Page 157 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“And South Korea,” Maison says, and his knee sends a pang of pain up at him with each step, despite Delina’s support. “The Paris one is the worst.”

“Which room is the Wight?” Chloe asks, and somehow she’s still eating, though her face twists. “I want to make sure we’re releasing someone correctly.”

“Eight oh nine,” Delina answers, and her own words are remote against her ears.

Another room, and there’s someone splayed on the ground, a bloody hole punched through his sternum, but he still breathes.

She stills.

“That one will die if we drop the spell,” Delina whispers, certain horror crawling along her spine. “Can he feel that?”

“Can’t ignore it,” Maison replies. “Can’t heal, can’t sleep, just sitting with the sensations of when you were locked up.” With his free hand, the one not clutching around Delina, he taps the sign.

Which reads Nicholas, Mass Murder.

“So this would be his punishment,” Gurlien says. “He can’t die, he can’t recover, knowing that the moment the spells would drop he’d perish.”

Words evaporate from Delina’s mind, at the ghastliness of all of it.

They pass another half-demon, body emaciated, curled up on the bed, and she’s marked for death, too. The skin is too thin, the arteries too nebulous, the nerves too sharp. She might take a dozen breaths, each one more painful than the next, before her brain would give up, starved.

If Delina clings a bit stronger to Maison, she can’t tell.

Another person, bleeding from the eyes and ears, black and red blood mixing, barely breathing, and the nameplate reads ‘Sauv, Terese Project.’

The moment she takes the runes down, he’ll die as well.

Goosebumps rise on her arms, despite the relative warmth of the hallway.

“Here,” Chloe says, jogging forward a few steps, “eight hundred and nine…oh.”

Inside the room, the wight’s half transparent, like she had been caught halfway through disappearing, her long curly hair unruly. She’s sitting on the floor, staring numbly out the window, her eyes not tracking them.

She’s also maybe twelve.

Maybe.

“Oh my god,” Delina whispers, covering her mouth.

The wiry hair and coloring echo the Wight from the cabin, almost a younger mirror image.

All four of them stare down at her, and she doesn’t react. The display plate reads ‘Stella, Ransom Insurance.’

“If she’s been here for six years, she hasn’t aged in that time,” Gurlien says, hushed.

“That’s a crime,” Delina hears herself say. “It’s a crime, she’s just a child…you grew up like this?” she asks Maison.

He shakes his head, and there are still lines of pain around his eyes. “Not in here, it was just a threat.”

“He was too powerful, too useful,” Gurlien replies, constantly looking over his shoulder. “And…alive enough for it.”

If that statement wasn’t enough to light the fire inside Delina to burn this entire place down, the pre-teen wight comatose in front of them, all gangly elbows, would be.

“Let’s do this,” Delina says, moving Maison towards the box, and—

The very next room is the demon with the half-shaved head. The one from the bar.

And she’s not prone like the rest of the hallway.

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