Page 141 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“Demon bullshit,” he confirms mildly. “It’ll take some finagling, but it’s possible.”

Delina would rejoice. The cabin is the first thing she ever got from her mother, the first tangible thing that her mother ever gave her, besides the will and the book with it. The first proof that she wasn’t just a normal person, the first idea that she had a mother who loved her, not just one who abandoned her.

And Chloe…

Chloe would have her home back.

Killian glances back at her again, checking in, the handsome demon face more prominent than the human.

“If you can figure out how, then yeah,” Chloe says numbly. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

“I don’t stay here, not often,” he admits, “but it’s nice when I have to do something particularly…intense.”

Chloe shifts back on the rock, quirking an eyebrow. With the warmth, they’re far less hostile to lean against, almost comfortable. “Intense?”

“I’m gonna draw in some threats,” he remarks simply. “Figure out who’s targeting me and then force their hands.”

He shakes out the extra roll of butcher's paper, her trap still glistening on it.

“The one back at the house was the failsafe, wasn’t it?” Chloe says, sitting forward despite herself. “Just in case they came back.”

He smiles at her and it’s a little bloodthirsty.

She smiles back.

Chloe transformsa plastic sheet from her back into a camping pad, lounging on the bench-like rock, as Killian does…something…with the trap. Something complicated, changing it and twisting it around his shields, until it is barely recognizable from the original spray paint.

While he does so, she unrolls her scrolls, now far more stable, layering her maps with the magic traces, settling on the location. Her compass shows the area pointing roughly north east, closer to where the actual ley line would start pooling around the mountain range.

Her maps, however, have their issues. The sands of magic vibrate around, skittering across the page, no matter how specific she gets with the location.

“I’m not sure if my scan was bad or if something else is wrong here,” she muses, as the compass swings wildly around.

“I’d put money on the line obscuring issues,” Killian says, in that deep remote voice of his when he’s concentrating. “She’ll be around here, somewhere in this state.”

Of course she is.

Of course, after so long and everything, it would all come down to Washington state. The place she hid for the last year, the place with the Wights, with Dr. Frisse’s compound, all of it.

It’s a puzzle, a nice little distraction from all the leftover emotions still fizzing around in her blood, before her phone beeps.

GURLIEN (5:24 PM): You’re in Washington, are you coming home?

DELINA (5:26 PM): Give us the nearest city, you’re close enough we could drive to you!

Chloe cradles her phone, the pang strong in her heart at that.

Killian sighs, just a whisper of air between them, and trails a hand on her wrist, gentle. As if reassuring himself she’s there.

“Do you need me to take you there?” he asks, his voice deep, like it’s pulling out of him against his will. “I will take you home. Someplace…safe. If you need me to.”

And it’s tempting. Sorely tempting, to just run back home. Give up on the quest, hide away in the compound with the runes that track everything and the too prominent surveillance until all the fears inside of her quelled. Until whatever unrest the college has spilled out, whatever war is being waged, finishes.

Leaving the spirit fox to suffer in the midst.

Leaving Killian alone. Alone to all his fear, to all his weaknesses against traps. Leave him to see if he will succeed or fail, to see if he can make it back to his adopted daughter at the end of the day.

“No,” Chloe says, thumbing a quick response back. “I’m staying with you.”

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