Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
“Anything for you, Ember,” he says, and the line goes dead.
An hour later, Jeremy still isn’t answering his phone, and I’m climbing the walls. I have no idea what happened to me in that courtroom, but I felt an unexplainable evil rip through me, and I swear it touched my very soul. That evil was him. If I’m insane, it’s the really over-the-top kind of insanity, because nothing will convince me that what I saw when that monster touched me was my imagination. He made me see them die in brutal detail. He made it happen, and that sick bastard loved it.
I don’t know how he did it. He’s not normal in some way. Or maybe I’m not normal.
When pacing doesn’t calm my nerves, I actually have to use a technique a therapist used on one of my clients who’d been through a traumatic event. She had my client fill her mind with the process of counting, and it created a sense of control for her. And that’s what I do now. I count. I’m still counting when my cellphone rings with several back-to-back calls.
My father’s secretary informs me of a rush of press attempting to reach me through his firm, and I instruct her to ignore all requests. A few minutes later, my father himself is on the phone, lecturing me about my handling of the matter, which apparently sucks. On the bright side, my parents are sticking to their norm of promise and retreat. They’re not coming back to see me. They’re staying in Europe and far away from Jeremy, which works out. That’s exactly where I want them. At this point, I don’t know what to do with myself, and I’m feeling dirty from the prospect of earning money for freeing a killer.
I hit the shower, but there’s no washing away the guilt that coils in my belly and wreaks havoc. I know me. I won’t get past this until two things happen: I understand where I went wrong and do something to fix the problem that was created.
I dress for comfort and to avoid drawing attention to myself in a pair of black jeans, a black V-neck T-shirt, and matching black boots. With my car still parked at Starbucks, I order an Uber to pick it up. A short time later, when I’m tucked inside my own car, I decide to do something that is probably—okay, definitely—not smart: I drive to Jeremy’s apartment.
I have to stop him from killing again.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Blue is the color of Seraphim, an angelic being, regarded in tradition as belonging to the highest order, analogous with light, ardor, and purity. But the most brutal of all demons was once a Seraphim. When you mix Seraphim and Nephilim, do you find light or darkness?
Chapter five
Twenty minutes later, I pull my Camry to a stop on the street opposite Jeremy’s rather seedy South Austin apartment building. Guilt driving me, I’m committed to somehow saving the world from Jeremy, and I waste no time in parking, killing the engine, and exiting my car. I pay for the parking meter, my skin crawling with the sense of being watched, my gaze shifting all about, expecting someone from the press seeking an interview, but I find no source for my discomfort besides my own nerves and anxiety. Or is it him? Is it Jeremy?
Watching me?
Expecting me?
I dart across the street toward the cluster of four-story red-brick buildings before I talk myself into leaving. I ignore the crosswalks half a block down on either side of me. There are no cars coming, and I wish this section of town was busier this time of day. In the masses, there is sanctuary, a place to hide, and people to talk to or beg for aid. Instead, I discover a human vacancy, and with it, exposure and vulnerability. Truly, I can’t believe that I’m actually about to visit a killer in his own lair, alone and without backup, but indeed I am. I comfort myself with the fact that the desolate streets create a false façade of being alone. There are other tenants—people who will hear me scream if I’m terrified into such an action.
Unless the nearby tenants are at work, of course.
Quickly, and in defiance of my now aching head I didn’t get ahead of after all, I walk the path that leads to the inner section of the building that should be his. Once I’ve ensured I’m at the proper structure, I follow the signs on the walls and stop at Jeremy’s ground-level apartment. With a calming breath, I knock on his door and wait. I have no plan and no idea what to do about Jeremy, but I need to know that I still have the chance to do it—whatever it is. Feeling anxious, I knock again and wait some more.