Page 75 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

He blanches.

“I mean, I’m alive, you’re alive, job well done?”

“Please don’t thank me for stuff like that,” Maison replies, as if it pains him. “I really don’t like that.”

“Fine,” Delina says, opening her car door again. “I take it back, that was weird and I didn’t like it.”

22

The next day, Chloe takes Delina out of the cabin, deeper into the woods until they come across the other side of the burned circle.

Maison didn’t look at her after they returned from the brewery, and didn’t crawl into her bed the next night, plunging Delina into even more confusion.

“Okay, masking a magical flare,” Chloe says, tucking her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. “Every magic gives them in some way, different people can see them. A demon—or, you know, Freddy—could tell just with a glance based on the type of feedback they give off. Like a vibe.”

Delina nods, and the sun is just starting to peek out from the morning mist. It’s colder than the last few days, and each breath draws icy lines into her throat.

“So do you know anything about diffusers? For lights and cameras?”

“I thought flare was less literal than that,” Delina says, trying real hard to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

“Yes, just like how magic isn’t actually in threads, it just looks like it,” Chloe replies, bouncing on her feet. “Be as literal oras figurative as works for you. I like literal, it helps me picture things.”

Delina scuffs her toes right up to the mossy line, before everything is abruptly burned. “Maison’s the one that pictures things, not me.”

“And he’s the one currently moping, so that’s on him. If he wanted to come help, he’d be welcome.”

That doesn’t help, so Delina huffs out a breath, which puffs around her face. “Yeah, I’m halfway certain he’s mad at me.”

Chloe gives her a look, her brown eyes sharp. “Yes, of course, he’s mad. That’s what it is. Not scared out of his mind.”

“I’m not scary,” Delina says, and Chloe responds by rolling her eyes. “What? I’m not. I’m an accountant, I deal with spreadsheets.”

“Necromancers are terrifying,” Chloe shoots back. “Nobody understands them and you basically can hold someone’s life in the palm of your hand. Countries would kill for that power to be under their control, rich men would hoard them, and demons are drawn to them. There’s nothing that isn’t scary.”

“Cool,” Delina says.

“It’s one thing to think that the person you’ve been sleeping next to for years might be a spooky sort of magic, it’s an entire other thing for her to put it to practice on your dead body.” Chloe finally slings off her backpack from her shoulder. “If I were him, I’d be evaluating every little thing of my life after that.”

In the cold air that hurts her nose, Delina can’t bring herself to roll her eyes right back at that.

“He’ll come around, or he’ll get so annoyed by Gurlien pestering him for theory that he’d do anything to run away with you again,” Chloe says. “Gurlien has my back, I have his, but good lord is he good at ignoring clues that the other person is bored out of their mind.”

“Glad I’m not as bad as that,” Delina says, then toes the border again. “So, diffuser.”

“If drawing the magic to you is light, then think something blocking it, so they can’t pinpoint it directly.” Chloe switches courses easily, as if there’s nothing else to it and she didn’t just leave Delina with a sour taste in her mouth. Out of her backpack, she pulls out a thin sheet of plastic, then a tiny flashlight. “Flashlight by itself, thin beam, you know where it’s coming from. Then this,” she shakes the plastic sheet, and in the warble it turns from clear to almost opaque. “This happens.”

She hides the flashlight behind the sheet and instead of a thin beam, the entire sheet of plastic lights up.

“There’s still light,” Delina points out, intrigued besides herself.

“Do a big enough diffuser, all they’d be able to figure is your general area. Think big enough to disguise mountain regions. It’s possible, in theory.”

“So what, right now you want me to raise something from the dead and then hide it?”

“God no, just imagining the plastic in your hands, that sort of thing.” Chloe stores the now frosted plastic back in her backpack. “Think about the place your necromancy comes from, think about how it feels, just…don’t touch a dead thing.”

The dead bird is a good few minutes’ walk away, which helps, so Delina settles her feet wider, then…thinks.

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