Page 19 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Yes, clothing is the most basic of alchemy tricks, she’s just showing off,” Gurlien shrugs on his own neon orange jacket, out of place over his otherwise nice clothing. “If you’re an alchemist, she’ll teach you how.”

That, at least, seems to be the first practical example of magic since this whole thing happened. “Neat.”

“It’s really not,” Gurlien says, before he holds the door open for them.

Outside, rain splashes into every available surface, in the puddles of the driveway and the eaves of the cabin. Leaves and pine needles litter the floor, and bright yellow birch leaves are plastered all over the roof of Delina’s sad little sedan. The entire outside glistens with water, a sharp, fresh smell, sending a chill down her back.

She’ll have to figure out how to get it back somehow. She only got a ten-day rental.

And here they were, about to go into town to solve one of the main mysteries in her life.

They get allthe way to almost the highway before a felled tree stops them in their path.

“Really?” Gurlien says, as he coasts the car to a stop.

Chloe kicks open the door, her hair immediately plastering to her head in the downpour, but she pays it no mind.

“Can you move it?” Gurlien calls after her, definitely not getting out in the rain.

Delina can’t blame him. The rain is still coming down in sheets and the temperature is what she would charitably declare as horrid.

“It’s a whole ass tree, she can’t move it,” Delina tells him as they both watch Chloe poke around at the tree branches.

“She might,” he responds, distracted. “Depends how long it’s been down.”

Delina eyes him, then shifts in the car so she can get a better view of Chloe.

The tree is gigantic, branches splayed down everywhere, feathering the road.

“She needs to do the matter shift,” Gurlien continues, craning his neck to watch Chloe. “She’s been practicing, if she tries, she could do it, but she’s too insecure.”

“Is this a magic thing?” Delina asks, and he nods, still distracted. “You’re telling me that magic could make that tiny person move this tree?”

That gets him to glance at her. “Yes.” He sighs, though, and rolls his eyes. “She gets weird with organic material. If it was stone, she could do it, but because it has a different cell structure, she has issues.”

She stares at him, flat.

“Some alchemists have no problem with wood or plant matter, it’s all in her head,” Gurlien continues, like that’s the part she’s bumping up against. “She has problems with wooden doors sometimes, it’s embarrassing.”

Outside the car, getting completely soaked, Chloe kneels down on the asphalt, making a complex motion with her hand that’s only partially visible in the sheets of rain.

Nothing happens.

Gurlien sighs again, then cranks down the window just enough. “Try shifting it towards petrification, that worked with the cacti,” he yells, and Chloe stands long enough to cheerfully flip him off. “It’s just a tree.”

“I’m going to assume I can’t do anything, right?” Delina asks as he rolls up the window, and he glances at her again. “Not without the spray paint in my room?”

“Do you want a lecture on sealed magics right now?” Gurlien asks, face completely serious. “Because to answer that, you’ll need the lecture.”

“I’ll pass,” Delina replies.

Outside the warm dryness, Chloe straightens, shifts her weight, and…

The entire air seems to snap around her, blurring and obscuring her, until the branch nearest to her crunches, then shatters into a million stone-like shards.

Delina flinches.

“Okay, good,” Gurlien says, sarcastically. “Now she just has to do that for a whole tree. Just managed one branch.”

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