Page 29 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“No,” Ambra says, and her stomach turns over, unhappy, at the food. “We were approached by the College because we knew each other.”

And they had been so excited.

She sets down her fork, shivering once.

“And I think we can all agree that the College does things unethically,” Gurlien says bracingly, and Axel snorts like he told a joke. “So can you help us?”

Axel snaps the notebook closed, an open and practiced smile on his face. “I have to run this by my experts.”

Gurlien scoffs.

“You realize you’re dealing with an experiment that has, to our knowledge, only two living examples, right?” Axel says, and it jolts Ambra to remember the other one, the one where the demon died and the human lived, and how much kinder of a world that would be. “It’s not like we have a lot of data to go off of, so we have to take this and actually research.”

He turns to Ambra, and Ambra scoots her chair back a bit.

“Short term advice? Eat enough food, actually sleep on a bed, don’t get taken by the College,” he says, like those aren’t equally as perplexing ideas. “Maybe kidnap someone a little less assholish next time?”

“He’s not an asshole,” Ambra says automatically.

Axel stares at her, like that’s the one bit of information she’s given that stretches his belief, before he turns to Gurlien.

“How’d you manage that?” Axel asks, before he stands, tossing a twenty on the table for his food, and striding off.

No strange scans follow his leaving, and the sleek black car rumbles out of the parking lot and out of view before Ambra lets her spine unwind.

“What the fuck,” she mutters, pushing the plate away and burying her head in her arms, as if the lack of sight would help her stop the shaking.

“That went well,” Gurlien mutters, clutching the mug of coffee like it’ll save him.

8

Ambra doesn’t speak for the rest of the day, teleporting them back to the cabin and burrowing herself underneath the blankets on the couch, and trying real hard to ignore Gurlien talking in low tones on the phone in the bedroom.

She should be practicing the leash with him. She should be taking him far, far away so they can test the limits of his ability to sense the leash, test how useful he’ll be. Test if she can just let him back into his normal life, so she would just be a temporary interruption when needed, instead of trapped here away from his friends.

But her teeth chatter with the leftover pain from Johnsin and her stomach aches from the onslaught of chemicals following all the emotions, so she curls up the tightest she can and ignores Gurlien. Pretends to be asleep when he gets more food, only getting up to use the restroom when he has the door firmly shut, and drinks a glass of water only when her mouth is so dry she feels her teeth will fall out.

And attempts to not think.

The next morning,however, Gurlien has approximately no patience with her, breezing in and clattering around loud enough that Ambra lifts her head to glare at him.

“I don’t think you’re going to hurt me when you do that,” he says, blasé, and Ambra regrets whatever niceties she’s given him. “But I do need you to actually get up and do things.”

She forces herself to sit upright, and her muscles protest, aching in ways she didn’t even know were possible.

“Have you heard anything?” she asks, and her voice rasps unpleasantly after a day of not speaking. “Any news of Johnsin getting back?”

“Not yet,” Gurlien replies, and his hair is carefully combed, so neatly in place. “But I got pretty strict instructions not to let you wallow for another day.”

“I wasn’t wallowing,” Ambra protests, stretching out her legs in front of her, and her eyes water at the motion.

“No, someone just brought up some specific trauma and you sat on the couch for twenty hours, not wallowing at all.” He tosses her a Power bar and she lets it thump against the couch, not touching it. “But Axel did hack into Johnsin’s schedule and he has an event he is supposed to attend in three days. It’s going to be conspicuous if he doesn’t show up, I want to be better prepared for that.”

That gets her attention, and she stands, using a jolt of her power deep into the earth to stabilize herself so she only sways once, and the house creaks around them.

He jerks back, his eyes wide.

“That was me,” she informs him, then pushes past him down the hall to grab another sweater, this one bright red, that the body had laughed at while hanging up.

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