To this book. She pulled back the cover, and ran her hand along the first page, and began to study the handwriting.
As she did, her heart stopped. She couldn’t understand it. It was a handwriting she recognized.
It was her own.
Caitlin could not process what was happening. She felt as if she were outside of herself, looking down, and she became more and more confused.
She read. And read. And read.
Finally, it hit her like a lightning bolt: this book, it was hers. Her journal. The journal of a teenage girl. A story of coming of age. Of going back in time. Of falling in love with a man named Caleb. Of having a daughter named Scarlet. Of becoming a vampire.
She wondered if she were losing her mind. Was this some sort of practical joke? Some sort of fantasy she’d had as a young girl? What was it doing here? How did her grandmother have it? And why was she only drawn to open it now, at this time?
As she turned page after page, transfixed, read entry after entry, as she sat there, frozen until long after the sun rose, she finally realized: this was no joke.
It was real.
It was all real.
This was her teenage journal. And she had been a vampire.
CHAPTER ONE
Caitlin’s hands trembled as she drove. Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking since she’d put down her journal hours before. She’d read every page, then started over, and read it all over again. It was like watching her life flash before her eyes. It was like reading about a life that had been kept secret from her, a life she’d always suspected she’d had, but was afraid to believe was possible. It was like holding a piece of herself she never knew existed.
It excited and terrified her at the same time. She no longer knew what was real and what was imagined. The line was blurring so much, she wondered if she was losing her mind.
Being a scholar, a rare book expert, she also analyzed and scrutinized the book itself, with an expert’s eye. She could tell, scientifically, objectively, that it was real. An ancient book. Thousands of years old. Older than any book she’d ever held. That in itself would have been enough to stump her.
It didn’t make any sense. How was it possible? In her own attic?
As Caitlin thought about it, she realized that her necklace, the one she’d given to Scarlet, was also ancient, and had also come from her grandmother. She wondered who her grandmother really was, and what else she had in hiding. Her grandmother had said at the time that it had come from her grandmother. Caitlin couldn’t help feeling an intense connection to the generations. But she didn’t know what.
As she turned it all over in her head, it only raised more and more questions. And that surprised her. She was a world-renowned scholar, and could dissect and analyze any book within a matter of minutes. But now, with her own book, in her own attic—in her own handwriting of all things—she was completely stumped. That freaked her out more than anything. After all, she didn’t remember writing any of it. And yet, as she read it, pieces of it seemed to come back to her, in some vague part of her consciousness.
When Caitlin had finally come down from the attic, it had been late morning and the house was empty, Scarlet already gone to school, and Caleb already long gone to work. She was supposed to be at work herself hours ago, and hadn’t even called in. She’d been in a daze, had lost all sense of time and place. The only one to greet her had been Ruth, and Caitlin, in a daze, had merely walked past her, out the door, to her car, and had taken off, the journal still in hand.
Caitlin knew there was only one person in the world she could turn to for answers. And she needed answers now, more than ever. She couldn’t stand to have something unsolved, and she would stop at nothing until she’d figured it out. She sped down the highway, racing down the Taconic Parkway towards New York City, hands still shaking. There was only one man in the world, she knew, who would know what to make of this—only one mind more brilliant than hers when it came to rare books and antiquities. He was the only one who could explain the deepest truths of history, of religion, of the esoteric. Aiden.
Her old college professor, her mentor throughout her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Columbia, Aiden was the one man she trusted and respected more than any man in the world. He was also the one man she considered to be her true father. The most venerated professor of antiquities and esoteric studies at Columbia, the shining star of the archaeological faculty, Aiden was the greatest scholar they’d ever had. If Caitlin ever encountered any rare book or piece of history or antiquity that left her stumped, Aiden was the one she could call. He always had an answer for everything.
She knew he would have an answer for this book, a scholarly way to explain it away that would both make her feel better and make her wonder why she hadn’t thought of it. And he would do it with grace and charm, in a way that didn’t make her feel stupid. In fact, knowing that he would have the answer was the only thing that kept her from losing her mind as she sped down the highway.
Caitlin trembled with anticipation as she reached Manhattan, speeding down the West Side Highway, over to Broadway, and parking right in front of the entrance to Columbia. She parked on Broadway, in a no parking zone, but was too preoccupied to notice. She was hardly aware of her surroundings, hardly aware that she had left the house still wearing pajama pants, flip-flops and an old sweater, her hair undone.
Caitlin jumped out of the car, snatched the journal, and ran through the gates of Columbia, stumbling on the uneven, brick-lined walkway. She hurried through the campus, and turned and ran up the wide, stone steps, taking them three at a time. She raced across the wide stone plaza, found the building she knew Aiden would be in, flew up the steps, through double doors, down a tiled corridor, up another flight of steps, down another corridor, and right to his classroom. She didn’t even think to knock, didn’t even stop to consider he might be teaching. She wasn’t in her right state of mind. She just opened the door and walked right in, as if she were still an undergrad.
She stopped, mortified. Aiden was standing there, at his blackboard, holding a piece of chalk—
and the classroom was filled with about 30 graduate students, who all turned and stared.
“And the reason why the archetypical differences between the Roman and Greek values weren’t considered—”
Aiden suddenly stopped lecturing, stopped writing on the chalkboard. He turned and looked.
The graduate students all stopped typing on their laptops and stared at Caitlin, too, looking her up and down. Suddenly, she realized where she was, what she was wearing.