Page 28 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

At one point, Chloe steps outside, comes back drenched, holding a piece of plastic siding. Without even bothering to explain or anything, she holds it against the open-door jamb.

It’s far too small to cover it, but Delina watches her through lidded eyes as the air blurs, bursts gold, and a door forms in its place.

A fully functioning door, if a bit warped. Still made of plastic, down to the doorknob, but Chloe yanks down the blanket and opens and shuts it several times.

The rain stops leaking in, and the wind echoes outside instead of through the living room, but Delina can’t find it in herself to be appreciative of it, not quite yet. Let them think she’s actually asleep.

Maison putters in the kitchen, with the familiar sounds he makes, with mixing bowls and measuring cups. He’s always been the one out of the two of them to bake when stressed.

How much of that is fake?

Delina stills her hand on the cat, and the cat meows at her in response.

There’s so many small things that could be real, could be fake, and she would’ve never known without her mother’s letter.

So instead, she listens to the familiar clinking of pans of the oven door opening and closing, all slightly muffled, the anger slowly replacing itself with something closer to sadness.

9

She manages to actually doze off, so by the time Gurlien makes it back it’s dusk outside and the smell of cookies permeates the air of the cabin.

And everything is louder.

“Axel didn’t pick up his phone, and Alette cussed me out before hanging up, and I still don’t have the other’s number,” Gurlien mutters to Chloe, along with the tell-tale sounds of someone stripping off a wet rain jacket. “I tried Luis the scholar, he didn’t take my call, and I couldn’t risk anything to Kirk.”

Delina blinks her eyes open, not moving from underneath the blanket, but they’re all in the kitchen.

“I found the dead bird,” Chloe says, and Delina instinctively thinks towards the spot she could tell it was.

Somehow, it’s colder, like the leaves covering it were a burial blanket.

“That’s bad,” Gurlien snips. “I don’t think either of you two know how bad this is.”

“I have a little inkling,” Maison says, his voice a rumble, and Delina sits up at that.

Immediately, they all look to her. Gurlien’s hair is literally dripping from the rain.

“Can you hear now?” Chloe asks, the first to break the awkward silence.

“Yeah,” Delina says muzzily. “Thanks for the door.”

“Oh that’s…that’s no problem,” Chloe responds, almost puzzled. “Just had to find a material that would work.”

Maison scowls at the room, his arms crossed, though his head is certainly better.

“Why is it bad?” Delina asks, when none of them speak again. “You said it was bad, why is it bad?”

They all look at each other, like gauging what lie they can tell.

“Frederick should take this one,” Gurlien says, “since he knows how bad it could be.”

“Don’t call me that,” Maison replies, plaintive, and that, at least, is something. “Nobody calls me that anymore.”

“Is it actually your name?” Delina asks, reaching towards the water on the table.

“Legally,” Maison says, disgruntled. “My mom calls me Maison.”

Delina raises an eyebrow at him. He never talks about his mother, changing the subject sourly whenever she brought her up, to the point where she thought they had a horrible relationship or something.

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