Page 110 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Killian only barely reacts, like he’s still stunned by something she can’t see, just half turning and getting his arms above her grip.

“You’re back!” the small voice—too small, too young—says, high pitched and excited and…happy? “Gracie and Johnathan moved away, and they said I can visit them and that they are going to California! And Mrs. J said that people can bring their pets to school on Friday, and—”

“Slow down?” Killian asks, and it must be the weary tone in his voice, but the child pulls away, eyes suddenly shuttering to caution.

“You changed bodies again,” the kid says, immediately all joy seeping out of her tone as she pulls further away, giving him a critical glance. “You changed bodies and…”

Her eyes, a normal human blue, trail over to Chloe, who’s sitting half slumped on the bed, black and red blood all over her and dust on top of that.

Chloe is not supposed to see her, that’s for sure, with how much Killian protected her last time, but Killian didn’t immediately teleport away when she burst into the room.

“Hi,” Chloe says warily.

Gently pulling away, Killian nods to Chloe. “Chloe, this is Seanna.”

There’s an odd weight to the trust, there, and Seanna blinks wildly at Killian, before letting her gaze sit on Chloe, less than friendly.

“I’m not telling you my last name,” she says, almost accusatory.

“That’s fair.”

“Did you make him change bodies?” the girl asks, but it’s not accusatory, not quite, more of a testing for answers. It shows an interesting understanding of demons, but an even different understanding of interpersonal relationships.

“It was an injury,” Killian says, shaking himself loose and running a hand through the curls, shaking out dust. “Had to take another one at short notice.”

The girl looks over to Chloe again, and she’s a young looking twelve-year-old, too young to know about demons and powers of destruction.

“It wasn’t her,” Killian says, almost exasperated.

“She’s the one that shot you?” the girl shoots back, too fast.

“Sorry,” Chloe says, the exhaustion bleeding into amusement. “But not this time.” Tentatively, she stretches out her legs, trying to evaluate how much she could stand in a shower to get all the grime off of her.

Probably.

“This time she helped me,” Killian says, then shoots Chloe a coded look, one that’s hilariously different in the new body but still readable.

A somewhat calculating expression crosses the girl’s face, and she tentatively reaches her hand out to Chloe.

Only for Killian to make a harsh noise in the back of his throat, and Seanna snatches her hand back.

“I wasn’t gonna do anything bad,” she protests, as Chloe raises an eyebrow.

So Chloe stands, only wobbling a bit, then nods to the shower, and the girl scowls at her until she awkwardly stumbles out of the room, closing the door behind her.

The shower does little to combat the overall feeling of grime, even when her skin is scrubbed free from all the blood and she’s disinfected her hands, but Chloe takes a few extra moments to comb her hair out of her face until the hurried whispers outside the door calm down.

Once again, she’s an intrusion. After all the small bits of affection, after the battle and the brutality and the tying of the magic, she’s an intrusion.

It hurts a bit more than it should.

But she takes a deep breath, squeezes her eyes shut, before opening the door back up.

It’s just Killian, all but slouched in the armchair by the bed, and even in the new body there are lines of exhaustion around his eyes.

He takes one glance at her, before he nods to the little table. “Eat.”

Somehow, there’s a box of pizza, steaming, and unless the kid knows how to order pizza, then Killian left while she was in the shower and stole it.

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