The dining room was long and formal, the table set with silver that caught the morning light like teeth. My parents were already seated.
My father—this body's father, the one I recognized from the borrowed memories—looked up first.
"Ah. There you are," he said, pleased. "Sit. You'll be late for council matters if you linger."
Council.
My stomach dropped.
I slid into my chair, my back straightening by habit I didn't remember learning. A servant poured coffee. The scent was rich and grounding, cruelly normal.
My mother watched me over the rim of her cup—careful, affectionate, distant.
Love, with conditions.
My father unfolded the paper, shaking it once. "Terrible business today," he said, not unkindly. "The de Pointe du Lac family is burying their son."
My spoon stilled.
"Paul," my mother added softly. "Such a tragedy."
The name landed like a stone in my chest.
Paul de Pointe du Lac.
I didn't know how I knew it mattered—but my pulse spiked, sharp and sudden, like the air before a storm.
My father went on, oblivious. "They say he fell from a height. Madness, perhaps. Grief does strange things to men." He shook his head. "The brother is handling the arrangements. Louis, I believe."
The room seemed to tilt again, slower this time.
I kept my face carefully blank, the way this body clearly knew how to do. Inside, something cold and electric threaded through my veins.
New Orleans.
The de Pointe du Lac family.
A funeral.
This wasn't just a city.
This was a story.
And I had arrived at the exact moment the blood had not yet dried.
I lifted my coffee, my hands steady now—not because I was calm, but because whatever fear had been there was being replaced by something else entirely.
Recognition.
Oh, I thought, as the spoon rang softly against porcelain.
This is dangerous.
And somewhere beyond the walls of the house, beyond the slow river and the mourning bells, a future was already shifting—unaware that a girl who was never meant to be a boy, and never meant to be here at all, had just learned a name she would never forget.
🩸
I kept my eyes on the steam curling up from my coffee.
On the surface, the breakfast table remained unchanged—silverware chiming softly, my father scanning the paper, my mother buttering toast with careful, economical strokes.
Normal.
Civilized.
Safe.
Inside my head, it was anything but.
Louis de Pointe du Lac.
The name echoed, refusing to settle.
I knew that name.
That was the problem.
Fragments came unbidden, like pages flipped too fast—
A plantation.
A brother.
Grief heavy enough to rot the soul.
A man kneeling in the dark.
A fall.
Blood.
Immortality.
No, I thought quickly. Stop.
I tightened my grip around the porcelain cup.
I had been a college student.
Finals week.
Three nights of caffeine and panic.
A thesis draft blinking accusingly on my laptop screen.
I remembered skimming articles, forums, timelines—different versions of the same story. Books. Films. A series. Endless arguments over canon. Names rearranged. Events shifted.
And then—this morning.
I hadn't fallen asleep reading.
I hadn't joked about transmigration with friends.
I hadn't wished for anything so ridiculous.
I had just been tired.
So why did my mind insist on pulling threads from a future that shouldn't exist here?
What if I'm wrong?
The thought slid in, cold and reasonable.
What if this world didn't follow any of the versions I knew?
What if Paul de Pointe du Lac was just—
A tragic young man.
A suicide.
A family name with no monsters hiding behind it.
What if I'd woken up in a perfectly ordinary historical tragedy, and my brain—overloaded, sleep-deprived—was recycling fiction because it was the closest thing it had to meaning?
My spoon tapped once against the cup.
My father glanced at me. "Something on your mind?"
"No," I said too quickly. I forced a shrug. "Just... council matters."
He smiled, satisfied. That word always worked.
My stomach twisted.
Because if this was that story—
If this was the beginning of something monstrous—
Then breakfast wasn't breakfast.
It was the calm before a turning.
And if it wasn't—
If I acted on knowledge that didn't belong here, I could become the mad one.
The girl who saw monsters where there were none.
The fool who interfered with grief because she thought she knew better.
I lowered my gaze.
Get it together, I told myself.
You don't even know what year it is.
