Page 146 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

She didn’t know how demons could sweat.

“You’re headed to the Auburn prison?” the man asks, casual, like it’s not exactly what they’re planning. “Where they’re keeping the fox? That is where your clues—whatever they are—are sending you?”

Chloe stills.

The fox could be within less than fifty miles away. Would have been less than fifty miles away from the cabin for who knows how long.

And she never knew.

“How would you know that?” Killian asks, and Chloe immediately parrots his words.

The man grins, and finally, all pretension melts off, and there’s something inhuman underneath. Something so completely foreign.

“The same way I know you broke the traps in Minnesota by changing the rocks in the ground,” he says, voice lilting up. “Same way I know you’re protecting a little girl up in Canada.”

And in those words, something in Killian snaps. Some sort of struggle against the blanket, some sort of leashing of himself, and—

The world cracks around them, the stones shattering underneath their feet, pitching the man forward. Gold blooms around them, vicious and sudden.

Chloe’s ears ring, dust billowing up around them, and Killian grips her tight. There’s a moment of weightlessness, a moment of her hair floating untethered around her face, where she feels like she may never come down, she may be there forever, she may be twisting and spiraling and clawing and—

Killian’s arm around her middle, they slam into the ground.

36

Some ground. The grass is damp and warm, sun touched, and mud smears against Chloe’s face as Killian rolls away from her and heaves.

The world tilts, and Chloe can just turn on her back, staring up at a startling blue sky, not a cloud in sight, stars behind her eyes and a pounding in her head.

There’s no sound.

There’s no sound, not even when she flops her arm to the mud. No squelch, no thud, nothing.

Her heart pounds anew.

“Killian?” she whispers, and her voice isn’t even meeting her ears. “Killian, are you—”

“Here,” he says, startlingly clear. “Here, I…” He coughs, rough, and she turns her head to stare at him.

He’s hunched over the grass, gasping for breath, his chest shaking with the effort.

This, she can hear.

“What…” Chloe starts, and she can’t hear her voice, only feel the air leaving her lips, only feel the vibrations in her throat. She lifts a hand, snaps her fingers.

Nothing.

Gurlien had spoken about something similar when he had stood in the middle of a raging ley line as it broke. That it took him two days before he could hear anything, that everyone at the hospital thought it was a concussion.

That he spoke to a Wight and didn’t know anything was wrong until Alette spoke to him.

Immediately, Chloe grips the battery in her fist, shaking her hand and flashing it over to a penlight. It cooperates, and another vise of fear relaxes in her chest.

Killian hacks out a cough, and absent of any other noise, it’s startling. Each ragged inhale, each catch in his throat, everything.

“Killian?” Chloe asks, pushing herself up from the muck, and his shoulders shudder. “What’s going on, what…”

There’s no trees, no stones, just damp grass and a never-ending blue sky. Wind bends the stalks, teases Chloe’s hair out of place, but no sound. The hilt of the gun digs into her side, awkwardly still in the holster.

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