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Of course. It’s an answer that’s a nonanswer to me. “Where was I supposedly born? In a place like this?”

“Yes,” he says. “I was born in the Dallas facility.”

“I was born in an Austin hospital.”

“I doubt that, and we’ll confirm. I want to question the Corrupted who were your handlers. It’s up to you if you want to be present.”

If there was one thing he could say to earn my trust, it’s this. I can find my own answers, and he’s willing to help. “When?”

“Jeremy is too close for us to leave now. He’s on my turf. I’m strongest underground, and so are you. You finding your assets is what matters most.”

“Can we bring them here or with us to the headquarters?”

“They aren’t entering our facilities. Not with the connection they have to Jeremy.”

“I have it, too.”

“You’re not them. You’re one of us.” He indicates my plate with his fork. “At any moment, we could be thrust into battle. Enjoy my cooking while you can. I don’t do it often.”

I pick up the bread and butter it. “I bake,” I say. “My grandfather loved it. One day, maybe I’ll make you my famous chocolate chip cookies.”

“I’d like that. What else do you cook?”

“Pretty much nothing.”

He laughs, and its warm rumble of masculinity I find as charming as him cooking breakfast as easily as he wields a blade. We talk a bit about my life when I was younger, and I think he’s looking for signs of Jeremy’s influence, but I can’t be sure. When we finish our meal, Micah stands up and walks to the living room bookshelf, returning to set a book beside me. The crystal blue cover instantly claims my attention.

“It’ll answer questions,” he says. “Read it. And read it again.” He walks to the coffee pot and grabs the cup he brewed some time back now.

I stroke the silken cover of the book, an instant form of respect in me for it that I can’t quite compute. It’s a book, not a person, and yet it feels…alive. I dare to ease it open to a middle section and stare at a picture labeled Wolf Demon, which is remarkably too much like the horror film version of a werewolf for comfort.

Laughter, choked and incredulous, bubbles from my throat, and I look up as Micah returns. “This is a joke, right?”

He claims his seat again, a steaming cup in his hand as he blatantly ignores my question. “Werewolves, also known as Wolf Demons, are lower-level demons.” He eases forward to flip to a drawing of a man in various forms of shifting into a giant standing wolf. “They appear human except on a full moon when they shift,” he continues, “at which point, they rip out a few human throats and steal their souls. They then deliver those souls to an upper-level demon like Jeremy, who in turn allows them to live. The wolf is pure muscle and power, and its teeth and claws are vicious weapons.” He smirks. “Need that coffee yet?”

“Yes, actually. I really need that coffee. Got any booze to go in it?”

“Ever been drunk, Ember?”

I have no idea why, but my defenses hum. “Of course I have.”

“When? What happened?”

“I…I really can’t remember details. I don’t drink much, so I don’t get drunk.”

“You don’t get drunk, period. You can’t. We’re immune to human alcohol.”

“Human alcohol? What does that even mean? We’re human, right? Or some form of human?”

“We’re descendants of angels. We are not human.”

“Angels,” I breathe out.

He flips the book shut and points. The Sacred Book of Nephilim, it reads, and the title stirs something inside me, something as familiar as what I feel with Micah. “Angels,” he says. “Fallen angels.”

“Fallen?”

“Our ancestors protected humanity, sworn to do so from the shadows, but too many caved to the temptation of human flesh. They became the Fallen, unable to rise again, sentenced to life on Earth.” And before I can ask the hundreds of questions ticking through my mind, he asks, “What do you feel when you’re near a demon?”