Page 44 of Ember and Ash

“We’re not in a courtroom. We’re in a war between angels and demons. You’d be smart to remember that.”

A war between angels and demons.

Bile gathers in my throat, burning a path down and settling in my belly. This is my new life, and I’m not sure if the war is happening around me or inside me. Or perhaps both.

“You coming?”

I blink away my thoughts to find Micah standing outside the car and holding the door for me.

I double-step and join him, stepping out into what turns out to be the same open warehouse where we’d first entered the garrison. At this late hour, the silence is thick, and the heavy overhead lighting has been replaced with floor-level soft beams of light illuminating our shadowy path forward. We weave through a path of motorcycles and trucks until we reach a steel door.

Micah keys a code into a panel and opens it as a biting gust of icy wind greets us, a drastic contrast to the cloak of warmth that had enveloped me moments before. While I shiver and dig deeper into my coat, Micah doesn’t react, seemingly oblivious to the shift in temperature. He eases outside, surveys a bit, or so it seems, and then motions me forward.

I steel myself for the bitter cold and inch through the small passage of his body and the wall that he’s allowed me. In my mind, I’m aware that he never shies away from our nearness, and in that moment, I believe this to be a strategic way to shelter his people and keep me out of the hands of his enemy. I comfort myself with the thought that if he believed I was one with the serpent, he’d find a way to achieve the same while creating distance between us.

A short staircase leads me to a parking lot, while snow flutters about in tiny buttons, more ice than powder. Micah is on my heels, and as promised, a bike awaits us—a Harley, actually. I know it’s a Harley, as one of my clients favored them and talked incessantly about the varied makes, models, and mechanics. I’d listened, as listening has always served me well, and it turned out that had been smart. One of those tiny details the client had shared with me had been how I’d turned a liar’s testimony meant to demolish him into the way I’d set him free.

He deserved his freedom. He’d been innocent.

I hope.

For all I know, I’ve spent my career tricked into defending demons.

Micah hands me a helmet. “It’ll keep your face dry,” he says, pulling on his own before he straddles the bike, looking as comfortable as he would in the soft bed we left behind. The man’s a rockstar on this thing, in his element, arrogantly confident and good-looking, while for my part, I’m thinking, How the hell did I not fall off the first time I did this with him? Oh yeah. I know. I plastered my body to his and had not one ounce of shame over it, either. I’m about to throw pride aside and flaunt my fear by doing the same thing now, when the door we’d exited bursts open.

My gaze jerks that direction to find Celine standing there. Dressed in leather, her dark hair lifting in the wind, her eyes raging with anger—she’s the force of nature, not me. The burn in her eyes declares her a gorgeous goddess about to strike me into Hell for standing next to Micah, and I wonder if this is about power, Micah, or me. Could she genuinely think I’m about to drag him to Hell, and them afterward, and that Micah is blinded by me, maybe by whatever connection we share? Maybe she knows what it is and I do not. I also can’t help but wonder if she wants me dead before that can happen.

Micah dismounts and throws a command my direction. “Stay here.”

This is probably not the time to point out that I’m pretty bad at taking orders and that I’m freezing my ass off. Not to mention the fact that a Crystal Seer, who, per Micah, is destined to kill werewolves and demons, among other gnarly creatures, should be more of a badass. I doubt demons will care if I’m cold while attempting to kill me. Jeremy sure didn’t, though he seems more intent on using me than killing me.

Celine waits on Micah at the top of the stairs, as if she expects he’ll come up there to her, but considering his dominant presence, I gamble on a big, fat no. He’ll never allow himself to be dictated to, even in a nonverbal fashion. Sure enough, he halts at the bottom of the steps, a wide berth between them, his back firmly my direction. I have no idea what he says to her, but there’s a shift in her, as if she’s shrunk an inch, her body stiff. Her expression tightens enough to crack like an icy pond being skated on.

Micah rotates away from her, and before I’ve hardly processed his movement, he’s remounting the bike with the expectation of me joining him. I climb on behind him, my hands on his waist, and when my eyes land on the door again, Celine’s gone.

The Sacred Book of Nephilim

Magic is not your friend or foe. It will be both. It will be neither. It will be everything and nothing. It’s a cloak of deception and the revelation of truth. The only way to understand what it shows you is to understand where it lives inside you and what it is to you.

Be one with it. Own it, or be assured your enemy will own you.

Chapter twenty-two

Ashort ride later, Micah halts the Harley in an IHOP parking lot.

The weather has calmed—no more than flurries in the air—and the roads are mostly clear. With no signs of any yellow-eyed demons, I’m certain there must be a problem with the bike—why else would we be stopping here of all places? I dismount, anxiously awaiting Micah to join me and explain.

He dismounts, yanks off his helmet, and latches it to the bike, his dark hair a mussed-up mess that somehow works for him. “Let’s eat,” he says and starts walking toward the door.

I’m shellshocked one second, trying to get my helmet off the next. By the time I’ve disposed of the awkward thing and tried to right my hair that feels as if it’s standing on end, he’s at the door waiting on me. “Is this even safe for us right now?”

His eyes dance with mischief. “I’ve never been attacked by an egg or a pancake in my fairly long life, so I’d say we’re good.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re such a smartass. You know what I meant.”

He simply stares at me with a deadpan look that says he’s eating at IHOP. It’s up to me if I want to starve outside in the cold. I walk inside the restaurant, and the hostess greets me, barely looking at me as she says, “Booth or table?”

“Does anyone say table?” I joke.