Page 49 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Good,” Chloe says, enthusiastic. “That’s exactly the sort of thing we’re trying to figure out if you can figure out.”

It doesn’t feel very good, but Delina nods, trying to match the enthusiasm. “This seems useful for murder investigations.”

“Oh, true, though it wouldn’t hold up in court,” Chloe says, off handed, then pauses, deliberate. “We want to seeabout giving you a space to practice without Freddy knowing immediately.”

As if she hadn’t figured that out by the secrecy and the attempts to distract him.

“I and Gurlien are firm believers that you cannot control something you don’t practice, and without control you’d be a sitting duck. I know you and Freddy…” Chloe visibly flounders. “Well, you have history, but we don’t know exactly what his motivations are to keeping you ignorant.”

So they think he’s still lying about something.

Which makes sense, though it settles inside of her just as wrong as everything else.

“I’m glad he seems to want to keep you alive,” Chloe says, which is an understatement, “but without knowing how he intends on reporting this, I don’t think we can trust him with anything else but that.”

“Yeah,” Delina says, and it’s a bitter taste.

“And we don’t know how much of your necromancy he picks up from you,” Chloe continues. “Demons feed off of necromancer power or life source, it’s unclear, but that’s why they die. As a Half Demon, he might…want some. And that’s not even bringing in the sleeping with him part, he could’ve done something there to make you easier to track.”

Delina rubs her face.

“If I were him, I would be working really hard on convincing you that I feel bad and that I still want to be with you,” Chloe continues, as if that’s not exactly what he had been doing on their lunch. “Try to re-establish a rapport, show that he is this person you knew and loved. Be charming and give you every piece of information. Work real hard at –”

“Got it,” Delina interrupts. “Can’t trust the ex-boyfriend.”

“Yeah.” Still, Chloe looks uncomfortable. “We have to keep him here so we can at least monitor his communications.”

“So don’t piss him off so much he decides to just leave, got it.” Still doesn’t feel great. “Haven’t had this much drama in my life since my sorority days.”

“When he’s not actively annoying Freddy, Gurlien’s going to look up cloaking runes that I can put out, so you can practice safely without him noticing when he’s still in the building.” Chloe glances up at the ceiling, where the two men are. “Because if this does go south, it’d be good to have him here as some defense.”

Her head hurts all over again.

“Okay,” Chloe says, obviously still off kilter. “Can you tell me how old the fly is?”

After a good fewhours of thinking real hard about a dead bug, Delina’s headache has escalated to a respectable migraine.

She begs out of more tests, and leaves Chloe to her notes in the cold basement, and the cat climbs the stairs with her to the much warmer main cabin.

Three paintings dry on the kitchen table, spread out and glistening, and Gurlien has his feet up on the couch as Maison bends over a fourth.

“I assume you found the library?” Gurlien says with a raised eyebrow, glancing up over the edge of the book.

Belatedly, she realizes it's the one her mother left her in the PO box.

“If you can call it that,” Delina replies, and the sound of her voice lifts Maison’s head.

His hand is well and goodly cramped, and his eyes hurt from squinting.

“Your ex-boyfriend is boring,” Gurlien drawls, and it’s so obviously to get a rise out of Maison that it’s almost funny. “And you put up with him for five years?”

“It’s not like I’m a barrel of laughs,” Delina replies.

Maison refuses to rise to the bait, instead setting down the paintbrush and shaking out his hand, giving Delina an even glance. “Get enough of your scanning done in this library?”

The paintings on the table are, of course, beautiful. Long aching swipes of watercolor with the impressionistic suggestion of the doorway of the cabin surround the greenery outside, all on a small piece of paper about half the size of a normal letter sheet.

He had done it three times, changing the perspective ever so slightly each time, changing how the piece reads. The emotions, the view, everything.

---