Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
“I just met someone,” I said. “And they’re an intellectual, but a, ah, firm believer,” I said, figuring that was the easiest way to put it without saying the truth.
“And, what, you can’t have differing opinions?” he asked.
“It’s not that. It’s… I am starting to question things,” I admitted, my hand rubbing the marks on my hip.
“Questioning things is good. It’s how we have evolved. When we stop questioning, stop searching, stop learning, that is when we collectively start to devolve.”
He was always right, my father.
“Okay. I have another question.”
“Sure.”
“If you believe in a higher power, do you also believe in a, well, lower one?”
“Like a devil?” he asked, letting out a dry laugh. “That might be too far of a stretch of the imagination for me. Like I said, I believe in something, but not any particular mythos, any set-in-stone rulebook about Heaven, Hell, and Earth.”
“So… demons?” I asked.
“Fantasy, I’d say. Now, again, I could always be wrong. It just sounds like something an overactive imagination made up.”
Except, they were real.
I’d had one’s hands—no, talons—on me.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, taking a deep breath. His calm, reasonable voice always managed to calm me down. “How are you?”
“I’m doing well. A little concerned about these crazy weather phenomena we’ve had going on.”
“Crazy weather phenomena?” I asked, brows knitting.
“Oh, Char, you need to get your head out of a book long enough to watch the news on occasion, okay? There’s a lot of serious things happening in the world right now.”
“I will catch up with everything as soon as we are off the phone,” I assured him, letting the conversation shift to simpler things. His new friends. His new job. His life halfway across the world from me.
I told him about my classes, my students, the university as a whole.
And not a single damned thing about Bael.
“Alright, my girl. Your old man needs to grab a little bit of sleep,” he said, and we said our goodbyes.
Finished with the call, I slipped into some fresh clothes, surprised that I didn’t feel an almost overwhelming urge to jump in a scalding shower and scrape my skin with soap and exfoliants until I ripped a couple layers off, wanting to get the feel of him, the smell of him, off of me.
Somehow, though, that wasn’t an urge I had as I wrapped up in oversized sweats, made a cup of coffee, then grabbed my laptop and sat down to catch up on all the news I missed.
Usually, the big stories were being talked about on campus somewhere, prompting me to go in search of information about them.
But, well, I’d been distracted lately.
An hour or so later, I was still perched on the chair at my small dining table, eyes wide, a strange knot growing tighter and tighter in my chest.
Because I couldn’t shake some niggling little thoughts.
About lightning and storms.
About unprecedented disasters that scientists were having a hard time coming up with explanations for.
Unprecedented disasters I’d just… explained to Bael a few days ago.
What the hell was going on?
Not able to shake the strange sensation, I opened a new tab, typing in his name.
Professor Bael Thane.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing.
He didn’t exist.
Not in academia, anyway.
In fact, he didn’t exist at all. Not on social media. Not on people searches.
“Yeah, because he’s not actually a human,” I mumbled to myself.
But if he wasn’t human, if he wasn’t a professor, if he wasn’t creating an app, why had he contacted me?
Could he think that, well, that the myths were… real? That the old gods were “waking up?” Hadn’t he said something about that? For the “app.”
But if it wasn’t an app, if it was real life, then, yeah, it was starting to line up with the events going on in the world, wasn’t it?
Were the… gods real? The gods I’d dedicated so much of my life learning about?
It sounded insane.
But so did the existence of demons.
So did having sex with one.
Yet those things were true.
If those were real, then so the gods could be, right?
Restless, I jumped up from my laptop, pacing my apartment with a mind that was racing around endlessly.
It didn’t stop spinning.
Not all night.
Leaving me going into work the next day on no sleep and far too much caffeine, feeling frazzled and disconnected from myself. My students were more concerned with my attack than the actual lesson plans and I was so out of it, I actually called class early so I could retreat into my office.
Where I promptly knocked over two piles of papers that I needed to grade.
I swear tears sprang into my eyes.
And then I heard it.
The tinkling little laugh.
I don’t know why this time made me snap into action, but I rushed to my office door, wrenching it open, and looking out into the hallway.
There was only one person around.
Atty.
Professor Stan’s new assistant.