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Publisher's Note:
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.
Solstice Publishing - www.solsticepublishing.com
Copyright 2016 Rachael Stapleton
To the Jackson's and the Trimble’s and all of our extensions—past and present—here and gone for allowing me to take inspiration from our history and liberties with our ancestors names. I’d love to write something more factual but my imagination won’t allow it. Regardless I hope that I make you proud.
Time Traveling Bibliophile Series: Book 2
Temple of Indra’s Curse
Rachael Stapleton
Prologue
Murky Past
Muskoka, Canada, Blood Moon, May 2003,
Stepping out of my darkened bedroom and wandering passed the grandfather clock in the hall, I waited for my eyes to adjust before creeping down the lake house stairs. Through the oversized window in the living room, I could see a large red moon hovering in the sky. The evergreen trees and murky marsh reflected eerily under its reddish glow, offering up the illusion that the marsh ran red with blood.
A gust of wind rattled the glass, prompting me to tighten the belt on my grey velvet robe. The thought of being trapped in the deep, dark abyss that lurked below that sheen surface of red was a recurring nightmare of mine …an odd phobia for someone who’d practically grown up on the lake.
The steps behind me creaked and I swung around to see a shadow at the top of the stairs.
“Sophia, is the boogeyman after you?”
My throat relaxed. My great-grandmother, Veronika Jackson, whom I affectionately referred to as Gigi, was in her long emerald nightgown, her copper curls pulled back under a bandana. She joined me by the window and gave my shoulder a comforting pat. How that woman managed to look pulled together even in the dead of night was a mystery to me.
“Nightmare,” I said, forcing my legs to move and follow her into the open concept kitchen. She switched on the kettle and I sat on one of four stools at the island facing her as she tinkered about.
“How about some chamomile?” she said, her eyes crinkling as she smiled, “or maybe you’d prefer milk with honey—”
Warm milk with honey was her cure-all for everything. Since I’d moved in two years ago we’d switched to the more grown up beverage of tea. Truth be told, I liked strong black coffee better, but Gigi was not easily swayed.
“Looks like there’s blood on the moon—the first of the tetrad.” She said, pulling two mugs down from the cupboard.
“What’s a tetrad?”
“It’s rare; it’s when four lunar eclipses happen within two years.”
“So they’ll be another eclipse this year?”
“In November, and then they’ll be two more next year. After that, it won’t happen for another eleven years.”
“Eleven years from now. So 2014.”
“Yes, and 2015. Two full eclipses per year. That one has been prophesized as something supernatural.”
I cleared my throat. The thought made me uncomfortable, although I didn’t know why. Gigi opened the fridge behind her and pulled out the milk, “It’s all just hocus pocus of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed, doing my best to sound confident like her.
“So, what was the bad dream about? Losing your parents?” Gigi asked, softening her tone.
I shook my head. “The murder.”
Gigi shot me a nervous look, and poured the tea. “Your cousin Emma’s murder? You haven’t dreamed about that in three years? I thought you’d forgotten.”
I turned back to face the darkness of the lake beyond the window, unsure of what she was talking about. The redness was slowly leaving the moon now and thankfully taking with it the details of the nightmare. Gigi stood there, waiting for my response.
My throat tightened even before I spoke the words. “No, I dreamed about my own murder—the time that your father drowned me in the swamp.”
Chapter One
Time to Study
Dublin, Ireland, Blood Moon, April 2015
Twelve Years Later
The antique table against which I tapped my fingers in the O’Kelly’s redbrick Edwardian mansion had once belonged to my boyfriend’s ancestor, museum curator Tandy O’Kelley. I thought it fitting that it was now covered with stacks of books, police reports, and assorted papers pertaining to the very cursed sapphire he’d sold to my family over a century ago.
Leslie and I had been at it for an hour, searching through musty books in Cullen’s parent’s library. We were looking for some clue that might shed light on the baffling cursed nature of my inherited sapphire gem set. I was tired and irritable. I didn’t want to think about what I’d seen and experienced in 19th-century Monaco, much less wallow in it. But as far as I knew I was still cursed. As I spoke, Leslie walked the perimeter of the room, leaving crumbs from cookies Cullen’s ma, Lucille, had made. Leslie’s auburn hair was styled up in a bun, and her large brown eyes were framed by tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. They reflected the fire Cullen’s Da had been gracious enough to light before heading out with the family for the day. The fire crackled and spit as it bit into the dry wood.
I paused from reading the text to pour a cup of tea and decided to take another run at cracking Leslie’s reason for visiting. She smiled too widely and held eye contact for far too long. Guilty, just as I suspected.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Cullen seemed perfectly normal to me.” She feigned innocence with an authenticity in her voice that a used car salesmen would have envied. I wasn’t buying it.
Cullen, my cool and aloof beau, had been particularly secretive for the past month. And last night Leslie had surprised me by popping in from Canada for Easter weekend. Just a hop, skip and a seven hour flight—no big deal there.
