Page 56 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Ah. The College.

“Delina, you might need to run,” Maison whispers, barely audible over Gurlien’s chatter, his back straight. “If I tell you to run, you need to run.”

The man—Korhonen, apparently—tilts his head at Delina, and her skin crawls again, before he idly waves his free hand at Gurlien.

As if hit by an invisible brick, Gurlien reels back, and even from this far away she can feel pain blossoming across the side of his head. He staggers, keeping his feet under him, before another wave of the hand crashes against his stomach and Gurlien doubles over.

All in complete silence, all still keeping a hand on Chloe.

“So, you failed,” this man speaks, and his voice is slightly accented, some Northern European country that Delina can’t place. Norway or Finland or something. “And instead of calling in, you just followed her up here, to this…town. Frederick.”

Chloe makes a small sound, barely over a squeak, but again, the man pays her no attention.

Maison takes another step back, and his shoulders ache from the tension.

“And you found…what, she has some talent?” Korhonen says. “Found some dusty research papers of her mother’s with two delinquents?” He gestures again, a welcoming gesture, and Maison backs up another step, the hand tightening on her arm.

And all at once, the gold blooms in her vision again, and Delina gasps, before Maison taps his fingers against her arm. A signal.

The stranger in front of them has his hands tightly tied in with two strips of magic, tight and angry, one of them pressing into the back of Chloe’s neck.

“Is it worth it?” he asks. “Throwing away a promising career and the contact with your mother just for some…girl?”

Maison inhales, but doesn’t move.

“So what are you?” he directs at Delina, and the magic coils around his fingers, sparks shivering down the length. “What did your mother do to you?”

“We don’t know,” Delina lies baldly, and Chloe’s eyes are wide. “We haven’t figured it out yet, not really.”

The man thinks for a few moments, obviously evaluating. “Pity.”

“Let her go,” Delina says, and Maison backs her up another step, practiced. “I can chat with you, you don’t need to hurt anyone.”

“Frederick?” he asks. “What is she?”

Maison opens his mouth, then closes it. “We don’t know.”

“No ideas?” the man asks, and Maison shakes his head. “No educated guesses on the bomb her mother left in the world?”

And Delina’s mind races.

Gurlien’s still huddled on the blacktop, pain across his face and his stomach, and Chloe practically vibrates with the need to be anywhere else. His grip on her hurts, viscerally, in a way Delina can’t quite get her mind to touch.

The man himself…is blank. Not a black hole like Gurlien is, not vivid and bright like Maison, but something more akin to an oil slick, all light slithering off of him until she can perceive nothing.

“Delina, stop,” Maison breathes, and she does, shuttling her mind to the surroundings, to the vivid gold elsewhere. “She’s not a bomb, she’s completely safe.”

Completely safe sounds like a misnomer, but she’s not going to chime in now.

“That’s not for you to judge,” Korhonen says, then gestures Delina forward, his hands still full of magic. “That was an interesting scan. Come over here, let me see.”

There’s no way Delina’s going to do that, not with his grip on Chloe or Gurlien still doubled over, and Maison’s hand on her is downright terrified, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“Can you let Chloe go?” she asks, and her voice doesn’t quiver. “Let her step away?”

The man releases Chloe, who scrabbles over to Gurlien, the pain vivid on the back of her neck, burning, as her knees hit the damp pavement next to Gurlien, but still clutching her bag.

Her bag with all her supplies.

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