Page 121 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“Don’t worry, I didn’t place you somewhere where you could do actual harm,” Nalissa says casually, boosting herself up so she sits on the pink metal surgery table, next to the flowers and the ever-present picture of her collection of golden retriever dogs. “I wasn’t going to give you the chance before we could talk.”

Ambra stills herself, and Gurlien loosens his arms.

She misses the contact, immediately, throwing a look back up to him.

“I saw Johnsin’s body, I don’t blame you,” Nalissa continues, voice still friendly. “He never did get the concept that you had a sense of self.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Gurlien bursts out, obviously startling Nalissa, who blinks owlishly at him.

“He thought of her as a plaything,” Nalissa says, after a moment of silence, obviously calculating, and Ambra doesn’t like it one bit. Nalissa could twist her words, could get anyone to do her bidding, and the last thing she wants is for her to get her claws into Gurlien. “We all thought it was ghastly, but we couldn’t stop him, we all had equal power over her.”

Nalissa’s eyes drop to Gurlien’s wrist, where the leash is still tied and still obvious.

“And now you, too,” Nalissa continues softly. “Somehow in this demon’s mad quest to be free, she tied you into the mess.”

Gurlien shifts behind her, and to someone unused to his motions, it must read as discomfort. As being insecure.

But he’s reaching for the gun tucked into his waistband, using Ambra’s body to block the view.

“You must know that she’s not going to stop at us,” Nalissa says, as matter as factly as if she’s delivering a lesson to her apprentices. “Demons aren’t logical creatures, they don’t form attachments, she’ll absolutely end you the moment she gets rid of me and Boltiex.”

A laugh at the ridiculousness bubbles into Ambra’s throat, but she squashes it down. Instead, she shakes out her arms, stepping forward, still blocking Gurlien from view, and opens her mouth to speak.

And without even a gesture, Nalissa cuts off her voice, closing her mouth again.

Oh, so she’s not gonna let Ambra speak.

A fission of anger winds its way up her back, and she shivers.

“Did she have you work on your distance?” Nalissa asks of Gurlien, and her warm brown eyes are on him. Ambra remembers that gaze, how until she knew better, she felt special underneath it. Misia felt special. “See how far you can control her?”

“Twenty feet,” Gurlien answers, and Ambra squashes another reaction at the lie.

He shifts, so the gun is tucked behind his back, easy to grab if he needs, but out of Nalissa’s sight, then nods, ever so minutely, to Ambra.

So he has some sort of plan, some sort of idea.

Ambra attempts to speak again, but nothing comes out, not even a twitch of her face, and Gurlien’s brow furrows at her.

“Makes sense, without any powers of your own, that controlling someone like her would be difficult,” Nalissa sympathizes, but Gurlien just narrows his eyes at Ambra, like he could tell something is off with her, even something as mild as Nalissa controlling her words. “Probably why shepicked you, no offense, I heard the rest of your ‘crew,’” some real venom sneaks into Nalissa’s voice at that, a hint of her real emotions instead of this manipulation, “were very powerful, leaving you as the odd man out.”

Gurlien twitches his eyebrow at Ambra, then shrugs, facing Nalissa. “She said as much.”

This time, Ambra’s not nearly as worried that he’s buying her words. Not like she was with Johnsin. Not after how easily he read Bianci.

The fact that the College disposed of him, even with all this knowledge and all this fluency and skills, is laughable.

Nalissa nods, full of sympathy, before she turns her gaze to Ambra. “And is he telling the truth?”

Whip fast, compulsion wraps its way around her throat, and Ambra physically recoils back for a split second before Nalissa controls that, too.

“I picked him because he had no power,” Ambra blurts out, beyond her control, and the side of Gurlien’s mouth tilts up.

But Nalissa just tightens the compulsion, choking her, leaving her sputtering. “Where have you been hiding?”

“The Paris house you found,” Ambra says, digging in her feet and struggling against it. “Minnesota. Bellingham. Maine.” Nalissa relaxes the compulsion long enough that Ambra can pull in a breath, ragged, before she tightens it again.

This time, the words aren’t Ambra’s own.

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