Rebirth (Lost Souls #1)

Chapter 26

H e’s in his study, boxing up papers and books. The last remnants from our fight have now been completely cleared away. The only intact bottle of alcohol stands opened next to him on the floor.

I enter with a soft knock on the door. “I’m stepping out.”

“Great timing,” he says, grabbing the bottle and taking a gulp. “Will you take one of these with you?” He gestures to the boxes with his free hand.

I nod and pick up the one nearest to me. “I’ll just put it in the library?”

“That’s fine,” he says, taking another drink. “Oh, someone will be coming over later today to get you set up with some essentials,” he adds.

“Essentials?”

“A phone, bank card, things like that.” My obvious confusion has him laughing. “You’ll see,” he says, waving me out while still laughing.

Upon entering the library, I see that he has drawn a seemingly permanent transportation circle on the floor. That definitely does away with the hassle of casting one from scratch every time. With the box still in my arms, I mumble the spell as I walk toward the circle. It starts to glow, and stepping inside immediately brings me to the library in the house.

I sigh as I put the box down next to the desk, then put the pouch with the teeth on top of the desk. I had almost forgotten that the changes in this world aren’t limited to what I saw outside. The house itself is filled to the brim with things I don’t understand.

The sound of what I assume is the doorbell breaks through my thoughts. Hesitantly, I go to open the front door and find a man on the other side. He seems to be in his late twenties and has golden-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He wears an expensive-looking three-piece navy suit with a silver pin on the left lapel of his vest—a snake coiled around a moon. He fidgets with one of his equally expensive-looking cufflinks when I open the door.

He looks up at me and smiles.

“Good morning, Lady Deimos. My name is William Evans. I’m the eldest son of the Deimos family.”

Deimos. So that’s the name of the family he created to keep his affairs in order while he couldn’t do so himself. The family he created because he only trusts his own blood.

William holds out his hand and, shaking it, I remember that they have my blood in them as well, practically making this man and his family the closest resemblance I will ever get to having a family of my own. Not weird at all.

My nervous smile has him averting his gaze while he picks up the box next to him. “My apologies if I offended you. My father was supposed to be welcoming you today, but I’m afraid he got called away unexpectedly and I got this box shoved in my hands without much explanation.” He grins sheepishly at his admittance.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, taken aback by his honesty as I step aside to let him in.

He clearly knows his way around the house, going straight for the door that leads to the living room and opening it before putting the box down on the coffee table.

“Today, I’m here to help you get started with some, well, basic daily essentials.” He tries to pick his words in such a way they won’t offend me. It’s adorable. “If you don’t mind me asking, my lady, what year are you from? That way, I’ll have a rough idea of what you are and aren’t familiar with.”

This question has me thinking for a moment, trying to pinpoint the date. “My last year here was 1852. I think.”

“Eighteen—” He falls silent, realizing how many years it’s been. Nearly two hundred.

“We have a lot to catch me up on.” I laugh.

“Okay, um…” He’s unsure where to start, and I don’t blame him. “Let’s go from room to room and start with the appliances?”

“Sounds good.”

He rummages through the box and takes out a bunch of paper booklets. “I brought manuals as well,” he confesses. “You can read through them when necessary.”

I accept the booklets from him and, with a quick perusal, notice that most are for the kitchen appliances. How difficult is cooking in this day and age?

Before going to the kitchen, though, William shows me the big, flat, glass-like object in the living room. He calls it a television and, with the push of a button on a small box—a remote, he informs me—it turns on, producing sound and moving pictures. He explains its purpose to me, flips through the channels, and shows me something called streaming. Meanwhile, I try to hide my panic because I don’t understand a single word.

“Perhaps this wasn’t the best to start with,” William says with an apologetic look in his eyes, clearly catching on to my discomfort.

“It’s… okay. I’ll get used to it,” I say as he turns the television off an d puts the remote down.

“But,” I ask as we make our way to the kitchen, “why are you calling me ‘lady’? Certainly I’m no lady.”

“My apologies.” He almost falls over his words. “But you are, indeed, my—our—lady. Your husband is our lord, thus you are our lady.”

Hearing this almost makes me cringe, and I’m not sure I feel comfortable with it. “Okay, but it weirds me out. Can’t you just call me by my name?”

