Page 54 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Which you’ve made clear,” Delina says, grabbing a few shirts blindly and thinking fondly of her closet back in Arizona. “But if I was under threat by mysterious Frenchmen—”

“—You weren’t,” Maison interrupts.

“—then I at least want to know the funny things.”

They follow her in silence, as they get the items they need, and Delina refuses to think of this place as permanent, despite all the things she’s purchasing to make it so, and Maison adds a few familiar items of his own. His favorite brand of pretzels, his preferred deodorant, a razor that won’t mark up his skin. All things she has memorized in the file in her mind for him, all things she would buy if she had the need to get something for him.

It hurts, just a bit. To do something so normal as shop through a Target with him, and have everything about their relationship be so completely ruined.

In her purse, his phone beeps, and all three of them still in the junk food aisle. Beyond the daily trips into the town for the check-in, there had been no response to his work phone.

Gurlien straightens, staring Maison down, like he could fight him in the same place they were discussing cheez-its.

“Okay,” Delina says, half placating and half annoyed. “I’ll just…”

HUMAN RESOURCE DIRECTOR (3:21 PM): trg spt grp 1 rpt.

“Oh that’s interesting,” Maison says, though his voice is anything but happy.

“Are they really saying there’s an active threat right now?” Gurlien asks, crowding around them because of course he can read that jumble of text.

“Group 1 is around the Prescott condo,” Maison informs him. “All the condos on the block and the bar at the corner.”

“Someone’s threatening Lyzzards?” Delina asks, glancing back at the words that still make no sense.

“No, someone they have marked as a danger to you showed up in that block,” Maison says, squinting down. “If we were there, it’d be important, but we’re…not.”

“What are the chances it’s an automated report?” Gurlien asks, deeply skeptical.

“Slim,” Maison says. “Type out ‘still in Washington with target.’”

She still bristles at being called target, but does anyways, and his hand comes up to the middle of her back, the same motion he used to do to soothe her.

She throws him a glance, flat, and his hand falls away, his face pinched.

“How often did you get these?” Gurlien asks, shattering the moment to pieces. “Are they really that common?”

“At least once every six months,” Maison replies, which isn’t a number she wanted. “When her mother was dealing with the Terese project it was once a week.”

Terese was apparently the demon in the live body, Delina knows that by now, but that doesn’t make it better.

“Did you ever see her?” Gurlien asks.

“Terese? Twice.” Maison’s lips tug down into a frown, a clear indicator he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Not from close, and she wasn’t coherent.”

“Surprised she didn’t try to off Delina, you wouldn’t have been able to do much to stop that,” Gurlien says. “No offense.”

“Thanks,” Delina responds, the want for shopping waning drastically. “I’m gonna have to learn how to protect myself, the way this is going.”

Maison’s lips tighten at that, like she’s honestly supposed to believe that he’s just going to stick around forever just to protect her, before he looks away.

“We should get back to the cabin,” he says, instead of anything else. “If they think there’s a threat to Delina, then we should be somewhere defensible.”

Delina’s not going to leave without paying, but Maison’s scowling the entire time, bouncing on the balls of his feet, like he does when they’ve stayed too long at a party.

Or, apparently, when he’s on the lookout for threats. Which was all the time, if she had to judge it, and the fact that so many moments of the two of them had him distracted because of nebulous dangers leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

It’d be easier if he isn’t here, and the thought pops into her mind unbidden as she watches the clerk bag their items. That if he had just washed his hands of her, then all these complicated and awful emotions would be further away.

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