Page 65 of Vicar
“So why were we able to see each other?” she asked Tor. “Because Vicar was obviously my one person.”
He shook his head, unsure. “I can only assume it’s because I’m a medium...though you were never really a ghost.”
“Or,” Vicar presented, “Raven had already made contact with you, Tor. You and you alone. So she thought that was the only way.”
“That would make sense,” Trinity said. “Yet how did she know she could do it for me?”
“Sorta makes you think Raven knows more than she’s been letting on all the way around, huh?” Jade crossed her arms over her chest. “I’d say she’s definitely been holding out on us.” She perked a brow at Trinity. “And you know what’s strange? Up until now, I had no recollection of you having another side or acting differently when we were kids. Now,” she narrowed her eyes, “I’m starting to recall bits and pieces. Starting to remember you having seriously off moments.” She considered what she had felt from Raven in the memory. “I get the feeling our little sis helped you for more reasons than one.”
“Me too.” Trinity sighed. “She was worried about my fluctuating personalities. You all were considering I balanced everyone.”
“Trust me,” Jade responded, “though us getting unbalanced would have been bad, we were all more worried about you.” She shook her head. “I just can’t believe we forgot!”
“You mean you were made to forget,” Trinity clarified, more curious than ever now. What had hidden all of this from their memories? Better yet, who?
“What makes you think Raven’s holding out on you?” Tor asked, focusing on the first part of what Jade had said. He shrugged and came to Raven’s defense. “She could have been as much in the dark as the rest of you before you traveled back.”
“Maybe.” Jade shook her head, understanding Raven better than most because they both ran on a negative spectrum. “But somehow, I don’t think so.” She gave Tor a look. “After all, she’s the only one who was actually told by one of her sisters that they’d traveled back in time. The only one who went on to help that sister travel for what?” She looked at Trinity.“Years?”
Trinity nodded. “Easily.” She gave Tor a look as well, blunter than she would have been before all this. But then, her other side had some say. Made her less uptight as a whole. “Right up until I traveled back normally so I could be intimate with Vicar for the first time.”
“That explains why it was so volatile,” Vicar said. “We knew we were taking a big chance.”
“We did,” she agreed, recalling more by the moment. How her Múspellsheimr side took over more and more as time went on. How they could only have a normal relationship if she traveled back as an astral projection. “I can’t believe how much my brief contact with Múspellsheimr started to affect me.” She swallowed hard. “How much, Violence aside, it stole from us.”
Because the worse it got, the less she could travel back as herself. The less they could hold hands or kiss or do things people falling in love should be able to do.
“So if you knew Trinity back then, Tor,” Jade wondered, homing in on a good point, “if you knew she traveled back in time even before she astral projected, which I’m assuming you did, you had to have put the pieces together.” She gestured between Trinity and Vicar. “It was too coincidental not to be related to your prophecy somehow. Wouldn’t you have said something to Leviathan or your family? Let them know what was happening?’
“No,” Vicar said, clearly remembering more by the moment as well. He looked at Tor with thanks. “Per our request, he agreed to wait until we figured out how to fix Trinity’s Múspellsheimr side. He agreed it was safer that way.”
In truth, it would have been smarter to communicate with Vicar’s family to see if they could help, but they were young and thought they had things under control. That they would figure it out. Worse yet, they never mentioned Violence stalking Trinity because they thought they could handle that too. Despite a war going on with the Celts and Violence being Celtic, they, in their naiveté, figured once they had dealt with her Múspellsheimr side, he would lose interest and leave. Which begged the question, where had Violence gone during the years Vicar and Trinity had forgotten each other? Had they somehow accomplished their goal despite her Múspellsheimr side surfacing again?
Clearly not because Violence had returned with a vengeance.
“I’d like to say because Tor could see you, everyone else probably could too, Trinity,” Jade shook her head, “but I suspect they couldn’t. That you suffered the same thing I did when I was with Thorulf.” She looked at Tor. “Honestly, in some weird way, it makes sense you might’ve seen Trinity, especially if you're connected to Raven somehow. Raven, who was undoubtedly connected to Trinity every time she helped her astral project. Not just that, but you obviously connect with souls on a different spectrum.” She shrugged. “Spirit on another plain of existence? Spirit projected out of a living body? Close enough if you ask me.”
Naturally, this brought the conversation back around to Tor’s abilities.
“Either way, Raven clearly knows you, Tor,” Thorulf said, referring to her overwhelming response to Tor in the twenty-first century. “But what makes you think she and the girl who haunted you have a connection?”
“The overwhelming sense of familiarity I felt when I saw her.” Tor returned to the meat. “There’s only one problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
Tor turned grave eyes on Jade and Trinity, as blunt with them as they had been with him. “The girl from my prophecy was dead.”
