Page 41 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“I see no sign of concussion,” he says, examining her eyes in a way that’s almost disorienting, and she blinks at the sudden brighter light. “I’m going to get you up off the floor, okay?”

After waiting for her nod, he grips her by her upper arm, hauling her up, and her knees wobble, before he guides her over to the beige couch.

It’s far less comfortable than the now broken and burnt couch in the other home, but she sinks into it just the same.

“There’s food in the cupboard I think,” she says, and every time her eyes shut there’s just the smoldering sleeve of the sweater.

“Where are we?” he asks instead. “This is a bit more populated.”

“East coast of the continent,” she supplies, and he raises an eyebrow. “The body liked the river.”

“The river,” he mutters, before he disappears into the other room, clearly checking it out.

“I should set up another human friendly safe spot,” she calls to him, “in case they tracked me here with the body before the merge.”

“Think that’s how they found the last place?”

“It’s that or they tracked me,” she says, to the muffled sound of him opening the closet in the other room, then closing it.

The body liked this place for its nearness to the views, not the coziness of the space, and it lacks a lot of thecheerful warmth of the motorhome. Sure, there was an extraordinarily large bed and much larger kitchen, but it just wasn’t the same.

And now the body’s favorite place is gone. The place where she slept, the place where she smiled when setting everything up. The place where she felt so accomplished the emotion bled over into Ambra.

Ambra curls up on herself on the couch, checking the wards, listening to Gurlien putter around.

They’re not going to give up on getting her back. They’re not going to let her disappear easily away from them, not while they still have something resembling a way to control her.

And one of them found a way to tell her.

She refuses to shut her eyes.

The showy nature, the dramatics of leaving her wards like that, reads towards a sign. They weren’t just destroying someplace for her to hide, they were showing she can’t hide.

Though why wouldn't they just pull the leash and be done with it…

Gurlien steps back into the room carrying something, eyes her critically, then stomps over and flops dramatically on the couch next to her.

She startles upright. “What?”

“You look like you’re having an internal meltdown. You shouldn’t.” He pulls out the small package he’s carrying, and it’s the first aid kit the body told her she needed to buy for each location under no arguments. Then his voice gentles. “They’re awful. I had to learn how to keep my head above the water every time they did something.”

“I’m not melting down,” she protests as he unzips the package, setting aside some gauze, alcohol wipes, and medical tape. “I’m trying to plan.”

He raises an eyebrow without even glancing at her. “Sure.”

She struggles to sit up straighter, settling for half propped up against the back of the couch. “I have to plan, if they know all the spots I went to with the body, then we should be prepared—”

He unbuttons the cuffs of the sky-blue shirt, rolling it up to his elbows, revealing the bandages he placed while shaking in Johnsin’s living room. Some blood had seeped through the top layer of the bandage, barely showing up against the white.

“Should that still be bleeding?” Ambra asks, almost whispering.

“Probably,” Gurlien responds, but he doesn’t sound perturbed by it. “Cuts like that, with how deep he got, usually take a while.”

With an awful ripping sound, he peels up the medical tape, and Ambra winces.

“How can I help?” she asks, and to her dismay, despair leaks into her voice. “I need to help.”

Barely a flicker in his brown eyes at that. “Just time is needed. Time and changing the bandages every few days.” Even though the skin around is abraded by the bandage, the cut itself is mostly a thin line of scab, bloody and stiff, and Gurlien meticulously wipes at all remaining blood with the alcohol wipe.

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