Page 104 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“Do we need to leave?” he asks again, careful. “Go somewhere she hasn’t taken away?”

It’d be impossible for her, when she’s breathing through Misia’s body.

But there’s a frisson of anger there, too, at the idea of running, and Ambra straightens. “No,” she answers, before swallowing. “No, she doesn’t get to ruin this.”

His lips curve upwards at that. “Good.”

So she watches as he explores the small house, puttering around the antique hardware of the kitchen, the sourness back in her stomach.

It would be so much better if he had a magical trace. If he could leave hints of himself behind, overshadow the ones left by Nalissa.

She would need to re-ward the place, write in more protections. Mask her presence in Paris, render her invisible.

Most of the demons around this part of France are like her. Transient, not setting up a base of power beyond the minimum needed for hiding spots, so she doesn’t have to worry about appeasing anyone. Too many people—demons, spirits, everyone—flock here to search for knowledge, to find answers, that nobody would be able to defend it for long enough.

Gurlien disappears into the other room, poking around, so she pushes herself up to standing to follow.

“We’ll have to buy you groceries,” Ambra says, following him into the little office area, with its dizzying collection of thin-papered science fiction books and its outdated maps on the wall. “There’s a little store down the street ran by a magician; he couldn’t see me, but he could sense when I or some wights were around.”

“Who is it?” Gurlien asks with a curved brow.

“Not in the College,” Ambra says, letting her fingertips trace over the spines of the books. The sensation is different now, with a live body and actual nerve endings against her skin. “Not strong enough in anything practical, so theyignored him. They’re very…snobbish around here about that.”

He nods, it’s not new information. “Have you read all of those?” he asks, gesturing to the bookcase, to the brightly colored books. “Half of those books don’t exist anymore, they’re out of print and most copies are non-existent.”

“Of course,” Ambra replies, tapping her finger against the books. “What use would books be if you don’t read them?”

He smiles at her, something soft and unguarded, and for a few seconds, Ambra’s heart kicks up a beat.

“Here,” she says, quickly pulling out one of them, a dashing tale of a fighter pilot in a world taken over by fantastical aliens. “This one is ridiculous, I adored it.”

He cradles the book, giving it so much care that it pulls at her heart again. “This is a legitimate antique, you know that, right?” he asks, running his fingertip over the spine and creaking the cover open to glance at the publication date. “You would revolutionize the collectors’ market with all of these.”

Ambra, having come across a few collectors in her time, just shrugs. “They don’t read their books.”

Another smile, paired with the gleam of knowledge in his eyes, and it helps against the traces of Nalissa.

Gurlien reads,curled up on the one bed (a much smaller one than the apartment, Ambra’s not sure if he’ll still sleep next to her with it), the entire time that Ambra sets up the wards, so when the sun starts to peek into the windows, his hair is tousled and his eyes look scratchy when he blinks at her.

“This book is awful,” he informs her, and he’s a good two-thirds of the way through. “I love it.”

“Right,” Ambra says, then makes a face at her voice, at the dry rasp across her vocal cords as she swallows. “I forgot to drink water for this.”

“Same here,” Gurlien mutters, and he did stay put the entire time she laid down wards, not shifting from his place on the bed, and his back pops when he shifts and stretches. “Food?”

Instead of answering, she sits next to him on the smaller bed, and he blinks up at her, owlish.

“Can I kiss you again?” she asks, now that her head isn’t pounding and her words don’t feel like they’re slipping out of her mouth.

Deliberate and precise, he fits a piece of paper in as a bookmark before closing the book, smoothing its cover, and it’s just as obvious of a stalling tactic as anything else.

“Do you want to?” he asks, sitting up so they’re on an even level.

She wrinkles her nose at him. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“Fair enough,” he murmurs, then places his hand over hers, a gentle tangle of fingers.

“And I want to when you remember it,” she continues, though the graze of skin contact on their hands distracts, derailing her thoughts. “Seems unfair.”

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