Page 70 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Chloe blinks up at him, and she knows she must look odd, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, but nobody pays her attention. Slowly, she digs her phone out of her pocket, holding it against her ear. “That’s useful to know. That’s plannable.” Numbly, she punches in an alarm for her phone for seven hours and fifty-eight minutes. “Let's get a bit of a warning next time.”

His eyebrows briefly, ever so briefly, flash upwards.

“That way we don’t have to rely on internal clocks?” Chloe supplies. “Get out ahead, in case either of us are sleeping?”

“You think of the most human solution to our problems,” he comments, and she’s not quite sure if that’s an insult or not. “My internal clock is impeccable.”

Chloe’s heard Lyra tease Melekai about something similar with timing, that he could keep track of things down to the seconds.

Chloe cradles the phone against her chin. “Though that can’t be a good use of power when compared to the reward,” she says, still watching him. “That’s a lot to do just for the off chance.”

“There’s a reason they ward their bases,” Killian says grimly, and there are lines around the eyes of the human face, matched by the stress of the demon one.

“And we’re sure there’s not a better path to follow?” Chloe murmurs into her phone, and with the simple prop nobody pays her any attention. “Another way to find my friend?”

This gets his attention. “You’re the one with the research.”

The answer to that is, if there had been another way to track it, Chloe would’ve found it in the last five years. Would have already done this entire thing without needing to wait for her research to be broken out of prison.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and the lines around his eyes relax, ever so slightly, before he gestures for her to continue ahead.

Everything’s a bad idea.

“If there had been a way to track this easily, I would have found it a month and a half ago,” Killian says, and it’s almost a glimpse into his process that she throws him a glance as she walks. “They have made this deliberately difficult.”

“Wonder why,” Chloe says dryly, then cradles the phone against her shoulder as she pushes her way into the first restaurant, a homey little diner with plastic chairs and scratched linoleum. A few families sit along one side, so Chloe skirts to the other edge of the room, tucking herself into a booth.

Killian follows her in, sitting next to her instead of across, forcing her deeper against the wall.

If Chloe hadn’t seen a month of Ambra almost unconsciously corralling Gurlien in how they sit, she’d think it’s a lot weirder, but it’s amusing how much of the body language and mannerisms translate across the different demons.

“They horde power,” Killian says, as if it’s not the most obvious answer, the same time a waitress approaches.

“Hey, honey, just you?” she says, before Killian continues.

“—and anything that could cause someone else to gain more power must be controlled, even if they can’t do anything with it,” he says, ignoring as the waitress slips a menu past him to Chloe’s hands.

“Yeah,” Chloe answers the waitress.

“And they realized ages ago that demons could use this, that humans could use, this, and that Wights—”

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the waitress says, their voices overlapping. “We have milkshakes and a soda fountain and a coffee bar.”

“And Wights would be dangerous, actually dangerous, if they chose to, with this,” Killian continues, too fast, and Chloe presses her knee against his, something, to shut him up.

His mouth clicks shut.

“Just water, please,” Chloe says with a smile, and the waitress returns it before stepping away, allowing Chloe to pick the phone back up. “Oh my god, when you talk when I’m being talked to I can’t keep track.”

He scowls at her. “I don’t have to obsess myself with human niceties,” he says loftily, and Chloe’s heard the same thing from Ambra several times.

“I do,” Chloe says, then flips open the menu, scanning it, but her entire body is aware of the demon sitting right next to her, practically thrumming with power. “I need to get a headset for this phone.”

“You mean you can’t just alchemy it together?”

She shoots him a glance, but it’s curiosity, not derision, in his tone.

“They’re a bit complicated to make,” she answers, deliberately slowing her tone. “Electronics aren’t my strong suite.”

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