feet tied, but no hood covered his purple death face. Victoria turned away. Sedatives could not help her here. Jasper and Mr. Magnus had been right.
They were both looking at her when she opened her eyes for real. “Ugh,” she groaned. “That was a really bad trip.” She moved her hands and feet. They hurt.
Mr. Magnus steadied her as she tried to sit. “It can only get worse unless you listen to me.”
She winced and touched her forehead where a flamenco headache was forming. “I’m listening,” she whispered.
“He is not dead. We will start with that.”
She looked at him, then at Jasper. She frowned, then thought better of that. “This is why I do not listen to you. I saw him die.”
“Everyone dies.” Mr. Magnus sat on her bed. “Many times. It is an inescapable fact. The first thing you must do is stop thinking that death is a ‘bad thing’. We can’t go any further while you are still under the impression that the worst thing that can happen to a person is for him or her to die.”
She took a deep breath. ”Okay.”
“You are humoring me. Let us pretend that it is true. That may be easier for you at first.”
She nodded, then winced. Jasper handed her a glass of water and she drank it gratefully.
Mr. Magnus continued. “Pretend then. Pretend all of life is a video game, and that you must learn the rules as you go. There are no cheats. Are you following me?”
She handed the glass back to the monkey demon. “I am.”
“When you die you get a re-start. Sometimes back to the beginning, and sometimes further along. What do they call those?”
“A save-point”
“Fine. Then we will call that a save-point. You do have a mission, just as in the game, and every time you fail to complete that mission you return. Sometimes in a different century, sometimes in a different country, always in a different body but some things remain the same so you can recognize them in the cloudy mists of eternity.”
“His scar?”
“Exactly. He is trying to contact you and get you to remember him. You resisted at first because the memory was too painful. You made up all kinds of fantastic reasons that this could not be Torgal or Marcus or Jack. You formed him into a demon and an incubus. You told yourself you might be crazy. You took the sedatives. Anything to keep from facing the truth, Victoria.”
She wanted something stronger than a glass of water before she must ask him the inevitable question. Jasper grinned and help up a smaller glass. She sipped and recognized a gin and tonic. She smiled back, but her eyes were leaking tears as she asked, “What is the truth, then, Mr. Magnus?”
“You are not responsible for his deaths. None of them. We each die our own deaths for our own reasons. Your guilt and erroneous beliefs are what are imprisoning you. Wake up and see the bars of this prison, Victoria. Shake them with both hands and then turn the lock and let yourself out. I can’t turn that lock for you.”
“Where is he?”
“He can’t come to you until you have jettisoned this tremendous guilt. You have told yourself for centuries now that you don’t deserve a lover. You don’t deserve to love or be loved. You don’t deserve happiness. You need to be punished forever. These beliefs become real and you have now found yourself in Hell. A Hell of your own making. These beliefs have formed a great barrier that he cannot penetrate. He is trying to get you out. He has been trying for a long time. He loves you so much. He will never give up trying.”
Victoria sniffed. “Which one?”
Mr. Magnus patted her shoulder. “All of him.”
“How,” she paused, thinking, “how can I stop?”
“You just stop believing you need to be punished for these imagined crimes.”
Victoria drained the gin and tonic and handed the glass back to Jasper. “I stop believing.”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes, Just like that.”
“Impossible.” She remembered Jack’s eyes when he saw her bloody skirts, and Torgal’s eyes as he slowly bled to death in the woods. And Marcus. Her guilt for his death was worse, for when she had been the little slave girl she had been the only gentleness in his life. He had nothing but his body and his weapons. She saw the miles and miles and miles he marched in his sandals thinking of her. Seven years he lived in poverty, saving his meager