Page 21 of Ember and Ash

“If you had asked me that yesterday, I’d have said the foolish attorney who represents Jeremy, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

“No. What are you, Ember?”

I hold up my hands and drop them again, at an utter loss. “I really don’t know how to answer that.”

“Did you sense evil in Jeremy? Did you know he was a demon?”

“Demon,” I repeat, and the word is poison on my tongue.

“Demon,” he confirms. “Did you—”

“No,” I say quickly, “but I’m a good reader of character. I don’t know how he fooled me. That’s why I went to his apartment that day we met. I needed to find him and do something to stop him.”

His brow inches upward. “Something? What?”

“I don’t know. I was compelled to go after him. I let him get away, and he killed those women.”

“What changed your mind about him?”

“At the end of the trial, he touched me, and—it was awful.” My voice is hoarse, and I barely recognize it as my own. “He showed me the murders. He showed me in gruesome detail. And I’m not crazy.” My tone firms. “It was real. It was so damn real.”

“That’s when you knew he was a demon?”

“I didn’t know he was a demon. That’s a horror movie, not real life, or that’s what I thought.”

“Then what did you think?” he presses.

“I was still trying to get a grip on what it meant. I thought either he was different or I’m different. How else could he put those images in my head?”

“It was a vision. Some of us get them.”

“Some of us?”

“You really don’t have any idea what you are, do you?”

“What does that even mean?” I ask, exasperated at this point, barely able to sit here like this. I need to move. I need to do something.

Incredibly, he seems to read me, capturing my shoulders and standing us both up. “Better?”

“As better as it gets while being hunted by a demon.”

“Demons,” he amends. “He has an army of followers. And when you don’t want to be hunted, you become the hunter.”

“Okay.” I give a choked laugh because I’m on edge, really on edge. I still need something. Answers will do. “Why do we have the same eyes?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. That’s the right question, and your obsession with asking me about my eyes is part of the reason you won me over. You’d run from that part of me if you were corrupt. You did not.”

“Are we family?” I ask.

“No.” His lips twitch, a hint of light in his striking eyes. “I don’t think we feel like family, do you?”

No, I think. No, that is not what this weird Deja vu thing I have with this man feels like at all. It’s fire and light and something I cannot name. “Then why do we have the same eyes?”

“There are Seers, and there are Crystal Seers. We carry the crystal gene. Crystal Seers are a rare breed. We are the few. We are the leaders of our kind, so imagine how shocked I was to find you in the company of Jeremy.”

“I’m so confused right now. I’m not—”

“You are. Crystal Seers can sense other Seers. I can one hundred percent confirm that you are a Crystal Seer. Buried deep inside you is the ability to judge the same of me.”