Chapter 2 Julia
Julia
My magic is a rabid animal inside my chest, clawing and desperate to feed. The hunger is all-consuming, a pain worse than anything I have known.
I gasp, drawing in air that’s all wrong—thick, heavy, and bitter. My vision swims as I try to focus on my surroundings. Like waking from a deep sleep, everything eludes me. What day is it? Where am I? Who am I?
I take two unsteady steps before I have to stop and catch my balance.
Beneath the haze and swirling ash, my body tingles. I rake my fingers through my hair, which is unusually tangled, then down my throat, where my pulse beats rapidly. I continue downward, running my palms over my white blouse, feeling my chest rise and fall, then down over my bodice and hips.
I’m all here.
A wintry wind makes my cloak flap against my calves and my hair whip around my face. I curl my toes. Beneath the hem of my brown trousers, my bare feet are on hot, dry ash, looking pale in the gathering darkness. Wet grass surrounds the ash.
Did…did someone attempt to burn me at the stake?
My hands fly back to my waist, checking for burns, for rope marks, for any evidence of what was done to me.
But no. There’s no stake. Just me standing in crumbling debris.
Indignation tightens my chest. Where are my boots? And why is my hair in this untamed state instead of its usual chignon? As a cold breeze sweeps over me, I tug my cloak shut and fasten the button to reclaim some control.
Heavy breathing comes to my attention, and it’s not my own.
The back of my neck prickles.
I snap my gaze to the source and raise my hands, ready to defend myself.
A young woman stands strides away on the grass—and if I thought I was dressed improperly, she puts me to shame.
Her hair, the warm-gold color of autumn leaves, is so disheveled that I’m surprised birds have not taken up residence in it.
And her garments! The fabric is like nothing I have seen, the material clinging to her legs as tightly as a second skin.
She’s pretty in a delicate, breakable way, with soft features and a pale, freckled complexion.
Her pink lips are open as she stares at me, her blue eyes wide with terror.
I curl my fingers, ready to feed. But my magic can wait a moment. Getting answers is more important.
“Who are you?” I demand, my voice surprisingly strong.
“I—I was going to ask the same!” Her words come out high-pitched and tremulous. She huffs and clenches her fists. “What are you doing in my yard?”
She’s inching backward as if she thinks she can sneak away.
I raise my hand, summoning my magic so I can stop her and force her to talk. “Leaving already?”
I ask the ground behind her to rise and bring her closer, but my power is sluggish, the effort of moving even a bit of dirt sending black spots across my vision. I create no more than a bump in the grass, which she trips over.
She catches her balance and looks down. “What the fuck was that?”
Hot frustration wells inside me, and I ball my fists, snarling. “What spell have you cast upon me?”
Her face is pale with fear, and she continues backing toward the house. “Nothing! I was just burning some stuff, and…”
I pause, searching her face. The tremor in her voice and her genuine confusion tell me she’s being truthful. She’s certainly no witch, and she’s fragile even for an ordinary human. I could snap her like a twig.
But my power is so weak I can barely feel it. It’s like my veins are filled with broken glass, each heartbeat sending shards through my body. My entrails have been replaced with a hollow ache as my essence cries out for sustenance. Every breath feels thin, like drowning in air.
I need a life force to feed on, and soon.
“This is not the Fort.” I take in the plain, gray houses all lined up. They’re strangely uniform, with excessively bright lights that sting the eyes.
Where is the riverbank? The wall?
A distant hum I cannot place nags at my ears, like harsh wind or a roaring sea. Even the air is unfamiliar, foul-smelling and sour. It burns my throat and makes my stomach queasy.
I gesture at everything and nothing. “Where am I?”
“My house?” the girl says uncertainly.
“Yes, but where?” I bark, the hunger making me snappy.
“Um, 3866 Belvedere Court.” She shifts, as if she’s unsure if this is the answer I’m looking for. When I continue to stare, she adds, “In Burnaby, BC, Canada. Why?”
My heart beats faster. How did I get so far from Fort Langley, and why don’t I recall how I came to be here? “And your name?”
“Hannah Schmidt. Will you tell me what’s going on?”
Schmidt. Germanic. No one I know by that surname. No relation to my coven.
Another question rises to my lips, one I’m afraid to ask. “And…what is the date?”
Hannah hesitates, looking at me warily. “It’s October 28, 2009.”
The earth seems to jolt beneath my feet. I sway, dizzy with the impossibility of her words. The year begins with a two?
