Mirrors (Curse of Lanval Book 1) Read online

  Mirrors

  Curse of Lanval

  Book I

  Rebekah Dodson

  Curse of Lanval Series

  Mirrors

  Marie

  Magic

  Merlon

  Copyright © 2016 Rebekah Dodson

  All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stores in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1540364968

  ISBN-10: 1540364968

  DEDICATION

  To C. Your bright smile, infectious laugh, and positive attitude always cheered me and helped me get my writing (and teaching!) “mojo” back. Thanks for all the research and discussions on the plague, stitches, stab wounds, and how to be a paramedic! I wish we had more than thirteen weeks to get to know one another. Before I knew it, you walked out of my life, and all I have left is this series.

  Time is pretty screwed up like that.

  Thank you for being a wonderful friend, an awesome teacher, and my kooky sidekick.Where ever life takes you, I hope it is always to inspire others.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To C.L. Cannon, for her detailed editing and feedback, which made this project possible, and for the world’s most awesome cover.

  Seriously.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One: My Sister, Ancestry Queen

  Chapter Two: When Your Sister Uses Your Middle Name

  Chapter Three: The Bearer of Bad News

  Chapter Four: Paris, again

  Chapter Five: A Funeral and My Sister’s Find

  Chapter Six: Not My Mother’s France

  Chapter Seven: Well, This Sucks

  Chapter Eight: There Be Fire

  Chapter One: My Sister, Ancestry Queen

  The peasants gathered the bundles of branches at my feet, their crackling torches dangerously close to the dry fuel. I didn’t know how I got here, tied to a stake in the middle of the twelfth-century French countryside. As usual, it was my sister’s fault. That—and the damned family curse. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to September where this all started…

  I silently dared my professor to call my name. Our eye contact was intense. He broke first, shifting his gaze around the room.

  “Jennifer Ibana.”

  “Here,” called a beautiful female voice to my left, all black curly hair and big blue eyes.

  “Alyssa Jackson.”

  “I’m here,” said another voice to my right.

  College was going to be difficult with all these fucking gorgeous ladies here. I stared at the nerdy teacher behind the desk, wondering if he knew the 1980s called and wanted their glasses back, and that tweed jackets were not hip anymore.

  “Andrew Kain.”

  “What up,” a voice behind me shouted, and a few polite, quiet giggles ran through the classroom.

  The professor shushed the class. “We are all adults here, people, this is college after all.”

  Do it, I urged him silently, call my name.

  “Gill – Gwill? Gwuilameme?”

  In fifth grade, I winced and slid down in the chair. In middle school, I nearly blushed like a girl when the beautiful ones laughed at me. Thankfully, in high school, something inside me snapped, and I stopped giving a shit. Everyone mispronounced it, and I didn’t care anymore. A big smile spread on my face.

  Full on laughter rippled across the students now.

  “Gwill-a-meme … Lanval?” the professor tried again, frowning and looking around the room.

  Well, at least he got my last name right, pronouncing it with a long a sound instead of the short. That was a first since probably second grade.

  “Guillaume,” I shouted, shooting my hand in the air. “Nice try, though,” I winked and pointed at him.

  “I’m sorry, Guillaume?”

  I groaned. He was dense as hell, like my idiot seventh-grade teacher that called everyone ‘honey’ because she was too old to remember our names. “It’s Guillaume, sir, it’s French. Most people just call me Gill.”

  “Gill?” The professor looked over his glasses at me.

  “Yes, sir, it’s short.”

  A few more giggles erupted from the back, and some guy behind me whispered, “That’s what she said.”

  I turned and high-fived a complete stranger. Maybe college wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “You don’t look French,” the professor said, clearing his throat and ignoring the rude comment. He looked me up and down. “Tell us, Gill, are your parents French?”

  “My mother and uncle are,” I said in French, “It’s an old family name.”

  A few students gasped as I rattled off my fluent second language, but most just stared, including the professor.

  To my surprise, he answered me in equally fluent French: “In my classroom, Mr. Gill, we will speak English.”

  I laughed, shaking my head, and repeated my phrase. I looked around to see the entire class was staring at me, and my confidence shot through the roof. I nodded back at them. Hell, ya.

  It was true, I didn’t look French at all. At least, not by modern standards. I had no dashing dark hair and sultry cheek bones like my countrymen, unfortunately. It was a cruel trick of nature to be left with red hair and brown eyes. My mother said my hair was a dormant gene, passed down from some royalty far back in our family tree. I ran a hand through my auburn curls, smoothing them back to my neckline. As a kid, I often wondered if I was adopted – I certainly didn’t look anything like either of my parents, and the only thing I shared with my sister was dark brown eyes.

  Bedroom eyes, my last girlfriend had called them. I was fucking proud of it, too.

