Page 130 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Yeah, definitely don’t do that,” Maison grumbles, but the hand on her back is gentle. “I want to see you actually pull it.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Last time you sprinted outside in your socks.” But at his slightly embarrassed shrug, she crouches down next to the deer, poking at the frozen skin.

Bugs had long ago crawled over it, sending phantom prickles across Delina’s arms, but instead she just breathes out, focusing on that single thread of gold, until it twists its way into her hand, falling into her palm like links of a chain.

Maison flinches, but the red in his eyes flash as he’s watching her. “That’s insanely spooky,” he tells her, then shakes his head at her grin. “You’re going to scare the shit out of people in Toronto.”

“Good,” Delina says, then spreads the magic between her hands. It’s more than the dead bird, scalier, warmer. Less happy to see her.

“Objective is to control Maison enough to blow up a tree,” Gurlien says, as if it’s a completely normal sentence. “Don’t tell him which tree, just use your willpower.”

Maison rolls his eyes, the hint of a dimple appearing, before he holds his hand out, and despite all his bravado the tremble is back in his arm.

Delina cocks an eyebrow at him, much like she did earlier that day, and he nods.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” she declares, quickly looping the magic around his wrist and—

He clamps down his hand on hers, but no gold flash echoes in the woods around them.

“You’re good,” Delina whispers, and his eyes reflect the light back to her, startling so as he searches her face, the sense of his body being off bugging at the back of her mind. “See?”

She reaches her other hand out, cradles his face, and he exhales, his eyes wide.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispers back, his voice breaking, and in between one breath and the next, he teleports away, behind a tree, then appears behind her. “Why—”

“Stop teleporting,” Delina whispers, and he stops, immediately, turning back to her, and the hair on the back of her neck raises. “We’ll work on that later.”

“Okay, he disappeared again, that’s still spooky,” Gurlien speaks up, and for a split second Delina had forgotten all about the two of them. “Everything good?”

“Yeah,” Maison says, before shaking his head the moment they don’t hear him. “Oh this is weird.”

“He’s fine,” Delina calls back.

In the twinkling dusk, where the setting sun settles softly on the snow, Delina watches Maison with sharp eyes as he draws in a breath, like testing the very air around him.

His throat bobs as he swallows, before he focuses back on her, his eyes narrowed.

“I can tell that other demon took from you,” he says, voice carefully controlled, and Delina raises her eyebrow at him. “That was days ago, why can I still tell?”

He stalks close to her, and a shiver goes down her back, but she lifts her chin instead of reacting.

“She doesn’t get to touch you again,” he breathes, and there’s almost something akin to a growl behind his voice.

That’s new.

Delina’s other eyebrow joins the raised one. “Noted.”

“I mean it,” he warns, and she believes him, though her heart kicks up a beat. “I’ll kill her if she does.”

Considering he wanted to help her back at the bar, it’s an…interesting change of heart, and her stomach tightens.

“Obviously,” she says, and finally, there’s a twitch of a smile against his lips. “I don’t want that either.”

There’s a long moment, where he stares at her, his eyes flickering over her face, like he’s tracing a thousand different things over her skin, before Chloe clears her throat and they both startle.

Both Chloe and Gurlien give her matching, profoundly uncomfortable expressions. The cat sits languidly in Chloe’s arms, like it has absolutely zero issues being held through the forest.

“The tree?” Chloe asks, and Delina’s not entirely certain how much she’s able to perceive, how much of the back and forth.

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