Page 5 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“Good to know,” he replies, before he glances around the room. “So, what, you’re here to sleep? Get some food, get some power back?” He gestures at the still-bleeding gut wound, and there’s a small tug on the leash at the motion. “Fix that?”

Unsteady again, she nods. “There’s a bed in the other room, the body liked the pillows if you need rest.”

“The body,” he states, and she flinches, completely outof her control, before he raises his hands in some obvious surrender. “Good, got it, okay—”

A shrill beep echoes in the small room, like a little spike into her brain, and she recoils back, then another, then another.

“It’s just my phone,” he states, digging into his pocket and pulling out one of the small electronics that all of her handlers kept on themselves. It beeps again in his hands, and he slowly, deliberately shows her how he can unlock it.

He’s treating her like a spooked animal, instead of the other way around.

“It’s my friends,” he says, again slowly and deliberately. “They’re worried.”

“Why?” Ambra blurts out.

He stares at her, blank. “Because a demon grabbed me and then disappeared and that’s not normal?”

“I wasn’t going to hurt you, that’d be counter intuitive,” Ambra says, gesturing to the room in some strange impulse she doesn’t fully understand. “I want you to make sure I don’t have to go back, not hurt you to the point where you willingly hand me over.”

“Which they didn’t know,” he points out, then starts tapping on the electronics, and her heart jumps again.

“Let me see,” she interrupts, and he sighs, turning the phone around.

It takes the body a few tries to focus her eyes, before the words swim into focus.

CHLOE A (7:30 PM): Are you okay?

CHLOE A (7:34 PM): I can’t track your phone, where are you, are you alive?

DELINA N (7:36 PM): All I can tell is you’re not dead.

FREDERICK HD (7:37 PM): The Wights can’t track you right now.

CHLOE A (7:49 PM): Gurlien, can you answer?

“What’s a Gurlien?” Ambra wonders aloud, and in front of her, he shuts his eyes.

“That’s my name,” he says wearily. “Chloe is the alchemist, she’s my best friend. Delina is the Necromancer and Frederick—Maison—is the Half Demon.”

She blinks up at him. “Okay, Gurlien.”

“Here,” he says, then types in front of her, pressing send.

GURLIEN (7:52 PM): I’m alive, with the demon, will explain later.

“No, you won’t,” Ambra protests, fear prickling over her skin. “How do you know they’re not with the College? They could be captive, someone else could have their electronics and be impersonating them, they do that.”

He sighs again, typing.

GURLIEN (7:53 PM): Chloe, code.

Immediately—

CHLOE A (7:53 PM): Charter Oak.

GURLIEN (7:54 PM): Ida Grove.

“There, it’s her, she wouldn’t give that up under torture,” he says, dark. “Believe me, they’ve tried.”

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