Page 21 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

And the moment she does, the moment the body’s feet hit the cheap linoleum floor, she sways.

Gurlien grips her by her elbow, then unceremoniously dumps her to sit on the plush couch.

“Hey,” she protests mildly, but the couch is a welcome surface, so massively different from all the slick white.

“You’re still in pain,” he accuses, despite the fact that he’s still the one with a bleeding wound, even with the rather professional level bandage job he gave himself. “No more teleporting until that’s done.”

“We don’t know who he talked to,” Ambra says, but lets the body melt into the couch. “We might need to go somewhere else, somewhere less obvious.”

“No,” Gurlien flat out refuses, “you’re going to sit there and actually recover.”

Stiffly, he tosses a foil wrapped pastry at her, then grabs his phone, staring her straight in the face as he dials.

If she had been less tired, she might’ve put a stop to that, but instead he places the phone on the counter, pressing the speaker.

“Yes?” a guarded male voice on the other end says. It’s not a familiar voice, so it’s not the Half Demon.

“Yes, hi, I need you to tell me how to give her some pain relief,” Gurlien snaps out, and his hands are shaking, so he crosses his arms. “We just had an encounter with a higher up and he did something.”

There’s an inhale of breath, and Ambra’s interested, she just can’t bring herself to sit up out of the clutches of the couch.

A female voice speaks in the background, somewhat musical, but Ambra can’t make out the words.

“There’s not an easy answer to that question,” the male voice replies, and Ambra anticipated that. “Morphine and most opioids don’t work, and the ones that do leave withdrawals that are—”

“Not worth it,” the female voice interrupts, clearly, and there’s a hint of recognition behind it, something that Ambra half remembers.

“Not worth it,” the male voice continues. “Make sure she’s fed—”

“Why?” Ambra interrupts, and the phone goes silent.

Gurlien carefully folds his glasses and sets them on the counter, then rubs between his eyebrows.

“Oh, you’re dealing with this stage of things,” the male voice says, mischief thick in his words, and all at once, Ambra decides that he’d be annoying to actually speak to, outside of the direness of the situation. “We went through this with Mel, I’ll chat with him on some particularities.”

The female voice scoffs.

“Food, rest, and moving the body will help,” the womansays, and again, her voice itches at Ambra’s mind. She should know her. “Trust me.”

“Who are you?” Ambra wonders aloud, and there’s silence before the line clicks off. “Who was that, do I know her?”

Gurlien rests his head against the counter, and it can’t be comfortable. “I’m not going to answer that.”

Ambra squints at him, but can’t muster up the ability to get up from the couch, a shiver winding up her spine, some left over nerve firing a bit too hard.

Johnsin always left sensations and they always lasted for days. Always some ache or stab or throb, always where she doesn’t think it would be.

“I was hoping there was an easily available drug to give you, but apparently not,” Gurlien says, muffled, and the thought is nice, more than she thought she would get.

“It’s just pain,” Ambra points out.

“And human bodies aren’t supposed to be in constant pain,” Gurlien shoots back, before he shuffles around the small kitchen, pouring a glass of water—the same cup the body drank from all those months ago—and sets it in front of Ambra. “She’s an expert, follow her advice.”

“She sounded familiar,” Ambra says, voice smaller than she would have liked. “Like I’ve heard her before.”

He hesitates. “There’s a non-zero chance you have,” he replies, before disappearing into the bedroom, emerging with an armful of blankets which he dumps on Ambra’s lap, then pointing at the foil wrapped pastry. “Eat that, drink that, then sleep.”

Ambra splays her fingertips over the blankets in the way the body used to, and the blankets are soft to the touch, almost fuzzy. “You shouldn’t have been able to feel the painthrough the leash,” she starts. “Otherwise, the other four would’ve stopped Johnsin long ago.”

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