Magical Girl: Book One, Ancestry Read online

  Table of Contents

  Magical Girl, Book One, Ancestry

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

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  Magical Girl, Book One, Ancestry

  Published by O. Rose, First Edition

  Copyright 2018 O. Rose

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The story contained is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintentional.

  First Edition, License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please direct them to the author’s website or purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please find it at an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Prologue

  The general public was unaware of many things; by and large they didn’t actually care. They were happy with small tragedies, with their daily struggles. At most concern extend to other members of their inner circles. Rarely did anyone stop to think there could be more to life, mocking awaited the one openly expressing interest in others.

  That was to the advantage of those on the fringes of society, particularly the immortals. Blessed, or cursed, to live on through the ages they escaped scrutiny despite the fame many enjoyed. Their stories ranged from Pompeii to Egypt, and many places in between, most full of turmoil.

  How immortality was gained not one of them could say. A strong enough wish? Many thought that the answer, yet others insisted they made no such requests.

  The strangest tale of coming into life everlasting, and the most closely guarded, was that of a child who had no say in the circumstances of her birth and she recalled very little of the life she once lived. Her current name was Emma and Emma believed she knew herself, her life, and the people in it.

  The people she knew were a mix of peers and adults. People who were afraid of many things. Afraid of things they didn’t understand, things they couldn’t control. Afraid of things that were different.

  Emma knew she was all of those things and that people were very afraid of her, yet they didn’t know why.

  “Necromancer.”

  She heard the whispers of fellow students as she passed, giving her a wide berth through every hall as they pressed themselves to the walls.

  They were wrong, but she didn’t care to correct them anymore. They didn’t believe her. It was an excuse, one they clung to; it explained why they hated to be near her. Why they sidestepped, why they glanced back upon passing. It made them even more afraid because on the surface there was no reason for their hearts to race, for their palms to sweat, for the hair to stand up on the back of their neck.

  But it always did.

  From a distance she was nothing more than a scrap of a girl. Not remarkable and she had no striking features. People told themselves, “She’s quite young, I’m being ridiculous, let’s forget we ever saw her.”

  She was only a girl with long black hair.

  And a curse.

  Emma believed something inside humanity could sense it, the curse of life for death. Blood for blood.

  It was hard for them because they were brought up not to believe in curses like that, those of old fairy-tales that told of queens who longed for a child. The stories sounded so sweetly tragic, but in reality the queen was driven mad by the desire. She wanted a child so much that she turned to magic, but not the kind taught in schools.

  Effective magic, the queen believed, demanded blood.

  In every time, in every place, there was a pervasive idea that magic could be black or white. Good or bad. But, Emma believed that was wrong. It didn’t matter what a person had in mind. Every action had consequences and magic was no exception.

  Living things might suffer for it, but magic worked if you’d pay the price.

  There was always a price and that topic was skimmed in ethics class. Lightly touched upon and then put aside, even as issues of cost became a frequent theme of the nightly news.

  The queen of old was more than willing to pay, or so she thought. The queen who wanted a child demanded those of her servants and they were the currency. She slashed their throats and bathed in their blood. Seven lives for one.

  For Emma’s.

  The queen died in uproarious laughter that shrank to kneeing shrieks as grasping, gray dead hands pulled her soul from the shell that is the body.

  In the moment the child was born, the mad queen passed from one life to another.

  That life was the one Emma remembered most clearly. Maybe because it was the first? Because it was bought with so high a cost?

  Whatever the reason she did remember. Flowing drapery and filtering moonlight. The flow of ruby red. Cold when it used to be so warm. Curiosity and fear mingled as the one voice she knew best faded to silence. The strange hush that descended as the body of the queen was prepared for burial.

  Coherent thoughts weren’t for the newly born.

  Infants were supposed to have time to grow accustomed to the world; Emma never did. She didn’t have the chance; she thought that must be why she was born knowing. It was a gift that never worked to her advantage because it scared people. They could sense it. They knew her eyes saw too clearly, that her mind understood more than it should. They knew to be afraid of her and what she could do.

  Emma believed she knew all those things.

  The truth was Emma didn’t know what she didn’t know.

  Neither did anyone else.

  She wasn’t a necromancer, but she didn’t know exactly what she was either.

  Chapter One

  Her first life was the longest and it was because they were ordered to care for her under penalty of death.

