Chapter nineteen
Perhaps he fears the serpent.
Or maybe he simply fears me.
Time ticks by with a heavy hand, eternal hours it seems, as I’m caged in Micah’s quarters, the quarters of the Overseer, a man, a Nephilim—my captor?
Sitting at the kitchen table, I study the books he’s left for me, searching far and wide for anything that justifies a serpent as my familiar, but there’s no peace in the writings to be found.
There’s only the promise of destruction, and that promise is plentiful and scattered about the pages of every book I scour for answers. One such passage reads:
The serpent represents temptation and destruction.
All the rest say the same thing in different ways:
The serpent is the end.
The serpent is the enemy.
The serpent will slither under the radar in the dark of night and bleed out your young.
That last one has me quaking in my own shoes, nauseous with the idea that I’m the serpent. I’m not, I all but scream in my head. I am not the serpent. I am not evil.
Desperation spurs my wild hunt for another answer—a better answer.
A real explanation as to why this is happening to me and how it might hold another meaning other than darkness and pain, created by me.
But there is nothing—no hope, no alternate meaning.
At some point, I end up on the floor in front of the couch, and I sit back on my haunches and pant out a frustrated breath, hope fading into the silence of the cavernous structure of the room.
No wonder Micah has me locked up in this cage and wants me out of his garrison.
The question is, why not just cage me or kill me if he’s that concerned?
Maybe that’s his intent, and our destination is a prison of some sort, but I don’t feel as if that’s his intent.
I’m not certain I can trust my character assessments at this point, not after I judged Jeremy as a sweet man in need of help.
Micah claims a Crystal Seer has the ability to read the intent of another Crystal Seer.
I believe he saw good in me.
Until I saw the serpent and confessed as much.
His reaction to me and the serpent had been stunned shock and, dare I say, terror? He’s a warrior who faced off with Jeremy, and he reacted with terror.
Now, he, too, distrusts his instincts. And me.
With a heavy sigh, I decide knowledge is still my biggest asset.
I scan several more pages of the book and land on a passage that references a way to communicate with your familiar.
Okay, I think. This is good. It’s really good because there is no way my familiar is a serpent.
The book, and Micah, too, for that matter, both state a familiar is not a reptile.
I must have another familiar. It’s the only answer, but I struggle more on the topic, and with a rumble of my belly, I’m motivated to pause and hunt down a snack that isn’t the sandwiches offered earlier.
I store the meat and cheese before it goes bad and start surveying my options.
To my delight, I discover a bag of chocolate in a kitchen drawer, and I’m more than a little pleased to conclude that my new life as a Nephilim still includes at least this one human pleasure.
I’m strangely pleased at the idea of Micah enjoying the same treat.
I decide it creates a facade of humanity.
And the fact of the matter is that humanity is far more comfortable to me than an Overseer of a garrison of demon hunters.
With a spellcast book in hand and my candy bag, of course, I settle onto his leather couch, abandoning my reading material to unwrap a piece of the chocolate.
I slide the candy in my mouth and allow it to slowly melt.
The deliciousness is an escape I crave, a way to feel like me when I’m being told I don’t know who I am anymore.
I begin flipping the pages of the book, and in the process, I eat half the bag of chocolate.
It’s true. I have no shame at all. I don’t even have a bellyache from it, and this tells me I’m deserving of my splurge.
The only reason I stop eating is that a spell catches my attention.
Bingo. Just what I was looking for: How to Communicate with Your Familiar.
There are risks to acting on the instructions, of course.
If my familiar is the snake, I’m evil, and I must be cautious not to make it stronger.
But what if Jeremy did something to bind my true familiar, and I can set it free?
I need to try. And I need to know the truth.
We need to know. And perhaps if I free my true familiar, together we can fight the enemy within me?
It’s a good plan, and I truly can’t understand why Micah didn’t suggest it in the first place.
Per the book, the process requires a specific crystal—the blue agate, which appears to be quite similar to the color of a Crystal Seer’s eyes.
I’m supposed to hold the agate in my bleeding hand as I chant several specified words.
Good Lord, why do I have to bleed for this?
But I quickly remind myself that it’s better me than someone else.
First things first, I must locate the crystal.
I push to my feet and begin my hunt, which proves easier than one might expect.
There on a bookshelf to my right is a box filled with crystals.
I carry the entire container back with me to the coffee table, compare each to the photo in the spellcast book, and easily find the one needed. That leaves the blood requirement.
With the stone in hand, I walk to the kitchen, grab a knife, and convince myself that slicing my palm won’t hurt all that badly.
Time matters. This needs to happen sooner or later, and I suck in a breath and just do it.
I cut my hand open, and, oh my God, it hurts.
And it bleeds in excess, but I’m committed to this path.
I place the crystal in my palm and grimace with the realization that I don’t know the chant, and the book is in the living room. I’m fretting about all the blood I’m going to get all over the floor when I hear, “What the hell are you doing?”
My gaze jerks toward the door, where Micah is stalking this direction, an unnerving realization considering I wasn’t aware of him entering the room, but then I was just a little focused on the intimidating process of slicing my hand open.
He’s in front of me in a blink, capturing my wrist as he tugs me roughly toward him. “Drop the crystal,” he orders.
I blanch, stunned by the fierceness of his anger. “The spellcast book said—”
“Drop the damn crystal, Ember,” he orders again, his voice pure steel.
I drop the crystal. His hand flattens on my hand, and there’s warmth there that becomes heat for a sizzling second before he releases me. I glance down to find my hand fully healed. I blink at it and then him. “You…How?”
“What were you trying to do, Ember?”
Anger radiates off him, a hot furnace threatening to burn me alive. “I…You left the book, and—”
He catches my shoulders, and not gently. “Release the serpent? Is that what you wanted?”
All of a sudden, I’m aware of his accusation, as if I was trying to set free an enemy inside his garrison.
“No. God, no. I mean, yes and no. I just…I wanted to prove my familiar isn’t that thing.
Isn’t him. I swear to you, Micah, you left the book, and I found the spell, and I thought… we both need to know.”
He studies me with cutting eyes, his fingers digging into my flesh. He’s trying to feel me, to read and understand the good or bad of me, and it scares me that he’s not convinced one way or the other.
“Go in my head,” I say. “Do it. Go into my head and see the truth. I have nothing to hide.”