Chapter fifteen
Once I’ve showered and dried my hair, I find my new bag of goodies to be loaded with makeup, hair products, and moisturizer. As a Crystal Seer, I may well save or destroy the world—the jury’s out on that one—but I’ll look good doing it.
I dress in black jeans and a black tee. I have no option but to wear my damp bra, but there’s a sturdy pair of black lace-up boots that are a half size too big, but they work. I’ve also been given a lightweight black leather jacket, because apparently that’s part of my new Seer dress code.
Once I’m fully put together, I stand in front of the mirror and braid my blonde hair, my blue eyes glinting sharply back at me.
I turn and look at myself in mirror number two, the full-length view, inspecting my image.
I’m different, I decide. I can’t explain how, but I’m most definitely different.
The images in my head are crisper, too, my senses more alive.
Every sound is slightly amplified, and everything smells stronger.
For instance, I know Micah prepared bacon and eggs with sharp cheddar cheese.
I could reason away the bacon and egg smells as common, but the cheese is not just any cheese.
It’s sharp cheddar, and I know this detail.
I could stand here and contemplate all the ways my mind could be playing tricks on me, but that’s still going to lead me to the same place, or rather, person.
Micah.
I turn away from this new me and head through the room and toward the door, ready for the learning I’ve been promised.
I exit the bedroom to find Micah in the kitchen, standing behind the stove.
“Just in time,” he says, turning away from the stove to greet me.
“The food is ready, and you look like you are, too.” He picks up two plates and walks my direction, cutting to the small, round, brown-finished table. “Did the bag have everything you need?”
“Everything and more,” I say, joining him at the table. “Please tell the ladies I am in their debt.”
“One day you can tell them. When you’re ready.” He motions to the chair. “Sit.”
Once we’re sitting across from each other, he points to the basket between us, covered by a napkin. “Fresh biscuits. Egg whites, ham, bacon, sausage. Breakfast of champions.”
“With sharp cheddar cheese.”
“Yes.” His eyes light with understanding. “With sharp cheddar cheese. At least a little part of you is waking up.”
“Are demons the same as us? Do they have enhanced smell?”
“Demons are more like us than any of us want to believe,” he says, grabbing a biscuit.
“Stronger in some ways.” He tilts the basket in my direction, and I remove a serving of warm bread.
“We’re corruptible,” he adds. “They’re already corrupt, and there’s no redemption for them, like, say, a human who’s slid to the wrong side of the road. ”
I pick up a piece of bacon and take a bite. “But humans can be possessed.”
“Yes, and then they’re fucked. They’re dead inside.” He lifts a pitcher of juice. “If you’d rather have coffee, there’s a Keurig waiting for action.”
“Later, yes. This is fine for now. If we’re here later?”
“We’ll leave in a few days. In the meantime, we’re going to find those answers we both need and want.” He stuffs eggs into a biscuit and takes a bite.
“How were my powers suppressed?” I ask, finishing off my bacon and reaching for my fork, looking for confirmation of what I think I know already.
“Magic is always the answer.”
Of course. It’s an answer that’s a nonanswer to me. “Where was I supposedly born? In a place like this?”
“Yes,” he says. “I was born in the Dallas facility.”
“I was born in an Austin hospital.”
“I doubt that, and we’ll confirm. I want to question the Corrupted who were your handlers. It’s up to you if you want to be present.”
If there was one thing he could say to earn my trust, it’s this. I can find my own answers, and he’s willing to help. “When?”
“Jeremy is too close for us to leave now. He’s on my turf. I’m strongest underground, and so are you. You finding your assets is what matters most.”
“Can we bring them here or with us to the headquarters?”
“They aren’t entering our facilities. Not with the connection they have to Jeremy.”
“I have it, too.”
“You’re not them. You’re one of us.” He indicates my plate with his fork. “At any moment, we could be thrust into battle. Enjoy my cooking while you can. I don’t do it often.”
I pick up the bread and butter it. “I bake,” I say. “My grandfather loved it. One day, maybe I’ll make you my famous chocolate chip cookies.”
“I’d like that. What else do you cook?”
“Pretty much nothing.”
He laughs, and its warm rumble of masculinity I find as charming as him cooking breakfast as easily as he wields a blade.
We talk a bit about my life when I was younger, and I think he’s looking for signs of Jeremy’s influence, but I can’t be sure.
When we finish our meal, Micah stands up and walks to the living room bookshelf, returning to set a book beside me.
The crystal blue cover instantly claims my attention.
“It’ll answer questions,” he says. “Read it. And read it again.” He walks to the coffee pot and grabs the cup he brewed some time back now.
I stroke the silken cover of the book, an instant form of respect in me for it that I can’t quite compute.
