Page 67 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“I’m not good at that sort of thing, but I doubt he’d take a kill shot for most people. He’s a selfish asshole.”

Delina briefly considers attempting to defend Maison, because selfish asshole has never been in the descriptors for him, but Gurlien knew him through whatever equivalent of high school and nobody is their best during that.

“So today we wait?” Delina asks, instead of any emotional statement, as possibly crying in front of Gurlien sounds like a nightmare. “Wait until whatever Necromancy power burns off?”

He’s already nodding. “The circle is a five-minute walk in any direction, you can’t miss it and you won’t cross it without knowing.”

After breakfastand taking care of her dishes, she escapes outside the moment Maison emerges from the bedroom, still sleep rumpled and handsome.

She’s not running away per se, but things are definitely still too confusing to contemplate this early in the morning.

So she clutches her mug in her hand and paces outside the cabin.

There’s a well-worn trail around it, filled in with gravel, though moss grows thick over some of it, and anything off that path is thick with blackberry bramble, dying in the chill of fall, and she’s not sure her tennis shoes would survive a fight with the thorns.

The dead bird is still bright to her awareness, but she skirts to the opposite side of the house, as if that could lessen it, finding a more or less beaten trail leading deeper into the woods.

It’s not nearly as quiet as she would think, with the wind in the branches and the live birds singing in the trees, but as shesteps through the trail, the cabin disappears from view, almost as an optical illusion.

“Ah,” she whispers, to the air around her. Of course her mother took pains to hide this place, and even in death it still works.

She tromps until she hits a burned strip, about as wide as a foot, curving around the property, and the hair on the back of her neck rises.

The demon trap, it must be.

Besides the visual signal, there's nothing else that would set it apart. The birds still chirp on the other side and the wind still blows through.

“It’s clever,” a voice says, and Delina jumps.

The woman with gray hair—the Wight? Spirit? —appears a few steps away, on the other side of the trap.

“I guess?” Delina says, her voice lilting up, and the woman bares her teeth in a smile. “I don’t know enough about it yet to tell you.”

“The magicless talked the alchemist through it, they’re both very talented.” The woman glances down at it, almost idle. “We can’t cross it, and I’m not sure anything can.”

“Good to know,” Delina says, clutching her coffee mug as if it could give her strength. “Sorry if it hurt anyone or anything.”

The woman shakes her head at that. “Merely an inconvenience. Have to walk around instead of going through. Worth it to keep the demons at bay.”

A lump in her throat, Delina nods.

“Though I think one or two of them checked out your flare down south,” she continued, conversationally. “So they definitely know there’s another one active.”

And the woman fixes her eyes on Delina, sharp, like she can see through her and find her wanting.

“The weak ones will be scared off by the Half Demon. The strong ones won’t.”

“Creepy,” Delina says, and she gets an honest smile in return.

“I don’t want a full demon in my forest again anytime soon,” she continues, pacing in front of the burned line. “So do all your raising away from here.”

Delina swallows. All her raising. As if there would be much more.

“The bodies can last a little while longer, the other one doesn’t need it to be immediately after death.”

“I panicked,” Delina says, and the woman’s mouth thins. “Sorry about…all the drama.”

“It’s good he’s already bonded with you,” she continues, and it’s so close to an actual answer that Delina perks up.

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