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  Marthe was working in the next bed, weeding around the leafy tops of carrots and the pale green stalks of celery. She had come from Les Revenants, where she had been helping Diana and Matthew with the children. Sarah and Agatha were still there, along with Marcus and Jack, so they didn’t need her assistance as much as they had when they first arrived, jet-lagged and exhausted, from America.

  Phoebe wiped a dirty hand across her cheek. There was a tiny fly there, and it was driving her crazy. Then she resumed digging.

  The sun was warm on her back, and the ground underneath her hands smelled fresh, like life. Phoebe plunged her trowel into the soil, breaking it up, readying it to be planted with the seedlings Marthe wanted them to move from the greenhouse.

  Phoebe was sure there was some lesson to be learned from her work with Marthe, just as there were lessons to be learned from Françoise and Ysabeau. Now that she was at Sept-Tours, lessons were woven into every activity.

  Since her father had been hospitalized, everything around Phoebe had shifted. Miriam had gone back to Oxford, placing her entirely in Ysabeau’s care. Freyja had not wanted to spend these weeks before Phoebe made her decision under her stepmother’s roof, though she planned on coming down for the day itself. In just two more weeks Baldwin would be here, and the next stage of Phoebe’s life would begin. She would be a fledgling vampire then.

  Within Ysabeau’s household, the four women coexisted with remarkably few outbursts and little fuss. This was not how things had been in Phoebe’s house growing up, where the three Taylor women had always been jockeying for position and control. Françoise and Marthe were a formidable pair, both of them forces of nature, neither of them yielding an inch of their own power to the other, each respecting the other’s carefully delineated sphere of influence. Phoebe still didn’t understand what all the divisions of responsibility were, but she could sense adjustments to them whenever Marthe appeared in the family apartments to look after Ysabeau, or when Françoise bustled through the kitchen on the way to mend a shirt.

  Authority. Power. Status. These were the variables that shaped a vampire’s life. One day, Phoebe would understand them. Until then, she was content to watch and learn from two women who clearly knew exactly how to not only survive, but thrive.

  But it was from the castle’s chatelaine that Phoebe was learning the most about how to be a vampire. According to Françoise, Ysabeau was the oldest and wisest vampire left on earth. Whether or not this was true, Ysabeau made Freyja and even Miriam seem young and inexperienced by comparison. As for Phoebe, she felt every bit the infant whenever she was in the woman’s presence.

  “There you are.” Ysabeau glided across the garden, her feet making no sound on the gravel, her movements smoother and more elegant than even Madame Elena’s. “You two do know that you can’t really dig to China, as the ancients hoped.”

  Phoebe laughed. “There go my morning plans, then.”

  “Why don’t you walk with me instead?” Ysabeau suggested.

  Phoebe stuck her spade in the ground and hopped to her feet. She loved Ysabeau’s walks. Each one took her through a different part of the castle or its grounds. Ysabeau told her stories about the family as they strolled through the courtyard or the house, pointing out where the laundries had been, and the candlemaker, and the blacksmith.

  Phoebe had been to Sept-Tours before, back when Matthew and Diana were timewalking and Marcus had wanted her close. She’d returned after the couple came home, too, and a few times since the babies were born. But something had changed in Phoebe’s relationship to the house. It was more than the fact that she was a vampire. She was a true de Clermont now—or so Ysabeau said, confident that Phoebe’s mind had not changed when it came to Marcus.

  “The sun is rising fast today,” Ysabeau observed, looking up at the sky. “And there are no clouds. Why don’t we go inside, so that you can take off your hat and glasses?”

  Phoebe linked arms with Ysabeau as they turned toward the castle. Ysabeau looked a bit startled by the familiar act. When Phoebe pulled away, fearing she had broken some rule, Ysabeau instead drew her closer. The two of them walked slowly indoors, drinking in the early morning scents.

  “Monsieur Roux burned his croissants,” Ysabeau said, giving the air a sniff. “And I do wish the priest would stop changing his laundry soap. I no sooner get used to the smell of one than he buys another.”

