Page 57 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

She shrugs, still not getting up.

“This bed could probably fit four people on it without anyone making physical contact,” Gurlien continues, and she’s not sure if he’s attempting to convince her or convince himself.

“And it’s the safest place in here, now,” Ambra says, pointing at the runes before she belatedly remembers he can’t see them, that it wouldn’t be an instinctive decision.

He nods, his mouth thin, before he exhales, shaking out his hands, and abruptly striding to the bathroom.

Definitely convincing himself.

Humans have hang-ups on strange things, but she rests her head back on one of the pillows, staring up at the ceiling, trying to piece it out on her own, despite the sleepiness.

Humans associate it with intimacy, with safety. And with Gurlien being fundamentally unsafe just by the nature of her mission, and with her still not knowing too terribly many things about him and his past, they don’t qualify for either of the criteria.

But that’s not enough motivation for her to leave the first truly comfortable position she’s been in for ages.

Since that one night with the body in the motor home.

Without getting off the bed, she shifts the books to the floor next to it, pulling one of the two blankets up over her, nestling further into the embrace of the bed, and lets her eyes close, listening to the small sounds of the apartment at night, until Gurlien steps back into the main room.

She doesn’t open her eyes at that, lets him deal with his own hang ups in the only privacy she can really afford him. His footsteps pace across the room, to all the many different light switches, flicking them off one by one.

“You are incredibly obvious when you’re faking being asleep,” he mutters at her, before he slides into the other side of the bed.

“You’re the one who was being weird,” she points out, still turned the other direction. “This is the most comfortable I’ve been in at least a year.”

He’s silent for a long moment, his breathing evening out into something predictable.

“You should seek out this comfort,” he speaks; after so long, she thinks he must be asleep already. “If you’re stuck in that body, you should treat it well. For yourself.”

His words should hurt, should poke at the tender part of herself, but spoken across the softness of the bed and the gentleness of the blankets, they don’t.

In the middleof the night, when even the city outside seems to hold its breath, something whispers against Ambra’s wards.

Her eyes pop open, but there’s nobody else in the apartment, and despite the vast distance across the bed, Gurlien’s foot is hooked around her ankle. Like in sleep his body unconsciously reached out to her, even in that small way.

Ambra exhales into the expanse of the room, and the same whisper against her wards.

Not antagonistic, but curious. Hoping to draw her attention.

A flicker of her mind out towards the edge of her runes,and another demon paces, outside the door to the apartment.

When originally setting up the wards, way back when she had all the time and ability in the world, she had placed them a few feet into the hallway, so even a malicious force couldn’t break through to the door, do damage against the wall.

The whisper again, an acknowledgement that the other demon knows she’s awake, but clearly not an attack. The most polite of queries, the sort that demons dance around when not wishing to embroil themselves in a fight.

Ambra pulls her foot away from Gurlien, and he makes a soft sleepy noise, before burrowing his head deeper into the blanket. She hesitates, but his breathing returns to its rhythm.

Her feet bare against the cool hardwood, she pads her way to the door. The city lights cast shadows through her long windows, just enough to tint the whole room a deep blue.

She sends back the same sort of polite whisper, a communication of something like peace, before she gently creaks open the door, stepping out into the hall, staying behind her wards.

In front of her, wearing the most nondescript dead body imaginable, some sort of businessman who could be anywhere between thirty and sixty years old, is the demon of Minneapolis. The one she traded for artwork all those ages ago.

If he wanted, he could have easily torn down her wards and rend her into many, many fragments of a soul.

She shuts the door as quietly as she could, to not wake Gurlien.

“What happened to you?” the demon of Minneapolisasks, the brow of the body furrowing. “I thought it was you, but…”

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