Mirrors: The Curse of Lanval, #1

By Rebekah Dodson

This is the start of my story. And it's one helluva saga.

The greatest adventure of my life started with a discovery in a history book by my sister, Jules. Don't let anyone fool you, this truly is all her fault. Well, not my Uncle Richard's death, but everything else.

Take our cousin's awesome car? Her idea.

Explore this ancient castle? Her idea.

Touch things that say don't touch? You guessed...

Guillaume Lanval! Do not blame the entire mess on me! I didn't send us to 1154 A.D. In France. And turn history on its head.

Well, we don't know we did that, Jules.

Want to know more? Open my pages. You know you want to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebekah Dodson
• Release date: Jun 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386175438

Rebekah Dodson

Rebekah Dodson is a prolific word weaver of romance, fantasy, and science fiction novels. Her works include the series Postcards from Paris, The Surrogate, The Curse of Lanval series, several standalone novels, and her upcoming YA novel, Clock City. She has been writing her whole life, with her first published work of historical fiction with 4H Clubs of America at the age of 12, and poetry at the age of 16 with the National Poetry Society. With an extensive academic background including education, history, psychology and English, she currently works as a college professor by day and a writer by night. She resides in Southern Oregon with her husband, two teenagers, and three dogs.

Book preview

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.

Chapter One

My Sister, Ancestry Queen

THE WATER CASCADED around me, and I couldn’t move, though I thrashed and twisted as hard as I could. My lungs burned with the breath I held, my last one. I didn’t know how I got here, bound and drowning 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 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, easily since 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 who’dcalled 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 our 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 such a pivotal role in ushering in the medieval age. He picked up his attendance sheet 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. What the hell? Why didn’t we have smartboards like the rest of the school? This professor was living in the past.

Ironic, I almost laughed to myself.

As if he read my mind, he cleared his throat. Some of the professors requested one of those new smart boards, he told us smugly, with his back still turned, but I opted out. Love the feel of chalk between the ol’ fingers. Reminds me of a simpler time.

Oh.

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 with access to the Internet and will have no excuse to email me. If you don’t, well, get one. It’s is the 21st century, afterall.

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 a year early, gave the speech, and yada yada. I was president of glee club and drama class, and not that anyone in college would care, but I won a two-year scholarship to the university in my hometown.

Unfortunately, my father wasn’t interested in me college aspirations, so I went on to be a paramedic, instead. For two years I saved lives and did what I wanted.

Life moved on, though, and a two year scholarship was a hard thing to turn down.

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 that 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, ripping me out of the past as I saw her 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 Chatsnap ID on a corner of notebook paper, quietly tore out the section, and slid it across to Jessica. Chat 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 class, my easy A course. 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