  The professor ruffled some papers on his desk, and jotted something down, ripping me out of my nostalgia. “Gill it is, then,” he said, “you’ll be delighted when we visit our chapter on King Charlemagne, who served a pivotal role in ushering in the medieval age.” He picked up his roll again and continued to call the rest of the names.

  When he’d finished, satisfied we had all responded, he nodded. “I’m Professor Alexander Jones, and this is Medieval History I, welcome to class.” He turned to the old-fashioned chalkboard behind him. I could still see the faded remnants of the last class’s math equations on the forest green background. “Some of the professors requested one of those new smart boards,” he told us, with his back still turned, “but I opted out. Love the feel of chalk between the ol’ fingers.”

  He scrawled “Medieval History I” across the board, his name, the course section and his email address. Without turning back to us, he drawled on: “I trust you all have phones that access the Internet and will have no excuse to email me.”

  No one answered him, and around me, all I could see were bored faces. Over the next hour, I tried to listen, I tried to focus. Despite my smartass act, I had been waiting for college my entire life, not like most of the bozos in this class. I worked hard in high school, graduated valedictorian, gave the speech and yada yada. I was president of glee club and drama class, and not that anyone in college would care, b
ut I won a two-year scholarship to the university in my hometown. The good thing was being a few blocks from home, but the bad thing, I was required to live on campus for the first year. I still don’t know how I ended up without a bunkmate, shoved in the corner of the most ancient dorm building I had ever seen. I kinda liked it this way, though. No partying until all hours of the night or girls to distract me, that was all in the past.

  Jennifer, the first name the professor had called, turned and looked at me, chomping on her gum and swirling a curl around her index finger.

  Well, maybe just ditch the partying, then. These girls were something else. Sexy, independent, and motivated. Not like the lazy drama filled high school girls. I was looking forward to testing the waters. I scrawled my number on a corner of my notebook paper, quietly tore out the section, and slid it across to Jessica. Text me, I mouthed, holding up my thumbs to demonstrate.

  She smiled and tucked the paper in her notebook.

  “Can anyone tell me what year the Gauls first settled in modern day France?” Professor Jackson still droned on. I wanted to roll my eyes. He was more boring than my social studies teacher last year.

  Instead, I went over my schedule again in my head. Today I would conquer history, political science, film class. Tomorrow would be French III, followed by sociology. My father had said I was crazy for taking five classes my first term, but I’d waited my entire life for this moment.

  I was most looking forward to French language class, my easy A class. Women love a guy who can speak French. Easy A? More like my “easy lay” class. More of my girlfriends in high school came from French class than any other class I took. I always figured it was something about late nights studying French that led to another type of French…ing.

  I figured in college, French would be easy; after all, I’d taken two years of it in high school, and spend almost every summer abroad. My mother, a quiet, demure French woman, sent my sister and me to my Aunt Alberta and Uncle Richard so we could get some “real world practice” with our French. Every summer since I was eight years old and my sister ten, my mother would put us on a plane for Paris. Once there, we would meet my uncle at the airport for the three-hour drive to their countryside villa. My sister, Jewel, didn’t pick it up as well as I did. I think she always hated me a little for that.

  My father, a true red-blooded American who my French mother had met in college, was also not the happiest camper about our multicultural experience. Who gave a shit, though? My father was an asshole; I didn’t know what my mother saw in him, although she told us what a dashing rogue he’d been during their days in college. And as much as my mother wanted us both to learn French, my sister decidedly took after my father’s American side of the family, and not just with her dark brown hair and eyes like him, either. Her language skills were poor, and she decided to go the medical route with her education, as my father had highly recommended to us both. When I chose education, instead, he was livid.

  I had sighed, pushing peas around on my plate like a cranky two-year-old. I worked my ass off to earn a one-year certificate in emergency medical technician my senior year of high school, which my father always referred to as “that certificate.” Like I didn’t make good money and basically, support myself by the time I was eighteen years old. I was twenty now, and finally decided to try this college thing. I mean, why the hell not, right?

  My sister kicked me under the table, and I glared at her. I looked at her, and she tossed her close-cropped blond head at me, nodding towards my father. She was home from college this particular weekend, dressed casually in sweats and a tank top, a far cry from her firefighting uniform. I hadn’t seen my sister in action, but my father made it clear she was more of a hero than I was. Quite often.

  “Gill, answer your father,” my mother urged softly from across the table.

  “I just figured with history I could go into teaching,” I said softly. There was no point in shouting; we’d done enough of that recently.

  My father sighed, and the communal defeat spread around the table like a dark shadow. I knew he disapproved, but I had stopped caring. I was so tired of my job, and it had only been six months. I knew I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life.

