Page 97 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“How have you not taken down all of their bases?” Killian asks, leaning casually against the wall, staring down at her as she ponders the control panel. “Go in, break the defenses, break everyone out, leave. You said you’ve been out for years.”

“What, with no backup?” Chloe asks, before keying the elevator down to them.

It’s a risk, of course, but no other stairs are available. The elevator whirs up, quiet in the stone, though Killian leans away from the wall as it does, twisting his face as if it’s distasteful.

“Did you just hide?” he asks, as the elevator beeps down to them. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Thanks,” Chloe mutters sarcastically, before the door whooshes open.

Revealing a demon trap painted onto the tile in ink.

For a split second, Killian recoils back, before getting himself under control.

Chloe strides into it, before breaking it with a jerk, pain ricocheting up her palm.

“Easy,” she says, and Killian flicks to the security camera in the elevator, cracking the glass in two, before edging his way intothe elevator, like he thinks the remnants of the trap will bite him, too.

His breathing hitches the moment the elevator doors slick shut, but instead of staring out at the door, he turns to her, sudden and intense.

“I saw these doors too many times,” he murmurs, a now-familiar hand coming up and cradling her chin. “I have no wish to see them again.”

Chloe wouldn’t want to see the doors to her prison, either. Would much rather stare into the face of someone so striking as Killian, as the double self in front of her.

The doors whoosh closed, and he scrambles to grab her hand, peering at it.

“I’m fine,” Chloe says.

“It hurt you,” he replies, deeply skeptical. “Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”

“Weird,” Chloe says, the elevator whirring upwards, her ears popping. “Lots of wards hurt.”

The look he gives her is withering, but she’s dealt with Ambra for a while now.

“This’ll just happen,” she says, then wriggles her fingers at him, showing him just how unharmed she is. “Lots of people like to put snaps in their wards.”

Her entire hand had been bleeding when they finished with Toronto, everything she touched turning slick with blood.

He briefly, ever so briefly, tightens his grip on her hand, before releasing her hand. “They shouldn’t.”

Considering all the protections she had seen around his house with the kid, she didn’t think he was one to talk.

There are silencing spells on the elevator, closing in on all the sound, so their words fall flat in the space, and no other peep makes its way in. There could be alarms going, the entire base could be mobilized, they would have no way of knowing, until…

Just as fast as she could breathe, they pass through the giant demon ward, and Killian sucks in a sudden inhale.

“I got it,” Chloe says, then snags the magic before it’s out of reach.

There’s no time for finesse in this one, no time for her to sus out the easiest, sneakiest way to dismantle it, so she rips it apart, vicious.

Wards like this live because they’re hard for normal humans to detect. Most magicians, if they don’t physically see them, have no idea of their existence.

But Chloe, with her training, and Chloe, brought back from the dead, they stand out as vivid as if carved from neon.

Pinpricks of pain dance across her fingertips, and single droplets of blood well up against the dust.

She’ll have to disinfect that later.

“Got it,” Chloe says, shaking out her hand, before glancing up at Killian.

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