24. Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
After fifteen minutes on the road, the cold vanishes and my awkwardness over my body pressing to Micah’s fades, and I actually enjoy the ride, the snow fluttering about as if dancing upon our approach to each new mile.
About an hour into the ride, we pull into a small country store for gas, and I’m remarkably agile as I slip off the bike and remove my helmet.
For just a moment, I’m allowed an opportunity to appreciate Micah with that bike between his legs, and the truth is his hotness factor is off the charts.
He throws his powerful thigh off the bike and removes his helmet, his dark hair falling in wild disarray, and I like it a little too much.
“Can you control how I see you?” I ask. “Like, change your appearance?”
He laughs, a boisterous rumble from deep in his chest. “If I could do that, just think of the games we could play. A Crystal Seer is not easily deceived and that means you. Humans are another story.” He holds out his hands to his sides and says, “What you see is what you get, Ember. Hopefully you like me as I am.”
Only time will tell, I think, but I ask, “How old are you?”
“Sometimes, I think I’m too damn old,” he says and reaches in his pocket to produce his wallet and removes a card. “If you need the bathroom, I suggest you use it. It’s all country roads the rest of the way.”
“In other words, you don’t want to tell me how old you are.” I don’t give him time to counter. “Can’t you just magically fill the gas tank?”
“It’s out of the magical budget,” he jokes, and then says, “I can, but humans cannot, and we can’t protect them if they fear us, and they usually fear anything that is different. Therefore, I’ve learned to live inside their limitations.”
“Like you are mine, right now?”
“Exactly.” He offers me the card, and that magical rush slides over me again. “The tank is full. Get what you want in the store.”
I accept the card, and our hands collide, the friction between us palpable to the point that I cut my stare and focus on just how much he’s taking care of me. “I have money in the bank. If we can stop by—”
“You won’t need it where we’re going, and I have plenty of money for the both of us. Get what you want, Ember.”
My eyes meet his, and I search the blue irises for answers I know I won’t find. “How do you make money?”
“You know the answer.”
“Magic.”
“Yes. Magic. We have no human limitations.”
“I’m confused by that.”
“You won’t be. Hurry. We need to get out of here.”
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” His voice deepens in a barely perceivable way, but I notice. “That’s a complicated question,” he says. “I’ll go in with you.”
“Then you take your card.”
“Keep it in case you need it.”
“I can’t—”
“Magic, Ember. You aren’t taking anything from me. Keep the card.” He steps to my side, and he’s facing the store while I am not.
I rotate to realize it’s closed, lights out, not a soul in sight, and at this late hour, this is more logical than not. I cut Micah a sideways look. “I don’t think you’ll be putting that card to use.”
“No?”
“No.”
The stubborn man starts walking and doesn’t stop until he opens the front door of the store. He eyes me over his shoulder. “You coming?”
A mix of curiosity and confusion puckers my brow, and I cross to join him, allowing him to hold the door for me. “What is this?”
“Go inside and find out.”
Okay, then, I think. This is weird. Everything about my life is weird now. I step over the threshold, and magic plays almost like music in the air. Suddenly the lights are on, and there’s an attendant behind the counter. He waves at me and then sips his coffee.
Nephilim, I think, and Micah says, “Can you feel it?”
“Magic,” I say softly.
“Yes. Magic. There are ways to make it undetectable to anyone I don’t want to feel it, but I wanted to see if you picked up on it.”
“The minute I walked in the door.”
“But not outside?”
“No. Not outside.”
He doesn’t comment or clarify if I should have been able to feel it outside, instead motioning to the rear of the store. “We’re going out the back door.”
I glance that direction, and I’m confused all over again. “I don’t see a back door.”
“You will.” He starts walking.
I follow him until we’re in a narrow hallway with him behind me and nothing but a wall in front of us. I halt and turn to face him. “What door?”
“Look harder.”
I rotate to find the wall has transformed into a door.
Micah steps to my side, and I shoot him an incredulous look. “What is this?”
“There’s an interstice between the human world and the Nephilim Kingdom, where magic thrives and demons cannot travel. We call it Elysium. If you’re ever injured or your powers are bound, you get to one of the entrances. You’ll learn how to find them.”
“And you hide the entrances inside human structures?”
“This one just happens to open right next to the spot where they built a highway. It was in our best interest to create a shelter of sorts. In this case, the country store.”
“So, it’s run by your people,” I say, assuming as much.
“By one family I’ve trusted for a very long time. I don’t invite anyone to the location you’re about to visit. It’s my private spot—a slice disconnected from the rest of Elysium. And as I promised, a safe place no one else will enter.”
Because he’s protecting me from the world and the world from me. And maybe that’s a little melodramatic. Maybe he’s just protecting his people. I don’t know. “Do we go in?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I say, but I don’t move, my feet frozen with the rest of me. What if he’s sending me to the prison I’d feared he’d planned for me? Or what if I go in, and it’s some crazy place, and I lose him or him me?
Always on point, it seems, he asks, “Would you feel better if I went first?”
Do I?
Is first or last better?
Clearly reading the uncertainty scrambling my brain, he captures my hand, a calmness radiating through me.
I wonder now if it’s magic—if he spellcasts me with his touch—but it doesn’t feel like magic.
Then again, he’s extremely powerful, of this, I have no doubt.
I’m not sure I’ll feel anything he doesn’t allow me to feel.
“Caution is good,” he says. “Trust no one. Not even me.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“Very few people would call me comforting. We’ll go together.
” He pushes open the door and guides me outside, and we are not in the back of the convenience store.
We aren’t in Kansas anymore, as the saying goes, or Colorado in our case, but we are most definitely in a place that fits Micah’s description of Elysium perfectly.
Someplace magical.