Page 50 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“Does your hand always hurt when you paint for that long?” Delina asks instead.

He flexes his fingers, rotating his wrist. “It doesn’t really hurt.”

“Liar,” she says, and even though he doesn’t smile, his dimple briefly appears. “It’s cramped and everything.”

“I really need to get ahold of Axel and Alette,” Gurlien says from the couch. “See if the pain thing is part of Necromancy or something else.”

“Feels like necromancy,” Maison replies, almost as an aside. “Same color and everything.”

And Chloe’s words still echo in her mind about trusting him. About all his knowledge, about what he’s telling them, everything.

“So these two know of another Necromancer,” Delina says, and Gurlien nods along. “How is your College not breathing down their necks?”

Gurlien raises his hand in almost a jaunty wave. “I happened. They don’t want it to happen again.”

Maison’s eyes sharpen, and she gets the sudden sensation that he’s filing that information away. That in the time he’s been here, he hadn’t learned what happened yet and hadn’t asked. “The Necromancer did that?”

“Not at all,” Gurlien replies. “I didn’t even get to meet her.”

Disappointment briefly flashes over Maison’s face, barely identifiable, before he masks it. Delina raises an eyebrow at him, and he catches her expression.

Instead of saying anything, he holds out his hand to her, like he always does after painting, and the tips of his fingers are wrinkled from the watercolors. “Seriously though, scanning went okay?”

“Dead things are gross,” Delina informs him, definitely not taking his hand, not after the talk with Chloe. “I’d much rather have the making things into other things ability.”

“So does every beginning magician,” Gurlien interrupts, and Maison slowly withdraws his hand, the hurt quickly replaced by his feigned nonchalance. “Tell me, could you figure out the fly’s vascular system?”

15

The next day passes in a haze of information, of Gurlien bringing up runes and Maison contradicting him, of Chloe suggesting things and Gurlien shooting them down, all in languages that sound more like Latin than English to Delina’s ears, before a knock raps against the fake plastic door.

Everyone stiffens, and Maison stands from the table, his eyes immediately reflecting back the light.

“Delina, go downstairs,” he orders, and Gurlien nods, pulling the gun out from the living room table drawer. “Don’t…”

Even though it’s locked, the door swings open, bouncing off the hinges. “Don’t try to hide her.”

An older woman, meek and short, strides in. Gray laces through her hair, wiry and uncontrollable, and she’s a good foot and a half shorter than anyone else in the room.

“Who’s there?” Gurlien asks, his voice declarative, blinking wildly around the room.

Maison steps around the table in one smooth motion, pulling Delina behind him, like he can protect her with that.

The old woman just leans to glance around him, locking eyes with Delina. “You’re the new one.”

“Who are you?” Maison demands, and Gurlien stiffens, looking around, and Chloe’s the same way.

They can’t see whoever this person is.

The old woman smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You’re the one looking at the dead?” At Maison’s tension, she sighs. “I’m not going to threaten her, I’m just evaluating our risks.”

“Frederick,” Gurlien says slowly, deliberately. “What are you seeing?”

The woman sighs once more, put upon, and then the very air around her shivers, and Chloe recoils back.

Gurlien, however, just narrows his eyes at her.

“Are you a local wight?” Gurlien asks, voice strident. “Can you communicate with Zoel and Alette?”

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