  Phoebe sniffed. The sharp, floral scent did not smell “springtime fresh,” but of chemicals. She wrinkled her nose.

  “Did you hear the fight last night between Adele and her new boyfriend?” Phoebe asked.

  “How could I not? They were on the other side of our wall, and shouting at the top of their lungs.” Ysabeau shook her head.

  “Madame Lefebvre—how is she doing?” Phoebe asked. The old woman was in her nineties and still went around to the shops every day on her own, pulling a wire cart to hold her groceries. Last week she’d fallen and broken her hip.

  “Not well,” Ysabeau said. “The priest went round yesterday. They don’t expect her to live out the week. I will go and visit her this afternoon. Maybe you would like to come?”

  “May I?” Phoebe asked.

  “Of course,” Ysabeau said. “I’m sure Madame Lefebvre would like to see you.”

  They were inside now, and making their stately way through the ground-floor rooms: Ysabeau’s salon, with its gilded furniture and Sèvres porcelain; the formal dining room, with the statues that flanked the door; the family library, with its worn sofas and piles of newspapers, magazines, and paperback books; Ysabeau’s warmly colored breakfast room that always looked as though the sun was streaming into it even on the cloudiest days; the great hall, with its high beamed roof and painted walls. In each room, Ysabeau revealed something about what had happened here, once upon a time.

  “Diana’s firedrake broke one of those,” Ysabeau said, pointing to a large lion’s-head vase. “Philippe commissioned a set of two. I must confess I was never very fond of them. If we are lucky, Apollo will break the other and we can find something new to take its place.”

  Another memory of Philippe popped up in the formal dining room, with its long, polished table and ranks of chairs.

  “Philippe always sat here, and I sat at the other end. That way we could manage everyone’s conversations, and make sure that war didn’t break out between the guests.” Ysabeau ran her fingers over the chair’s carved back. “We had so many dinner parties in this room.”

  “Sophie’s water broke on this sofa, on the day before Margaret was born,” Ysabeau said when they reached the family library. She plumped one of the cushions. Though the rest of the sofa was covered in faded brown, this cushion was a rosy pink. “We did not have to replace the whole piece of furniture, as Sophie feared, only the cushion. See, this one does not match the others. I told Marthe not to even try, but to use something that would always remind us of Margaret’s birth.”

  “Here, I tried to frighten Diana away from Matthew,” Ysabeau said in the breakfast room, a smile turning up the corners of her lips. “But she was braver than I knew.”

  Ysabeau turned slowly around in the castle’s lofty great hall, inviting Phoebe to do the same.

  “This is where Diana and Matthew held their wedding feast.” Ysabeau surveyed the large room with its suits of armor, weapons, and faux medieval decorations. “I was not there, of course, and Philippe did not tell me about it. It was not until Diana and Matthew returned from the past that I heard the tale. Perhaps you and Marcus will celebrate here, and fill the hall again with the sound of laughter and dancing.”

  Ysabeau led Phoebe to where a set of stone stairs climbed to the crenellated heights of the castle’s square keep. Instead of climbing them, as they normally would, Ysabeau drew Phoebe toward a low, arched door in the wall that was always locked.

  Ysabeau took a worn iron key from her pocket and fit it into th
e lock. She turned it and motioned Phoebe inside.

  It took Phoebe’s eyes a few minutes to adjust to the changing level of light. This room had only a few small windows fitted with colored panes of glass. Phoebe took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes to help bring them into focus.

  “Is this another storeroom?” Phoebe asked, wondering what treasures it might contain.

  But the stale air and faint scent of wax soon told her this room had a different purpose. This was the de Clermont chapel—and crypt.

  A large stone sarcophagus occupied the center of the small chapel. A handful of other coffins were set into alcoves in the walls. So, too, were objects: shields, swords, pieces of armor.

  “Humans think we live in dark places like this,” Ysabeau said. “They are more right than they know. My Philippe is here, in the center of the room as he was once at the center of our family and my world. One day, I will be buried here with him.”

