Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
As for me, well, I do feel ill, but not in the way he assumes. I’m overwhelmed to my very core. It’s one thing to live one lifetime, trying to dig up old memories that have been buried by time. It’s another to have lived two others in two different periods of civilization and to have them all collapse on you at once. I feel like I’m drowning in a million different versions of myself, even though in reality there’re only three.
That I remember, anyway.
Could I have been anyone else before Valtu?
How does reincarnation work anyway?
When I die again one day, will I come back in this body during another point in time? Can I ever appear in people who don’t look like me? Can I be a boy? Can I be another race? Or am I forever doomed to have this face?
Not that I’ve ever taken issue with my face. I suppose there is some comfort in knowing you always look the same, give or take weight loss and other changes during the different lives. I was rather plump in my life as Lucy, obviously because I had a lot of access to rich foods, and luckily both me and Valtu liked that extra weight. I was underweight when I was Mina, because my father liked to starve me, even though there was enough food to go around in a general’s family. And today, well, I’m somewhere in between. But in the end, still me.
Still me and Lucy and Mina.
Dear lord, Lucy and Mina. Bram Stoker wrote about me.
Okay, well at least my names were used for his characters, though they were nothing like me.
What a fucking trip this is.
The funny thing is, the concept of past lives isn’t new for witches. I’ve heard of others remembering their past lives here and there, but none of it seemed very concrete or fully formed. I have to wonder if I’m an anomaly and, if so, why? What is it about me that makes me keep coming back? Do I have unfinished business or something?
Or is my business Valtu?
Perhaps I keep coming back because each time we haven’t been given the chance to make things right, for our love to get a chance to last.
“Almost there,” Valtu says as he takes the boat down another narrow canal that leads to his place. “How are you feeling? Being on a boat can’t help, can it?”
I shake my head. “I’m doing okay.”
He gives me a sympathetic smile and is about to say something else when his eyes narrow at something over my shoulder.
I turn around to see something big and long and dark slipping into the water a few yards in front of us. It goes in with a splash and disappears into the inky depths.
“What the fuck was that?” I gasp, quickly remembering that my current life is full of all kinds of crazy shit. I quickly shuffle back from the edge of the boat, just in case whatever it is tries to pull me under.
You know what it is.
The bad thing.
“River otter,” Valtu says.
I look at him over my shoulder. “Are you nuts?”
He presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything.
God damn it. It’s like the universe is trying to keep me in my current role. I have to get that fucking book back before this shit gets worse, then I guess I’ll figure out how to eventually reveal to Valtu who I really am.
Luckily, we get back to his place without a demon capsizing our boat, and the moment we step inside his back doors, I calm down a little. I don’t think his house is protected by any wards, not like the ones I have currently around my apartment to keep those bad things out, but I always feel safe and protected here.
“Do you want me to make you tea?” he asks, looking so adorable and yet dapper all at once in the tux and I’m only now realizing that I’ve seen him wear this tux before. To my twenty-third birthday party in London, a month after we got married. The love I felt that day…
“Valtu,” I utter, suddenly so overcome that tears flood my eyes.
He stares at me in confusion, mid-reach for the kettle.
I stride over to him and grab his face, my palms pressed against his cool cheeks, his stubble scratching my skin. “Fuck me,” I whisper, staring deep into his eyes. Oh these eyes, how dark and rich they are, as they’ve always been. I’ve lived so many lives staring into these eyes.
He raises his brows. “So, no tea then.” Then he gives me one of those beautiful smiles that look like the heavens are shining down on him and he kisses me.
I could always count on him to oblige me.
Especially when it came to sex.
Our kiss deepens and I feel like I’m kissing for the first time, the first time with all my lives and memories. It’s been so long that I’ve been without him. I had him and lost him as Mina, I had him and lost him as Lucy, then I became Dahlia and I had nearly thirty years without him in my life, and now he’s here and I’m here and that’s a fucking miracle in itself.