“Oh no, we’re not allowed to use your given names.”

I sigh, because this is so typical. They probably don’t even know our given names. Especially his. But I refuse to be called ‘lady’. “Isn’t there anything in between that you are allowed to call me?”

He thinks about it for a second. “I can call you by just your family name? Dei—” William starts, then seemingly thinks better of it. “Lady D?”

Looks like there’s no way around it, so I better get used to the title, and the nickname, though it almost makes me want to force him to call me by my given name. The only thing stopping me is that I don’t want him to get in trouble over something as ridiculous as a name.

“Fine,” I say, my jaw set in annoyance.

He smiles, clearly relieved that we’ve come to an agreement.

I push open the door to the kitchen and step inside. William follows closely behind me and immediately starts running all the appliances by me, taking his time to explain everything and answering any questions that I might have. It makes me see the good side of all the technological improvements, especially since most of it looks more complicated than it actually is. And then it dawns on me that I don’t eat anymore. Well, I don’t need to eat—unless I need a quicker way to replenish my energy, both normal and magical—but I guess it’s still possible for the enjoyment of it .

Once William has concluded the last of his tour, we stand lingering in the kitchen for a moment.

I’m still trying to make sense of all that he’s shown and explained to me, when William asks, “How are you finding this time? It must be quite different from what you’re used to.”

I give him a nod as my eyes glance around the space. “It’s okay, I guess? I’ll need some time to get used to it, since it’s a bit overwhelming.”

“I can imagine,” William says, a soft smile playing on his lips. “Well, at least the pandemic’s been over for a while now, so you don't have to take any restrictions into account.” He gives me a nervous laugh, but I’m not following. Is there a joke in there that I’m missing?

“Pandemic?” I frown at him. “Is cholera still a problem, after all this time?”

William frowns back at me. “What? No. Well, yes, it still exists, but that’s not—” He sighs then, shaking his head. “Forget I said anything. It’s been a few years, anyway.”

This only raises more questions, but what I think started out as a joke ended up confusing both of us, so I just let it be.

“There’s this thing for the kitchen I need to give you,” William suddenly announces as he seems to remember something. “I’ll be right back.”

He rushes out—back to the living room, I assume, from the direction I hear him head in—then returns with a book in his hands. Taking it from him, it immediately becomes clear that it’s a recipe book.

“I was asked to give you this, Lady D.” I cringe at hearing him address me like that. “It’s a collection of Lord Deimos’s favorite dishes.”

Those words, but especially the indication behind them… My nostrils flare, and I have to hold back from setting the book on fire. “I’m going to kill him.” I laugh, but even to my own ears there is a cl ear edge to the sound.

William looks at me with shock on his face upon hearing these words. “Lady?—”

I smack the book on the kitchen counter loudly, successfully cutting him off. “Let’s continue,” I say, my voice dripping with barely suppressed rage.

He swallows and nods, not going against me. It takes a while for me to calm down, and it clearly makes William nervous. It’s only when we return to the living room and he hands me something that I recognize from the people on the street that I start to fully calm down.

“It’s a smartphone,” William explains.

“A what now?”

He can’t help but smile at that while taking out his own smartphone and showing me how to work it. It’s confusing, to say the least. The concept of a phone isn’t that difficult to understand, but the whole internet thing is going to take me a while.

William also hands me a laptop, which is basically a big smartphone, and a couple of cards: a debit card and a credit card. Needless to say, my head is about to explode by the time he wraps everything up.

William smiles nervously at me as I see him out, very much aware of the overload of information he has given me. “If there is anything that you need, Lady D, just give me a call. I’m at your service.”

At my nod, he takes off and closes the front door behind him, leaving me with my smartphone in hand. For the first time in forever, I need a drink. Tea, to be exact, to calm down my head. Pocketing the phone, I go to the kitchen to try out the electrical kettle, finding a selection of expensive-looking teas in one of the cupboards. After making myself a cup of hot tea, I take it with me to the library.

Taking the pouch of teeth from atop the box, I sit down at the desk and empty it before me. Staring at the teeth while sipping my tea, I think about the spell that I’m going to create. No, not a spell—a curse, like I called it earlier.

