Page 27 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“The runes,” Maison murmurs.

“—and everything is too much. There’s too many details, there’s too much to think about, I’m getting a headache.”

She ventures her eyes open.

Gurlien’s brows are drawn together, a thoughtful expression on his face, his pen still on the paper. Chloe drums her fingers on her legs, her head cocked, frowning.

Maison’s leaning back, his face unreadable.

“There’s some sort of animal outside, I think it’s dead under a tree and some leaves. There’s ants on the outside of that wall, and I still want to know why he’s allowed in here and why you two didn’t do anything.”

Gurlien glances at Chloe, then holds up his left hand. “Translate…sense.”

“He’s asking what you sense when he does something,” Maison says, his voice distant, like his mind is racing and he’s on autopilot.

In front of her, Gurlien taps each finger to his thumb, and there’s a trace of pain when his ring finger comes in contact.

“There,” Delina says, and after everything, with how shitty she feels, with how much her head pounds, a smidgen of curiosity worms its way inside of her. “That one hurt.”

Gurlien nods, then says something rapid fire to Chloe, too fast for her to have a prayer of understanding. His eyes dark, he stands, striding into the other room.

“He’s going to walk into town to make a call,” Maison says, his grey eyes staring hard at her. At least they’re not red anymore. “You’re not going with him.”

There’s no way she could make that walk right now, but she levels her best approximation of a glare at him. “Are you going to arrest me?”

“What?” Maison says, then shakes his head—which doesn’t help the sharp pain. “No, Delly, I’m not going to arrest you.”

“Don’t call me that,” she says, crossing her arms.

Chloe says something outside her hearing and she doesn’t feel like concentrating to understand it, but the sarcastic tone is obvious enough.

“No, I’m not going to do anything until she feels better,” Maison argues, “then we’ll plan and we’ll figure something out; until then, the College doesn’t need to know.”

“I thought you worked for them or something,” Delina says. “Great big reason why you were with me.”

Maison exhales, looking away, and in the motion she could swear she sees a glint of red in his eyes before he blinks and it’s gone.

Chloe clears her throat, the sound soft against Delina’s awareness. “Delina,” she says, slowly, deliberately, leaning forward and peering over her thick rimmed glasses. “We may have bigger fish to fry right now.”

She didn’t even miss any words that time.

Delina shuts her eyes again, thumping her head against the couch. “So what am I, Chloe? You’re the one who knows the types of power.”

There’s silence, not the normal muffled speaking, which doesn’t help.

“Still figuring that out,” Maison says finally. “Might take a bit.”

There’s the sudden, overwhelming emotion of exhaustion. Of experiencing too much in too little time.

“Is it safe for me to sleep?” Delina asks instead. “Or is this a concussion sort of situation?”

She endsup curled on the couch with a blanket thrown over her, the dim sounds of Maison and Chloe discussing something in undertones in the kitchen.

It’s not better, and the nap that she knows in her soul would make her feel better evades her.

Chance stretches himself out next to her, at least, purring like nothing’s wrong in the world. The cat’s back right paw is a bit sore, like he stepped on something prickly, but she would have never known by the sound of the purr.

It’s worse than her horrid hangover in undergrad, but she focuses all of her will to doze off, like that could fix everything.

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