Page 47 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Everything,” Delina says, and just by the feel of the dead fly, she knows Chloe turns the corner down the hall, then descends some stairs.

So, the creepy basement.

“I’m also probably fired from my job,” Delina says, and Maison snorts out a familiar laugh as he strides into the other room. “That’s not fun to think about.”

“I’ve seen your mom’s accounts, you never have to work again,” Gurlien says, dismissing her concerns with a wave of his hand. “You can spend the rest of your life in far off exotic locales and doing whatever research your heart desires with a fake passport, easy.”

“Thanks,” Delina says, hopefully as sarcastic as Gurlien’s comment, before she pushes herself up, the dead fly almost pulling her to movement. “Because fake passports are definitely not a difficult thing to get.”

“Chloe’s an alchemist,” Maison replies, returning with his small travel paint set tucked underneath his arm. “Give her enough paper to work with and she can get it without any issue.”

“How is that not outlawed?” Delina asks, as Maison sits at the cutesy carved kitchen table, rolling out the kit, setting the watercolors to one side in practiced motions.

She’s seen him do so a hundred times, on trips out to coffee shops and their yearly vacations.

“What are you doing?” Gurlien asks, finally turning to stare down at Maison. “Those would be shitty for runes, and that paper wouldn’t do a thing for any spell keeping.” He pokes at Maison’s watercolor book, like it’d bite him.

“I want to think some,” Maison says, with the infinite patience he only gets when he really wants to yell at someone but is keeping it in. “So I brought this along.”

“Is this just…normal paint?” Gurlien says, his face wrinkling. “That’s useless.”

Maison’s gray eyes flicker to Delina, before he goes about ignoring Gurlien.

So they don’t know he paints.

They don’t know this crucial detail of Maison, part of what makes him him. They don’t know that this is the first thing he does when stressed, the first thing he does when happy, the first thing he does when sleep deprived. They grew up next to him, at whatever childhood the College let them have, and Gurlien never knew he painted.

“It’s not useless if it helps me think,” Maison replies, filling up one of the chipped mugs with water. “Some of us went aboutdeveloping hobbies outside of magic instead of making it our entire personalities.”

The cat watches Maison paint with avid eyes, slowly raising a paw like he’s going to bat at the paint brushes before Gurlien scoops down and picks up the cat away from the temptation.

Gurlien rolls his eyes at him. “Some of us had to work for our abilities instead of being granted with unlimited potential just because of how we were born,” he rebuts, before glancing up at Delina, then obviously towards the hallway Chloe went down.

Message received. Whatever it is that they want her to do with the dead bug, they don’t want Maison to know immediately.

“Well, I’m going to explore this strange cabin my mother left me,” Delina says, rolling her eyes performatively at Gurlien. “Have fun arguing.”

“Don’t touch anything you don’t understand, it could be dangerous,” Maison calls after her, because of course he does. “Your mother was a lunatic.”

The cat pads along behind her, far enough away that she can’t pet him, as Delina steps down the dark hallway.

A few steps past three obvious bedrooms, Delina’s ears pop and the air abruptly cools.

The wallpaper transforms from the floral everywhere else in the cabin to a gray, clinical shade, something akin to a dentist's office. The baby blue carpet stops, giving way to bare, enameled concrete.

All vestiges of a personality, however cutesy, vanish. All small decorations, all kitsch and Americana, stop.

“Alright,” Delina whispers, finding the staircase half by sight and half by the sense of the dead fly. “Grim.”

She flips the light on over the stairs, and it’s bright and florescent, out of place with the warm lamps of the front rooms and master bedroom.

Clearly her mother wanted to give at least the appearance that this was someplace normal at first.

At the bottom of the stairs, Chloe pokes her head around the corner. “Okay good, it’s just you. Gurlien annoying Freddy?”

Delina nods, trailing her hand against the wall, her fingertips tingling.

“Welcome to the real benefit of this place,” Chloe says, and she’s sitting in a rolling chair, the tile clean. “Underground basement that isn’t on the will or the deed to the place.”

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