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)
“And yet, I lived twenty-seven years without being found. How is that possible?”
“You know the answer.”
“Magic.”
“Yes. Magic. Jeremy is not the average demon. I’m curious if your own magic was suppressed intentionally, and why any of my kind would do such a thing. A Crystal Seer is a treasure, born once a century, if we’re lucky. It would be expected that you would be trained and developed from a young age.”
“You said an Eagle crossed my path at the courthouse.”
“Yes, but I was surprised a Bedrock didn’t see you long before he did. They’re our working class who live amongst the humans.”
The waitress appears with a pot of coffee, fills our cups, and walks away.
I slide the condiment bowl closer and start opening paper creamers to top off my cup. “Do they live a human life? Or—well, you know what I mean.”
“They emulate a human life as best as they can in order to shelter and protect humans, the biggest obstacle being the way we age. We come of age at twenty-seven, and then our aging process slows. We age ten years to their one year.”
I can’t quite get my head around him talking about humans as someone other than me, let alone process what he’s just said to me. “I’m going to be twenty-seven for ten years?”
“You’ll look twenty-seven for ten years, but you won’t be twenty-seven.” He adds cream to his coffee and sips. “And you only get there if you don’t end up dead. You need your guard.” He doesn’t give me time to tell him to stop with the nagging already before he adds, “Bedrocks who live among humans have to cycle to new locations every five to ten years.”
“Why me?”
“There aren’t a lot of choices. We’re rare. But I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days. What if there’s something about you that we don’t know? You were hidden away until your coming of age, but the Bedrocks I would assume would protect you were killed and replaced? I just can’t come up with any other way you ended up with the Corrupted. And Jeremy knows why. He knows what we do not.”
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Magic is a skilled manipulator and deceiver. Use more than your eyes and choose to see the invisible.
Chapter twenty-three
There’s something about me that Jeremy knows that we do not.
Or I do not.
Micah knows more than he’s telling me.
And with that absolutely fabulous and wildly uncomfortable thought, the food arrives. I’d love to reject it and insist on having a conversation that gets to the bottom of the mystery of me, but my stomach growls and I’m just plain hungry. I also don’t know if I’m going to like where this conversation is going. I’m not an avoidant person, not at all, but for now, I dig into my omelet and savor what feels like it could be my last meal. I wonder if every meal in my future will feel like my last meal.
“Where are we going after this?” I ask again after we’ve both inhaled a portion of our meal, hoping he’s feeling more giving with details on a full stomach.
“I told you, I’m not telling you that.”
“How far away is it?”
“Far.”
I study him, a question niggling at me. “Why can’t you just use magic to take us there?”
“Traveling by way of magic is called rifting and I could. I just won’t.”
I set my fork down and straighten. “Why? Because I have to learn to do it myself?”
“You do have to learn, but no. That’s not why.” He flags the waitress and holds up his credit card, setting it on the edge of the table.
“Why?”
“Because when I travel with you, you could easily slide under my guard.”
“You invited me to slide under your guard.”
“But not your serpent.”
This answer is brutally honest and bitterly spiteful, even if that’s not his intent. I’m reminded that the reason he claims we left the garrison is the danger I represent to those whom he protects, including himself. “Understood,” I say, scooting around the booth. “I need the ladies’ room.” I don’t wait for his approval, darting away and toward the bathroom sign I’d noticed when we’d arrived.
I step into the cutout and turn left to the ladies’ room, pushing open the door to the double-stalled facility. Awareness flares inside me, and I whirl around to find Micah following me inside, and what blows my mind is not his boldness but the rush of what I know to be magic that radiates off of him and lifts the hair on the back of my neck. I don’t know how I know it’s magic. I simply know. It’s not a taste. It’s not a smell. It’s a feeling—a rush of awareness. Heat. Fire.
“You can’t be in here. And damn it, can I get just one moment to myself?”