Page 102 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

To see the smile Nalissa always had when music was playing—regardless of the type of music—and to see her fingers twitch whenever she controls something. To see her face, always so animated.

And see her reaction when she spots Ambra.

“If you need to, we can stop by the library first,” Ambra rambles, a cold shiver down her back. “We can get you whatever material you need, anything.”

He shoots her a look, one she has not a prayer of interpreting.

“Paris is nice, there are wine bars and any restaurant you could ever need,” she continues, her stomach turning over again. “I can steal more money—they use euros, right?—and you could buy whatever you need, anything.”

“I’ve been to Paris before,” Gurlien replies neutrally. “The College has their entire European base of learning there.”

Which doesn’t make the fear any better. There are hundreds of people in the city who might recognize her, might recognize Gurlien. Experts they could bring in, runes that could be drawn, anything.

“They’ll mock my accent because I learned French in Quebec, but I’ll be able to play translator,” he continues.

“French is easy,” Ambra shoots back, then rubs her face, her stomach turning over. “I don’t need a translator.”

“Right,” Gurlien drawls, before switching seamlessly to French. “If I speak in French, will you stop freaking out?”

“I’m not freaking out,” Ambra snips back, and he just raises his eyebrows at her, and she sighs. “You’d be afraid, too.”

“Of Nalissa?”

It’s too much of a magnifying glass on her, so Ambra paces across the apartment, the heart pounding in the body.

Before Gurlien’s hand touches the leash on his wrist, and she stills, turning towards him.

He’s watching her, a funny look on his face.

“Were you trying to get my attention with that?” Ambraasks, stalking back towards him, but he doesn’t blanch away, not like Chloe did.

“Yes,” he replies, precise.

Ambra narrows her eyes at him, but he doesn’t back down.

“You’re panicking about something, I can feel it through this, and I want to understand a bit better so I can help,” he continues. “I don’t know why I could tell, but I could.”

This changes things, and she straightens.

“You shouldn’t.” Nobody ever has. Or, rather, none of the Five have ever reported getting any emotions from her, and she felt so many that she can’t imagine that they’d just ignore them.

If they did get emotions, if they did get the cast off of her feelings, they’re even more heartless for ignoring them all this time.

Gurlien’s face twitches, like he’s about to say something but thinks better of it, as he weighs his words, his fingertips still against the leash. “It doesn’t hurt you.” It’s more of a question than a declaration.

“You haven’t hurt me,” Ambra repeats, a curiosity starting to well up inside of her, at his actions. At the calculations flying behind his eyes. “But really, you shouldn’t get anything from that.”

“Interesting,” he says, cautious. “You have any demon research at that library?”

She bares her teeth at him, and, surprisingly, he smiles back. “More than you can ever read.”

26

She teleports him to the house in France, still pristine perfect from her protections, not a speck of dust anywhere, and watches as Gurlien gets his feet underneath himself, his eyes sharp.

Her skin crawls, this close to Nalissa’s territory.

“Okay, this place is older than I anticipated,” Gurlien says, at the green counters and the rounded edges on the refrigerator. It’s dark outside, the lights twinkling from the street below.

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