“Is that what you were looking for?” Emily eyed the scrap. It didn’t seem worth tearing the room apart.
Ysabeau’s answer was clear from the way she handled it. She carefully unfolded it to reveal a five-inch square of thick paper, both sides covered in tiny characters.
“That’s written in some kind of code,” said Sarah. She swung her zebrastriped reading glasses onto her nose from the cord around her neck to get a better look.
“Not a code—Greek.” Ysabeau’s hands trembled as she smoothed the paper flat.
“What does it say?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah!” Emily scolded. “It’s private.”
“It’s from Philippe. He saw them,” Ysabeau breathed, her eyes racing across the text. Her hand went to her mouth, relief vying with disbelief.
Sarah waited for the vampire to finish reading. It took two minutes, which was ninety seconds longer than she would have given anyone else. “Well?”
“They were with him for the holidays. ‘On the morning of the Christians’ holy celebration, I said farewell to your son. He is happy at last, mated to a woman who walks in the footsteps of the goddess and is worthy of his love,’” Ysabeau read aloud.
“Are you sure he means Matthew and Diana?” Emily found the phrasing oddly formal and vague for an exchange between husband and wife.
“Yes. Matthew was always the child we worried over, though his brothers and sisters got into far worse predicaments. My one wish was to see Matthew happy.”
“And the reference to the ‘woman who walks in the footsteps of the goddess’ is pretty clear,” Sarah agreed. “He couldn’t very well give her name and identify Diana as a witch. What if someone else had found it?”
“There is more,” Ysabeau continued. “‘Fate still has the power to surprise us, bright one. I fear there are difficult times ahead for all of us. I will do what I can, in what time remains to me, to ensure your safety and that of our children and grandchildren, those whose blessings we already enjoy and those as yet unborn.’”
Sarah swore. “Unborn, not unmade?”
“Yes,” Ysabeau whispered. “Philippe always chose his words carefully.”
“So he was trying to tell us something about Diana and Matthew.”
Ysabeau sank onto the sofa. “A long, long time ago, there were rumors about creatures who were different—immortal but powerful, too. Around the time the covenant was first signed, some claimed that a witch gave birth to a baby who wept tears of blood like a vampire. Whenever the child did so, fierce winds blew in from the sea.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Emily said, frowning.
“It was dismissed as a myth—a story created to engender fear among creatures. Few among us now would remember, and even fewer would believe it possible.” Ysabeau touched the paper in her lap. “But Philippe knew it was true. He held the child, you see, and knew if for what it was.”
“Which was what?” Sarah said, stunned.
“A manjasang born of a witch. The poor child was starving. The witch’s family took the baby boy from her and refused to feed him blood on the grounds that if he was forced to take only milk, it would keep him from turning into one of us.”
“Surely Matthew knows this story,” Emily said. “You would have told him for his research, if not for Diana’s sake.”
Ysabeau shook her head. “It was not my tale to tell.”
“You and your secrets,” Sarah said bitterly.
“And what of your secrets, Sarah?” Ysabeau cried. “Do you really believe that the witches—creatures like Satu and Peter Knox—know nothing about this manjasang child and its mother?”
“Stop it, both of you,” Emily said sharply. “If the story is true, and other creatures know it, then Diana is in grave danger. So is Sophie.”
“Her parents were both witches, but she is a daemon,” Sarah said, thinking of the young couple who had appeared on her doorstep in New York days before Halloween. No one understood how the two daemons fit into this mystery.
“So is Sophie’s husband, but their daughter will be a witch. She and Nathaniel are further proof that we don’t understand how witches, daemons, and vampires reproduce and pass their abilities on to their children,” Emily said, worried.
“Sophie and Nathaniel aren’t the only creatures who need to stay clear of the Congregation. So do Diana and Matthew. It’s a good thing they’re safely in the past and not here.” Sarah was grim.