Page 47 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“No, but he’s spent enough time with me to know whatthey mean,” Maison says, and there’s no trace of laughing on his face, not now. “Did they break it for you?”

There’s only one way to break a bond, and if he’s a Half Demon, he knows that, so she jabs at the giant red button on the phone, ending the call.

“Your friend is an asshole,” Ambra calls out, standing and almost knocking the chair over.

“Yes,” Gurlien calls back through the door, and she rifles through the closet, quickly shucking off the reddish sweater for a dark blue shirt the body had loved. “He’s been that way his entire life.”

“Such great friends you have,” Ambra says, breezing back into the main room, and her legs ache a bit at the quick movement. “Does this shirt look odd?”

He stares at her blankly.

“Yesterday at the store, my clothing looked out of place and odd. Does this look odd?”

“Well,” he starts, “not really. You were just clashing yesterday.”

“Okay,” she grits out, then attempts to finger comb her hair, before giving up and flopping back on the couch. “Distance training or setting up another location to be human appropriate, one they didn’t know about?”

“Safe spot,” he says immediately. “Good way to track if they know your location or if they’re just using historical data.”

And this is why she appreciates him. An actual scientific approach to things, instead of poking at the sore emotional spots of her.

“And it’ll give us a place to return to,” he continues, which is a part she didn’t anticipate. “Someplace with food, a bed, and relative safety.”

“Good point,” she says, and the frazzled edge inside ofher relaxes somewhat, away from the conversation with the Half Demon. “That’s important.”

“And I want breakfast before we go,” he says, and she stills, like she had slithered right into a trap he laid before her. “Something that’s actually filling.”

She rubs the side of her head, and it still prickles uncomfortably.

“There’s a cafe down the street, there’s that strip of magic that runs through it, let's go there.” He strides back into the bedroom, pocketing the phone and grabbing a sturdy jacket he bought the day before.

And he had remembered the lay of the magic with just a brief glimpse. A glimpse where he had been, at best, somewhat emotionally compromised.

“It’ll be easy for you to grab and use if we’re in there,” he says, and he had obviously planned this in the however long he had been awake before her. “You can have your back to the wall, the magic in front of you, and I can get food.”

He extends the green tinted glasses to her.

“You thought this through,” she says, gingerly taking them from him.

12

The cafe is thankfully empty, the only conversations half-muted from behind the kitchen wall, and a bored looking waitress sits them in a tall back booth.

Highway signs and various car accessories adorn the walls, along with American flags and various star shaped paraphernalia. It’s bright, so Ambra doesn’t take off the tinted glasses.

The strip of magic pulses over to her, checking her out, before humming along its way, clearly not disturbed by the actual demon in its midst.

And the cafe is outside of Ambra’s protections, so the back of her neck prickles the moment the waitress leaves.

“You’re fine,” Gurlien murmurs, glancing over the plastic covered menu, an eyebrow raised over his glasses. “What did Maison tell you?”

“Well, he called you a dick,” Ambra replies, poking at the edge of the menu, instead of anything else. “He’s also invasive and rude and asks insensitive questions.”

“He’s going to be using his access to some systems totrack Boltiex down, since he’s going to be the harder of the two to find.”

It’s more kindness than Ambra had anticipated from the Half Demon, so she sits with that as the waitress drops off waters and looks expectantly at Gurlien.

With a sigh, Gurlien rattles off an order, before giving Ambra a critical glance. “You okay?”

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