Page 7 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

And he had never done anything that could bring her harm.

“Why?” she asks, and despite all her control, her voice breaks.

“Before she left, she told me to keep this in case you broke free, for some proof,” her dad says, and she hardly recognizes the look on his face. “Said that you would need proof, if you were anything like her.”

“Proof would be nice,” Delina replies, staring down at the pager, like just glaring at it could reveal its secrets. “Are you sure I’m not insane?”

“All the therapy you got as a teen suggested you’re fine,” he says. “Some depression, but fine.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she snipes back, then, like it’d bite her, she pokes the pager with her thumb.

At first, there’s nothing, and she glances up at her dad, before the plastic snaps in two, shattering apart.

She jumps back in the camp chair, clutching her hand to her chest. Her dad’s dog scrambles up, sprinting to the other side of the backyard with a whine.

The pager smolders, black smoke curling up from it, and a spare wire sparks uselessly.

Her father sits back, with a sigh, and he looks old, far older than she’s ever seen him.

“Did she leave you someplace to go? She always said she would.”

“A cabin in Washington,” Delina says, horror creeping in. Her dad is supposed to be the sensible one, the one that tells her to research mortgage rates and check her tires before long drives.

“Cash to get there?” he asks, and then nods back at her. “Leave your phone in my car, I know that’s tracked.”

3

After a brief explanation that makes no fucking sense, her father ends up taking her to her least favorite Target store in the state to buy enough toiletries and changes of clothes for a few days, plus a bright pink rolling suitcase, and Delina can’t quite stop shaking. There’s a flight to Seattle at six PM with a ton of open seats, and despite everything, despite all the earth-shattering insanity that has been told to her that day, Delina still can’t quite grasp that she’s actually going on a plane.

She can’t quite grasp that she broke a pager.

“Act a bit more natural,” her dad mutters to her, as they go through a drive through for fast food burgers, of all things. Delina hasn’t eaten a burger in three years, but this seems to call for it.

“I’m…” Her phone chimes, and they both fall silent.

MAISON <3 (3:21 PM): I’m making tacos, can you pick up some cilantro on your way back?

“He knew I had a phone call from someone strange,” she says, and her dad holds out his hand for her phone, as they inch along the drive through. “He knew that without me telling him.”

“So we’ll keep your phone in my car, and if they have the location tracked they can come to my house,” her dad reminds kindly. “I’ll feign ignorance. I’ll park your car somewhere else, and if it’s nothing, you can come back and tell him your friend had a crisis and you left your phone.”

It’s so far outside of her normal behavior, that she knows, she just knows, that there’s no way Maison would buy it.

“Did you ever see Mom…” she trails off, still unsure what she could actually say, “do magic?”

“Four times,” her father says. “Saw her light something on fire with her fingertips. Saw her draw something in midair and cause an explosion. Saw her write something in a Sharpie and it glowed. Saw her…” he hesitates long enough to order for the two of them. “Saw her aim something at her stomach while pregnant with you, and she had a seizure and you both almost died before you could be born.”

“Was she…” Delina trails off, blinking down at her hands in the Arizona sun, “trying to get rid of me?”

“Oh, god no, honey,” her dad says, reaching over the parking break and grabbing her hand reassuringly. “Nothing like that, she wanted…” and here he sighs, weary once more. “More than anything, she wanted to give birth to someone powerful. I think that’s why.”

Delina just watches the cars pass them on the main street, drumming her nails on the passenger’s side door, just like she used to do when she was a teen and upset about small things.

The textbook and the will are safely tucked in her new pink suitcase, and the letter in her purse.

“Do you really think Maison is a spy?” she asks, leaning her forehead against the warm glass of the window, her throat tight.

He had made her a smoothie yesterday before work, put chocolate milk in it and everything.

---