Page 58 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

“It’s okay, I got you,” Delina babbles, as Chloe unrolls bandages from her bag, moving fast. “It’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, it’s okay—”

And then, with his hand holding onto her, he dies.

It punches through Delina, wave after wave of contradictory sensations, knocking the breath out of her.

But his brain stills, his nerves cooling and settling to stillness, and his eyes are still open.

He’s vivid against her awareness, unmoving, his blood not pumping, his heart quiet, all crystal clear and bright and…and…and…

Dead.

“Shit,” Chloe says, scrabbling at her bag. “Shit shit shit.”

Dead.

“Fuck, no pulse,” Gurlien is saying, his fingers against Maison’s pale skin, and there’s blood smeared there, too. “Call an ambulance, make a defibrillator, something.”

Dead.

Some deep part of her knows that a defibrillator wouldn’t do a thing. That it might shock his heart, a few beats might happen, but it would stop again, and it would happen all over again.

The wound is too big, stretching through his lungs, grazing past an artery in his heart, tearing a ragged hole in it, the blood still leaking.

She can’t see it, she can’t see anything but the crimson and black blood splashed all over his front and the terror in his still open eyes and his paling skin, but still, she knows. The injury is too big, would need too much repair, too much effort.

It pulls at the back of her stomach, at the wrongness, at the brightness and the itch in her hands and whispers that she could change this.

That she could fix this.

Not seeing, she scrambles until she can press her hand against his cheek, and…and lets whatever that is in her snap into place.

Her ears pop, and again, no sound reaches her, like she’s back at the cabin in the bio-trap, but gripping his cheek she pushes the blood back into place, snapping the artery closed and smooth again, purging the liquid starting to pool in his lungs.

His body jerks like it's fighting her, but she just leans in more. Like putting her body weight against him could make this work, like she could actually do something.

“No, stop.” It’s Gurlien, but his voice is far away. “Shit, stop.”

There’s a chip of bone off of one of his ribs, she sockets that back into place. Smoothes over the skin, though blood still smears over it, soaking into his clothes.

Then, with one last bit of something inside of her, she clenches her hand and sends a spark of electricity into his heart.

And for a beat, nothing happens.

Her stomach drops, and she stares down at his still open eyes, her head swimming.

Then all at once, he sits bolt upright, gasping, coughing, hacking up blood, and her hand falls away from him.

“Fuck,” Gurlien says, scrambling away from them.

Maison clutches at his throat, then at his chest, then looks up in horror to Delina.

“Hi,” Delina says, and her own voice wavers, her head light for a few giddy moments, before she blacks out.

17

It’s not like she wakes up, not quite, but more like something gradually pulls her upward, tugging her back to awareness, one torturous moment to the next.

She’s laying on something cold, something chilled and hard, and though she fights to keep her eyes shut, there’s a bright, sterile light above her. The cut on her shoulder stings, distant.

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