A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy, #1)

by Deborah Harkness

Matthew stalked out of the room and pounded down the stairs at considerably more than a human pace. Jordan eyed the polished treads with concern. ‘Professor Clairmont is having a difficult day, Jordan.’

His body demanded something more specific. If only he could taste it – taste Diana – he would be satisfied and the painful longing would subside.

A vampire had to desire another creature more than anyone or anything else in order to mate, and cravings were rooted in desire.

‘There’s a lot I don’t understand about all this, Hamish, but there are three things I do know,’ Matthew said emphatically, picking up his wineglass from the floor by his feet. ‘I will not give in to this craving for her blood. I do not want to control her power. And I certainly have no wish to make her a vampire.’ He shuddered at the thought. ‘That leaves love. You have your answer, then. You do know what you want.’

‘I want what I shouldn’t want, and I crave someone I can never have.’

Everyone in Paris was infatuated with someone else’s wife at the time.’

I took her life, her identity, her vitality – that’s death, Hamish.’

‘I can’t conceive of what you would have to do to make me hate you, Matthew. I love you like a brother, and I will until I draw my last breath.’

‘The king just sits there, moving one square at a time. The queen can move so freely. I suppose I’d rather lose the game than forfeit her freedom.’

Nobody can be what he’s not, no matter how hard he tries.

‘I’m not leaving until you’re out of my sight,’ he said, looking at me in disapproval. ‘Vampires,’ I muttered, shaking my head at his old-fashioned ways.

Nothing in my culinary experience had taught me what to feed a vampire when he came for dinner.

My wardrobe contained precious little that said ‘dinner with a vampire.’

I already knew he liked the way I smelled. Apparently that made him hungry.

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

‘Humans are with us all the time. They just refuse to acknowledge our existence because we don’t make sense in their limited world.

‘I’m sorry, Marcus. But if anyone is going to take Diana’s blood, it’s going to be me.’

‘This tastes like you!’ I said. ‘How so?’ he asked. ‘Spicy,’ I said, flushing suddenly from my cheeks to my hairline.

the call of your blood could be my undoing – and yours.’

‘Be still,’ he said, voice harsh. ‘I might not be able to control myself if you step away.’

He’d warned me in the lab about the relationship between predator and prey. Now he was trying to get me to play dead so the predator in him would lose interest in me. But I wasn’t dead.

‘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.’

emotions that keep the world spinning, year after year.’ He hesitated, then continued. ‘One is fear. The other is desire. That’s

Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action.

Oh, God, I thought, he’s going to kill a witch in the Bodleian.

My coffee-loving daemon drifted by shortly afterward, swinging his headset by the cord.

I obediently started reciting English monarchs in my head, beginning with William the Conqueror, to rid my mind of thoughts of the missing manuscript.

Matthew was lounging against the kitchen doorframe with the nonchalant air of a Renaissance aristocrat waiting to have his portrait painted.

You really shouldn’t turn your back on a vampire if you’ve been arguing.

We were prey and predator once more.

‘What am I going to do with you?’ He was standing with his hands on his hips, a lopsided smile on his face. ‘You are the most exasperating creature I’ve ever met.’ ‘No one has ever known what to do with me.’

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.

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.

She’s a witch, he reminded himself as he watched her sleep. She’s not for you. The more he said it, the less it seemed to matter.

The sound of Diana’s breathing was all that kept him from leaping through the night to hunt down two witches.

And he taught the healer how to kill.

All his mistakes in judgment could be traced back to decisions made in anger.

Marcus knew that a vampire’s life was measured not in hours or years but in secrets revealed and kept.

Juliette Durand.

It was a face he’d studied for hours and knew well, but its contradictions still fascinated him. ‘Have you bewitched me?’ he wondered aloud.

After tonight Matthew knew his need for her was greater than anything else. Neither his family nor his next taste of blood mattered as much as knowing that she was safe and within arm’s reach. If that was what it meant to be bewitched, he was a lost man.

‘This bargain you made about magic and its place in your life – you made it when you were a lonely, frightened child. Now, every time you take a step, it’s as though your future hinges on whether you manage to put your foot down in the right place.’

‘You won’t go for your own safety, but if there’s a manuscript involved?’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘So much for common sense.’

‘Matthew,’ I said faintly, ‘I didn’t know you had a mother.’ ‘Everybody has a mother, Diana,’ he said, turning his clear gray eyes to mine. ‘I’ve had two. The woman who gave birth to me and Ysabeau – the woman who made me a vampire.’

This was not a pretty, fairy-tale castle made for moonlit balls. Sept-Tours was a fortress.

Ysabeau stood in the doorway of her enormous château, regal and icy, and glared at her vampire son as we climbed the stone stairs.

‘She is sweet and repulsively green, like spring.’

Matthew murmured in sympathy, and Ysabeau appealed to the ceiling for deliverance from the emotional spectacle.

Elle est une puissante sorcière

His closeness somewhat diminished my instinctive concern with having a vampire sniff me.