Page 63 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Slow, she clicks on the aged lamp on the bedside table, casting a warm glow across the baby blue carpet and the floral quilt.

There are circles under Maison’s eyes, a vivid reminder that they’re not in undergrad anymore and all-nighters can be a bit rough.

“Dead bug too distracting to you?” Maison asks, leaning against the door frame. “I know other late bloomers, when they become aware, get driven nuts by their powers until they get used to it.”

“That would’ve been good for my mom to include in her letter,” Delina says and Maison smiles. Actually smiles, like she’s the only person in the world and nobody else matters.

It catches in her throat.

“Do you want hot chocolate?” Maison asks, going for the jugular and offering her favorite late-night drink. “I can make a few mugs.”

“Sure,” Delina says, before she can stop herself, before she can think it’s a bad idea.

She pullson a sweatshirt by the time he returns, and by then she’s had enough time to steel up her spine and shore up her defenses.

One look from him, still sleep rumpled, threatens to tear them right down again.

“Here,” he says, setting it on the bedside table, before he sits next to her on top of the quilt, smoothing his hand over the wrinkles They’re not touching, but all it would take is a twitch of her hand to grasp his. “They didn’t have the type with the marshmallows, but at least it wasn’t the fat free stuff.”

With all the turmoil of the day, with the ache still in his chest, she doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“How’s the lungs?” she asks, after a long stretch of just sipping hot chocolate in the warm light.

It’s a wan attempt at conversation, she can tell they ache, less so than a few hours ago but still enough to tug at her awareness.

He offers her a crooked smile, before ducking his head. “I’ll be okay.”

By now, she doesn’t think the wound is going to tear open again, that the artery will stay in place, but the anxiety of it still tugs at her mind.

“You realize if you lie to me about that, I can tell now,” she says, aiming for arch and coming off a bit pathetic.

Her hair is still a mess, the bags full of hair supplies and snacks most likely still on the blacktop behind the Target, but she pushes it away from her face anyways.

“Well, it’s not comfy,” he replies, wry. “But most likely better than being dead, can’t imagine anyone like me would have a great time in an afterlife.”

She blinks at him, and the light from the lamp cast deep shadows in the room around them. “Is there an afterlife?”

“Nobody really knows,” he says, with a wistfulness that’s almost like homesickness.

“They told me that there were some other people who had been raised who were, you know, dead for longer than a minute, they might know?” Delina ventures, and he cracks a smile. “Pretty sure you wouldn’t even have had the chance to figure that out, your eyes were still open and everything.”

He flinches, and she wishes she could pull the words back.

But then, there’s so many words she doesn’t know how to even begin to say, the confusing mess of emotions sitting behind her breastbone leaving a knot behind her throat.

Because she had panicked, it’s true. She had panicked and instead of letting him die, immediately did something that everyone had decried as foolish. Because just moments before, he had looked at her and smiled when she talked about wine.

“Oh, I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?” Delina says, watching as the dust mites cast shadows over the baby blue carpet.

“Well,” Maison says delicately, taking the time to sip from his own mug of hot chocolate in an obvious stalling movement. “I think Korhonen carries the bigger blame than you, personally. I’ve known him since I was eight,” he turns to her, still sitting there on the quilt, “Since I was eight, and he had no problems with striking me.”

It’s entirely not what she means, but she nods.

“I’ve had drinks with him and his wife, and he just…was completely okay with killing me.”

In all her angst, all of her exhaustion, Delina didn’t factor in the betrayal side of it for him. That it’s not just the injury, it’s from someone he knows, someone he used to trust.

“And now, I did everything they asked for my entire life, and it’s…they’re still going to take it out on Mom.” He looks down at his hands, and somewhere in the last few hours he had obviously taken the time to clean the blood from under his fingernails. “Even if they still think I’m dead. Which I still can’t wrap my head around.”

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