Page 56 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

MEL (7:55 PM): Are you serious. They did that?

It’s a little validating.

MEL (7:55 PM): How are you sane?

AMBRA (7:56 PM): That’s up in the air.

“Of course Maison likes him,” Gurlien mutters, obviously reading over her shoulder, before the oven beeps again. “Why does that not surprise me in the least.”

T (7:57 PM): This isn’t going to be an easy thing to untangle. Other than death of one party, those last forever.

Like she didn’t know.

AMBRA (7:58 PM): Hence why I want to kill Nalissa and Boltiex. They killed my human, I get to kill them.

MEL (8:00 PM): Good.

Gurlien’s phone beeps, but he’s pulling the food out of the oven and it, quite frankly, smells far too good to be human food.

MEL (8:01 PM): I have been informed to tell you to not kill Gurlien at the end of this, but I’m neutral on that.

“Seriously, does nobody like you?” Ambra asks, and he sighs. “What did you do to these people?”

He doesn’t answer, pulling the baking dish out and setting it on the stovetop.

“What is that?” she asks, when he doesn’t speak. She hadn’t paid too much attention to what he bought while shopping for the groceries, instead tracking the ley line through the store wall and twitching at every other sound.

“It’s a basic casserole,” he replies. “Chloe’s from the Midwest, so when we connected again, she taught me how to cook everything she knows. Which is only very complicated Thai food and weird casseroles.” His brown eyes flicker to hers, before away. He’s avoiding the other conversation. “Chloe actually lived outside of the College until she was twelve, she has other life skills that I never got a chance to learn.”

Still holding onto the dish with the oven mitt, he scoops out some onto the plates that came with the apartment, before sliding it across the counter to where she sits.

“Chicken, tater tots, a weird amount of cream cheese, and buffalo sauce,” he lists off. “It’s not fancy, but…” he shrugs.

As if he’s self-conscious.

“I don’t think I have any skill at cooking at all,” Ambra offers him. “I tuned out when the body did it, and she usually just put a salad into a bowl with some sauce on top.”

There’s a glimmer of something, maybe relief, that she’s following him away from the other subject, and she burns with curiosity, but instead pokes at the luridly colored food in front of her.

And puzzles at him more.

14

There’s something soft about spending an evening with someone in silence.

Her wards are pristine, perfect and whole, and after dinner she props herself up on one side of the too-large bed, alternating between poking at the phone and reading an old book she hasn’t touched in a few decades. Gurlien alternates between leafing through old pages of research and writing down an impromptu catalog of the topics she kept in the bookshelves.

He’s going to love the library in the castle.

When it’s all over, when she’s free to do what she wants and he has no more obligations to her, she’s going to let him spend as much time in the castle as he wants. Going to let him sift through the books, find which ones to read and which ones to merely record their existence.

The bed is kind, the blankets plush against her skin, and even though exhaustion pulls at her eyelids and at her very bones, she’s not…she’s not uncomfortable.

“You look like you’re about to nap on a pile of books,” Gurlien mutters, after a few hours of the peace, and theinterruption isn’t even an imposition. “Are you going to be weird if we sleep on the same bed?”

She blinks at him, slow. “That’s a human thing, right?”

“Yes,” Gurlien says, glancing at her over his glasses. “But despite the bookcases and the desks, you’re the one who didn’t put a couch or anything in this apartment.”

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