Leslie tried to hold my eye, but her gaze kept wandering to the door.
“No one’s coming to save you, Les,” I said, dryly. “Now spill it.”
“Fine.” She threw her hands up in the air. “The dinner that the O’Kelley’s are holding tonight is not an Easter dinner but rather a celebration in honor of your one-year anniversary. Way to spoil the surprise.”
“And you flew all the way to Dublin for that even though you’re broke as hell?”
“I am not broke as hell and Cullen flew me here on his dime. I’m your best friend…”
“And…?”
“And…he thinks you’ve been a tad bit melancholy lately. He’s hoping you’re just bored, but big surprise, he feels like there’s something you’re not telling him.”
“Like the fact that I’m a time traveler,” I added dryly. It was hard to believe that in a full year I still hadn’t told him the truth: that when he had seen my ex-boyfriend push me off a cliff, I hadn’t just landed in the water beside his yacht, but had plunged into the body of a nineteenth-century princess.
“Why haven’t you told him?”
“Leslie, what sane person would believe that what had been only seconds underwater to them had been weeks to me?” I tapped my pencil against the side of my head. “So he sent you in to ferret out the truth, huh?”
&nbs
p; “I hope you know that I resent being compared to a ferret—with its weasel-like qualities. My spirit animal is more akin to the panda bear. I like to eat and sleep and I am definitely not as cuddly as I look.”
“You’re a hundred pounds and barely five feet two inches tall. You’re hardly a bear.”
“Okay, so maybe I’m more of a red panda,” Leslie said, following it up with her trademark chuckle.
“Those are hideous looking raccoons, that’s no better. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. So, where is this Easter dinner? He won’t tell me where we’re going.”
“I don’t know. Some fancy restaurant downtown. All I know is that there’s a new dress in a box upstairs and the limo is picking us up at four.”
“A new dress, huh?”
Leslie grinned. “Long, silky and emerald green, you want to go try it on?”
I bit my lip. “Not yet. Let’s finish up here first.”
“Right. Let’s review: What do we know so far?” Leslie asked.
“The sapphire was stolen from the Temple of Indra by a treasure hunter named William Ferris during the Indian Mutiny, something about removing the stone activated a curse and because it was given and handled by my past life self, Princess Sapphira Alexandrie de Monaco, I am now cursed forever,” I answered from my perch at the head of the table.
“How do we know this?”
“I was pulled back in time and experienced it.”
“Yes, but how do we know you are still cursed?” Leslie said. “How do you know plunging from the Palace balcony wasn’t the end of it?”
“Madam Brun, the psychic we met, said that the dark spirit attached to me would not stop until he killed me in this life as well. She said I’ve experienced this cycle several times already –in the body of the Princess and in the body of my Great-Aunt Zafira. She said there may have been other times as well.”
“As a librarian and a self-proclaimed scholar I must tell you: Psychics are not exactly reliable sources. What do we know about your Great-Aunt’s life and death?” Leslie dusted off her hands on a napkin and immediately reached for another cookie without breaking her stride. “We have a journal from the killer, do we not?”
Chapter Two
Control Your Temperance
Toronto, Canada, May 1920
Zafira Breathour pressed the cold cloth to her throbbing forehead. It was nine in the morning, but it felt like six, thanks to the pounding in her skull. Opa was talking, but Zafira was lost in her own thoughts. Her chin balanced on one fist, she stared, unseeing, at her coffee, which she was mindlessly stirring.
For the past twenty minutes, her family had been laying into her about last night’s episode at the Brunswick House. Her drinking had been brought to their attention once before, thanks to an unfortunate raid on a speakeasy, but last night’s trouble had caught her even more hell.
“Opa and I do not approve. Have you not heard of the Temperance Act? You should be focused on your education in the feminine arts. When I was your age I was budgeting the housekeeping money and buying fresh produce.”
Zafira couldn’t stop herself. She rolled her eyes.
“Zafira Breathour! Do not disrespect your grandmother!” her mother snapped. “Your grandparents are German, do you know what it was like for them to live here for the last six years with all of the anti-German sentiment. They have built a good name, our family name. The Bejeweled Case is finally a success.”
“Do you ever stop to think about how your actions reflect on our business?” Opa added.
Zafira slid her weary eyeballs in her mother’s direction. Her mother sat stiff-backed and thin-lipped, her long hair coiled at the nape of her neck. Zafira had finally convinced her mother to cut it off. Her appointment was set for today. It was the first step in Zafira being allowed to do it. Of course her mother was a total stiff and would probably use this situation to back out. Zafira let a smile slip, thinking of what an aneurism her grandfather would have if her mother went through with it and bobbed her hair like one of those new age jazz girls.
“What are you grinning about?” Opa thundered. “Do you have something to say?”
“No, Sorry,” Zafira muttered.