  Phoebe looked at Ysabeau in surprise.

  “None of us is immune to death, Phoebe,” Ysabeau said, as if she could hear Phoebe’s thoughts.

  “Stella thinks we are. She didn’t understand why no one would save Dad,” Phoebe said. “I’m not sure I understand myself. I just knew he wouldn’t like it—that it would be wrong.”

  “You cannot make every person you love into a vampire,” Ysabeau said. “Marcus tried, and it almost destroyed him.”

  Phoebe knew about New Orleans and had met those of Marcus’s children who survived.

  “Stella may have been the first human to ask you to save someone’s life, but she won’t be the last,” Ysabeau continued. “You must be prepared to say no, again and again, as you did last night. Saying no takes courage—far more courage than saying yes.”

  Ysabeau took Phoebe’s arm again, and resumed their walk.

  “People wonder what it takes to become a vampire.” Ysabeau gave Phoebe a sidelong glance. “Do you know what I tell them?”

  Phoebe shook her head, intrigued.

  “To be a vampire you must choose life—your life, not someone else’s—over and over again, day after day,” Ysabeau said. “You must choose it over sleep, over peace, over grief, over death. In the end, it is our relentless drive to live that defines us. Without that, we are nothing but a nightmare or a ghost: a shadow of the humans we once were.”

  36

  Ninety

  10 AUGUST

  Phoebe sat in Ysabeau’s salon, amid the blue and white porcelain, the gilded chairs, the silk upholstery, and the priceless works of art, and waited, again, for time to find her.

  Baldwin strode into the room, his navy suit harmonizing with the room’s color scheme. Phoebe had picked her dress to stand out, however, rather than blend in. It was a bright shade of aquamarine, a color that symbolized loyalty and patience. It reminded her of her mother’s wedding clothes, and Marcus’s eyes, and the color of the sea when it returned to the shore.

  “Baldwin.” Phoebe thought about rising and found she was already standing, offering a cheek to the head of her husband’s family.

  “You look well, Phoebe,” Baldwin commented after he’d kissed her, his eyes surveying her from head to toe. “Ysabeau hasn’t been mistreating you, I see.”

  Phoebe didn’t acknowledge his remark with a response. After the past several weeks, she would walk across deserts for Ysabeau, and was keeping a silent record of every slight uttered against the matriarch of the de Clermont clan.

  Phoebe intended to settle those accounts one day.

  “Where are your glasses?” Baldwin asked.

  “I decided not to wear them today.” Phoebe was battling a headache, and every time the curtains blew she winced, but she was determined that her first long look at Marcus was going to be without any interference. When she’d seen him at the Salpêtrière, she had been too distracted by her father’s condition to pay any attention to her mate.

  “Hello, Phoebe.” Miriam entered. She was not in her usual black leather and boots, but in a flowing skirt. Her long hair fell around her shoulders, and her neck, arms, and fingers were covered with heavy jewels.

  “Excellent. We can get started,” Baldwin said. “Miriam, do you consent to your daughter’s decision to mate with Marcus, a member of my family and the Bishop-Clairmont scion, son of Matthew de Clermont?”

  “Are you actually going to go through the entire betrothal ceremony?” Miriam demanded.

  “That was my plan, yes.” Baldwin glared at her. “You wanted it to be official.”

  “Wait. Don’t we need Marcus to be here before we go any further?” Phoebe asked. “Where is he?” Her anxiety rose. What if Marcus had had second thoughts? What if he decided he didn’t want her now?

  “I’m right here.”

  Marcus stood just over the threshold, wearing a blue shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers with a hole in one toe. He looked handsome and slightly mischievous, as he always did. And he smelled divine. Freyja was with him, though Phoebe had to tear her eyes away from her mate to give his aunt a proper hello.

  “Hello, Phoebe,” Freyja said, beaming. “I told you we would make it.”

  “Yes,” Phoebe said, her eyes fixed on Marcus. Her throat felt dry, and she had to struggle to get that single word out.

  Marcus smiled. Phoebe’s heart thumped in response.