I’m going to put a curse on his bloodline, one that will remain active for as long as his blood lives on. I want their children to die in childbirth, taking the mothers with them. I want the fathers to go insane because of it, until they snap and inevitably kill themselves. Only those that choose a childless life will be spared, giving them a way to live out their days in peace and quiet, as long as their bloodline dies with them.

The most beautiful part is that I will use their deaths to break him free.

To be certain that it’s sufficient for my summoning spell, I’ll place the curse on all the children he has brought forth. Blood is blood, no matter if it’s male, female, or anything else on the spectrum.

After my last sip of tea, I exchange the teeth and cup for pen and paper. It will be best if I activate my curse and perform the summoning when blood has first been spilled. I’ll need to locate a couple, the first woman to give birth, and let them be the trigger to activate the curse. If I use one or two teeth to locate them, then I should be able to extract some recent genetic material to guide the curse to them and to later connect the summoning spell to the curse.

Performing the curse beforehand means that I’ll only need to connect it with the summoning spell later. Thinking about that while looking at my notes, I know that it’s going to be quite the task to accomplish. These kinds of big spells are fun to put together, but seeing how the last one went, I’m not too keen on actually using them. Because both the curse and the summoning will take a lot from me, and I fear what might happen if something goes wrong. Even though I’m fairly confident it will go well, I need to consider the worst-case scenario.

Finishing up, there’s the little tug that signals I’m almost out of time. I leave my notes on the desk; I’ll search for a family when I come back. In the meantime, I should sort things out for the summoning spell, as I have no idea how much time I’m going to have before the next child is due. Taking the empty teacup in hand, I go to the kitchen to rinse it out.

My eyes fall on the recipe book on the counter, and my initial anger over it flares up again. Just as I pick it up, I’m back, the book still in my hand.

“Did you make any progress?”

The sound of his voice triggers my anger to explode. I turn around to face him, my hands shaking and my magic raging through me. “You asshole.” He looks at me, puzzled. “I’d rather die than cook for you.”

I throw the book at him with such speed and force that it catches him by surprise. It smacks right into his chest, almost knocking him over. I stand there, fuming, while he picks the book up and laughs when he sees what it is.

“William actually gave it to you.” He snickers, only making the pounding of my heartbeat louder and faster. He tosses the book in his hands, his lips curling in a smile as he looks at me. “You do realize it was a joke?”

“I don’t care. Even a joke insinuates that I will just take to being the silent, obedient housewife again.”

He says nothing, throwing the book back at me with equal force. Dodging it, I light it on fire as it flies by, the paper turning to ash within seconds. In those seconds, he sets a spell on me, and I yelp when it throws me against the wall. My right hand is pinned down next to my body, and his black magic curls around my flesh, cutting me deep enough to bleed. He comes up to me and presses my other hand against the wall as well, ensuring I won’t use it to free myself.

His eyes hold that wicked look I know all too well. “I really should punish you,” he whispers in my ear .

My heart skips a beat, and a strange mix of fear and desire floods my veins. “I have work to do,” I say, unable to keep a slight tinge of desperation from my voice.

“You should have thought about that before you threw that book at me.”

His words tick me off enough to forget about any possible consequences, and my first reaction is to try and kick him. But he grabs my leg when I move it, knowing very well what I’m about to do.

“Behave. Or I’ll pin all of your other limbs to the wall as well and leave you here like that. You might even end up losing one, who knows.”

My right hand is bleeding where his spell cuts the skin, so I nod obediently. But it takes biting my lower lip to hold back my words.

He lets go of my leg, yet continues to pin my left hand against the wall. A smirk plays on his lips, and I swallow. “Tell me, love, are you going to behave?” His words trail off as he places kisses on my neck. “Or do I really need to leave you here? I wouldn’t mind either way.”

“I’ll behave,” I whisper, my voice as weak as I feel. All fight leaves me under his touch, knowing all too well that he will indeed leave me hanging here.

“Good girl.”

He retracts his magic and lets go of me so suddenly that I fall to the ground with a loud gasp. He chuckles while crouching down next to me. “You better get to it if you still want to get some work done.”

With those words, he gets back up and walks away, leaving me lying on the floor.

“Asshole,” I whisper, uncaring whether he hears or not.