I took a breath, grounding myself in the weight of the chair, the heat of the cup, the sound of the city stirring beyond the windows.
One name.
One funeral.
That was all I truly had.
Everything else—vampires, immortality, love and damnation—could wait until I knew whether this world wanted to bleed the same way the stories did.
Still...
My heart refused to calm.
Because even if I was wrong—
even if this wasn't a story I recognized—
A young man surnamed Pointe du Lac was dead.
And something in my bones whispered that this death mattered far more than it should.
🩸
"Before I go," I said lightly, as if the question meant nothing at all, "what's today's date?"
My father didn't look up from folding the newspaper. The pages crackled softly in his hands, ink smudging his fingers. "Tuesday. The twenty-third."
My breath hitched—barely.
"And the year?" I added, careless to the point of audacity. A boy's question. Innocent. Administrative.
My mother answered this time, smoothing the edge of the tablecloth. "1910. Don't tell me you've forgotten that too."
1910.
The number landed.
Not like a blow.
Not like a scream.
Like a lock sliding into place.
Click.
I stared at the grain of the wooden table as the room sharpened around me.
The right year.
Not vaguely early twentieth century.
Not historical-flavor wrongness.
The year.
The one etched into footnotes and timelines and obsessive rereads. The year New Orleans still breathed old money and rot and ritual. The year grief came dressed in black silk and long shadows.
My thoughts aligned with frightening speed.
Okay. This isn't book-canon fuzzy.
This isn't adaptation drift.
This is specific. Curated. Intentional.
This is dangerous.
I nodded, schooling my face into something close to sheepishness. "Long night," I said. Finals brain, I almost added—and stopped myself just in time.
My father snorted. "Eat. Then dress properly. We're attending the funeral."
My head snapped up. "We?"
"Of course." He folded the paper with finality. "The de Pointe du Lac family is... important. Appearances matter."
The name hit harder than the date.
de Pointe du Lac.
My chest tightened—not from memory, but from recognition so sharp it hurt.
A house near the river.
Old money.
Catholic grief and French bones and Spanish moss clinging to iron gates.
My pulse thudded.
"The brother?" I asked carefully. So carefully. "He... died recently?"
My mother's mouth thinned. "How come you didn't know? Tragic timing, though. Just one morning after his sister's wedding. Slipped from the roof. A senseless thing."
The morning after the wedding.
My fingers curled into my palm.
Paul.
My mind filled in what the room didn't say.
A young man with too much responsibility and not enough protection. A death that cracked something open and never quite let it close again.
"And Louis?" I asked, as if the name were nothing more than polite curiosity. "Is he... well?"
My father hesitated—just a fraction too long.
"Well enough to be seen," he said finally. "Though people talk."
My stomach dropped.
"Talk about what?"
My mother glanced toward the window, lowering her voice. "He's been seen about town the past few days. With a tall man. Fair-haired. European, perhaps. No one seems to know where he came from. He'll probably be at the funeral."
Cold crept up my spine.
A tall, mysterious blonde.
I could see him without trying.
The smile.
The arrogance.
The kind of beauty that rewrote a room the moment it entered.
My body reacted before my mind did—heart racing, breath going shallow, something tight and electric threading through my chest.
Not fear.
Recognition.
No, I thought wildly. No, no, no—this isn't possible. This is a show. A book. A—
But the details kept coming, relentless.
New Orleans beyond the shutters—carriages on cobblestone, river damp in the air, the low hum of a city that never quite slept. The timing too precise. The gossip too accurate.
This wasn't inspiration.
This was placement.
My father cleared his throat. "We leave within the hour."
I nodded.
"I want to come," I said immediately.
My mother paused, studying me with new sharpness. "It will be... somber."
"I know," I said.
And I did.
Because now—
now I understood.
I wasn't circling the story anymore.
I was standing inside it, at the exact moment where grief met something far worse.
And somewhere in the city—
A grieving brother was about to meet a monster who called himself a savior.