Page 106 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“You still like this one?” Korhonen says, as Maison slowly climbs to his feet, raising his hands, his eyes wide. “Maybe I’ll throw her in the cell with your mother.”

There’s so much dead in the room, the bugs, the brilliant line of the bartender, the ants in the aftermath of the bubble, and Delina can’t grasp any of it, can’t reach anything.

Korhonen himself is mostly unharmed, wound on his arm barely distracting him. His heart pounds, harder than it should, like he’s scared. Like he’s extending himself with this entire thing. Like his mind is racing and he’s only a few steps away from losing control of the room. Of the demon.

There’s even a trail of sweat down his back, itching at his nerves.

She’s not usually this aware of it all.

“Do you want them to live?” Korhonen says, nodding to Gurlien and Chloe, not taking his eyes off of Maison. “You want them to get out of here? Tell them to leave.”

Maison swallows, and she can see his Adam’s apple bob at the motion.

The demon rolls into a crouch, her eyes reflecting the light back, and her lips are pulled back into a snarl. There’s a burn, vivid and angry, across her cheeks where Delina grabbed her with the death, and the skin flakes from it.

Something trickles down Delina’s neck, and with a jolt she realizes it’s blood.

Whatever he’s doing, whatever sensation the demon stole away, it’s enough that she could bleed without feeling it.

Maison locks eyes with her, eyes still wide, some sort of calculation still flying through his brain. “I’ll go with you if you don’t hurt her.”

Fuck that.

If Delina could control her legs enough, she’d kick out, but as it is she just manages a somewhat feeble twitch, and Korhonen shakes her again.

Korhonen’s panicking, she can feel the acrid chemicals flooding through him, almost taste the bile in the back of his throat. He thought it’d be easy.

And his hand is still on her, providing her a direct line of all of his sensations, with just a thought.

With the dead bartender still almost blinding her, almost crowding out all of her ability to see, all she’d have to do is grab his hand and jolt him back. Socket the bones in his neck, smooth out the spine, and shock his heart back to beating.

She inhales, past the almost rabid want to give the life back.

“Wait,” she mumbles, everything coming out mealy mouthed and weak, and Maison blanches, flinching towards her, as Korhonen pulls her away.

If she could give someone their life, she could take it away.

“You’ll come with me?” Korhonen says, ignoring her words, directly at Maison. “Without a fuss, anything?”

Still pale, still looking at Delina, Maison nods, clearly panicking as well.

“No,” Delina fumbles out, and Korhonen clenches the hand tighter on her neck. Every vein in his palm, the blood pumping through it, the nerves firing through his skin.

And Maison looks like he’s about to accept a death sentence, just to save her.

“Nope,” she says louder, then, squeezing her eyes shut, tries to reach out and grab that life power coursing through Korhonen. To twist her mind around the nebulous sense she has of him, twist around it and pull.

Nothing happens. At first.

Then, with a gasp, the hand tightens on her neck, and everything goes to shit.

Pain blooms, brilliant, through her neck and her chest, and with one sudden motion Delina can feel her legs, gets her feet back underneath her, though her knees are still weak.

So she pulls on that nebulous power again, still on the hand on her neck, as hard as she can.

The skin on his palm blisters black, then peels back, and the nerves abruptly die, one by one, and Korhonen lets her go.

She twists, he’s clutching his hand in horror, panicked, shaking.

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