Page 161 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

His fingers curl around it, and for a moment her heart lurches, at relinquishing control over something so critical, before he turns and…

Flickers.

But stays in place.

His lips part.

He can’t teleport.

She can tell in the jerk in his head, the twitch in his jaw, the way his shoulders tighten.

“Did you tell when they put that up?” he asks, and Chloe shakes her head. “It wasn’t in the hallway. I should’ve felt it when we walked into it.”

They didn’t trip a trap, that would’ve tickled at the back of Chloe’s mind.

“So when we want to leave,” Chloe starts, low, “when we find my friend and let all of these ones out, we need to get back there.”

“I didn’t try when we were in the wall,” he replies, with an equally low tone.

“Then back to the fire hallway.”

He cranes his head to look at the ceiling, eyes sharp, like he’s evaluating how much effort it would take to bring it all down on them, before gently placing the compass back in Chloe’s hand.

He was going to teleport down the hall to get closer, see what he can find, and the crystal clear nature of it is obvious.

Chloe turns back to the room of animals, and more than one pair of eyes reflect back at her, and if she hadn’t spent so much time with Killian it’d be truly creepy.

“At least the fire spells should’ve been burned out,” Chloe says, then strides towards the cages.

The first row is just dogs, all eyeing her with disinterest in cages far too small for her, but she flicks open the first metal gate, and ears perk up at her.

“This will cause chaos,” Killian warns, before he unhooks the lever on the next one. The dog inside—some curly haired white poodle type, cringes against the back wall of the cage, as far away as it can get.

“Don’t care,” Chloe says churlishly, opening the next one. None of the cages are locked, of course, and all the animals pull back from their motions.

Still, she walks down, cranking open cage after cage, and the quiet only increases.

Until she comes upon a padlocked cage.

She crouches down next to it, and inside a cat curls up in the furthest corner, it’s fur an odd shade of light blue.

So obviously something magical.

Chloe doesn’t have the time to pick the lock, not really, but it’s just one of those cheap Master Locks that can be broken with enough kinetic force, so she takes one of the rocks from her pocket and slams it down on the shackle.

It immediately pops open.

She flings it off the cage, skittering the metal across the tile floor, and somewhere deep inside the room, an animal cries out.

At this point, she can’t tell what type of animal.

The cat cringes away, then the moment Chloe steps back, it shoulders the cage door open the rest of the way and sprints down the hall towards the door.

For a split second, Killian and Chloe watch it disappear into the hole in the wall they created.

“The fire spells might’ve been left for them,” Killian says, which is worse.

“I hate this place,” Chloe says, and the words are torn from her strangely, like a puppet string from her throat. “I hate this place, I hate everything this college does, I hate everything.”

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