Matthew put the babies back into my arms. The room was empty.
“I don’t know how you women survive it,” he said, pressing his lips against my forehead.
“Being turned inside out?” I looked at one tiny face, then the other. “I don’t know either.” My voice dropped. “I wish Mom and Dad were here. Philippe, too.”
“If he were, Philippe would be shouting in the streets and waking the neighbors,” Matthew said.
“I want to name him Philip, after your father,” I said softly. At my words our son cracked one eye open. “Is that okay with you?”
“Only if we name our daughter Rebecca,” Matthew said, his hand cupping her dark head. She screwed up her face tighter.
“I’m not sure she approves,” I said, marveling that someone so tiny could be so opinionated.
“Rebecca will have plenty of other names to choose from if she continues to object,” Matthew said.
“Almost as many names as godparents, come to think of it.”
“We’re going to need a spreadsheet to figure that mess out,” I said, hitching Philip higher in my arms. “He is definitely the heavy one.”
“They’re both a very good size. And Philip is eighteen inches long.” Matthew looked at his son with pride.
“He’s going to be tall, like his father.” I settled more deeply into the pillows.
“And a redhead like his mother and grandmother,” Matthew said. He rounded the bed, gave the fire a poke, then lay next to me, propped up on one elbow.
“We’ve spent all this time searching for ancient secrets and long-lost books of magic, but they’re the true chemical wedding,” I said, watching while Matthew put his finger in Philip’s tiny hand. The baby gripped it with surprising strength.
“You’re right.” Matthew turned his son’s hand this way and that. “A little bit of you, a little bit of me. Part vampire, part witch.”
“And all ours,” I said firmly, sealing his mouth with a kiss.
“I have a daughter and a son,” Matthew told Baldwin. “Philip and Rebecca. Both are healthy and well.”
“And their mother?” Baldwin asked.
“Diana got through it beautifully.” Matthew’s hands shook whenever he thought of what she’d been through.
“Congratulations, Matthew.” Baldwin didn’t sound happy.
“What is it?” Matthew frowned.
“The Congregation already knows about the birth.”
“How?” Matthew demanded. Someone must be watching the house—either a vampire with very sharp eyes, or a witch with strong second sight.
“Who knows?” Baldwin said wearily. “They’re willing to hold in abeyance the charges against you and Diana in exchange for an opportunity to examine the babies.”
“Never.” Matthew’s anger caught light.
“The Congregation only wants to know what the twins are,” Baldwin said shortly.
“Mine. Philip and Rebecca are mine,” Matthew replied.
“No one seems to be disputing that—impossible though it supposedly is,” Baldwin said.
“This is Gerbert’s doing.” Every instinct told him that the vampire was a crucial link between Benjamin and the search for the Book of Life. He had been manipulating Congregation politics for years.
“Perhaps. Not every vampire in London is Hubbard’s creature,” Baldwin said. “Verin still intends to go to the Congregation on the sixth of December.”
“The babies’ birth doesn’t change anything,” Matthew said, though he knew that it did.
“Take care of my sister, Matthew,” Baldwin said quietly. Matthew thought he detected a note of real worry in his brother’s tone.
“Always,” Matthew replied.
The grandmothers were the babies’ first visitors. Sarah’s grin stretched from ear to ear, and Ysabeau’s face was shining with happiness. When we shared the babies’ first names, they both were touched at the thought that the legacy of the children’s absent grandparents would be carried into the future.
“Leave it to you two to have twins that aren’t even born on the same day,” Sarah said, swapping Rebecca for Philip, who had been staring at his grandmother with a fascinated frown. “See if you can get her to open her eyes, Ysabeau.”
Ysabeau blew gently on Rebecca’s face. Her eyes popped wide, and she began to scream, waving her mittened hands at her grandmother. “There. Now we can see you properly, my beauty.”
“They’re different signs of the zodiac, too,” Sarah said, swaying gently with Philip in her arms.
Unlike his sister, Philip was content to lie still and quietly observe his surroundings, his dark eyes wide.