Page 37 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

So she picked well when she impulse kidnapped him.

Ignoring the salad, she props her chin in her hands, staring hard at him from behind the tinted glasses.

He sits back at the direct attention, brows raised from behind his own glasses.

“So you’re good at gathering information,” she starts, then grins at him in the way that unnerves most humans. “Whyever would they kick you out?”

Wrong thing to say, as his mouth thins and he falls silent, picking back over his own food.

“I don’t consider it a bad thing,” she ventures, eating another bite of salad, as if that would appease him. “The entire structure could collapse and I’d be happy for it.”

“We’re agreed with that,” he mutters, and the crispness of his clothing directly counteracts with the casualness of his meal, fried foods in styrofoam containers, which he picks at with about as much appetite as she has. “Axel says…” he trails off, frowning at the food, before eating one of the fries.

She waits, raising an eyebrow at him when he doesn’t continue. “He’s going to help?”

There’s still bitterness in her voice.

“Axel says we’re going to have some culture differences,” he says, almost bracing himself, as if it's anything but an indisputably correct sentence. “Until this is done, you’re going to have to trust me.”

“Obviously,” Ambra says, getting a bite of a veggie, and has to pause in the sharpness of the taste, at the almost burn in the tip of her tongue, before her brain has a chance to interpret the sensation as something akin to pleasure. “Oh,” she mumbles, picking through the salad to find a similar item. “I like this one.”

Gurlien cranes his neck to glance at it. “You mean the raw jalapeños?” His voice is skeptical, before he shrugs, pulling out his phone, and it's her turn to look over to him.

GURLIEN (1:41 PM): Does your connection like spicy food?

Three dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.

AXEL D (1:42 PM): T does sometimes, M likes the flavor but dislikes the burn.

“So I can get more of this type of food?” Ambra asks, andshe gets the barest hint of Gurlien’s lips curving into a smile. “Ask him where.”

“I know how to buy spicy food, don’t worry,” he says, and his eyes crease nicely behind his glasses when he smiles like that. “Chloe’ll want to introduce you to Thai food.”

GURLIEN (1:44 PM): Well, she just ate a raw jalapeño and liked it enough to search for more.

AXEL D (1:45 PM): lol.

“That means he’s laughing,” Gurlien translates, almost unconsciously, before placing the phone on the table, face side up. “But yes. You need to trust me.”

It’s so close to a rehash of an old conversation that she briefly wonders what’s different, but she takes another bite of the salad again, now actually enjoying it.

“That’s what this all is, right?” she asks, after a few moments of silence. “This shopping, this food, it’s for me to trust you.” He hesitates in his reaction, so she sighs. “You had a chance to turn me over to Johnsin and probably go free. You had the opportunity to turn me over to Axel and his group of ‘experts.’ It’s officially in your best interest at this moment to go along with my plan. I trust that.”

“Alright,” Gurlien replies, almost unsteadily. “So I need the trust for the small things, too.”

She still doesn’t know where he’s going with it. “What do you need?” She gestures towards the food court in its expanse, at the mall at large. “I can get more money, get whatever you need. Whatever you want. If it keeps you on my side, you got it.” They stare at each other, before she distracts herself with another bite. “If it’s trust, then sure. I can try.”

“Demons don’t interact with each other a lot, do they?” he asks, voice almost a bit wobbly.

“I try not to,” Ambra replies. “I know some tiethemselves into society, get involved with humans and magicians, in wars and governments.” It’s strange enough to talk this much. “I’ve just always kept a few friends, found libraries, and let others do what they want.”

There’s a flash of interest in his eyes. “When you’re less in fight or flight, I want to have a long discussion about culture.”

“Sure,” she replies, as again, it’s the easiest thing he could ask for. If he wants to talk, she could do that.

“Okay,” he says, bracing himself. “We’re going to buy a few more things, then I’m going to get information for you.”

She takes another bite, unable to find another jalapeño, but the rest of the salad is enriched by the fact they existed at all.

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