A Discovery of Witches (All Souls, #1)

by Deborah Harkness

My aunt Sarah had always warned me it wasn’t possible for one witch to lie to another, but that hadn’t stopped me from trying.

Humans outnumbered us and found our power frightening, my mother explained, and fear was the strongest force on earth. I hadn’t confessed at the time that magic—my mother’s especially—frightened

When my mother was lit up with magic, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from her.

It was as if her skin fit the underlying bones properly.

Clairmont, however, got a prodigious amount done, covering pages of creamy paper with rapid strokes of his Montblanc Meisterstück mechanical pencil. Every now and again, he’d turn over a sheet with a rustle that set my teeth on edge and begin once more.

Clairmont seemed to have made a scientific and medical reputation at the same time by studying how the brain’s frontal lobe processes urges and cravings. He’d made several major breakthroughs related to the role that neural mechanisms play in delayed-gratification responses, all of which involved the prefrontal cortex. I opened a new browser window to view an anatomical diagram and locate which bit of the brain was at issue.

You’re a witch. You know words have power.

am capable of opening my own door,” I said, getting out of the car. “Why do today’s women think it’s important to open a door themselves?” he said sharply. “Do you believe it’s a testament to your physical power?”

All you have to do is be a good listener. Nobody really wants to keep secrets, not even the dead. People leave clues everywhere, and if you pay attention, you can piece them together.”

Normal’ is a bedtime story—a fable—that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what’s happening around them is not ‘normal’ at all.”

The strongest distinguishing characteristic of humans is their power of denial.

It was over in a matter of seconds, but as I knew from using magic to get Notes and Queries off the Bodleian’s shelf, a few seconds was all it took to change your life.

“I’ve seen courage like yours before—from women, mostly.” Matthew continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Men don’t have it. Our resolve is born out of fear. It’s merely bravado.”

“As far as I can tell, there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning, year after year.” He hesitated, then continued. “One is fear. The other is desire. That’s what I wrote about.”

“Magic is desire made real. It’s how I pulled down Notes and Queries the night we met,” I said slowly. “When a witch concentrates on something she wants, and then imagines how she might get it, she can make it happen. That’s why I have to be so careful about my work.” I took a sip of wine, my hand trembling on the glass.

“So you earn everything twice over. First you earn it by not simply taking it, and then you earn it again through work and effort.” He laughed bitterly. “The advantages of being an otherworldly creature don’t amount to much, do they?”

Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe.

“You wear a seat belt in my car,” Matthew said evenly. “You’ll wear a vest on my horse.”

was Vesalius’s anatomy book from 1543, the first to depict dissected human bodies in exacting detail.

“This is not a game, Diana! Matthew would willingly turn his back on creatures he has known for centuries to protect your right to be whatever you imagine you want to be in your fleeting life. I’m begging you not to let him do it. They will kill him if he persists.”

It is a blessing as well as a burden to love so much that you can hurt so badly when love is gone.”

What a complicated, delicate business it was going to be to love him.

“No. I can’t make any progress there. There’s nothing left for me in Oxford. I want to be home, with you. I should be there in a few hours.” He sounded strange, his voice thick. “Am I dreaming?” “You’re not dreaming,” Matthew said. “And, Diana?” He hesitated. “I love you.” It was what I most wanted to hear. The forgotten chain inside me started to sing, quietly, in the dark.

kissed him on his quizzical mouth. “This feeling when I’m with you—as if I’m fully alive for the first time.” Matthew smiled, his expression uncharacteristically sweet and shy. “I hope not.”

I complied without a second thought, amazed at the comfort between us. This was so different from books and movies, where love was made into something tense and difficult. Loving Matthew was much more like coming into port than heading out into a storm.

For Matthew, hunting was primarily about strategy, about pitting his feral intelligence against something that thought and sensed the world as he did.

“I don’t mind one moment of love that you’ve shared with any creature, living or dead,” I said emphatically, “so long as you want to be with me right at this moment.” “Just at this moment?” he asked, his eyebrow arching up into a question mark. “This is the only moment that matters.”

How could you not have been loved before, when I love you so much?”

“And you are going to give me gray hairs—long thought impossible among vampires, by the way—with your courage, your firecracker hands, and the impossible things you say.”

Like Ashmole 782, Matthew’s body was a palimpsest,

My mother’s smile was bittersweet. Yes, Diana. She gave my father a long look, the kind that children don’t understand until they’re older.

“Then I will have to call you my lioness now, because only she could have fought as you did. But even la lionne needs her protectors.” His eyes flickered toward my right arm. My gripping the tub had made the bleeding resume.

“That’s what I said. Everyone who has ever been in pain knows that morphine and magic are the same.

needed to be reminded that there were creatures in the world who could touch me without causing pain.

“That’s right,” he replied. “A gambit lulls your opponent into a sense of false safety. You make a deliberate sacrifice in order to gain a greater advantage.”

I knew both of these truths and loved him anyway. What did it say about me, that I could love such a creature so completely?

And happiness is always louder than sadness.

“All babies are vampires, Matthew. They’re all nourished with their mother’s blood.”

Sarah took it. “Would you kill your own son if you thought he was a threat to Diana?” He nodded. “Without hesitation.” “That’s what he said.” Sarah nodded at Marcus. “Get him a drink, too. It can’t be easy, knowing your own father could kill you.”

Em smiled. “I’ve always thought yoga and magic had a lot in common. Now, close your eyes. Think about the stillroom you just left. You have to want to be there more than here.”

“You were too focused on the details of the room. Think about Matthew. Don’t you want to be with him? Magic’s in the heart, not the mind. It’s not about words and following a procedure, like witchcraft. You have to feel it.”

Each time strands touched—and millions of strands were touching all the time—there was the soft echo of an original, inaudible sound.