Page 24 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Chloe plunges among the trees, keeping herself low, deep into the smudged line between the snow and the blackberry brambles. The thorns, long ago stripped of any leaves that would soften them, catch on to her coat and her hair around her throat.

Unconsciously, she lifts a hand to her neck. Her little orange handkerchief is gone too. She’s had it for ages.

“Motherfucker,” Chloe whispers. Demon took that, too.

Or, more likely, it fell off somewhere in their battle, somewhere between her shooting the gun and getting his blood all over herself and him knocking her out for the second time in two hours.

For some reason, it hurts more than the gun. She can replace the gun, she can’t replace a piece of cloth she’s had since she broke out.

Combat Boots swings a flashlight—a real one, not an alchemied one—around the trees, and Chloe ducks her head even further. She can be sentimental about items later.

“Where’d she go?” the first voice says, almost high pitched. “What the hell was that, where’d she go?”

“She can’t vanish, don’t get panicky,” Combat Boots replies. “Make something useful and search for her.”

Chloe hunches herself into the bramble, sending a tendril of her magic to change the color of the coat, blending in with the branches.

The flashlight sweeps over her, sweeps over the dead branches, focusing right where the old dead bird lay, the one that Delina experimented with only a few short months ago.

Chloe feels like she’s aged years since then.

“Something weird over here,” Combat Boots says, and Chloe squeezes her eyes. At least it’s not at her, at least it’s not focusing on her, she can still go elsewhere once their attention is shifted.

The first voice still has the loops of magic in her hands, vivid even behind Chloe’s eyelids.

She didn’t used to be so fucking sensitive to see magic such as that. Before it was just vague awareness of the abilities not…intimate awareness that the person in front of her, however young and inexperienced she may be, wanted to take her in. Throw her behind bars, imprison her once more.

Fucking demon, dropping her in the most inconvenient place.

The flashlight swings back to the other side of the cabin, nearer to where Chloe would’ve had to climb in through the window. Chloe grits out a breath between her teeth, then slowly, as slowly as she can stand to, starts to creep further into the forest.

It’s less than ideal. It’s so far less than ideal that it hurts her mind to even think about, but she softens the soles of her shoes to the dead branches on the ground, stepping ever so slowly in the direction of the woods.

If she has to call Gurlien and Ambra so soon after failing, after losing her research, she might as well get to someplace safe to do so.

Hearing something, the flashlights slice back through the woods towards her, and she ducks again.

This time, the two people know enough to whisper, and Chloe strains to overhear them, her heart pounding into her throat.

If she had her research, she could use the explosion spells she has already written out, deep in the bag. Rip the little piece of paper and leave it behind, waiting for them to come after her.

Again, though, murder.

The first voice loops more magic out into the woods, a snare, and Chloe’s breath hitches. She can’t, not without her research, not without her friend, she can’t doom herself to more prison, she can’t…

A crunch echoes, all the way across the clearing, and the flashlights swing over towards the driveway instead.

Chloe freezes, the air cool against her unprotected skin, chapping at her lips, as the jeep lights up, all alarms splitting the air, wailing into the cold and blowing snow.

The strip of magic, intended to capture her, flies harmlessly over her head as the spellweaver twists, turning towards the jeep.

The horn wails, too loud to be normal, and there’s the barest hint of a silhouette in the driver's seat, someone turning it on and—

Before she can fully comprehend what’s happening, a small hand closes over her wrist, pulling Chloe upright.

And staring into the face of the child Wight. The one from Toronto. The one next to Ambra in the stasis chambers.

Sure, her hair is a bit better brushed, but the horrified sunken eyes still dominate her face, and her cheeks are still more hollow than not.

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