  So, whatever. My mother was the best, my sister was always mostly a bitch, and my father was a hard-ass. It wasn’t hard to see that my own dorm room was a welcome escape. And honestly? I was just glad to leave behind the petty drama and general suck feeling of high school.

  University didn’t seem much different so far, much to my disappointment. I looked around at my classmates, who except one older kid, all looked around my age, a “green” eighteen, as my father had put it. An older woman to my right was nodding off as Professor Jones went over the syllabus, page by page, his level voice lulling her to la-la land. The boy to my left was sketching a very hairy King Kong snatching and eating airplanes from the sky while waving a long-haired stick figure from one meaty palm.

  Someone stifled a giggle from behind me, and this class seemed to be more of a joke than I would like. I turned my head to see the girl at the table with her cell phone placed delicately in her lap, in full view of the others and undoubtedly the professor as well. I shook my head. Sometimes, college felt exactly like high school all over again.

  The bell rang blessedly early. Despite the dry, mundane shit of the first day, I was still excited to get to my next class. I had an hour break between them, which I knew I could utilize for homework later on, but for now, I found myself with nothing to do. I wandered the halls for a while, getting lost and doing a hell of a lot of cursing. The campus was huge, but the humanities classes were all in Saunders, so at least I wouldn’t have to go very far. I found my French class with over half an hour to spare.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I juggled a stack of books on my arm as my backpack slid down my shoulder. I finally pulled my phone free from my tight jean pocket. Oh, goddamn it, it was my sister. How she escaped the horrible ancestral naming, I’ll never know. Why didn’t she get some fucked up French name like me? She was older by two years!

  I swiped across the screen to answer. “Jules,” I said, wondering why she’d call me in the morning when we both had class. My father’s pet, of course, she’d decided to go into medical school about two hours away. But no, Guillaume was the rebel, getting that useless history degree. Despite my parents’ disapproval, Jules and I were still close. Not a day went by we didn’t catch up on the phone, even if she felt the need to tell me about some guy who cut her off in traffic or how her green tea smoothie wasn’t green tea enough. One thing my sister and I both had in common, was checking out hot girls. It was both a blessing and a curse that my sister was gay, a few times in high school, we chased the same girl, and she won. It was a game we often played.

  “Gill,” she said, her voice high, twanged with excitement. “You’ll never believe what I found!”

  “Aren’t you in class?” I said, finding a bench outside my next class and plopping onto it.

  “Technically, yes, but it’s advanced anatomy, I’m the Teacher’s Assistant, so basically I’ve got some time.”

  I laughed. “Teacher’s pet!”

  “Look,” she said, dropping her voice, all serious-like, suddenly. “I was going over some family history for a genetics assignment, and I was able to trace back our genealogy quite a ways.”

  “A lot of French names would be my guess.”

  “Of course,” she said, and I could almost hear her rolling her eyes, “but there’s more.”

  “Really?” I tried not to sound bored, really I did. But my mother had been into the family tree stuff, and it was all just names and dates. Nothing like that really interested me. A great grandfather from centuries ago that I was named after? Big deal, so what?

  “You know Guillaume, that count you were named after?”

  “It’s Compte,” I said, preferring her to at least respect the French title. “But, yeah, why?”

  “He was a big deal, I gu
ess. Owned a castle.”

  “Yeah, Mom mentioned that at one point, I think.”

  “Oh, but this is where it gets interesting. He defended his castle against William the Conqueror, ya know…”

  I perked up a little at that, leaning forward. “The man responsible for uniting England?”

  “Yeah, that guy. Guillaume owned a castle, Castle Duvall, and William attacked it in… let’s see” - I could hear her clicking a mouse in the background – “ten-eighty-six, looks like.”

  “Well, that is interesting,” I said, no longer bored. “Did you find pictures?”

  “Of the castle? Of course, I’ll text them to you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Will? It gets stranger.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s a few different deaths noted for Compte Guilluame.”

  “Mom always said that happened back then because the records were poorly kept.”

  “Oh no, this is stranger than that. Much stranger. According to this, Guillaume died in 1155 A.D.”

  “What’s so strange about that?”

  “He was born in 1016, or thereabouts.”

  “Okay, so he was super old.”

  “But Gill, really? A hundred and thirty-nine years old? That’s strange back then when life expectancy wasn’t that high. You should know that, history major.”

  “Um, not to burst your bubble, but no one lives to be that old. It must be a mistake.”

  “I’ve checked it several times,” she urged.

  I shrugged. “Maybe he had a good diet.”

  “Not this good,” Jules murmured, “he apparently also died in 1223.”

  “What?” I nearly dropped the phone.

  “And again in 1486.”

  That time I did drop it. “Oh shit,” I murmured. A door down the hall opened, and students began filing into the hallway, talking in loud, excited voices. I scrambled to pick up my phone, examining it for a second to make sure the precious screen was intact. It was.