It’s a book, not a person, and yet it feels…
alive. I dare to ease it open to a middle section and stare at a picture labeled Wolf Demon, which is remarkably too much like the horror film version of a werewolf for comfort.
Laughter, choked and incredulous, bubbles from my throat, and I look up as Micah returns. “This is a joke, right?”
He claims his seat again, a steaming cup in his hand as he blatantly ignores my question.
“Werewolves, also known as Wolf Demons, are lower-level demons.” He eases forward to flip to a drawing of a man in various forms of shifting into a giant standing wolf.
“They appear human except on a full moon when they shift,” he continues, “at which point, they rip out a few human throats and steal their souls. They then deliver those souls to an upper-level demon like Jeremy, who in turn allows them to live. The wolf is pure muscle and power, and its teeth and claws are vicious weapons.” He smirks. “Need that coffee yet?”
“Yes, actually. I really need that coffee. Got any booze to go in it?”
“Ever been drunk, Ember?”
I have no idea why, but my defenses hum. “Of course I have.”
“When? What happened?”
“I…I really can’t remember details. I don’t drink much, so I don’t get drunk.”
“You don’t get drunk, period. You can’t. We’re immune to human alcohol.”
“Human alcohol? What does that even mean? We’re human, right? Or some form of human?”
“We’re descendants of angels. We are not human.”
“Angels,” I breathe out.
He flips the book shut and points. The Sacred Book of Nephilim, it reads, and the title stirs something inside me, something as familiar as what I feel with Micah. “Angels,” he says. “Fallen angels.”
“Fallen?”
“Our ancestors protected humanity, sworn to do so from the shadows, but too many caved to the temptation of human flesh. They became the Fallen, unable to rise again, sentenced to life on Earth.” And before I can ask the hundreds of questions ticking through my mind, he asks, “What do you feel when you’re near a demon? ”
“I told you. Ice. I feel ice.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“I did. Yes. I do.”
“That’s because you can’t control your gifts. It’ll become more a buzz than a zap, for lack of a better description.” He indicates the book and somehow flips back to the exact spot we’d previously studied. “See those teeth on the wolf?”
“Yeah. I see the teeth. They’re hard to miss.”
“Leather doesn’t rip as easily. You’ll learn to appreciate it despite how damn hot it can become.”
“Because I’m going to fight those things?”
“You’ll not only fight, you’ll thrive on it.”
I shake my head. “This is insanity.”
“This is your destiny.”
“I want to kill Jeremy, but I don’t want a life of nothing but death.”
He shoves sharply away from the table, stands, and turns my chair to face him.
His hands come down on the arms on either side of me.
“You are hunted. We are always hunted. You will fight, and you will win, or you will die, and everyone you would have saved will die. I’m your come-to-Jesus.
I won’t always be there to save your life.
You’ll have to save yourself and others.
I believe you can and will rise to that challenge, but Jeremy is coming, so do it quickly.
Eat. Drink. Read the book, and I’ll come for you later.
” He shoves off of my chair and straightens, already walking toward the door, and I don’t even think about following him.
Suddenly, those screams are back in my head.
Murdered. Tortured. Bloody and gruesome.
They call to me. They want me to save them.
It’s too late for them, but it is not too late for others.
By the time he’s at the door, he’s waiting on me. “You said Crystal Seers fight the wars,” I say.
“We do. When push comes to shove, it’s our job to save humans and angels alike.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you couldn’t stand toe-to-toe with Jeremy back at the cabin. What makes you think I can?”
“He bound my powers.”
“You have no powers?”
“It was temporary. I was useless. Which shouldn’t have happened. That’s what I spent last night tackling. How did he do it?”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out. But that’s why he mocked me over the gold, which he knows damn well I didn’t think would kill him. I was slowing him down until help arrived. What happened shouldn’t have been possible. No demon has the ability to bind our powers.”
“But he does. He did yours.”
“Yes, Ember. He does and did, and the fact that he could touch my powers has sent shockwaves through the Overseer community. It would cause panic if the Seer community as a whole finds out. I’m trusting you with that knowledge. That cannot get out.”
“Never. Not from me. I promise.”
He nods sharply and adds, “His abilities are not natural-born. There’s a way to banish them and him.”
“If you’d have had your powers out there—”
“My men would still be alive. I would have obliterated him and his minions.”
My pulse roars in my ears. “Do I have that kind of power?”
“You may end up stronger than me. I think it’s safe to say you’re extremely powerful, and that’s why you have his attention.
The timing of those murders, right before your coming of age, tells me he’s using magic that requires their sacrifices.
Read the book, and then we’ll talk.” With that, he turns and leaves.