Page 149 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“There,” Gurlien whispers, pointing to yet another security camera, and Chloe silently turns the glass in the lens to opaque plastic.

Delina keeps the pill box of death gripped in her fist.

“There’s a demon trap up ahead,” Maison whispers, and the sound doesn’t carry his words. “After the bend.”

Chloe nods, then gestures Delina up.

Because Delina has to do some of the work here, conserving Chloe for the traps that she has no ability to take down.

They turn the bend, and there’s…nothing. No paint on the floor, no paint on the ceiling, nothing.

“Under the carpet,” Maison murmurs, and she’s never taken down something she can’t see. “Here.”

He taps her hand, and the world bursts into gold.

Gold everywhere. Gold along all the walls, gold in the footsteps on the floor, gold outlining the ancient computers in the cubicles.

And gold, ever so faint, shining in a circle painted under the carpet.

“And another dampening,” Chloe whispers, “they must deal with demons up until this point, but no further.”

“Interesting,” Gurlien responds.

One of the lines of the circle is fainter than the rest, like it’s been shifted over and over again, like a gate.

Delina rests her hand against it, and Maison breathes out, before giving her a quick glimpse of his dimple. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” she warns, before yanking on the line, until the strip of magic shatters.

And, immediately, the entire building slams into focus.

Death, death, and more death floods into her.

Something dead, two floors down, ended by a knife to the heart.

A twisted mound of flesh, so warped that the nerves wrapped itself around the lungs and squeezed until no more air could reach the brain.

A human, completely normal, all but just a skeleton.

A…a demon, foul and bitter against her tongue, dead from a surge of power.

A person, draped over a clinical cot, rotting from the inside, long dead but the skin around them perfectly preserved. They aren’t wholly human, not entirely, but her mind skips away from it as soon as it can.

Another person, the body perfectly still, the lungs stopped by a chemical she can’t quite taste, long ago…and with a jolt she realizes that she gets the same sensation from him as she does Maison.

A Half Demon. Just like him.

All this information, all this knowledge, and she gets it before her butt even hits the floor, the air knocked out of her.

“Woah, you’re okay?” Maison’s asking, he’s rubbing her back as she blinks through unbidden tears. “What happened, you’re okay?”

“We need to keep moving,” Chloe says, her voice muted.

Delina swallows down the horror, past the lump in her throat, then clings to Maison’s arm, pulling herself up.

“All the…uh…dead in the building, I just got…yeah, just got to where I could sense them,” Delina says, rubbing her eyes, trying to see past the stars swimming in her vision. “That broke the dampening.”

The other three exchange glances.

“There’s a lot,” Delina says, getting her feet underneath herself. “They’re…some of these died in horrific ways.”

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