I press a hand to my throat, where my pulse ticks rapidly.
“That’s…no.” I try to calculate how long it’s been, but my brain will not cooperate. “It’s… 1891 was…”
“1891?” Hannah repeats, as if she’s never heard of such a number.
“Yes,” I snap, growing impatient. “How many years ago was that?”
She pulls something rectangular out of her pocket and taps it with her thumbs. “Hundred eighteen.”
“I’ve been gone for 118 years?” I roar.
“Okay, um—a little quieter, please.” Hannah puts her hands out. “My neighbors are probably putting their baby to bed, and… Look, I’m going to get someone to come pick you up and bring you back to your caretaker, okay?”
My heart slams against my ribs. Over a century.
God, this cannot be! The number feels impossible, yet the strange world around me confirms it.
Do any of my coven sisters remain, or has everyone I knew turned to bones?
Did anyone mourn me when I vanished? Did they wonder about my fate or cast a tracking spell to find me?
Or did they move on and assume I chose to disappear?
My chest tightens unbearably with a loneliness I have not felt since my mother passed. The utter terror of having no one who cares where I am or what happens to me. Of having no one who knows my face, my name, my soul.
My breaths come quick and tremulous, and I clamp my jaw shut before the girl notices. I am Julia Moreau, and I do not break.
Instinctively, I lift my hands to cast a kinship spell. I must know if anybody I can trust is near.
“Sorores, voces vestras nunc exquiro…” I murmur, but it’s clear from the first word that it’s no use. Dark wisps of magic sprout feebly between my fingers, too weak for a complex spell. My hands tremble, and I curl them into fists. The void inside me pulsates, my power desperate to be replenished.
“Is there a phone number I can call?” Hannah asks. “Your family or caretaker?”
Drawing deep breaths, I take in the houses with the colored lights flashing in the windows, the putrid air, the uniform grass under my bare feet… No wonder everything looks foreign. The world has undergone generations of change since…
A shiver rolls through me. Since what? What happened to me?
My memories are hazy, like trying to see through fog. What is the last thing I remember?
Warmth. The scent of sage and jasmine and sweat. Rebecca’s lips grazing my throat as her blonde hair spilled through my fingers.
We were on the floor of her sanctum, the pentagram beneath us, candles casting moving shadows on the stone walls. I’d gone there to help her with a spell, but we never finished the chant. As we knelt and joined hands, sharing our breath to strengthen the enchantment…she leaned in.
In the next beat of my heart, we were kissing hard, both of us finally giving in after weeks of wanting. I pushed her onto her back, scattering our carefully placed herbs. The candles snuffed out, leaving us in darkness while the wind howled outside.
“I want to feel your power, Julia,” she’d whispered.
The words sparked a fire in me. Of course that’s what this was about: her desire to feel what it was like to be fed on by a sanguine witch.
So I’d pressed my body against hers, and she moaned under me, parting her legs.
I teased her lips with mine and plunged my tongue into her mouth.
Lifted her skirts. Slid my fingers between her thighs.
Her teeth stung my bottom lip. My hair came undone beneath her frantic fingers, cascading down and caressing her face.
She came apart at my touch, arching her back beneath me.
I’d just begun to recite the feeding incantation when…
Darkness. Sleep. Nothing.
I place a hand over my frantic heart, the truth crashing over me.
Rebecca did this to me.
The pentagram, the spell… It was a setup. She lured me there so she could curse me to an enchanted sleep. I should have known when she seemed nervous and wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I cannot believe I trusted her. I let myself kiss her, lick her, thrust my fingers inside her. And she used my desire against me. Turned my moment of weakness into a trap.
Molten anger bubbles up within me, making me tremble, before Hannah’s uncertain voice yanks me out of the memory. “Excuse me? Can you hear me?”
I snap my gaze to her, fury pulsing so hot my vision blurs. “Where are my coven sisters? Are they still alive?”
“I don’t know any…covens…but if you tell me your name and where you came from, I—”
I stalk closer, pointing at her with my fingers curled into claws. “Then how did you wake me?”
“It was…” She glances at the ash under my feet, her eyes widening.
There, among the charred wood and fabric, is a lump of something that might have been a book.
“Were you…in the journal?” she asks, then makes a face, as if she’s confused by her own words.
I pick it up, and it crumbles further between my fingers.
A book? My prison was a book? The indignity boils my blood. To be trapped in something so mundane and so easily destroyed is the sort of cruel irony Rebecca would find amusing.