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)
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.