Spellbound - Cara Lynn Shultz [52]
Brendan, who’s smart. Very smart. Just like Archer was supposed to be, when he was reincarnated.
The signs flashed through my head, coming at me faster now, like a meteor shower.
His name was Brendan Alexander Salinger. Alexander was Gloriana and Archer’s son. And, come to think of it, I was pretty speedy, just like Gloriana was supposed to be when she was reincarnated.
Brendan was strong, too—he knocked down Anthony like he was flicking over a domino. And Brendan was definitely more handsome than any lord—I mean, he was certainly the best-looking guy at school. His family was probably loaded, too. Most people at that school were.
And then there was the biggest sign of all: the crest in his locker. What could that mean to him? What could it mean that I was wearing it? I braced my palms against the marble sink in the bathroom. Was he into witchcraft? Had he seen the design in a textbook, as I just did? Or was it…his family crest?
“Could the street lamps flickering really have been a warning, like Angelique said?” I asked myself.
I stared at my reflection—dark bangs, freckle underneath my right eye, nothing special—until the bathroom light started to dim. My heart pounding, I ran back to my room, throwing myself facedown on the bed, refusing to glance back through the open door to see if some supernatural force had triggered yet another light to burn out as a warning.
Cautiously, I raised my head and peered through the doorway, where the bathroom light shone brightly.
“You’re losing it, Emma. You are seriously losing your mind,” I croaked, my voice hoarse. “Your poor aunt is going to have to have you committed, and locked in a little padded room. You’re seeing streetlights explode and you’re believing in legends and that bulbs burning out are some ominous sign that you’re destined to have a doomed fairy-tale romance.”
And now you’re talking to yourself?
I pulled the covers over my head, telling myself that I was just tired, that I hadn’t been sleeping well—thanks to dreams where I lived in another time. Where, in a medieval gown, I tended to a rose garden and was covered in blood. Where my brother warned me to stay away from him. Where I died.
I hugged my pillow to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut, but I was hyperaware of every sound. The traffic four stories below me. The rolling sound of an approaching storm. The raspy wheezing of my overexcited breathing. There was no way I was getting to sleep tonight.
Throwing my covers back, I got up and defiantly turned off the bathroom light. When I got back to my room, I grabbed my laptop and pressed the power button, anxiously peeling off my nail polish as I waited for it to turn on. In the search engine, my fingers shook as I typed in “Reincarnation dreams.”
More than a million hits. I clicked on the first one that looked halfway legit and didn’t have a web address like “MagikSoulTime.com.” I skimmed the site.
“Past lives and past memories can manifest in your subconscious dream state. Although it’s more likely that what you’re seeing are images from movies, television and film…
“Ultimately, no one except the dreamer will know if the dream is, in fact, a past life reaching out, or if it’s merely the product of a mind overexposed to mass media…
“…if it is a past life, the dreamer should consider what message is being conveyed, as most adherents to the tenets of reincarnation believe that the soul returns to learn lessons and atone for sins committed in a previous life. Once when the soul reaches true enlightenment, it may exist in Heaven…”
I clicked on a few more sites, but saw nothing about a witch’s curse forcing my soul to be earthbound forever. My eyes were starting to get heavy, and the web pages blurred in front of me. I shut down the computer and rested my head on my pillow, staring at my nightstand. The lights on the alarm clock read 5:46. Great. School began in less than three hours.
I huddled under the comforter, which