Page 9 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

“How close do I have to be for the leash?” Then, at something in his expression, he holds up his hands again. “I know, they can get you anywhere. But what about me?”

“We will have to test the limits,” Ambra replies, because again, it’s a good question, one showing a scientific mind that’s not prone to assumptions. “I hope…I hope we have a day before they try anything.”

“That long?” Idly, Gurlien starts inspecting the kitchen, opening the drawers and the cabinets, and it’s the actions of someone who doesn’t like to be lacking information about his surroundings.

“They’ll want to control the beasts on site first,” she murmurs, hugging herself again. “I shouldn’t be a priority.”

“No, you’re just the first successful result of the Terese project, a controllable demon with massive amounts of power that could be in their hands, couldn’t see how that would be a priority, not at all.” Still, Gurlien shakes his head, grabbing the single glass out of the drying rack and filling it with water, drinking deeply.

She flinches, but doesn’t stop him.

“I’m exhausted,” he states. “I’m exhausted and very, very confused. I didn’t fully expect to live through today, and now I’m somewhere unfamiliar, with a clearly unstable experiment, being asked to control a magical process I have not studied and have no abilities in.”

“Exactly,” Ambra says again, because he seems to be missing the point that that's entirely what she wanted.

“And my friends are still in Eastern Canada and I’m on an entirely different coast because I got teleported.” He levels her with a glare over the top of his glasses, which spoils any sort of threat from it. “So pardon me if I’m not feeling comfortable with your level of plans.”

It’s fair enough, but Ambra scrapes at her mind for something else to do, some other lever to pull at this very moment, besides sitting back down on the chilly tile and recuperating.

“And you’re still obviously not in good condition,” he points at her, almost accusatory, and she stares down at his hand as if it personally offends her. “You’re shaking, you keep on jumping at things that aren’t there, there’s still blood on your face—”

Instinctively, she reaches a hand to her face, and sure enough, some dried blood flakes off.

“—and I don’t know if it’s because you’re a demon or if it’s because nobody ever expected to have this experiment go well ever again or because you’re in a human body and I don’t think you know how to care for it.” He crosses his arms, like it’s the end of an argument.

It’s not anything she didn’t know, but there’s still a sting to it.

She stares at him back. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he repeats, face blank. “Just…okay?”

She shrugs one shoulder, and it reminds her of the muscle tightness that the body always had there, tightness verging on pain that she has never quite figured out how to heal. “You’re not wrong on any of that.”

“Good,” he says, forcefully to the point of it being comical. “Thanks. Super validating.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmurs, then pushes herself away from leaning against the sink, even though her legs wobble precariously. “Eat what you want, sleep on the bed. Don’t leave the house until we have more information on the range, I’m going to clean up.”

With a flick of her hand, she twists the wards tighteraround the windows, and the very structure creaks around them.

He jumps, eyes wide, before he spins back to her.

But instead of angry and scared, instead of the fake boredom or the sarcastic mask, he’s fascinated.

The expression lasts just a split second before he schools his face back down, but another shiver winds its way down Ambra’s back.

“That was just protection to make myself feel better,” she informs him, then turns on her heel and marches to the meager bathroom, slamming the door behind her in the way her handlers used to do when they wanted her unnerved.

The bathroom in the motorhome is tiny, with barely enough room for her to turn around, but the plumbing still works and dust covered towels still hang over the sink.

Ambra inspects her appearance in the dirty mirror. Gurlien was right, she still has a rather ghastly amount of human blood on her face, along with some of her own. The wound from the necromancer, where she had the audacity to slam a strip of raw death into Ambra’s face at the bar, still takes up the majority of Ambra’s cheek, with flaking, peeling skin.

She pokes at it. It’s not as painful anymore, but the skin around it is tight, like it’s stretched too far over her cheekbone.

And no matter how much she prods it, how much she concentrates, it doesn’t heal.

“Alright,” she mutters, rubbing at the edge, which doesn’t help. “Necromancer wounds don’t heal.”

In the cosmic balance of things, where most necromancers end up dead from demons while they’re still achild, it makes sense that they could be one of the few things that could hurt a demon.

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