Page 133 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

They drive through the night, and in the middle of the night they stop at a single pump gas station.

Snow falls softly in the lone sodium light, and Delina hasn’t seen the passing of headlamps in roughly an hour.

At some point, Gurlien had fallen asleep, the cat safely tucked inside his jacket, leaving Delina to her thoughts, so by the time they actually stop, her mind has well and truly soured on itself.

It’s almost remarkable that it took so long for her mind to do so.

A small part of her had thought, had hoped, that since it had been so long, that the reason her mind would turn on itself was because she knew she was supposed to be powerful and it had been locked away.

But instead, as the hours inched along, the pit of despair in her gut just…widens.

The stop is just a single pump, a vending machine, and a single restroom.

“This is grim,” Delina says aloud, as she parks the ratty little sedan under the light, as Chloe sketches her fingertips over the gas meter.

Gurlien jerks awake, and Chance gives a pitiful mew at the motion as Delina kicks the door open, standing up and stretching her back. Stretching, moving, anything to see if it’ll knock loose the pit of awfulness inside of her.

Outside the tiny sedan, the world is…quiet. All sound muffled by the snow, no wind, no city noises.

No trees to rustle their branches, nothing but grass as far as she can see, now buried in the snow. No mountains, not even a rolling hill.

Just a barren emptiness.

“Eh, not that bad,” Chloe says, somehow cheerful despite the still stinging cat scratches on her shoulder.

Maison steps out of the car, stretching his shoulders, face pale, before he narrows his eyes at Delina.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, voice guarded, but still he bounces on his toes, as if he can move the inactivity out of himself.

He’s not in any pain, according to the quick scan she throws at him.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just wiring it to give us free gas,” Chloe replies absentmindedly, tapping a fingertip against the screen.

“That can’t be legal,” Delina says, skirting around Maison’s question as the snowflakes powder in her blonde hair, melting against her scalp.

“Oh, it’s not,” Chloe says brightly. “But there’s no security camera here and I’m tricking the machine into thinking we’re paying anyways.”

Maison crosses his arms, leaning against the other car, raising an eyebrow at Delina.

Gurlien, by all accounts, just adjusts the cat in his arms, resting his head back against the headrest and falling back asleep.

Delina stretches again, pacing towards the vending machines, and Maison immediately stalks over to her.

“What’s wrong?” he repeats, as she stares at the truly dire selection of chips available at an unmanned gas station in northern Minnesota.

She shrugs, one shoulder. She’s talked to him at length about this, he knows how to help, but…

…she had hoped that this reaction of hers would be done with after getting access to the biotrap.

And after they just reconnected, after just earlier that day, she doesn’t want to show him that.

“Was Gurlien just an asshole?” Maison asks, throwing a glance at the obviously asleep Gurlien in the car. “What did he say, I’ll talk to him.”

Delina just gestures to her head, like that could explain everything. “Eh, he’s been asleep for a few hours.”

Maison narrows his eyes further, leaning against the vending machine, before his gaze clears with understanding, which is almost worse.

“I’m fine,” she preempts.

---