My question was an unforgivable breach of vampire etiquette, but I hoped that Marcus would excuse it since it was coming from a witch—not to mention a historian.
“In 1757. August.” Marcus’s voice was flat and coolly factual. “The day after Ft. William Henry fell to the French.”
“Where?” I asked, even though I was pressing my luck to be so inquisitive.
“Hadley. A small town in western Massachusetts, along the banks of the Connecticut River.” Marcus picked at the knee of his jeans, worrying at a loose thread. “I was born and raised there.”
Philip climbed into Marcus’s lap and presented him with another block.
“Would you tell me about it?” I asked. “I don’t know much about your past, and it might help to pass the time while you wait for news from Phoebe.”
More importantly, remembering his own life might help Marcus. From the bewildering tangle of time that surrounded him, I knew that Marcus was struggling.
And I was not the only one who could see the snarled threads. Before I could stop him, Philip grabbed at a red strand trailing from Marcus’s forearm with one pudgy hand, and a white strand with the other. His bowed lips moved as if he were uttering a silent incantation.
My children are not weavers. I had told myself this again and again, in moments of anxiety, in the depths of night while they slept quietly in their cradles, and in times of utter desperation when the hurly-burly of our daily routines was so overwhelming I could barely draw breath.
If that were true, though, how had Philip seen the angry threads surrounding Marcus? And how had he managed to capture them so easily?
“What the hell?” Marcus’s expression froze as the hands of the old clock, a gilded monstrosity that made a deafening ticktock, stopped moving.
Philip drew his fists toward his tummy, dragging time along with them. Blue and amber threads screeched in protest as the fabric of the world stretched.
“Bye-bye, owie,” Philip said, kissing his own hands and the threads they contained. “Bye-bye.”
My children are half witch and half vampire, I reminded myself. My children are not weavers. That meant they weren’t capable of— The air around me trembled and tightened as time continued to resist the spell that Philip had woven in an attempt to soothe Marcus’s distress.
“Philip Michael Addison Sorley Bishop-Clairmont. Put time down. Immediately.” My voice was sharp and my son dropped the strands. After one more heart-stopping second of inactivity, the clock’s hands resumed their movement. Philip’s lip trembled.
“We do not play with time. Not ever. Do you understand me?” I drew him out of Marcus’s lap and stared into his eyes, where ancient knowledge mixed with childish innocence.
Philip, startled by my tone, burst into tears. Though he was nowhere near it, the tower he had been constructing crashed to the ground.
“What just happened?” Marcus looked a bit dazed.
Rebecca, who could not bear it when her brother cried, crawled over the fallen blocks to offer him comfort. She held out her right thumb. The left was firmly lodged in her own mouth. She removed it before speaking.
“Shiny, Pip.” A violet strand of magical energy streamed from Becca’s thumb. I’d seen vestigial traces of magic hanging off the children before, but I’d assumed that they served no particular function in their lives.
My children are not weavers.
“Shit.” The word popped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“Wow. That was weird. I could see you, but I couldn’t hear you. And I couldn’t seem to speak,” Marcus said, still processing his recent experience. “Everything started to fade. Then you took Philip out of my lap and it all went back to normal. Did I timewalk?”
“Not quite,” I said.
“Shit,” Becca repeated solemnly, patting her brother on the forehead. “Shiny.”
I examined Philip’s forehead. Was that a speck of chatoiement, a weaver’s signature gleam, between his eyes?
“Oh, God. Wait until your father finds out.”
“Finds out what?” Matthew was in the doorway, bright-eyed and relaxed from repairing the copper gutters over the kitchen door. He smiled at Becca, who was blowing him kisses. “Hello, my darling.”
“I think Philip just worked—or wove—his first spell,” I explained. “He tried to smooth out Marcus’s memories so they wouldn’t bother him.”
“My memories?” Marcus frowned. “And what do you mean Philip wove a spell? He can’t even talk in complete sentences.”
“Owie,” Philip explained to Matthew with a tiny, shuddering sob. “All better.”
Shock registered on Matthew’s face.
“Shit,” Becca said as she noticed her father’s change of expression. Philip took this as confirmation of the gravity of the situation, and his fragile composure disintegrated once more in a flood of tears.
“But that means—” Marcus looked from Becca to Philip in alarm and then in amazement.
“I owe Chris fifty dollars,” I said. “He was right, Matthew. The twins are weavers.”
* * *
—
“WHAT ARE YOU GOING to do about this?” Matthew demanded.
We had retreated—Matthew and I and the twins—to the suite of rooms we used as a bedroom, bathroom, and private family sitting room. A medieval castle did not lend itself to a feeling of coziness, but these apartments were as warm and comforting as we could make them. The large main room was divided into several different areas: one was dominated by our seventeenth-century canopied bed; another had deep chairs and sofas for lounging by the fire; a third was equipped with a writing desk, where Matthew could get a bit of work done while I slept. Small rooms to the left and right had been repurposed to make walk-in closets and a bathroom. Heavy, electrified iron chandeliers dropped from the arched ceiling, which helped keep the rooms from feeling cavernous on dark winter nights. Tall windows, some of them still glazed with medieval painted glass, let in the summer sun.
“I don’t know, Matthew. I left my crystal ball in New Haven,” I retorted. The situation in the library had thrown me for a loop. I was attributing my slow response to the stoppage of time rather than to blinding panic.
I closed the bedroom door. The wood was stout and there were many thick stone walls between us and the rest of the household. Still, I switched on the music system to provide an extra buffer against acute vampire hearing.
“And what will we do about Rebecca, when she shows signs of having magical talent?” Matthew continued, driving his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“If she shows signs,” I said.
“When,” Matthew insisted.
“What do you think we should do?” I turned the tables on my husband.
“You’re the witch!” Matthew said.
“Oh. So it’s my fault!” I put my hands on my hips, furious. “So much for their being your children.”
“That’s not what I said.” Matthew ground his teeth together. “They need their mother to set an example for them, that’s all.”
“You can’t be serious.” I was aghast. “They’re too young to learn magic.”
“But not too young to work it, apparently. We aren’t going to hide who we are from the children, remember?” Matthew said. “I’m keeping my end of the bargain. I’ve taken the children hunting. They’ve watched me feed.”
“The children are too young to understand what magic is,” I said. “When I saw my mother cast a spell, it was terrifying.”
“And that’s why you haven’t been working your own magic as much.” Matthew drew in a deep breath, understanding at last. “You’re trying to protect Rebecca and Philip.”
As a matter of fact, I had been doing magic—just not where or when anyone else could witness it. I did it alone, under the dark of the moon, away from curious, impressionable eyes, when Matthew thought I was working.