Page 59 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

There’s a crack in the axel, one of the tires leans funny to the left, and the trunk will never open again, the mechanism crushed into place.

All in all, a beater of a car.

Killian watches her like he can sense what she’s doing, and it’s thoroughly unnerving, his shoulders stiff and unmoving. “You ready?”

She throws a nod at him, as subtly as she can in the street. There are a few people in the shops, visible from where she stands, a few dead trees along the sidewalk, and a post office down the street has a mail truck idling outside, the postman busily loading in Christmas packages.

Killian stands tall, and suddenly it’s like everything in him…unwinds. All the tension, all the holding himself together, everything, just unspools into relaxation.

And he grips his hand out, grabbing onto something that Chloe can’t quite see, and the tree…

Detonates.

It cracks, as loud as a gunshot, splitting down the middle as if it’s made of stone, then shattering into pieces, shredding a power line and plunging the lights off in all the stores.

Shards of bark fly everywhere, and the post man yells, chunks of wood crashing down onto the hood of the mail truck, smashing through the metal and the rubber.

People spill out of the shops, rushing towards the post office, like they could help, their backs all to Chloe.

And with that wielding of power, that sudden unleashing, Killian inhales, like it’s a relief. Like he’s breathing in his own self, breathing in all that makes him…him.

She’s known him for such little time and yet it’s like a lightning strike. Where all the disparate pieces she’s observed suddenly coalesce into one crystal clear picture of him standing here. His stance wide, his shoulders back and strong, his face alight.

Chloe’s mouth runs dry, her heart beating with the same sudden want for that wholeness of self. Of the beautiful power and completeness that he just achieved, where his demon face and his human face are as one.

It’s breathtaking in the way human men rarely impact Chloe.

Chloe stares, open mouthed, before Killian turns back to her, expectant.

Right.

She quickly pops the lock out of the car, turning it to rubber in her hands, then swoops in to sit into the driver's seat. Thespark plugs gone, the transmission siphoned away, there’s not much she can do to improve the health of the car, but—

But they only need it to run for 2 hours. She can do that, sustain something like that.

Pushing power through the steering wheel, she twists the engine, separating it from the spark plugs, from everything else it needs, until it turns over, chugging to life.

She wrestles with it, as if she can make it better by sheer force of will, before she twists the need to run just off of air, change the very nature of how it processes materials, burn a little colder…

It won’t be a smooth ride, it won’t be an easy one, but she can make it work.

A drop of sweat trickles down her back, and she sheds her coat, plopping her backpack in the back seat right as Killian appears in the passenger's seat, not even bothering with the door.

Out the cracked windshield, people congregate around the tree, pulling off pieces from the truck. Someone throws their arm around the mailman, obviously shaken, and the truck smolders. A power line crackles against the concrete, a live wire, and in the distance, Chloe can hear sirens.

“That took you just about six minutes,” Killian says smoothly, and she scowls at him. “I don’t think this car will run if anyone but you is in it.”

“I wasn’t exactly working with good materials,” she says, then shifts the car into drive, pulling out of the parking space.

The bad tire pulls, but she jolts a bit of power into it, transforming it into something approaching functional, and to her surprise, Killian barks out a laugh.

“What?” she asks, and now drinking the hot coffee is a hell of a lot less interesting after she’s worked up a sweat, but she sets the egg muffin on her lap, ready to eat it, then turns theratty car down the first available street, away from any possible spectators.

“Most of the alchemists I’ve met are way more preoccupied with aesthetics than functionality,” he says, leaning back in the seat, and there’s the same relaxation in his shoulders. “You just turned a tire into a slightly less flat tire and didn’t change how it looked. It’s amusing.”

“Thanks,” Chloe responds, but takes a sip of the coffee anyways.

“I once saw an alchemist turn a cart into solid gold before he made it functional,” Killian continues, and Chloe rolls her eyes. “I’m not sure I ever saw any of them just fix something.”

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