  None of her other lives lasted long. They ended in various ways, but the reasons behind her deaths were all the same:

  From the moment she was born into a family they knew something wasn’t right. They couldn’t be sure what it was, but they felt the difference. That difference grew fear in them and they reacted in various ways. Some became depressed. Some violent. Some paralyzingly terrified.

  She’d starved to death, been abandoned, buried alive and smothered. Drowned. Thrown into a fire.

  But, in her first life, s
he lived for a long while.

  The king never loved his queen. She was the princess of a neighbor country and, as portrayed in too many tales to count, she was beautiful. However, unlike the stories of old, the marriage was political. So, he didn’t keep the child alive because of some endearment. The fact was that he was without further heir save the son’s of his brother. Like most, when it came down to it, the king was selfish. He would not allow a nephew the throne.

  Instead, he determined to see his child raised to be a loyal daughter who would marry a man of his choosing. Someone who would carry on in the fashion prescribed, who would not blot the reminders of the previous ruler from history books.

  He never dealt with her, his only child. Others did and they were never kind. Most were too frightened to spend much time around her, but some responded differently.

  She remembered them saying they would beat the curse out of her, desperation in their voices and reckless abandon in their eyes.

  One of them died by accident. The second was on purpose.

  She was four years-old then.

  That was when she realized the magic perpetrated by the queen came with extended consequences.

  In more recent years, she’d come across a phrase: The sins of the parents will be visited on the children.

  The moment Emma heard it she decided it was true. The actions of a parent would, without a doubt, come back to haunt the children. If a parent was a murderer it effected the child. If the parent was a liar it effected the child. The things an adult did would follow the children born to their household.

  For her, her mother was insane and she was only born because the queen turned to magic to force what nature said, “No,” to. To pay for her desire she used the blood of innocents who’d done nothing to deserve death and couldn’t defend themselves. They weren’t fated to die by her hand, but fate applied only when allowed to regin.

  Emma could feel them, following her. Their lives, cut short, became part of her curse. She couldn’t claim to understand what really happened when the queen did her magic and that was why, even so many years later, she didn’t know why she held more power than others.

  These days she hid it, kept to the pace of each class and pretended to be no more than an average high schooler. There was no reason to stand out even more. This life was one of many and she didn’t want to rush headlong into death again, not if she could help it.

  Still, she thought of it sometimes, that first life. She lived then, with no fear of dying.

  Until she was married and her husband killed her.

  She was eighteen when he murdered her, setting a disconcerting chain of events in motion.

  Atypical questions rolled through her mind daily, like why did she keep dying when she could kill them first?

  The answer was that she usually didn’t have the chance.

  If it was unexpected, or she was too young to fight back, it wouldn’t work. A baby couldn’t slice throats from a distance. A toddler might be able to do that, but she rarely made it that far. Even when she did they’d kill her while she slept.

  But, she was seventeen now and this was her second longest life.

  Some days the thought made her sigh, but overall she’d accepted it as something she couldn’t do anything about. Past events were unalterable and dwelling on them held her back. Not that she had anywhere to go or anything to do.

  Born to a woman who left her at a fire station, safe haven laws saved her, and after that children’s services came into the picture, In modern times people didn’t believe in much of anything beyond base level supernatural and, sometimes, they didn’t even notice the feelings she inspired in them.

  Or, at least, they pretended they didn’t.

  People were more aware of difference between darkness and light in years passed.

  That didn’t mean it wasn’t there and more than once she'd seen some assistant grow dark in the aura. She never spoke about it anymore because they wouldn’t believe her. They called her jealous.

  Anyone who was anyone had an assistant.

  She didn’t have one, so she wasn’t anyone.

  Assistants. Their true purpose might be sinister and she’d always seen them, but she didn’t know their intent. To upset? To scare? To kill? Emma couldn’t say. They were called by those with enough power and that baseline was low; even children young as two could be seen with a personal assistant. An assistant did menial tasks, delivered letters when those were still a thing, text messages were much simpler to use now, and disappeared for parts unknown when not needed. Or so everyone thought. The truth was Emma saw them all the time, looking much scarier than they did in view of the populace. They were things that whispered in ears, hovering invisible near a shoulder. Touching heads and human hands swiped at unknowns, flipping hair aside without realizing they were prompted by a light brush of claw. Scratching a shoulder scraped by tooth.

  They were all over people, but never herself and she’d tried to think why, could only assume she was more different than alike. Her power wasn’t like theirs.

