“Then it must be very dull to be a knight,” Ysabeau said. “And I shouldn’t worry about causing trouble. It seems to find this family no matter what we do. Something will happen any day now. It always does.”

Matthew and I exchanged glances. Sarah snorted.

“Has Diana told you about the griffin?” my aunt asked.

* * *

—

WITHIN THE HOUR, Apollo was perched on Ysabeau’s arm like one of Emperor Rudolf’s eagles. Though the griffin was about the same height, I suspected that his leonine hindquarters added considerable weight. Only a vampire could have held him aloft with such elegance. In spite of her modern clothing, Ysabeau handled the creature with the grace of a medieval lady going hawking.

Becca had elected to have Sarah and Agatha read her a story rather than play with the griffin. The rest of us were with Ysabeau to witness the rare sight of a griffin taking to the open air.

Ysabeau had a dead mouse in one hand, and the griffin’s complete attention. When Ysabeau lifted her arm, the griffin left his perch and soared above her. Quickly, Ysabeau tossed the mouse into the air.

Apollo swooped down and caught it in his beak, his tail streaming behind him. He returned to Ysabeau, and laid the trophy at her feet.

“Good boy!” Philip cried, clapping for added emphasis.

Apollo chortled something in response.

“Okay.” Philip seemed to understand what his griffin had said and picked up the mouse. He threw it with all his might. It landed about two feet behind him.

Apollo retrieved the mouse in several bounds and dropped it at Ysabeau’s feet this time.

“I fear that Apollo is not getting enough exercise, Matthew. You must fly him, or he will amuse himself,” Ysabeau said, picking up the mouse once more. She hurled it across the moat. “You won’t like the results.”

Apollo gamboled up to the edge of the water, flew over it, and found the mouse in the reeds on the other side. The griffin took off with it and circled overhead a few times. Ysabeau’s piercing whistle brought him back down to earth.

“You seem to know a lot about griffins, Grand-mère,” Marcus said suspiciously.

“A bit,” she replied. “They were never very common. Not like centaurs and dryads.”

“Dryads?” I said faintly.

“Back when I was a girl, you had to be very careful walking through the woods,” Ysabeau explained. “Dryads looked like perfectly ordinary women, but if you stopped to talk to one, you could be encircled by trees before you knew it and find it impossible to see your way out.”

I glanced at the thick forest that bounded the property to the north, uneasy at the thought that the trees might try to strike up a conversation with Becca.

“As for centaurs, you can be glad Philip didn’t summon one of them. They can be devious, not to mention impossible to house-train.” Ysabeau crouched down by her grandson. “Give Apollo his mouse. He’s earned it.”

Apollo extended his tongue in anticipation.

Philip picked the mouse up by the tail. Apollo opened his beak, and Philip dropped the rodent into the griffin’s craw.

“All done,” Philip said, wiping his hands together in a gesture of completion.

“Still think you can weave a disguising spell for him?” Matthew murmured in my ear.

I had no idea. But I was going to have to reconsider the knots so that it could include weighted feet to keep Apollo attached to the ground. The creature definitely liked to fly.

“I’m sorry Rebecca did not stay to watch the hunt,” Ysabeau said. “She would have enjoyed it.”

“Becca is a bit jealous,” I explained. “Right now Philip and Apollo are getting a lot of attention.”

Philip let out a mighty yawn. The griffin followed suit.

“I think it’s time you took a nap. You’ve had a lot of excitement today.” Matthew swung his son into the air. “Come. Let’s go find your sister.”

“’Pollo, too?” Philip inquired, looking especially winsome.

“Yes, Apollo can nap in the fireplace.” Matthew gave me a kiss. “Will you join us?”

“There was a bucket of cherries on the kitchen counter this morning. I’ve been thinking about them for hours, and wondering what Marthe is going to do with them,” I confessed, leading the way back into the kitchen.

Marcus laughed and opened the door for me, gentlemanly as always. I knew now that it was his mother who had instilled these manners in him. My thoughts returned to Hadley, and to Marcus’s story. What had happened to Catherine and Patience, after Marcus fled?

“Diana?” Marcus said, concerned. I had stopped in my tracks.

“I’m fine. Just thinking about your mother, that’s all,” I said. “She’d be very proud of you, Marcus.”

Marcus looked shy. Then he smiled. In the years I’d known him, I’d never seen such unalloyed joy on his face.

“Thank you, Diana,” he said with a small bow.

Inside, Marthe was pitting the fruit by boring one slender pinkie into each cherry and popping the seed kernel into a waiting stainless steel bowl with a satisfying pling.

I reached into the bowl. Something snapped at my fingers. “Ow!”

“Keep your hands to yourself and nobody gets hurt,” Marthe said, glowering. She had a new crime novel, and was learning all sorts of useful English phrases.

Ysabeau poured herself some champagne, and I made myself a cup of tea and cut a slab from a freshly baked lemon loaf to console myself until Marthe declared open season on the fruit. Sarah and Agatha joined us. They’d finished Becca’s first story—and her second—and left her in Matthew’s capable hands. He would sing songs from his childhood to send the twins to sleep.

“Matthew really does have a special touch with the children,” Sarah acknowledged. She headed over to the coffeepot. As usual, Marthe had anticipated her need for caffeine and the coffee was hot and fragrant.

“The twins are lucky,” Marcus said. “They won’t have to search for a good father—a true father—like I did.”

“So everyone knows about Obadiah now?” Ysabeau asked her grandson.

“Everybody except Phoebe,” Marcus replied.

“What?” Agatha was stunned. “Marcus. How could you keep this from her?”

“I tried to tell her. Loads of times.” Marcus sounded miserable. “But Phoebe didn’t want me to tell her about my past. She wanted to discover it for herself—through my blood.”

“Bloodlore is even more unreliable than a vampire’s memories,” Ysabeau said. She shook her head. “You should not have let her dissuade you, Marcus. You knew better. You followed your heart, and not your head.”

“I was respecting her wishes!” Marcus retorted. “You told me to listen to her, Grand-mère. I was following your advice.”

“Part of growing older and wiser is learning which advice to follow and which to ignore.” Ysabeau sipped her champagne, her eyes glittering. My mother-in-law was up to something, but I knew better than to try to ferret it out. Instead, I changed the subject.

“What’s a ‘true father,’ Marcus?” Vampire family vocabulary could be confusing, and I wanted to be sure I had it right. “You mentioned it earlier. Obadiah was your birth father—is that the same thing, in vampire terms?”

“No.” The colored threads around Marcus were getting darker, the purple and indigo now almost black. “It has nothing to do with vampires. A true father is the man who teaches what you need to know about the world and how to survive in it. Joshua and Zeb were truer fathers to me than Obadiah. So was Tom.”

“I found some letters online about the summer of 1776 and the lifting of the inoculation ban in Massachusetts,” I said, determined to find a safer topic of conversation than fathers and sons. “Everything you remember fits into what I discovered. Washington and Congress were panicked at the thought that an epidemic would wipe out the entire army.”

“Their fears were justified,” Marcus replied. “When I finally reached Washington and the army, it was early November. The battles were drawing to a close for the year, but fatalities were destined to increase when the fighting stopped and the army went into their winter camp. Back then, peace was more deadly to the army than war.”