Page 99 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

And Chloe’s broken out of so many things.

“Can you teleport to something in line of sight?” she asks, and this time, her voice is steady. No squeaking.

He doesn’t respond, just tilting his head back towards her.

So the twists, staring at the back wall, the one facing away from the door, still keeping an arm awkwardly behind her to keep a hand on him.

Who knows if the demon bubble will kill her if she lets go.

Or what pain she would face.

Exhaling past that, she places her free palm onto the slick metal of the elevator wall. Condensation drips across her hand, colder than the air, but she squeezes her eyes shut.

And focuses.

It’s a normal metal elevator, made of steel and aluminum, an easy enough metal to change.

The floor jerks beneath them, and Killian’s warm hand tightens around her arm again.

“Chloe…” he starts, before the door splits open in front of him.

With a flinch of his hand, a shield—warping and red—flashes around them, before something strikes him, rocking him back.

And Chloe’s not a combat mage.

Her hand still against the metal wall, she shoves, fluxing it immediately into putty. It wobbles out, before tearing apart, revealing a perfectly normal elevator shaft, the sort found in office buildings around the country.

Another blast of something, so vicious it knocks Killian against Chloe, and she pulls him towards the back of the elevator, her heart in her throat, before a splash of black blood splatters against the wall in front of her.

Chloe stumbles, her breath almost squeaking away from her, stumbling towards the open wall.

There’s a gasp, a fragment of a motion, before Killian twists, wrapping his arms around her, shoving her into the elevator shaft.

Her feet meet the air, hanging in perfect crystalline stasis for one moment, before—

With another jerk,she clatters to a floor, the tile slick, Killian falling heavy over her, and her ears ring.

They’re somewhere else, the lights bright and blinding, and Chloe’s ears ring.

She scrambles up from underneath him, and he slumps to the floor.

“Killian?” She gasps, and her voice is tinny in the space. “Killian, are you…”

His head jerks up, his eyes flashing red at her, before…

He…

Separates.

The body, the human body, flops empty to the floor, still half draped on her, the eyes open and unseeing and a perfectly normal human brown.

And Killian…

24

Chloe’s now seen a demon without a dead body, separated from it, but Killian crouches, looming over her, eyes sunken.

The fluorescent light streams over him.

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