Free Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) by Lila Huff

I want to be around for that.” Carlo seemed almost happy, though I knew he should not have.
    I could hear the pensiveness in Jack’s thoughts as he spoke again, “none of us do.”
    I let Jack’s words trail off as I continued down the hall… what exactly was it they were lying to me about? What was I, if I was not what they had told me I was? I knew that these questions would never be answered, but still, I had to wonder, what was it that Gallu had in store for me?
    I lay down on the rock shelf that was my bed and closed my eyes. As they say, there’s no rest for the wicked, and my mind did not cease to run through possibilities of what their conversation meant for me. I knew that it was really of no use for me to try to figure it out on my own, I doubted that I could ever come up with the correct hypothesis for what was going on.
    I let my mind wander to Ellie, the girl I would never have, the girl I had never deserved and slipped into a dream-like stupor. Perhaps if I closed my eyes long enough, this nightmare would dissolve into the dream that it was and I would wake up at home in my own bed. It was futile to hope that I’d be able to “wake” from this nightmare in a different place, but I knew I was confined to my new existence, and to these waking dreams. I sunk further into my mind.
    Ellie was there with me, but her eyes were sad. I did not know if they were sad for me, but I wished to make her smile again. Something I knew I would never be able to do.  She started to move away from me as though she was on one of those moving sidewalks you see in airports. We were drifting apart, more readily than I had expected. I reached out to her but she did not reach back, she just opened her mouth.
    “Rise and shine.” she said in Jack’s voice, and I opened my eyes to two glowing eyes in the darkness of the room.
    I sat up and looked to the ceiling, where the six flames had burst to life on the chandelier, filling the room with light that bounced off of the glassy surfaces of the walls and ceiling.
    “Come on sleepy head,” Jack said, throwing an oversized sweatshirt at me. “It’s time to return to the world of the living.”
    “Oh, yeah?” I asked, feeling a bit cheated from my half-dream. But I got up and went to the sink like basin that was always filled with water; from where I had not been told. It had little effect on me, it felt like it was the same temperature as my skin, but it evaporated as quickly as I splashed it on my face, it had an odd, astringent smell, but I ignored it.
    I looked at the glassy surface in front of me, to the black eyes that still sat deeply in the sockets of my pale face. They hadn’t yet changed to the glowing red that I had been assured would come. These eyes were just another part of my cursed existence. Without knowing why, I suddenly punched the wall, sending spindly cracks across the reflection of my face. It almost looked better than the monster I now saw in myself.
    It was only then that I remembered that Jack was there. I quickly ran my hand over the splintered wall and watched as the rock melted, filling in the cracks until they returned to the glass smooth texture they had been. The hand that passed in front of my face had a light grey mark across it. The charcoal-like marks had begun to appear the day that I learned to use my fire, they were only light grey now, and it just looked like I needed a shower, but I knew from the others that they would darken and that there would be more of them.
    “So you’ve been sent to collect me again?” I asked trying to sound as blasé as possible. “It seems like that’s all we ever do. I wait and you come to get me.”
    “Yep.” He said with a smirk. “You get to tag along on a collection today.”
    This didn’t sound like quite as much fun as Jack was making it out to be. He actually seemed giddy.
    I put the shoes on that he had thrust at me. “What are these for?” I asked, nodding toward the shoe I was lacing and