Page 29 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

But no, his mom calls him Maison.

Her hand shakes a little with the glass, but not nearly as much as before, so she pushes herself up to standing and wobbles.

“Take it easy.” Chloe says, her voice lilting up. “You’re probably still dealing with a fair amount of shock.”

Delina shoots her a glare, and gets a surprised grin from Maison, before she strides in to join them in the kitchen, shamelessly grabbing a cookie from the pile. “Talk,” she orders.

Again, she’s met with silence.

“I mean it,” Delina says, leaning against the counter, the same counter she brewed coffee just that very morning. “I can hear now, I’m upright, I deserve to know. Go.”

“Good lord, she is just like her,” Gurlien mutters in sotto voice, and she levels the stare at him. “It’s not a good thing to be like your mother.”

“We can’t confirm anything,” Chloe finally says, as Maison crosses his arms again. “So we don’t want to panic you, but in whatever magic your mom did…it might be bad.”

“Understatement,” Gurlien says.

Maison just frowns deeper.

“Bad like drag me off to this College bad? Or bad end the world bad?”

“You’re not going to end the world,” Maison says, finally. “At most you might be on the run for your entire life.”

“That’s not better,” Delina informs him, and his jaw twitches.

“We want to run some more tests,” Chloe says, and Gurlien nods. “But you need time and energy for those.”

“Do I have time for that?” Delina asks, tossing her ponytail behind her and immediately regretting it. “Or is my ex-boyfriend here going to take me to this College that my mom wanted me to avoid?”

There’s a flash of something across Maison’s face, gone before she can even pinpoint it down, but he shifts, squaring his shoulders.

It’s his ‘ready to fight’ stance.

“They don’t know I’m here yet,” he says, and Gurlien’s eyebrows flash up. “And I’m not going to tell them until we have more answers. If they track my GPS, I’ll say we went on a surprise vacation.”

“Charitable,” Gurlien shoots at him.

“And,” Maison says with a glare to Gurlien, “like you pointed out, there may be bigger issues.”

“Which you aren’t telling me,” Delina snaps, stealing another cookie.

“We’re trying to not be alarmist,” Chloe says solemnly, “and if we act like the bad option is true before we know it is, then we could do things that aren’t necessarily a good idea.”

It’s something, at least, but it sits poorly with Delina.

“And,” Chloe says, raising her voice just a bit more, “we can go into town to test it tomorrow. Weather is supposed to clear up and the forest service will take care of the tree.”

“And there’s something to be said in not telling you, as to not influence the results,” Maison says, which is, again, reasonable, but Delina seethes with it.

Gurlien’s staring hard at Maison, like he’s trying to will him into explaining himself, and Delina could have told him that rarely works. “Chloe,” Gurlien says, “I need to run something by you.”

Chloe glances at him, startled, her brows drawn together. “Now?”

Gurlien nods, a quick jerk of his head, still staring at Maison, before the two of them abruptly walk away, down the hallway on the other wing of the cabin that Delina still hasn’t explored.

Leaving just her and Maison.

She grabs another cookie, needing the idle motion, and he scowls.

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