Page 4 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

I’m sosorry I never got to meet you. If this letter is in your possession, then I am either dead or in prison, and if they put me into a prison, I doubt I’m getting out.

Delina takesthe moment to glance out at the white sands and stone beyond the coffee shop parking lot.

Her mother’s dead, she knows her mother is dead, but even reading those words feels odd.

Sorry about therune at the top, it’s all I could manage without setting off alarms. I’d unlock everything inside of you, but they’d catch on. If you touch anything magical with the hand that touched the rune, you’ll be able to tell.

You don’t know about the world, about the actual world, so I’ll rip off the band aid fast. Magic is real and there’s magic in you. The world is far more vast than you think it is, and there are ghosts and demons and monsters around every corner.

Delina reststhe letter on her lap and takes a huge drink from the espresso milkshake.

Not only is her mother dead, but she’s also insane.

When I waspregnant with you, I was starting on experiments, and a ruling counsel—the College—deemed it immoral for me to be around you, and locked away your magic. Everything about your life is a lie, and you have been watched and controlled for your entire life.

So her motheris really insane. A nice fancy insane nut job. Delina breathes out hard through her nose.

You can’t trust anyone.Your father knows, he’s complicit in keeping you locked away. Your boyfriend, Maison, isn’t real. He’s a spy from the College, vastly powerful, and has been in charge of keeping you in control for at least five years. Don’t trust him, he’s not who you think he is.

She takesanother long sip from the espresso milkshake, disappointment flooding through her. Her own mother knew her boyfriend’s name, but didn’t know her, and was apparently convinced of a grand conspiracy.

They track your cell phone,they track your car, they track your email. Go to Northern Washington, near the Ferry service, there’s a cabin that will help unlock your full potential. Leave your phone behind, buy a plane ticket with cash, there’s some in the textbook. The address to the cabin is in the will, page 24, line 9.

Delina leans overto flip through the will, and sure enough there’s a property listed.

I love you,and you will one day be magnificent.

Joyanna Jhyoti Frisse

And that’s it.Just some insane ramblings from someone she never met. Claiming magic was real, that there were ghosts and shit.

After a beat, Delina tosses the letter aside, then picks up the textbook again, this time leafing through the pages.

Symbols, like the one that zapped her thumb, adorn every page, but she doesn’t touch them, instead turning them.

At the start of the second chapter, a crisp hundred-dollar bill.

“Okay, Mom, that’s nice,” Delina says, then continues flipping.

Third chapter, another. Fourth, another.

There are twenty-eight chapters in the book, and all of the bills are perfectly clean and unused and, because Delina’s the person to check for these things, all unmarked and non-sequential.

When they had first found out about her mother’s death, Delina had gotten a nice sum of money deposited into her bank account, but this seems somehow even weirder.

Her mother was insane, dead, and left her a key and a bunch of cash in a book. Just what every little girl dreams of.

2

Delina allows herself about five minutes of wallowing and drinking her espresso milkshake, staring blankly out at the austere desert around her, before her phone dings.

MAISON <3 (9:21 AM): You okay? Something wrong with the coffee shop?

Delina stares at it, at the little thumbnail of his face, and really doesn’t want to explain to him all the emotions and completely derail his day.

DELINA (9:22 AM): Yeah, sorry. OMW back now.

MAISON <3 (9:23 AM): Didja make an extra stop? :)

---