Page 8 of The Girl Who Inherits the Dead

By then, her father had gone over the letter with her, had read that crucial, heartbreaking detail, and had given her a hug over it.

“Your mother seems to think so,” he says, still gentle. “She knew that world, not me.”

“Why would he be with me for so long if it was just some…ruse?” Delina says, blinking too fast. She had put on mascara before the gym, like she always does, and she doesn’t want to ruin it before a flight. “But he…I thought he was going to propose.”

Her father reaches across the car and grabs her hand again. “I don’t know, Delly. I thought he was good for you.”

She doesn’t have a response to that.

“He seemed decent, maybe she was wrong about this thing,” he says. “She wasn’t right about everything, she had her flaws.”

She rubs her face, carefully avoiding the already precarious mascara. “Should I just talk to him?” she asks, and it’s like she’s back as a high schooler, woefully asking her dad for advice. “Maybe there’s some explanation?”

He pauses long enough to accept the food from the take-out window, and remains silent until his window is rolled up enough to drive away.

“Delina,” her father starts, and he so rarely calls her by her full first name, “go to this cabin first. Take a few days to get your head on straight, see what your mother left you. If you still want to talk to him, talk to him then. You have bigger things to worry about.”

He’s right, of course, her dad is usually right, but everything presses down hard against the back of her eyes.

“Right, like magic, because that’s apparently a thing,” she snips back, accepting the hamburger.

“There was a reason your mom hated the College, though I never knew it,” he says, digging into the bag for his fries. “And there was a reason they wanted to keep you in the dark.”

It still doesn’t makesense, even if she accounts for the idea that magic is real and even after three midday airport margaritas.

Somewhere in waiting for her now woefully delayed flight, she pulled out her trusty planner and tried to sketch out some lists, make some sense, anything, and nothing added up.

“I need more information,” she mumbles, looking wistfully in the pocket of her purse where her phone usually resided. “This is bullshit without information.” The balding bartender throws her a look, and she waves him away. “Just talking to myself.”

Even if magic is real, and broken pager notwithstanding she’s not sure it is, there’s not any reason to keep it hidden from her except in revenge for her bio-mother, and Delina just doesn’t have enough information on her to figure that out.

There’s always the option her bio-mother was insane even by magical standards, but that’s not exactly better, and she tugs at the collar of her gym clothes, suddenly and viciously wishing she had thought to change into something else before driving to her dad. Something more comfortable, something less spandex-y. Something soft, something that she could snuggle into and forget everything that’s going on.

Her dad had left her instructions on how to pick up an untraceable cell phone in Seattle, because that’s a skill he apparently has now, and had given her even more cash, to the point where Delina’s basically a walking target for an enterprising pickpocket.

Maison would always insist on her depositing too much cash, that it was dangerous for her. Insist that she needed to be safe, needed to not take any risks. Would fret at her doing anything remotely risky, worry that she’s going to get harmed by some nebulous…something.

If that nebulous something was something magical, she’s gonna be pissed.

Across the bar, just far enough away that it’s almost ignorable, her eyes catch on a woman staring hard at her. Her graying hair is in a haphazard bun and she’s on the dumpy side of fashionable, but her eyes are way more skeptical than most people who look at Delina.

So, of course, Delina lifts her chin and stares right back. Pours all the self-confidence she’s not feeling and all the frustration into the look, until the woman’s gaze drops.

Drops directly to her hand. To her thumb.

Delina shivers, tucking her hand away, and the woman smirks, throws down a twenty on the bar, and striding away.

By the timeher flight takes off, however, the drink has led to a creeping doubt and a deep-down horror that everything Delina’s doing is a mistake.

If Maison is a spy, he’ll be able to find her. If he’s not…she’s doing the worst thing she has ever done, and she’s not quite sure how there would be a way to come back from it. From hurting him, if that is what will happen.

But her thumb still tingles, and she swipes it on the window of the airplane, and there’s no reaction. None of the spark or static that she felt with the pager, nothing.

Except…

All at once, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck raise, and she shudders, glancing up from her seat.

The entire airplane is cool, filled with tired people who obviously would prefer to be somewhere else than on a plane in the middle of the afternoon. Three rows over an elderly gentleman sleeps, his head leaning against the back of his chair, his wispy white hair fluffed up. Two rows back, a young mother bribes her tear-streaked child with a toy, and the kid shakes his head angrily.

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