A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [20]
“I don’t think anyone who took the time to examine me carefully would think I was ordinary, do you?” Clairmont’s already quiet voice dropped to a mocking whisper, and he tilted forward in his chair. His pale skin caught the light and seemed to glow. “But otherwise, yes. It’s just a series of coincidences, easily explained.”
“I thought scientists didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.”
He laughed softly. “Some have to believe in them.”
Clairmont kept staring at me, which was unnerving in the extreme. The female attendant rolled the reading room’s ancient wooden cart up to the vampire’s elbow, boxes of manuscripts neatly arrayed on the trolley’s shelves.
The vampire dragged his eyes from my face. “Thank you, Valerie. I appreciate your assistance.”
“Of course, Professor Clairmont,” Valerie said, gazing at him raptly and turning pink. The vampire had charmed her with no more than a thank-you. I snorted. “Do let us know if you need anything else,” she said, returning to her bolt-hole by the entrance.
Clairmont picked up the first box, undid the string with his long fingers, and glanced across the table. “I don’t want to keep you from your work.”
Matthew Clairmont had taken the upper hand. I’d had enough dealings with senior colleagues to recognize the signs and to know that any response would only make the situation worse. I opened my computer, punched the power button with more force than necessary, and picked up the first of my manuscripts. Once the box was unfastened, I placed its leather-bound contents on the cradle in front of me.
Over the next hour and a half, I read the first pages at least thirty times. I started at the beginning, reading familiar lines of poetry attributed to George Ripley that promised to reveal the secrets of the philosopher’s stone. Given the surprises of the morning, the poem’s descriptions of how to make the Green Lion, create the Black Dragon, and concoct a mystical blood from chemical ingredients were even more opaque than usual.
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.
Occasionally Mr. Johnson drifted through the room, making sure no one was defacing the books. The vampire kept writing. I glared at both of them.
At 10:45, there was a familiar tingle when Gillian Chamberlain bustled into the Selden End. She started toward me—no doubt to tell me what a splendid time she’d had at the Mabon dinner. Then she saw the vampire and dropped her plastic bag full of pencils and paper. He looked up and stared until she scampered back to the medieval wing.
At 11:10, I felt the insidious pressure of a kiss on my neck. It was the confused, caffeine-addicted daemon from the music reference room. He was repeatedly twirling a set of white plastic headphones around his fingers, then unwinding them to send them spinning through the air. The daemon saw me, nodded at Matthew, and sat at one of the computers in the center of the room. A sign was taped to the screen: OUT OF ORDER. TECHNICIAN CALLED. He remained there for the next several hours, glancing over his shoulder and then at the ceiling periodically as if trying to figure out where he was and how he’d gotten there.
I returned my attention to George Ripley, Clairmont’s eyes cold on the top of my head.
At 11:40, icy patches bloomed between my shoulder blades.
This was the last straw. Sarah always said that one in ten beings was a creature, but in Duke Humfrey’s this morning the creatures outnumbered humans five to one. Where had they all come from?
I stood abruptly and whirled around, frightening a cherubic, tonsured vampire with an armful of medieval missals just as he was lowering himself into a chair that was much too small for him. He let out a squeak at the sudden, unwanted attention. At the sight of Clairmont,