Zafira’s mother responded with a weary sigh.
“You young people seem to treat everything like a joke, don’t you?” Opa was off and running—responsibility, women’s suffrage, civic duty. She knew his rants well. What Zafira needed was a little hair of the dog, but her mother had confiscated her hip flask.
“Zafira, honey?” Her father’s face was grim. “Are you sorry?”
She managed a smile. “Of course, Papa.” Leave it to Papa to intervene and attempt to save her.
“Tell me, mäuschen, why did you make up that horrible lie about Deborah and Elwood? Florence is your best friend—she’s very hurt.”
For the first time, Zafira frowned. Papa always knew what to say to make her regret her decisions. Calling her little mouse was his favourite way to guilt her. “I wasn’t lying, Papa. Elwood is a cheater and a scoundrel.”
“You accused the poor boy of… of…” Oma’s face colored as she stammered.
“Of putting Deborah in the puddin’ club?”
“Zafira!” Her mother gasped.
“What?”
“Of taking advantage of her and leaving her in the family way,” Her mother clarified.
“I think you should know that unless you offer a public apology, Elwood’s family has threatened to stop shopping in our store.”
“What? I will not apologize!” She stood so quickly that her head doubled its pounding and she had to sit again. “I did nothing wrong. I told the truth.”
“Elwood bought Florence’s ring from our store. You’ve ruined their engagement.”
“Elwood did that, himself. He shouldn’t have been so eager to whoop it up. He is a louse and Flo deserved to know the truth.”
Zafira’s parents stared in stunned silence.
“Can you prove your accusations?” her mother pressed.
She couldn’t. Not without telling them about her dream, and she couldn’t risk that. “I will not apologize.”
Zafira’s mother cleared her throat. “There is another option.”
Zafira glanced from her mother to her father and back.
“How would you like to go to London for a bit, with your Aunt Maggie?” Her mother asked.
“I… ah… as in, England?”
Zafira had stayed in London with Aunt Maggie last year around the same time. She’d had fun shopping and she’d especially liked the bookstore down the lane. She’d become friends with the shopkeeper, an older man named Rochus. She’d even bought her father’s favorite book from the place. H.G Wells’s Time Machine.
“I spoke to my sister this morning. As you know she’s moving to London permanently in a couple of weeks to be with her fiancé. I was planning to go with her just for the bridal fitting and to help her get settled. Your father and I talked and we think perhaps you should come with me and then you can stay on after I leave and help her with her duties at the Manor.”
“Just for the summer,” Papa continued. “Until this whole situation has sorted itself out.” Papa lowered his voice to a whisper and gave Zafira a hug. “If what you say is true, then Deborah won’t be able to hide it and the heat will be off you in no time.”
The summer in London. Zafira thought to herself, she loved Aunt Maggie but the place smelled horrid and had the dreariest weather. Besides, she couldn’t abandon Florence at a time like this. Poor Flo, her best friend and neighbor, of course she’d probably never speak to her again after this. She hadn’t deserved to find out what a louse her fiancé was in a room full of people—she should have told her privately.
Zafira bit her lip. She needed to apologize now. What was the quickest way to end this discussion?
She was tempted to argue, but she knew her mother and father well. She’d wait a few days and claim that she’d “learned her lesson well,” and they’d forgive
her and let her stay home hopefully sans the apology to Elwood. London was fun for a week or two but she couldn’t leave for the whole summer —not when Elwood and Deb’s betrayal was about to blow up in their pretty little faces.
She sighed and worked up just the right amount of tears. “I suppose that would be sensible. I do look forward to visiting Aunt Maggie, of course, it wouldn’t be fair at all to her—having me underfoot for the whole summer while trying to plan a wedding and I’d hate to cause her trouble, but London is such a big city and who knows what I might get into? I just have so much trouble controlling myself, but whatever you think is best.”
“Hmmm, I didn’t think about that,” her mother said, her mouth set in a grim line. She looked over at her husband. “Maybe I should speak to Maggie again and just make sure she knows what she’s taking on. London is kind of a wild place and she is right downtown. Perhaps it’s not the right setting for Zafira.”
Zafira suppressed a grin. Like shooting fish in a barrel, she thought.
Her father checked his watch. “I have to get back to the store. You can come and work with me today so I can keep an eye on you.”
Chapter Three
Daddy Knows Stress
Dublin, Ireland, April 2015
“Yes, we have the killer’s journal.” I said, picking up the familiar dark journal with the initials E. B. on the cover. It had once belonged to my Gigi’s father: Eugene Breathour.
“Shockingly, he does not outright admit to killing his daughter in it.”
“Damn! We just can’t catch a break now, can we?” Leslie smirked.
I opened it, flipping to the beginning, and read the spidery ink.
Velte has still not returned. He’s been missing since the body of a girl was found below deck. Coincidentally, two of Papa’s jewels are missing.
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