“I don’t understand.”
Officer Silva’s face pinches, and she pulls her lower lip in between her teeth, inhaling sharply. Her hazel eyes briefly flit to my ankle and the angry red flesh there before returning to my face. “This is a safe space.”
Silva folds her fingers together and sets them atop the desk, watching me carefully. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Paige? About Mr. Ford?”
A tingling numbness works its way into my fingertips, crawling lazily up my arms. I barely heard what came after there’s no record of any autoimmune disease.
I shake my head and a dull ache forms behind my eyes.
She is wrong.
“I’m sorry, I don’t—” I cut myself off, trying to remember what I’d been about to say. A thousand thoughts race and crash through my skull, and I can’t piece them together.
It’s clearly a mistake. They were missing records or were sent incomplete ones.
“I don’t understand,” I state more clearly, clenching my hands together in my lap tight enough to bruise. “There’s clearly been some mistake.”
She taps the spacebar on a keyboard and swivels a square computer monitor to face me. Her slender finger pokes a spot on the screen.
“It says here that you were delivered by a midwife at Mr. Ford’s residence. No complications. And here in your immunization record, it says that you were inoculated at two months old, and again at four months old by a private physician.”
“No,” I interrupt. “No, I was never immunized. Regular immunizations could kill me.”
I sigh. They’ve obviously gotten my record mixed up with someone else’s. I go to say as much, but Silva’s grim expression gives me pause.
She turns the screen back to face her, shifting in her seat. “Well, maybe there’s something missing here, then,” she offers, though I can tell she doesn’t believe it herself. “Your medical records cut off abruptly after that. There’s no record of any injury or sickness. Have you ever been admitted to a hospital?”
She leans back in her chair, bringing the cap-end of a pen to her lips to gnaw on. Her doubtful tone makes my stomach uneasy again, and I swallow back the taste of bile as it tries to rise in my throat.
“No, Ford always took care of—”
Two sharp raps on the door interrupt me. Silva sits up straighter in her chair, discarding the pen into a drawer in her desk.
“Come in,” she calls, straightening her shirt.
The door opens and the other officer from earlier pokes his head in, offering me a small nod and a tight smile before he turns to Silva. “The diviner is here.”
4
“So, Paige,” the diviner begins, tilting his head at me with patient eyes. “May I call you Paige?”
My mouth is brutally dry, and all my words have crumbled to dust.
He is…magnificent.
I can’t help gaping. Warring emotions of terror and awe dance through my mind and twitch at my nerve endings. The undeniable urge to run makes my knees bounce, but I stay put, transfixed and completely unable to stop staring.
The diviner, something not quite man and not quite angel, is the most beautiful being I’ve ever beheld in real life or even on screen. He’s over six feet tall with broad shoulders and a square jaw. Gently waving auburn hair sweeps low over his left brow, and his eyes…his eyes are like starlight captured beneath a thin pane of glass.
The diviner waits patiently for my response, leaning casually against Silva’s desk with his knee bent and corded arms stretched backward to prop him up.
Something about his whole demeanor manages to be relaxed and also poised to spring at the same time. There is no telling his age, either. He could be twenty-five or forty-five, it’s anyone’s guess. With skin as unlined and unblemished as his, he could even claim he’s underage and I might believe him
Finally finding my voice, I croak hoarsely, “Yes. Yes, Paige is fine.”
He smiles, and I swear it’s all I can do not to drool. Are they all this painfully beautiful? I may have listened to endless news stories about the diviner’s kind, the Nephilim, and about the Diablim, too, but I’ve never seen one.
Not on TV. Not in real life. All I ever had were Ford’s description to go by.
Ford gave me access to a massive online library of movies and even had the credit card information saved in the system so I could purchase more. He had subscriptions to most streaming services, too. I watched them from under the comfort of my weighted blankets as the mini projector threw the moving pictures over my one blank wall.
I was allowed fictional movies and books of almost any kind. Ford only censored some documentaries and anything satanic or overly dark in nature.
This man—this being is definitely not satanic, and I don’t need a visual reference to see that. He radiates light. Exudes life.
How could Ford have thought the Nephilim to be anything less pure than their angelic forefathers?
How could he describe them as hideous abominations?
“Good,” the diviner intones, leaning forward over his knees so we are only inches apart. I hardly remember to what he is referring, but I nod anyway.
“Officer Silva has filled me in a bit on the situation. It seems she believes there are some discrepancies in your file, and that perhaps there’s something important you might be hesitant to say.”
My breaths come slower at his words, and I grip the edges of the seat I am in to try to calm myself. My eyes dart to the exit, and I squeeze tighter, trying to keep myself rooted in place.
I hate rooms with only one exit. It’s bad enough that I was deposited in here alone, and it only got worse when I was trapped inside with Silva.
But now I am stuck in this one-exit room with a being who isn’t human.
Ford’s warnings ring in my ears despite my initial measure of the diviner. I feel like he is good. Like he is safe.
I could be very, very wrong.
He’s here to help you, I scold myself.
He can save you.
“This isn’t an interrogation,” the diviner continues. “You can leave at any time. And if you wish, you can refuse to be read, that is your right.”
When I finally meet the diviner’s eyes, he recoils at what he sees. The metallic reflective color of my irises unnerves him, too, like it did the other officers. Quickly, I drop my gaze, and the diviner readjusts his position.
“Do I have your permission to begin, Paige?”
Is this really it?
Will the authorities finally believe me? Am I finally going to be free? I could go to the hospital and get tested like I’ve been begging Ford for the past five years. He had money, lots of it. I wonder if all of it is mine now.
Maybe the house is mine, too, but if it is, I will burn it to the ground. I’ll watch gleefully as the wood turns to ash and the metal warps and the glass shatters and melts.
I’ll dance around the embers.
“Yes,” I manage, and the diviner extends his delicate hands to me.
“Take my hands.”
Self-consciously wiping my sweat-slicked palms on the sides of my jeans, I gulp and set them flat against his.
The diviner closes his eyes and inhales deeply as his long fingers close around my hands.
Breathless, I watch his angelic face as he uses his magic to glean information from the skin-on-skin contact. Curiosity piqued, I study our clasped hands, feeling around within myself to see if I can sense his presence in my mind or in my soul or wherever he’s rooting around inside me.