when she and Emily had tried to work the magic, as well as the results. Their first three attempts had failed. On the fourth try, they succeeded.
Both of them were thirteen at the time.
“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 a page inserted 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 passage 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.
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.”