Page 142 of Stealing Embers

“No. Wait, not yet.” My voice comes out as a croak. “I have more questions. What about my mother?”

“What about your mother?” Tinkle stares at the ceiling. I glance up, but don’t see anything interesting.

“Who is she? Where is she?”

“How am I supposed to know that? I’m all-powerful, not all-knowing.” He says the last part as he holds on to his feet and rolls back and forth, the tip of his tail dangling over his nose.

“Emberly, we need to talk to someone else about this. This is a lot of information. And if what he’s saying is true—”

“Then it means I have a father out there who left me to be raised by strangers. Ha. Forget strangers, he left me to be raised by an entirely differentspecies. Sounds like an awesome guy. Can’t wait to meet him.” I don’t even try to keep the bitter note out of my voice. Shock mixes with fury and my emotion scales start to tip toward the latter.

A hand rests on my shoulder. When I look up, Ash stands above me, sympathy pooling in her eyes. “I don’t think we’re going to get much more out of him at this point. Maybe he needs a nap or something?”

Tinkle is back to staring at nothing on the ceiling, but his eyelids do look a little droopy. I’m not ready to back off now. That little being contains a mountain of knowledge.

I open my mouth, ready to shoot off more questions, but before I can utter a syllable Tinkle tips over, face-planting into my pillowcase. Soft snores rise from his tiny nose.

Did that really just happen?

“Do you think he’s narcoleptic?”

“Come on.”

“I’m fully serious. Did you see how fast he nodded off? That can’t be normal.”

She has a point.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I rub the bridge of my nose. Another tension headache brews. My emotions are so intertwined, I don’t know how to separate them. Fear and anger and hope and joy slosh around inside my brain, battling for dominance.

“Will you let me tell Sable about what Tinkle said about my . . . father? I want to feel out the situation a little first. And I need a minute to process some of this.” All of this.

“Yeah, of course.”

Thirty minutes later, Tinkle is perched on my shoulder. After a fifteen-minute power nap, his eyes popped open and he started bouncing around the room like a caffeinated gremlin. It took another fifteen minutes to calm him down enough to get out the door.

There’s a sharp tug on my earlobe followed by something being shoved down my ear canal.

“Ahh. What the heck.” My hand smacks the side of my head, protecting the sensitive area. “Tinkle, did you just stick something in my ear?”

Twisting my head, I do my best to take in the small creature as we navigate the academy halls on the way to Sable’s apartment. I’ve never been there before, but Ash assured us she knew the way.

“I most certainly did not sticksomethingdown your ear.”

“Well then what was—”

“I merely wanted to see if my arm would fit in this hole.”

“So youdidput something in there.” Creepy little dude.

“I did not. It was my arm.”

“Your arm isn’t something?”

“No.” I contort my neck to see a blurry image of his triangle head. His beady black eyes blink back at me. “My arm is part of me.”

Ash snickers under her breath. “Weird Celestial logic?”

“I guess.”