Free A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

nerves.
    “They’re not interested in me, Dr. Bishop. They’re interested in you. ”
    “Why? What could they possibly want from me?”
    “Do you really not know why every daemon, witch, and vampire south of the Midlands is following you?” There was a note of disbelief in his voice, and the vampire’s expression suggested he was seeing me for the first time.
    “No,” I said, my eyes on two men enjoying their afternoon pint at a nearby table. Thankfully, they were absorbed in their own conversation. “I’ve done nothing in Oxford except read old manuscripts, row on the river, prepare for my conference, and keep to myself. It’s all I’ve ever done here. There’s no reason for any creature to pay this kind of attention to me.”
    “Think, Diana.” Clairmont’s voice was intense. A ripple of something that wasn’t fear passed across my skin when he said my first name. “What have you been reading?”
    His eyelids dropped over his strange eyes, but not before I’d seen their avid expression.
    My aunts had warned me that Matthew Clairmont wanted something. They were right.
    He fixed his odd, gray-rimmed black eyes on me once more. “They’re following you because they believe you’ve found something lost many years ago,” he said reluctantly. “They want it back, and they think you can get it for them.”
    I thought about the manuscripts I’d consulted over the past few days. My heart sank. There was only one likely candidate for all this attention.
    “If they’re not your friends, how do you know what they want?”
    “I hear things, Dr. Bishop. I have very good hearing,” he said patiently, reverting to his characteristic formality. “I’m also fairly observant. At a concert on Sunday evening, two witches were talking about an American—a fellow witch—who found a book in Bodley’s Library that had been given up for lost. Since then I’ve noticed many new faces in Oxford, and they make me uneasy.”
    “It’s Mabon. That explains why the witches are in Oxford.” I was trying to match his patient tone, though he hadn’t answered my last question.
    Smiling sardonically, Clairmont shook his head. “No, it’s not the equinox. It’s the manuscript.”
    “What do you know about Ashmole 782?” I asked quietly.
    “Less than you do,” said Clairmont, his eyes narrowing to slits. It made him look even more like a large, lethal beast. “I’ve never seen it. You’ve held it in your hands. Where is it now, Dr. Bishop? You weren’t so foolish as to leave it in your room?”
    I was aghast. “You think I stole it? From the Bodleian? How dare you suggest such a thing!”
    “You didn’t have it Monday night,” he said. “And it wasn’t on your desk today either.”
    “You are observant,” I said sharply, “if you could see all that from where you were sitting. I returned it Friday, if you must know.” It occurred to me, belatedly, that he might have rifled through the things on my desk. “What’s so special about the manuscript that you’d snoop through a colleague’s work?”
    He winced slightly, but my triumph at catching him doing something so inappropriate was blunted by a twinge of fear that this vampire was following me as closely as he obviously was.
    “Simple curiosity,” he said, baring his teeth. Sarah had not misled me—vampires don’t have fangs.
    “I hope you don’t expect me to believe that.”
    “I don’t care what you believe, Dr. Bishop. But you should be on your guard. These creatures are serious. And when they come to understand what an unusual witch you are?” Clairmont shook his head.
    “What do you mean?” All the blood drained from my head, leaving me dizzy.
    “It’s uncommon these days for a witch to have so much . . . potential.” Clairmont’s voice dropped to a purr that vibrated in the back of his throat. “Not everyone can see it—yet—but I can. You shimmer with it when you concentrate. When you’re angry, too. Surely the daemons in the