Page 6 of Vengeance of the Gods

It wasn’t a dream. Or at least it hadn’t felt like a dream… The scars on her face looked too close to claw marks to come from the headlight of a car.

“Good.” Sasha interrupted Vega’s mental landslide. “That’s good.” She smiled professionally. “Why don’t we wrap up a little earlier today? You should go home and get some rest.” Closing the case to her tablet, the therapist stood, and Vega followed. “I’ll see you on Friday.”

Sometimes Vega “forgot to set an alarm” and missed her sessions, so she wouldn’t make any promises that she’d show up for her next appointment.

Vega took the long way home, but even the long way wasn’t long enough. She only lived a few blocks from her therapist’s office.

Her apartment building loomed in the distance. Vega stood on the corner and stared at the entrance. This isn’t my home. Tolevarre is my home.

Vega took every opportunity to remind herself of who she really was, despite the shooting pain erupting behind her eyes at the thought. Sometimes it felt like something inside her was broken and the headaches were more pieces of herself breaking off.

But is it? There was that voice again, the one who made her doubt herself. A dream… it’d been a dream, Vega.

The scar on her chest, the three across her left eye, the others littered across her skin—those were from the accident.

But were they? She remembered how she got each one, and it wasn’t from a car.

A car she couldn’t remember hitting her, but she could remember the feel of her sister’s strike across her face like it happened this morning.

Vega had spent the last month of her life questioning everything she thought she knew.

She couldn’t remember entering the building of her apartment, couldn’t remember walking up the stairs, and didn’t realize she had put her key into the lock of apartment number twenty-one—How ironic this is my twenty-first life, huh?—until she opened the door and stepped inside.

Chase wasn’t home, and he wouldn’t be for a few more hours. Which meant she had time to snoop like she always did when she was alone.

Marlena can curse inanimate objects. So that was where she started. Looking for something, anything that called to her—made her feel like she might be on the right track. But would it really be as easy as an object in my apartment?

As usual, her head pounded. Vega fought through the uncomfortable pain, realizing she was becoming accustomed to it, or maybe getting better at ignoring it.

Vega shuffled through the box of keepsakes she’d found hidden on Chase’s side of the closet, tucked under a pile of coats on the very top shelf.

Since waking up from her supposed coma, Vega had destroyed twenty-seven different objects of significance without Chase knowing.

Today, it was the goodbye letter from her mother—the one who’d passed away from cancer in her last life… This life? Vega wasn’t sure she should consider this a full new life.

A small metal trash bin, lighter fluid, and a box of matches were hidden in the corner underneath the lounge chair on the balcony. Vega held a match up to the paper. The letter caught fire in seconds.

The sulfur of the match was all she could smell as she lowered what was left of the paper into the trash can.

Vega stared into the quickly dimming flames, her vision blurring while her mind wandered to the forest and Bridger—to the cliff, to the kiss. She blinked when the memory of his lips was palpable, bringing herself back to the world around her.

Her fingers fluttered over her lips, just like Bridger’s lips had.

When the fire went out, all that was left were the ashes of a letter Vega had once cried over, and Vega… still stuck in a world she didn’t belong.

She had no idea what she was supposed to feel or what would even happen if this worked, but it was the reason she’d come back. It’s the reason I’m alive. I got it right. I got something right.

Another failed attempt to find the cursed object. Almost as if she weren’t cursed at all.

The pain in Vega’s head made her squint, but eventually, it went away like it always did when she found herself doubting her own memories.

Vega flopped down to the patio chair and watched as the sun sank behind the Colosseum in the distance.

Rome. Not Chicago. According to Chase, they’d never even lived in Chicago.

She’d never had a job at Bobby’s Diner.

She’d never gotten stuck in an elevator.