Page 69 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

Through the windshield, Chloe crosses her arms at Maison, bristling, both of them talking too quietly for Delina to hear in the car, before Chloe stomps back off in the direction of the cabin, the mist swirling behind her.

Maison watches her walk back, a scowl on his face, before he yanks open the car door and sits back down, his hair damp from even that brief time in the mist.

“You don’t need to babysit me if it’s that big of a deal,” Delina says, driving over the remnants of the trap. The back of her neck prickles, like something’s going to rain down on them, but nothing happens, just the slow movement of the blackberry canes along the deadened branches.

Maison leans his head over on the neck rest, watching her, like he used to do whenever they drove long distances, whenever they made road trips. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Everything else you’re doing suggests otherwise.” Delina clutches the steering wheel, before drumming her nails on it. “Am I still glowing or whatever?”

“I’m not a good judge of that,” Maison grumbles, and Delina chances a glance away from the gravel road to look at him. “You’re fine.”

“So what’s crawled up your ass the last few days?” She’s probably being a bit too rude to him, a bit too mean, but the day and a half of almost ignoring her after such a tender moment in the middle of the night, she can’t make herself care.

They pass the broken tree, and the stone chips turned by Chloe are still there, scattered into almost pebbles.

“Would you believe me if I said that things feel incredibly weird for me?” Maison asks, after a long pause.

Things are incredibly weird for everyone right now, but as the car slides through the mist to the paved street, Delina still scowls, before a thought occurs to her.

“Weird like the whole death thing? Is your chest having issues? I should be able to tell, but…”

“Weird like I don’t know how to talk to you,” Maison interrupts, then sighs. “And yes, the death thing.”

“Talk to me about the death thing,” Delina demands, a horror itching under her skin. What if she did it wrong, what if it reverses itself, what if the repair work unravels and his artery rips open and his lungs fill up…

“I don’t want to talk about the death thing,” he says, surly.

“No, tell me, what if I did it wrong, what if something happens, what if—”

“You didn’t do it wrong,” he interrupts again, and Delina coasts the car to the side of the highway, throwing it into park and turning in her seat to face him. “Delly, I’m fine. Absolutely fine. Stop worrying about it.”

They stare at each other, his eyes the same gray as the mists around them.

“If I scan you, would it draw demons?” Delina blurts out.

For a long moment she thinks he’s going to refuse to answer, before he crosses his arms. “Don’t try to fix anything.”

It’s enough permission for her, so she slaps her hand against his chest, right where the bolt pierced him, even though his skin stopped hurting a day and a half ago, and exhales.

The artery still holds, healthy and flowing into his heart, as if it had never broken. His lungs are clear, not even a hint of a hitch in their motions. The muscles in his back are together, reknit in her healing and just as strong.

She lets her eyes flutter shut, follows the motion of his blood. It surges up to the brain, back down, perfectly clear of any obstruction.

His shoulder is a bit unhappy, like he slept wrong, and his ankle is annoying him.

“Okay,” she says, opening her eyes again, not removing her hand. “Alright, you’re okay.”

His own eyes glow red, and she flinches.

“Red eyes again,” she tells him, nervy, and he blinks, before the color vanishes to the grey again.

“So you can tell when I’m tapping into something demon,” he says, like it’s a separate side of him, but at least he’s talking to her. “I’ll hold it back.”

“You don’t need to.” If they were together, actually together, she would curl her fingers around the collar of his Henley, pull him closer, and plant a kiss on his cheek, but as they are she just keeps her palm against his beating heart.

There’s something akin to exhaustion thudding against his mind, halfway to a headache.

“You’re not sleeping well again,” she says, instead of anything else. “Did I interfere with that?”

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