  Other things, ones she saw less often, stood tall pillars of light. Indistinguishable features of radiance appearing on the sidewalk, catching something falling. Stopping a child running.

  Sometimes she thought people almost saw them, yet if they did the encounters were brushed off as assistants reminded of meetings about to be missed. Their coffee was cooling and they had places to go.

  “You know, this next one-”

  “Will be the same as all the rest.”

  She was sure Lori thought her depressed, but she wasn’t. Realism, however, was often branded pessimistic.

  “Emma,” Lori’s tone was forever defeated.

  ‘Emma’. The woman who brought her into this life didn’t leave a note, wasn’t the one who named her. There was a protocol for that and they were on letter ‘E’.

  Lori, a social worker, knew her charge was right. That was why she couldn’t do anything except halfheartedly say her name, hoping to convey knowledge she thought Emma didn’t have. But she was wrong; Emma knew Lori believed she should be more positive, that it might make some difference in the reception she was going to have, but it wouldn’t. She’d tried that, to pretend she was upbeat, to see what would happen. A bright, peppy child would be better received into a new foster home. A girl ready and willing to help out around the house, eager to be part of the family.

  For anyone else that would have been true.

  Families kept her for a while, but indiscernible unease would force them to turn her back out. They tried, some harder than others, to be good to her, but it couldn’t work.

  She was born of death and believed it was in everyone’s best interest that she didn’t remain beyond a month or two. In a year she’d be out of the system anyway, thrust into a world that didn’t want her.

  “This is a group home, okay? Just...” Lori’s long exhale said it all. “Do your best.”

  Emma didn’t answer. It would be useless to explain that she didn’t try to make people uncomfortable, to explain that it happened naturally. Even the social worker, a woman who’d been on her case for a decade, still shifted away.

  It couldn’t be helped.

  The metal gate they pulled up to was out in the countryside, somewhere Emma'd never been during this life. All previous foster arrangements were in the same general area, city bound or near outskirts.

  The ‘group home’ was on a private road, surrounded by a high, jumbled stone wall. Across the road was a field of gold.

  Emma suspected it wasn’t a simple group home; instead, a place for the troubled. The ones who kept being sent back. Lori hadn’t said it, but that made sense. There was nowhere left for her to go.

  She was confident they’d keep her, at least for her last year of system chained life. After that she wasn’t sure. Eighteen was as far as she’d ever made it and never in the modern world.

  She attended public schools and passed her days in solitude. Theory focused work
wasn’t hard, especially when everyone left you alone for fear of something undetermined. No distractions in classes. No teachers calling her name.

  “See? Looks great,” tone relieved.

  Emma gave Lori the side-eye. She wasn’t sure what the woman meant. They were driving up the slight incline of a gravel driveway, but to her the house seemed small for the amount of land and it was too quiet. The air was different, denser. Thicker? Sweet in a way that made her stomach turn and it sat, onerous, on her shoulders. Vines grew emerald on the walls, over windows and up, up, up.

  Once parked by the front door they exited the car, Emma’s trash bag of belongings removed from the backseat and she stood on unsteady legs as Lori stepped onto the single, concrete step to ring the bell.

  Emma allowed her eyes to trace the angles of the house, felt the draw of weathered stone. Aged how old she couldn't say; the feeling was ancient and dreary. Hollow. Lonely and dank. It drew her in. Closer, closer.

  It was all she could see. The world faded and her ears rang.

  What was this?

  She found herself recalled, jolted from stupor, by the opening of the heavy wooden door, noted now intricate carvings in strange detail, flowing swirling silver, and as the silhouette became human realized that she and Lori weren’t seeing the same person.

  Lori addressed the man like he was not, when he clearly was. Her gaze slid off him, unfocused. Her words a generic babble of greetings and goodbyes, she handed over a manila folder that turned to ash in his hand, before stepping away, eyes crossed.

  Emma didn’t know what Lori said to her before she left, if she said anything at all; her social worker may well have gotten in the car and driven away without a word and, though Emma had a bone-deep premonition, one that told her she would never meet Lori again, she didn’t care to watch the car disappear out the gate and around the corner of the high wall.

  How long did she stand on the threshold of the house staring at the impossible man?

  He was impossible because she knew him, impossible because he should have died forgotten in the pages of history. She’d never read her story and that meant no one remembered.