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"I’ll have soh the list of es from Baldwin, Riation, and my department chair at Yale I was busier than I’d ever been Happier, too

When I joined Matthew in his study, he was not fixing our drinks Instead he was standing in front of the fireplace, Philip balanced on his hip, staring up at the wall above thehis stare, I could see why

The portrait of Ysabeau and Philippe that usually hung there was gone A s was pinned to the wall SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN MARRIED COUPLE TEMPORARILY REMOVED FOR THE EXHIBITION SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS AND HIS WORLD AT THE ROYAL GREENWICH PICTURE GALLERY

"Phoebe Taylor strikes again," I murmured She was not yet a vampire but was already well known in vampire circles for her ability to identify the art in their possession that would provide considerable tax relief should they be willing to give the works to the nation Baldwin adored her

But the sudden disappearance of his parents was not the real reason Mattheas transfixed

In place of the Reynolds was another canvas: a portrait of Matthew and me It was clearly Jack’s work, with his trademark combination of seventeenth-century attention to detail and modern sensitivity to color and line This was confirmed by the small card propped on the mantelpiece with "Happy birthday, Dad" scrawled on it

"I thought he was painting your portrait It was supposed to be a surprise," I said, thinking of our son’s whispered requests that I occupy Matthew’s attention while he sketched

"Jack toldyour portrait," Matthew said

Instead Jack had painted the two of us together, in the forrand s I was sitting in an Elizabethan chair, a relic from our house in Blackfriars Matthew stood behind ht as they looked at the viewer My eyes ested I was not an ordinary human

Matthew reached over ers woven tight My head was angled slightly toward hih we had been interrupted in mid-conversation

The pose exposed my left wrist and the ouroboros that circled th and solidarity, this syun with the surprising love that developed between Matthew and h to withstand the hatred and fear of others And it would endure because we had discovered, like the witches so e was the secret of survival

More than that, the ouroboros symbolized our partnership Matthew and I were an alchee of vampire and witch, death and life, sun andfiner and more precious than either of us could ever have been separately

We were the tenth knot

Unbreakable

Without beginning or end