Page 137 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“Did you bring the gun?” she asks, struggling to push herself up to sitting, but he points at her until she settles back down.

“No, they took the gun,” he says dryly, but he rummages through the backpack, pulling out a small yellow bag, too similar to the first aid kit that Misia kept at the motor home.

“I want one,” she tells him.

“A gun that can kill you?” he asks, his brow furrowing as he unzips the bag, digging through it.

“Good self-defense,” Ambra says.

“Jesus Christ, you’re really not mad,” he mutters, before laying the contents on the bed. “Good. They gave me a magician pack. You’re gonna hate this.”

He waves what looks like a foil tube at her, then tears it open and hands it to her.

“Glucose and caffeine gel,” he informs her. “Used by marathon runners for energy.”

She sniffs it, and it doesn’t necessarily smell bad, if a bit chemical.

“Eat it,” he orders, but again there’s no compulsion andshe could shrug him off if she needs to. “Eat it and then focus whatever energy you can to healing.”

She pushes a bit of energy towards her chest, and it resists, before the skin slowly crawls together.

“Yeah, that’s still weird,” he mutters, digging into the pack, laying out a variety of things. Another 5 Hour Energy Drink, something called “protein goo” and a bag of dried dates.

Moderately horrified at the display, Ambra attempts to eat the gel in front of her, and it’s wholly unpleasant.

“Sure, you can shake the entire building, but can’t eat something a little bit disgusting?” Gurlien asks, and she flatly raises an eyebrow at him.

“Did being around other people remind you to be caustic?” she asks, and he grimaces.

“Fair.” Still, he watches her, his hands in fists on his side, an odd desperation in his stance, so she finishes it anyways.

Without even pausing, he hands her the protein goo, and it smells even worse.

“Why would you even have this?” Ambra asks, after ripping it open in a move that was rather unpleasant to her chest.

“Because suddenly running out of energy is a normal problem for magicians to have,” he replies, his brown eyes a bit intense for her to eat under. “And Mel said it would be the same for you in that body, and absent a Necromancer for you to kill…” he gestures at the display of food, and there’s a tremor in his hand, one she can’t quite parse out. “I would keep chocolates and caffeine gel with me. Axel did the energy shots and cheese sticks. Alette apparently did tea.”

She hates it.

“Chloe always ate candy,” Gurlien continues, almost babbling, and she eyes him.

He’s nervous, he’s still worried.

“Delina didn’t do enough for us to fully know, but when she raised Maison—” Ambra raises both eyebrows at that, “we gave her some chocolate chips and water, we weren’t prepared for that.”

“Was that before or after the bar?” Ambra mumbles, eating despite herself.

“It was when Karkohen tried to take down Delina himself, before he brought you out,” Gurlien says, grasping on to the distraction with both hands. “He came alone once, with just an activated teleport spell and tried to kill Delina, Maison stepped in front of one of his bolts.”

Ambra had the dim idea that the Necromancer had been way newer to her powers at the bar, but if she had already raised someone with a critical injury, Korhonen was more stupid than she thought at trying again with Ambra and expecting it to be so easy.

She pauses at the thought, but Gurlien just gestures her to continue.

It’s another part of the body she’ll have to get used to, so after taking a rather unpleasant gulp of the protein goo she twists the magic again, focusing on the edges of the wound.

“I’ve spent the last five days thinking you may die because of me,” Gurlien says, voice low, his face pale, as she picks off the bandage to inspect the wound closer.

It’s right underneath her clavicle on the right side, black blood crunching around the edges, and with the half-healed state she can see the flex of the body’s lungs and the tremor of the blood vessels.

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