Page 62 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Maison offers her a hand, pulling her up, and she sways.

“Now they know you’re you, they know our general area, that Chloe and I are up here, they know that Maison double crossed them, and they know how to get back at him.”

“They probably think I’m still dead,” Maison says, with a glance back at Delina. “Hopefully, no getting back at me.”

“And they know she’s a Necromancer, nobody in their right mind is going to think you’re still dead,” Gurlien says, and by the tightness in his lips, he’s frightened, too. “My former boss smacked me away like I was a fly, they’re not going to assume anything and they’re going to come down hard.”

Maison scowls at him.

“I’m reheating some soup from our freezer, and Gurlien’s already has bread in the oven,” Chloe says, and soup and bread sound just about perfect. “Think you can manage the stairs?”

The answer to that is also no, but Delina nods anyways, and they all tromp upstairs, Maison’s hand steadying on the small of her back the entire way.

Chance meows at her the moment she’s back on the couch, before butting his head against her arm and crawling into her lap.

“Aww, the cat likes me,” Delina says, holding as still as she possibly can, feeling wrung out.

“The cat does that to anyone who’s feeling bad, don’t take it personally,” Gurlien says.

“Gurlien, stop,” Chloe mutters, and he does, sitting at the table and accepting an ice pack for his face.

“What’s the likelihood of them tracking us directly here?” Delina asks, as Chloe offers her a glass of water.

“Relatively unlikely but not impossible,” Gurlien says, waving the hand not pressing the ice pack to his eye around. “Depends on how in-depth their knowledge of Frisse’s properties is. This building is pretty well hidden, if they don’t have directions to it.”

Delina glances over at Maison, and he’s staring blankly out at the door, like now that they’re upstairs and out of the demon circle, the entire day is catching up to him.

“Oh, he found you because you slept with him, so unless you’ve slept with other members who just so happen to have innate tracking powers and bonds, you don’t need to worry about it,” Gurlien says, and Delina’s gathered something of the ilk, but it’s still…weird.

“What he’s saying is we should be safe for now,” Chloe says from the stove. “We just don’t know how long that will last.”

18

Later that night, long after the sun sets and the wind starts whistling through the chimney and everyone else has gone to sleep, Delina lays awake on the giant bed, alone.

There are a hundred reasons for her to still be awake, she knows this, but the most annoying by far is the dead fly still in the basement below.

She could make a map of the basement, merely by the location of the fly.

Sure, the others are sorta in her awareness. Chloe fast asleep, unmoving. Gurlien a black hole of no magic, tossing and turning. The cat pacing up and down the hall like a patrol, tail flicking right and left.

And Maison sitting up in his bed, down the hall from Chloe, skin still pulling at his injuries.

Delina’s breath catches in her throat at the sudden knowledge that she’s not the only person awake, and quickly lets her mind flash back to the dead fly, to the bird still outside.

There’s a bug crawling over the bird, small, it’s many feet leaving tiny pinpricks of sensation over the one exposed bone, sending echoes of shivers down Delina’s back.

“Yeah, I can tell when you do that,” Maison speaks from the door to the bedroom.

Delina briefly contemplates pretending to be asleep, before she sighs, tossing off the blankets and sitting up.

He’s silhouetted against the doorway, in a soft T-shirt and his sweatpants, his hair sticking up in the back.

“Well, you can go back to sleep, I’ll work hard at not accidentally scanning you,” Delina says, though her pulse flutters against the skin of her neck.

“Eh, I wasn’t sleeping well,” Maison says with a half-shrug. “Bit hard to in a strange bed, completely forgetting the fact that I, you know, died.”

And her heart hurts all over again, at the casual conversation after midnight. Like it’s just another sleepless night with the two of them chatting, like nothing has changed and she still trusted him.

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