Page 95 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

Ambra stills, her footsteps stopping in the low mist.

Stella gazes out at Ambra, half numb, and she’s still so thin, so fragile, like Ambra could reach out a single finger and break her.

Ambra thought that many times during stasis. That there was no way a little wight could be so important to be locked away next to her, that she was too small, too young, too breakable.

Ambra doesn’t quite have the life cycle of the Wights memorized, but this one is far from adulthood.

The woman’s arms tighten around Stella, and with a jolt, Ambra realizes their faces match. That there’s some familial relation, some genetic kinship.

Ambra opens her mouth to say something, and Stella’s face crumples, before the older Wight whisks her away, both of them vanishing.

Gurlien glances back at her, where she pauses on thesidewalk, and she just shakes her head and continues after him.

She shifts, her skin prickling, before Gurlien steps towards the single gas station. Still, Ambra glances around, at the tall trees and the mist vanishing up into the clouds.

“I miss this,” she murmurs, and Gurlien glances back at her. “The motorhome. I liked being there. Seeing this outside.”

Another small smile. “This area is pretty unparalleled in beauty.”

While it’s a true sentence, it still rings incomplete.

“Feels more like home.”

Home is still an odd sensation, sitting deep in her chest, and it must come from the human body. Demons want their comfortable places, want their hidey-holes, but beyond that…the location matters much less than most would think.

But the air is crisp, smells correct, and the cold humidity dances along Ambra’s scalp like it’s welcoming her.

Gurlien’s eyes dip to her lips, sending a shock down her back, before back up to her, as if it never happened.

“I’ll run it by Delina, but I know her mother held many properties in the area,” he starts, and the cool air puffs around his face. “If one doesn’t have a demon trap, she’ll probably let you set it up as a hiding spot.” He shrugs, almost embarrassed. “Delina now has more property than she could ever hope to manage and more money than entirely normal, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

Ambra’s absolutely not gonna ask the necromancer for anything.

“I’ve lived in this area for the last year,” he says, almost wistful, as he tilts his head towards the cloud-laden sky. “Before, I had only lived in big cities. Toronto, Atlanta. It’s different in a small town.”

She could believe that, especially with humanities crushing need to be around others.

“Nobody cared who I was, nobody cared that I had failed so spectacularly, nobody cared that I had lost all ability. I was just another person living out in the woods.”

The bar Ambra tracked them down to is about thirty miles away, deeper into the mountains than along the coast, and it must’ve been near there.

“Sorry about wrecking the bar,” she murmurs. “I was just very happy to be out of stasis. And to see a necromancer.”

He squints at her, but it’s good natured.

“I’m not going to go after her,” Ambra reassures. “Your Half Demon would kill me, and he’d be able to.”

“Good to know,” he replies sarcastically.

Ambra follows him, until…

Turning the corner to the gas station, in front of a cheery convenience store, is the remnants of a demon bubble.

A demon bubble gone horribly, horribly wrong.

She stops dead in her tracks, and Gurlien turns towards her at the scrape of her shoes.

“What?” he asks, suspicious, and he seems perfectly fine, now, after the greasy food. Like the malaise of physical awfulness has completely left him. “It’s just a Buggees.”

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