Page 124 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Chloe shifts, and he narrows his eyes at her.

“You’re not going to like this,” he warns. “It’s bordering on cruel.”

Like the experimentation and the prison cells before weren’t.

“I’ll like opening a vault,” Chloe says, and that gets a twitch of a smile as she digs out her lock picks, casting a critical eye at the single lock on the front door. “How long do you think this’ll take me?

It even looks like a standard four pin doorknob.

“Under a minute,” Killian says, almost smug.

“That’s insultingly unspecific,” she says, and she doesn’t even have to crouch down to pick it, barely paying any attention before it turns easily in her palm. “Easily under fifteen seconds, am I right?”

“And without any magic,” Killian says, and there’s a soft smile on his face, almost catching her off guard as she swings the door open.

And faces another, even more run down door, the wood splintering around the locking system, a dusty remnant of a decayed ward spray painted on the uneven surface.

“Is it just three doors back-to-back?” Chloe asks, poking at the decayed ward.

It’s no more magical than the rocks of the cliff behind her.

If she wanted to, if she really wanted to, she could just tap against the rusted metal of the lock and transform it into something else, something that would swing open the door, but Killian shifts behind her, like his impatience almost physically pains him.

So instead, she just pushes into the wood, and it creaks with the barest hint of pressure, before crumbling in her hand.

“That’s…” Killian starts, then falls silent, frustratingly so. “Why would this place exist?”

“Good question,” Chloe murmurs, the hair on the back of her neck prickling, as she kicks the door open, the lock system rendered useless. “I’ve seen high schools with more security than this.”

He hmms in the back of his throat, his hand coming down to rest on the curve in the small of her back, and this time she shivers at his touch. “This couldn’t have been more than a halfway spot,” he whispers, twisting something resembling power into his hand on her. “Some place in between travel, before the next one.”

When Chloe had been transported between locations, she had been handcuffed, blindfolded, and given a sedative that wasn’t strong enough to knock her out, just render her useless, and they always dumped her on a hotel bed when they did stop.

The spirit fox would’ve required even less work, when basically a large bespelled pet carrier could work in a pinch.

That’s how they met, as she remembers with a pang. With her drugged out of her mind, handcuffed unceremoniously on a bed, and an all-metal cage all but dropped on a cheap motel quilt next to her. She couldn’t do much, just blink over, and was immediately entranced by the sheen of magic on the fur on the creature next to her, at the scared intelligence in the eyes that stared back inky black. The fox had curled in the corner ofthe cage, as far away from their captors as possible, which was so close to Chloe that if she had her hands at her disposal she would’ve been able to touch the tip of her tail.

Even then, power flickers from its tail, nestling into the quilt and skittering across the pillow towards Chloe.

Chloe couldn’t react, couldn’t flinch away or embrace it, but it still tingled along her skin and felt like home.

“That makes even less sense,” Chloe says, clearing her throat of the memories.

“A staging area?” Killian suggests. “A place for a few days before something more permanent?”

With a final kick from her boot, she clears the second door, and it’s a few steps to, finally, a large sheet of metal with a single keyhole and no discernible opening method.

“Finally,” Chloe says, tossing him a smile in hopes that he wouldn’t have seen her momentary wallow, but he raises a carefully manicured eyebrow down at her. “You know, a challenge.”

“I’d be okay with a few less challenges,” he says dryly, but his hand remains on the curve of her hip, like her very presence is soothing.

“Finally, something interesting,” she shoots back, and he makes a face at her. “Something that doesn’t make me think it’s a trap.”

“There is nobody I’d rather be trapped with, at this point,” Killian says, too gravely, startling in its sincerity. “Any trap you’re in, you’d blast right out.”

“If only that was true for my entire life,” Chloe says, then steps away from him, his hand falling away, so she can kneel and peer at the keyhole.

It’s not a traditional one, that’s for sure, and when she pokes her finger around it, the entire area tingles with warning.

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