Page 12 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

She shivers, suddenly, and Gurlien sighs, before he crosses to the closet and abruptly pulls a pair of sweatpants off the hanger. “Here, put these on, you’ll be warmer.”

Warmth had nothing to do with it, and Ambra had teased the body for even hanging up sweatpants, but she shucks them on anyways, then smoothes her hands on her hips in the unconscious way the body always did.

The fabric is, of course, much better than the rough canvas pants.

“Glad you’re getting invested,” Ambra says, pushing herself to standing, clutching the unappealing bar in her hand. “Did your friend know how to remove the leash entirely?”

Gurlien’s lip twitches, and somehow she knows, deep down, that she’s not gonna like the answer.

“He can’t,” he says, and despite the guarded tone, Ambra can tell he’s not lying. “He’s a dud like me. Had magic then had it taken away.”

It wasn’t something Ambra knew of happening, but she never paid all that much attention to too many humans to form observations of it before the merge.

She knew the body had had magic of her own, a small smidgen of power that was quickly eclipsed by Ambra’s.

“Do you want to wash all the scuffs off of you?” Ambra asks, gesturing to the shower. “I can’t imagine you like all the blood and dust caked on you.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Any of those clothes in there men’s clothes?”

The body had some old T-shirts, worn soft with time and care, and a pair of men’s pajama pants left over from a ‘boyfriend,’ so Ambra pulls them off the hanger. They’re a lot easier to look at than the other clothing.

“She slept in these a few times, said it reminded her of her ex,” Ambra supplies, at his blank look. “I don’t understand it either.”

“That’s not the part of this I don’t understand,” Gurlien grumbles, but takes them anyway. He holds out the rumpled pajama pants, clearly meant for a shorter person. “Do you have anything else?”

“You can wear some of the body’s clothes, but I don’t think they’ll fit any better,” Ambra offers, and he closes his eyes. She’s once again missing the point, the human conversation strange.

“Answer my phone if it’s Chloe, Maison, Delina, or someone named Axel or Alette. Nobody else.” He dumps the phone in her other hand. “Go eat some food.”

4

Nobody calls for the brief time Gurlien’s in the shower, but Ambra curls her legs underneath herself and gamely attempts to eat the thoroughly unpleasant energy bar, staring at the blank piece of electronics.

The couch is just as plush as she remembers it, at least, and she slumps backwards in it, like it’s something that can embrace her. Even with the weirdness, even with the physical body sending so many contradictory sensations, it’s a lot better than the blank fuzz of stasis, with the single cot.

And she goes over her plan, whatever it could look like. Her now much abridged plan, with only three targets instead of five.

She had always planned on going after Korhonen first, taking him out as quickly as possible. He used her for the most destruction, and she wanted to limit that the most.

Nalissa would be the easiest to kill but the hardest to track down, the most protected. She ruled the underground burial tunnels underneath Paris, and had laid all the traps possible for people to be caught off guard.

Even though she had walked Ambra through them like a friend, even though she had chatted amicably with the body, she didn’t bother to step in during the merge, to stop the body from dying and leaving Ambra behind. She didn’t help, and then afterwards put Ambra through a reeling array of tests, all for control.

Johnsin mostly stayed in Florida, the humid state with more marsh than forest, and the body had hated him with a passion. His mansion was slickly beautiful, smooth tiles and white walls overlooking a twinkling blue ocean, and Ambra had just thought it was all so very tacky.

He hadn’t waited for the body to die before putting them through all the tests, and the body had screamed her throat bloody before Ambra could heal it.

Boltiex…Boltiex just wanted power. He lived wherever suited him, rarely keeping one home, and would be, by far, the hardest to kill.

She puzzles over it, as the shower turns off, her limbs somewhat heavy on the couch. Like they were unused to being out of stasis for so long.

“Nobody called,” she says loudly, as soon as the tiny bathroom door opens up.

The pajama pants are somewhat comically short around Gurlien’s ankles and his glasses are fogged up, but he shakes his head anyways.

“I hate these pants,” he mutters, tugging at the hem. They don’t look bad on him, just ill fitting, like something that he’s never meant to wear.

Other than the tough work pants from the base, she’s not sure why her mind makes that connection. Back at the bar, she had been too tunneled into focusing on the half-demon and the necromancer, and barely remembered Gurlien being there, except for the flash of his phone lightand the reflection of it in his glasses. Nothing about his clothes or general presentation.

---