Page 41 of A Time of Witches

Chills prickled over Lilith’s arms.

Was she entirely losing her mind…or was this what she needed to help her figure out answers?

She focused, trying to look beyond the modern-day furnishings to the translucent past beneath. The image wavered and the birthmark at her arm tingled with warmth.

Several figures bustled about the room in long heavy skirts, hair covered beneath white linen caps, their words a muffled jumble as they set to tasks performed centuries ago.

That familiar lightheadedness crashed over Lilith, and she reached for the table’s edge for support.

“I am in England in a creepy old house that might be haunted,” she said aloud. Her fingertips gripped the cool hard surface, centering herself. She was not going to faint. Not when she was here alone.

And not when Asher specifically told her he didn’t want her in the manor without him.

“Get it together,” she hissed to herself.

She had to be here. Whatever the fortune teller meant, the answers—ensuring her future existence—were somewhere in this house.

A gauzy figure strode into the room, gown shimmering in green silk, dark hair swept back from her face. Though her features were indecipherable, Lilith knew her.

Through the pull at her gut, a certainty in her soul.

The noncorporeal figure was the woman standing on the pyre in Lilith’s nightmares.

This was Sybil.

The woman opened her mouth, and her voice came like a soft exhale.

Jacinda.

Onward, she strode, directly toward Lilith.

Through Lilith. Passing through skin and bone and organs, leaving a cool, damp imprint on Lilith’s lungs and heart.

She shuddered at the sensation, then spun to follow Sybil, refusing to let the woman out of sight. Together, they climbed the stairs, steps tandem with a muted pat of Sybil’s leather heels and the thud of Lilith’s Brooks.

A sound came from below, the clatter of a pan in the distance, followed by breaking glass.

Heat blazed at Lilith’s arm.

The same sound as yesterday.

Without thought, Lilith glanced at her watch.

12:03.

Had it been the same time as the day before? They’d gone to Brackenmere Manor around noon.

Before she could ponder it further, Lilith found herself at the landing of the second floor, looking into an open space where the apparition of portraits from the past hung on wood paneling against the current state of empty walls with peeling yellow paint.

Lilith swayed, torn between two worlds.

Sybil rounded a corner, disappearing out of Lilith’s line of vision.

No.

Lilith followed Sybil into a sprawling library filled with shelves of books that stretched from floor to ceiling. The past and present cluttered together in a dizzying blend with the tease of a low fire flickering within the hearth. The smoky scent lingered in the air from another time and mingled with the mustiness of ancient books now tilted crookedly against one another on sagging shelves.

When Lilith turned around, Sybil was gone, but another woman was in the room with her. A young woman with red-gold hair. She was bent over the bookshelf on the opposite side of the hearth from Lilith, searching for something.