  Her senses clicked into overdrive. All she could hear was the sound of his heart beating. All she could smell was his distinctive scent. Her thoughts were only of Marcus. Her skin yearned for his touch.

  And just like that he had her in his arms, his lips pressed to hers, the clean scents of licorice and bee balm and pine surrounding her along with a hundred other notes she couldn’t yet recognize or name.

  “I love you, sweetheart,” he murmured in her ear. “And don’t even think about changing your mind. It’s too late. You’re already mine. Forever.”

  There were congratulations and champagne and laughter after Phoebe formally chose Marcus to be her mate. None of it made much of an impression on her, however. Phoebe had waited for ninety long days to announce her intention to irrevocably attach herself to another creature. When it came time to do it, however, all she could do was stare at Marcus with rapt attention.

  “You have a bit of red in your hair,” Phoebe said, removing a strand from his shoulders. “I’ve never noticed it before.”

  Marcus took her hand and kissed it, his touch electrifying. Phoebe’s heart skipped a beat and then felt like it was going to explode. Marcus smiled.

  That tiny crease at the side of his mouth—she’d never noticed that before, either. It wasn’t a wrinkle, exactly, but a light depression in the skin as though it remembered precisely how Marcus grinned.

  “Phoebe. Did you hear me?” Miriam’s voice penetrated Phoebe’s consciousness.

  “No. That is, I’m sorry.” Phoebe tried to focus. “What did you say?”

  “I said it’s time I left,” Miriam replied. “I’ve decided to go back to New Haven. Marcus isn’t going to be much use as a research partner for the next few months. I might as well be useful.”

  “Oh.” Phoebe didn’t know what she was supposed to say. A horrifying thought occurred to her. “I don’t have to go with you, do I?”

  “No, Phoebe. Although you might want to sound a little less anguished at the prospect of spending time with your maker.” Miriam looked at Ysabeau. “I’m trusting you with my daughter.”

  Seeing Miriam and Ysabeau facing each other, one light and one dark, was like watching two primeval forces of nature struggling to achieve balance.

  “I have always looked after her. She is my grandson’s mate,” Ysabeau assured her. “Phoebe is a de Clermont now.”

  “Yes, but she will always be my daughter,” Miriam replied with a touch of fierceness.

  “Of course,” Ysabeau said smoothly.

  Finally, M
iriam and Baldwin left. Their hands tightly twined, Phoebe and Marcus saw them to their cars.

  “How much longer do I have to wait to get you alone?” Marcus whispered, his mouth pressing lightly into the sensitive skin behind her ear.

  “Your grandmother is still here,” Phoebe said, struggling to remain composed even though her knees felt bendy and after their separation she wanted nothing more than to spend the next ninety days in bed with Marcus. If it felt that good to have him kiss her neck, what was it going to be like to make love?

  “I paid Freyja to take Ysabeau and Marthe to Saint-Lucien for lunch.”

  Phoebe giggled.

  “I see that meets with your approval,” Marcus said.

  Phoebe’s giggle turned to laughter.

  “If you keep laughing like that, they’ll suspect we’re up to something,” Marcus warned before swallowing her laughter in a kiss that left her gasping for air.

  After that, Phoebe was pretty sure Ysabeau and Marthe did more than suspect what would happen when they descended the hill to Madame Laurence’s restaurant.

  By the time she and Marcus were finally, completely alone, Phoebe had had time to get nervous about what was about to happen.

  “I’m not very good at biting yet,” Phoebe confessed as Marcus drew her toward his room.

  Marcus gave her a kiss that left her dizzy.

  “Do we exchange blood before or after we make love?” Phoebe asked once they were inside and the door was closed and locked. It was a very stout lock, she noticed, probably fifteenth century in date. “I don’t want to do it wrong.”

  Marcus was on one knee before her, sliding her knickers out from underneath her dress.

  “I’m so glad you didn’t wear trousers,” he said, shimmying the aquamarine linen up to expose bare flesh. “Oh, God. You smell even better than you did before.”