Uriel: The Inheritance (Airel Saga Book Five)

Chapter XIII

Boise, Idaho—Present Day

WE STOPPED OFF AT my favorite coffee shop. It was the very same Moxie Java where, really, this whole thing had started. I ordered my "yooszh," which was a coconut latté, only this time as a decaf. I was buzzed already, and didn't need the jitters. Ellie ordered a cup of Earl Grey and we sat by the fire and sipped and talked.

"So," she said, "how about you and the new guy, Dirk ... What will Michael think? What a scandal."

"Haha," I said, "laugh it up."

"Once upon a time, Michael was that new guy."

"Hey, don't be mean. If you think Dirk's so hot, you date him."

"Don't be nasty. He's hundreds of years younger than I am." She giggled. "So ... you're probably amazed I'm alive."

"Um, yeah." I felt I should try to keep my interjections to a minimum for now, but I couldn't resist asking where in the high heels she had been for the last few months.

She sighed, visibly heavy. "You probably ought to know a few things about me before I start bringing you up to speed. First, if you must know, I've been staying up at my father's place."

"You mean ..."

"Yeah. Under the waterfall and all that."

I chuckled darkly. "Narnia."

"Pretty much. I had a lot of things to do there. A lot of studying. But anyway, I need to start my story elsewhere. You've read up on Uncle Yamanu, yes?"

I nodded, sipping, my eyes locked on her over the top of my cup.

"So you're familiar with the shadowing arts."

"Yes."

"And how far did the Book of Kreios permit you to read?"

"What do you mean? I read that book to the end. Many times."

She smiled. "No, girlie. You read it to the end it allowed you to see. So ... how far did you get, then?"

"I ..." I had to think. I was stunned at this new development. "I think it was before Christ still. Seven hundred B.C. somewhere, I guess." I closed my eyes and tried to remember specifics. "788, I think."

Her smirk turned, betraying unmistakable pain. "You don't know even half, then."

I couldn't do anything but sit and stare.

"If you're wondering why the Book did that to you, don't. It was for your own protection. If fallible creatures of free will knew where their choices were to take them, they would become enslaved to inevitability. El has far greater love than to show us all ends."

She sounded like an old woman, but it was hard to look at her and her blue hair and hear the way she could slip into wise old woman talk. "So what did I miss?" I asked.

She took a sip of her tea, savoring it. "The shadowers." She sighed. "Yamanu knew I had been activated by the time I arrived at the City of Refuge. I have no doubt he prayed to El about it, that he ultimately received confirmation that he should train me as a shadower anyhow. I don't know why, but he did. It only took one lesson for me to surpass him in every way. The rest, I learned on my own through trial and error."

She looked out the window for a second and then let her gaze come to rest on the flames behind the glass in the fireplace. "I made a lot of errors. But in the end, I came up solid. I learned new ways to practice the art. Yamanu was a powerful master. He was able to call up the shadows in a physical fog, he was able to counteract the drain our kind feel around the Bloodstone, around the Brotherhood.