I blanched.
“You had a choice, too,” Hubbard reminded me. “So if you want to cast blame for Jack’s becoming a vampire, blame yourself or blame Matthew. He was your responsibility. You made him mine.”
“That wasn’t our bargain, and you know it!” The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. I froze, a look of horror on my face. This was another secret I’d kept from Matthew, one that I’d thought was safely behind me.
Gallowglass’s breath hissed in surprise. Matthew’s icy gaze splintered against my skin. Then the room fell utterly silent.
“I need to speak to my wife and my grandson, Gallowglass. Alone,” Matthew said. The emphasis he placed on “my wife” and “my grandson” was subtle but unmistakable.
Gallowglass stood, his face set in lines of disapproval. “I’ll be upstairs with Jack.”
Matthew shook his head. “Go home and wait for Miriam. I’ll call when Andrew and Jack are ready to join you.”
“Jack will stay here,” I said, my voice rising again, “with us. Where he belongs.”
The forbidding look Matthew directed my way silenced me immediately, even though the twenty-first century was no place for a Renaissance prince and a year ago I would have protested his high-handedness. Now I knew that my husband was hanging on to his control by a very slender thread.
“I’m not staying under the same roof as a de Clermont. Especially not him,” Hubbard said, pointing in Gallowglass’s direction.
“You forget, Andrew,” Matthew said, “you are a de Clermont. So is Jack.”
“I was never a de Clermont,” Hubbard said viciously.
“Once you drank Benjamin’s blood, you were never anything else.” Matthew’s voice was clipped. “In this family you do what I say.”
“Family?” Hubbard scoffed. “You were part of Philippe’s pack, and now you answer to Baldwin. You don’t have a family of your own.”
“Apparently I do.” Matthew’s mouth twisted with regret. “Time to go, Gallowglass.”
“Very well, Matthew. I’ll let you send me off—this time—but I’ll not go far. And if my instincts tell me there’s trouble, I’m coming back and to hell with vampire custom and law.” Gallowglass got up and kissed me on the cheek. “Holler if you need me, Auntie.”
Matthew waited until the front door closed before he turned on Hubbard. “Exactly what deal did you strike with my mate?” he demanded.
“It’s my fault, Matthew. I went to Hubbard—” I began, wanting to confess and get it over with.
The table reverberated under the force of Matthew’s blow. “Answer me, Andrew.”
“I agreed to protect anyone who belonged to her, even you,” Hubbard said shortly. In this respect he was a de Clermont to the bone—volunteering nothing, only giving away what he must.
“And in exchange?” Matthew asked sharply. “You wouldn’t make such a vow without getting something equally precious in return.”
“Your mate gave me one drop of blood—one single drop,” Hubbard said, his tone resentful. I’d tricked him, abiding to the letter of his request rather than its spirit. Apparently Andrew Hubbard held grudges.
“Did you know then that I was your grandfather?” Matthew asked. I couldn’t imagine why this was important.
“Yes,” Andrew said, looking slightly green.
Matthew hauled him across the table so that they were nose to nose. “And what did you learn from that one drop of blood?”
“Her true name—Diana Bishop. Nothing more, I swear. The witch used her magic to make sure of it.” On Hubbard’s tongue the word “witch” sounded filthy and obscene.
“Never take advantage of my wife’s protective instincts again, Andrew. If you do, I’ll have your head.” Matthew’s grip tightened. “Given your prurience, there isn’t a vampire alive who would fault me for doing so.”
“I don’t care what the two of you get up to behind closed doors—though others will, since your mate is obviously pregnant and there isn’t a hint of another man’s scent on her.” Hubbard pursed his lips in disapproval.
At last I understood Matthew’s earlier question. By knowingly taking my blood and seeking out my thoughts and memories, Andrew Hubbard had done the vampire equivalent of watching his grandparents have sex. Had I not found a way to slow its flow so he got only the drop he asked for and nothing more, Hubbard would have seen into our private lives and might have learned Matthew’s secrets as well as my own. My eyes closed tight against the realization of the damage that would have resulted.
A distracting murmur came from Andrew’s briefcase. It reminded me of the noise I sometimes heard during a lecture, when a student’s phone went off unexpectedly.
“You left your phone on speaker,” I said, my attention drawn to the low chatter. “Someone is leaving a message.”
Matthew and Andrew both frowned.
“I don’t hear anything,” Matthew said.
“And I don’t own a mobile phone,” Hubbard added.
“Where is it coming from, then?” I asked, looking around. “Did someone turn on the radio?”
“The only thing in my briefcase is this.” Hubbard released its two brass clasps and withdrew something.
The chattering grew louder as a jolt of power entered my body. Every sense I had was heightened, and the threads that bound the world chimed in sudden agitation, coiling and twisting in the space between me and the sheet of vellum that Andrew Hubbard held in his fingers. My blood responded to the faint vestiges of magic that clung to this solitary page from the Book of Life, and my wrists burned as a faint, familiar scent of must and age filled the room.
Hubbard turned the page so that it faced me, but I already knew what I would see there: two alchemical dragons locked together, the blood from their wounds falling into a basin from which naked, pale figures rose. It depicted the stage in the alchemical process after the chemical marriage of the moon queen and the sun king: conceptio, when a new and powerful substance sprang forth from the union of opposites—male and female, light and dark, sun and moon.
After spending weeks in the Beinecke looking for Ashmole 782’s missing pages, I’d unexpectedly encountered one of them in my own dining room.
“Edward Kelley sent it to me the autumn after you left. He told me not to let it out of my sight.” Hubbard slid the page toward me.
We had only caught a glimpse of this illumination in Rudolf’s palace. Later Matthew and I had speculated that what we thought were two dragons might actually be a firedrake and an ouroboros. One of the alchemical dragons was indeed a firedrake, with two legs and wings, and the other was a snake with its tail in its mouth. The ouroboros at my wrist writhed in recognition, its colors shining with possibility. The image was mesmerizing, and now that I had time to study it properly, small things struck me: the dragons’ rapt expressions as they gazed into each other’s eyes, the look of wonder on their progeny’s faces as they emerged from the basin where they’d been born, the striking balance between two such powerful creatures.