Time's Convert

The novel interweaves two timelines in a world where vampires, witches, daemons (a distinct nonhuman species), and humans coexist under a truce governed by a body called the Congregation. In the present, a young woman undergoes transformation into a vampire and endures a long separation from her fiancé. In the past, that fiancé's origin story unfolds across decades of revolution and the search for a true father.

On her last night as a human, Phoebe Taylor attends a farewell dinner at the Paris home of Freyja de Clermont, Marcus's vampire aunt. Her father, Edward, tearfully urges her to reconsider, but Phoebe is resolute. She calls Marcus on a hidden phone, and they rehearse their vows. The next morning, Miriam, an ancient vampire chosen as Phoebe's maker, bites her and drains her blood. When Phoebe wakes in searing cold, Miriam offers her wrist and asks her to choose between life and death. Phoebe chooses life.

At Les Revenants, the de Clermont castle in the French countryside, Diana Bishop-Clairmont, a witch married to the vampire Matthew de Clermont, learns that Marcus has bolted toward Paris. Matthew pursues him and brings him back. Diana challenges Marcus's assumption that he knows what Phoebe needs, reminding him this traditional approach was Phoebe's own choice.

Phoebe's first days unfold under strict supervision. Freyja and Miriam lock windows and limit light to prevent sensory overload. Phoebe discovers the thousand shades of darkness visible to vampire eyes but struggles with uncontrolled strength, breaking Freyja's finger and cracking a windowpane. Through Miriam's blood, Phoebe absorbs vivid memories of her maker's life, including her mate Ori, who sacrificed himself in Jerusalem. This bloodlore, the knowledge carried in a vampire's blood, binds maker and child together.

Meanwhile, Diana coaxes Marcus into sharing his past. She is a weaver, a rare witch who can perceive and manipulate strands of time. Marcus was born Marcus MacNeil in 1757 in Hadley, Massachusetts. His father, Obadiah, a militia veteran, returned from war violent and broken, ruling the household with an iron bootjack. Marcus recalls a childhood of poverty and fear, lightened by his friend Zeb Pruitt and the surgeon Tom Buckland. As Marcus shares these memories, Diana's twin infants, Philip and Rebecca, reveal they too are weavers. Philip grabs threads of time trailing from Marcus, and days later summons a small griffin familiar he names Apollo.

Phoebe's development proceeds through milestones. On her third day, she befriends a live cat meant for feeding practice and feeds without killing it. She names the cat Persephone. On her ninth day, she rebels during a blood-tasting session. Françoise, Freyja's housekeeper who has served the de Clermont family for centuries, warns Phoebe that as Marcus's mate, or formally bonded vampire partner, she will never again have privacy. On her twenty-first day, Phoebe feeds from a live human for the first time and manages to stop on her own. She takes the name Catherine to honor Marcus's mother.

Marcus's story spans the American Revolution. In 1775, Obadiah publicly humiliated the seventeen-year-old and forbade him from enlisting. Marcus ran away and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1776, after inoculating himself against smallpox, he returned home to find Obadiah attacking his mother. He shot his father dead. His friends Zeb and Joshua Boston helped him flee under an alias. He joined the army medical corps and at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777 met the chevalier de Clermont, a commanding figure traveling with the Marquis de Lafayette. In October 1781, Marcus lay dying of fever at Yorktown. The chevalier revealed he was a thousand-year-old vampire and transformed Marcus. During weeks of travel north, Marcus learned to hunt and feed. Passing through Hadley, he glimpsed his mother and sister thriving but accepted he no longer belonged there.

In France, Marcus met his grandfather Philippe de Clermont, who named him and forbade him from siring vampire children without permission. By 1789, Marcus was swept up in the French Revolution alongside his lover Veronique, an independent vampire, and the daemon Jean-Paul Marat. Philippe twice ordered Marcus away from Paris to separate him from Marat's escalating violence. Veronique refused to leave, burning her hands to rescue Marat's manuscript from a fire. Marcus departed without her, feeling she had chosen the Revolution over him.

In the present, tensions mount around questions of parenthood and control. When Rebecca bites Matthew, his blood rage, a hereditary condition causing violent impulses, nearly overwhelms him. After Matthew flees into the forest, Marcus follows and reveals his reason for becoming a vampire: "Because I had nothing left to lose that mattered. And I thought you might be the father that I had been searching for" (226). Baldwin de Clermont, Matthew's brother and head of the de Clermont family, arrives at Les Revenants demanding the twins be tested for blood rage and that Diana spellbind any family member who poses a threat. Diana lassoes the feuding vampires with a binding spell and declares this branch of the family is done controlling its children. Her own buried memories erupt: her parents spellbound her repeatedly as a child, using magical leashes to prevent her from flying. Matthew reveals he destroyed all the twins' genetic samples months ago, choosing uncertainty over labels.

Marcus's story reaches its darkest chapter. In 1793, he broke his promise and transformed his dying friend Vanderslice into a vampire. Vanderslice fell in with dangerous associates and was murdered. Marcus swore never to sire again, but in New Orleans he created more than two dozen vampire children. Matthew arrived on Philippe's orders and, with his companion Juliette Durand, systematically killed most of Marcus's family. Marcus told Matthew he would never forgive him.

On her thirtieth day, Phoebe ventures outside and is lightstruck, a condition in which bright light overwhelms a young vampire's senses, and attacks a tourist before Freyja intervenes. On her forty-fifth day, she encounters her sister Stella by the Seine. Stella accuses Phoebe of unfaithfulness to Marcus; Phoebe snarls a warning and walks away. When Edward suffers a heart attack, Diana disguises Phoebe's vampire nature with a spell so she can visit the hospital. Stella demands the vampires use their blood to heal Edward, but such intervention would mean transforming him. Edward survives surgery, and Phoebe moves to Sept-Tours, where Ysabeau, the de Clermont matriarch, teaches her that to be a vampire is to choose life over grief and death, again and again.

On the ninetieth day, Phoebe formally chooses Marcus as her mate. They make love for the first time as vampires; Phoebe drinks from Marcus's heart vein, experiencing a flood of his memories, and their hearts synchronize. Diana and Matthew settle into domestic life in New Haven with the twins. On Phoebe's hundredth day, she and Marcus drive to Hadley. Inside the small house where Marcus grew up, they find his childhood chair, hooks where Obadiah's gun once hung, and Philippe's blue Windsor chair with a note from Matthew: 'Philippe would want you to have his chair. So would Dr. Franklin. Remember we are not far away, if you have need of us. Your father, Matthew' (431). The Dr. Franklin referenced is Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman whom Marcus befriended during his time in France. Marcus places his copy of Common Sense on the mantel where his mother's clock once stood. Phoebe tells him she chooses him, this place, and this life. Their hearts beat as one.