Page 37 of Stealing Embers

“No more of that, okay? You’re with your own now.”

“Am I?” I ask, subconsciously playing with a damp strand of my long blonde and red hair—the very thing that makes me doubt how much I actually belong in this group of angel hybrids.

“I know I said this before, but that hair of yours is wicked cool. It just grows like that, huh?”

Bouncing to her feet, Ash circles me like a shark.

Boundaries are going to be an issue with her, I can tell.

“For as long as I can remember. It was one of the things that always made my foster families uncomfortable. Well—the hair, the mysterious injuries, the insistence that monsters were after me, and that people turned into bursts of color sometimes. I suppose considering everything, the hair was the least of the oddities.”

Ash snorts a short chuckle. “Yeah, ya think?”

I shift my weight, at a loss for words.

“How are you holding up? It’s been an eventful couple of days for you.”

I’m thankful for the subject change. Thinking about all the families I was placed in and removed from . . . well, it’s a sore subject for me.

“Is it always this exciting?”

“Ha, not even close. We run lockdown drills all the time, but that’s the first time in the six years I’ve been going here that I actually used one of the safe rooms. All those teenage bodies in a small space.” She fans a hand in front of her face. “Nasty. I thought I was going to pass out from the stench of B.O. and farts.”

I wrinkle my nose, imagining the horror.

But something else she said stands out to me. Sable wasn’t lying about the frequency of attacks on the academy after all.

So why did it have to happen the first day I arrived? Was it just a coincidence? Do I even believe in those?

“Those things that attacked us . . . I have no words.” Picturing the fanged creature that Steel fought, I only just manage not to shudder.

“You’ve never seen a Forsaken?”

“Never.”

Ash blows out a breath, causing the wispy curls framing her face to dance. “Girl, you must have a protective bubble around you. Or a guardian angel warding off evil. Avoiding the Fallen for so long is one thing, but the Forsaken hunt in the mortal worldandthe spirit realm. They’re like supernatural bloodhounds when it comes to smelling out lone Nephilim. Our numbers keep them away from the academy, but getting attacked out in the rest of the world is pretty commonplace for our kind. It’s part of the reason why we get sent to an academy so young. Safety in numbers is a real thing for us.”

She stares at me like she expects an explanation as to how I didn’t know Forsaken existed. She’s going to be waiting for a while, because heck if I know the answer to that.

“It’s a good thing you’re here with us now. Thank the Creator you made it this long on your own.”

“The Creator? Like . . . God? Is He . . . real?”

I’ve always wondered.

“Oh yeah, girl. He’s real for sure. The Bible is no joke. We just happen to have a bit more information about Him and the supernatural world than the rest of the populace. It can be fun being in the know. Until it’s not.”

I don’t know. Being oblivious but safe sounds better than joining some paranormal circle of trust. But even so, I can’t seem to stop the questions.

“So the Forsaken. They’re like . . . vampires or something?” I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth. The world was definitely a safer place when I woke up yesterday morning—which isn’t saying much, considering how hard it’s been to survive on my own.

I scrub my fingers over my forehead as a throbbing ache begins to pound a steady cadence in my head. My body may be stronger than the average person’s—and now I know why—but it still has limits. I’m flirting with overload.

Ash shakes her head.

“They are and aren’t. Vampires are a myth, but the Forsaken are what inspired the legends. They can’t walk in the daylight and they do sometimes drink blood.”

So. Creepy.