Page 138 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Who was that?” Delina asks, though the hair prickles on the back of her neck.

“Terese,” Maison whispers back, and it takes a moment for his words to register in Delina’s mind. He sighs, rubbing his eyes, and in between one blink and the next, they’re back tonormal. “Well. I hated that, but she didn’t want to fight, so that’s good.”

“She was in pain,” Delina murmurs, and he nods, shaking out his hands. “How was she alive?”

“We should leave,” he says, at full volume, and both Gurlien and Chloe startle awake.

“What is it?” Gurlien asks, and Maison shakes his head. “No, tell me, I want to know.”

“We just got a visit from Terese,” Maison starts, and both Gurlien and Chloe flinch.

Chloe stares blankly at the two of them from her place on the couch, before she springs into action, grabbing at her go-bag, scrabbling to shove her feet into her shoes. “What do we do, where do we go, how—”

“What did she say?” Gurlien asks, yawning blearily, but his eyes are sharp. “Is she still there?”

Maison’s already shaking his head. “She backed down and left.” With less urgency than Chloe, he rolls up the makeshift blankets that made up his and Delina’s bed, his brows tight. “She rabbited the moment she saw Delina, I don’t like it. She wasn’t a demon, she didn’t feel like anything I know, and I don’t know how long she were out there before I woke up.”

Delina’s skin crawls, just barely, so she hugs herself. “Great.”

“I don’t know what called her to this place, I don’t know what alarm we set off, I don’t know.”

Him and Gurlien lock eyes, before Gurlien swings himself up to standing. “Got it, let's get out of here.”

“Should I grab the box?” Delina asks, and everyone hesitates, the three of them having a wordless conversation that goes over her head. “If only I can see it, that means it could be from my mother, right?”

“That’s a risk,” Gurlien says, crossing his arms at Maison, like Maison won the argument. “See if it’s biolocked, but I wouldn’t bring it.”

Before they could change their minds or stop her, Delina crouches to underneath the bed, letting her fingers fall on the cool metal of the box.

It’s just as inert as it was before, and she tugs it out, and nothing changes.

It doesn’t open, it doesn’t reveal itself to them, nothing.

And it’s another thing she has to leave behind.

The sun is just startingto set when Maison finally speaks on the drive.

“We should talk about what we might see in Toronto,” he says, and Delina leans her head over to watch him, well and truly bored with the waves of dead cornfields out the windows.

“Well,” Delina drawls, “I know there are locking pits, I know Chloe almost died getting out, and there are demon traps.”

He spares a glance at her before returning to the road. “It’s a prison. We’re on our way to break into a prison, then break out.”

Delina mulls over that, testing how she feels, like it’s a piece of taffy that she can pull at. “And we have someone who’s come out of it,” she starts, “and you. And they don’t expect me.”

He hmms, drumming his knuckles against the wheel, and it’s only years of knowing him that she can actually tell he’s holding back.

“I’m…” he starts, then trails off, like he’s halfway caught between despair and hope. “I don’t want to bring you in there, I don’t know if you’ll be able to get out.”

It’s not some authoritative sentence, it’s not some controlling statement, and his voice breaks in the middle.

She shifts, not reaching out and touching him, but watching him, and he glances at her again.

“We’re doing something you’ve told yourself your entire life that you can’t do, right?” Delina asks, and he nods again. “I get it, that’s terrifying.”

“And if we fail, I lose you. And my mom. And probably…probably any sort of freedom of my own.” His words stop, and he frowns, like they pain him to admit out loud. “I don’t want to run away now, but I…”

“But you kinda do?” Delina asks dryly, and he nods, so she shifts again, so she can rest her hand on his arm. “I’ll just, I dunno, necromancer drain the life of anyone who gets too close.”

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