Page 3 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“I have questions,” he starts, and there’s a tone in his voice like he’s trying to project authority and failing miserably.

“Obviously,” Ambra murmurs, and a different one of the runes buzz, the same demon now actively prodding at her. “I picked you because you most likely couldn’t put me back in stasis. Your group saved the little wight, so you’re unlikely to try to use this body for anything weird because of human morals. I didn’t choose the necromancer because the Half Demon would kill me, and that alchemist is too powerful for me to want to try.”

He swallows, his throat moving, and it’s something she never noticed humans doing until the merge. “With her help, we might be able to remove the leash,” he starts, and she can recognize someone bullshitting. “And the Half Demon might have some ideas.”

“And you’re just trying to get back to them,” she replies, then stalks over to the other side of the room, to her little bookcase, scanning the traps she put behind the books.

Still untouched, the whisper thin wire all but invisible to the body’s eyes.

She blinks at it, as if she could will the gaze to focus better, but it doesn’t work.

Because she’s stuck in this body, with its breathing, its pain, its eyelids, its shivers, and all of its unconscious movement that she has to be aware of.

Another buzz, and she twitches, as this other demon presses harder. She’s going to have to go to another safe spot, going to have to abandon these books and the comfort and the silence, if this keeps up.

“Boltiex wanted full control, solo control, but he was overruled,” Ambra continues, and at least if she has to have noise in the room it could be created by her. “He has some ideas about ruling the College using me, I don’t like it, so I know the existence of the other four—two now—were to counterbalance. So there is a way to counterbalance.”

Her captive says nothing, his lips thin.

“Boltiex is the most skilled at it, he’s the one who…” she gestures at the body, and the body responds with a lump in her throat that threatens to momentarily choke her.

He nods, serious, like he understands what she’s trying to communicate, which is nice, so she doesn’t have to actually say it.

“Nalissa is the craftiest, she does experiments with my power,” Ambra continues, twisting her face. “She knows all my limits, all the body’s weird reactions.”

“I thought she was in France,” her kidnappee says, “doing research on the catacombs.”

Another shudder of the body, at the claustrophobic,echoing tunnels lined with bones that immediately pop into mind, but Ambra pushes onwards. “Johnsin is the one who liked pain, and he’s the one that figured out how to tie the body’s nerves into my own. I’d like to avoid him.”

“Understandable,” he says, and he hasn’t relaxed, not really, but there’s less tension in his shoulders and his face has softened into something pondering.

It’s a bit gratifying, to have someone say that, after most of the humans in the College always act as if she’s spouting nonsense.

“I also don’t want another demon to find this,” Ambra says, holding up the leash, but he doesn’t track the motion.

Right. Because he can’t see it.

“If one even for a second thinks I’m weak, thinks they can destroy me, they will. I don’t want to be destroyed, no matter what they say happened to the other Terese project.”

“The demon died, but the human lived,” he says, and she rocks back, to digest it, the jealousy sending a twist to her stomach. “A necromancer killed the demon.”

“And the body survived?” Ambra asks, before she can stop herself. “She didn’t…die off?”

Her kidnappee falls silent, a blond brow raising over the glasses, and she hates that she said something, so she shakes her head.

“My point remains, I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to be controlled, I don’t want to die,” she says, the leash still in her hand. “I need someone useless to hold the leash.”

He scoffs, like that’s what he’s upset about in all of this.

Another pull at the runes, something stronger, and she spins to stare at it, dread starting to drip down her back.

She also needs a place to recover. To sit with the body until she has enough energy to fix the annoying wounds, until she can think straight. To huddle away, find some sortof sustenance, whatever the body needs, and figure out what being at full power in the body would be.

Someplace out of stasis.

“I don’t think that will work,” he says, finally, his face carefully still.

A prod at the runes, and the electricity cording through the room flickers.

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