Page 126 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

“Impossible to tell,” he murmurs, and his eyes aren’t worried, aren’t panicked, but instead a more analytical light in them. “Can you still transform the door?”

Her grip, her innate ability to touch the magic around her and know things, hasn’t faded, not in the way that it does with drugs or sleep deprivation, but before she can open her mouth to answer, he tugs her in, placing a quick kiss against her lips, lighting fast.

“Of course you can,” he says, like it was a silly question for him to ask.

“One day, I want to know what you can tell,” Chloe says, and she should go back to inspect the door, figure out what else she can tell, but instead she just blinks up to Killian.

If she concentrates, she can ignore the human face, instead just see the handsome demon one underneath it.

“That’s easy,” Killian says, still gentle on her wrist. “When there’s a block put on magic, it’s obvious here.” With his other hand, he taps against her sternum. “When you’re tired, when you’re at burnout…it’s all visible there.”

“Okay, wild,” Chloe says, and he smirks at her. “So that’s how demons utterly ignore normal people?”

“Ignore is the wrong term,” he says, and they’re still standing so close. “But yes.”

She tries to suppress a smile, but like always, it worms its way out anyways. “Crazy,” she remarks, then glances back at the table, and if her head leans against his shoulder for a brief second, she’s not going to do anything about that. “I think I can open it without turning the entire thing into putty.”

She feels rather than hears a chuckle from him. “Of course you can.”

It’s strange to buffer her up so much, but she rests her hand against the cold steel anyways, avoiding the sparking door frame.

If the door frame is warded, more things will be, and somehow it makes her feel better. Somehow, if they took the pains to make it more difficult, then it’s not just a trap looking for easy pickings. Of course it could be worse, it could always be worse, but she’d rather go headfirst into something she can at least anticipate.

So she settles her mind into the locking mechanism she can sense.

The pins seem to rest on a complicated set of springs, one that doesn’t only release a deadbolt but also reaches down further into the door, clasping around a series of latches and blocks. It would be hell to pick, way harder than most vault doors, for all that it appears to be a completely normal keyhole. Would take way more strength, way more finesse, way longer tools than easily available. Sure, she could make them, but even then, it would take a few attempts to make sure she got the rake just right.

Or she can attempt to mess with the latches underneath the ward.

She pokes her power out at the latches, fussing with them a bit, elongating the teeth of metal they sit upon just enough to shift them, listening to the clicks. They’re a bit rusted, which means that water got in at some point, but they clack easily in the door.

Next to her, Killian raises an eyebrow.

She raises one back, then pokes a bit harder at the door. Testing, she raises one, and the locking mechanism closer to the key responds.

So if she turns the ones below, the linking pins would turn the top.

It’s a risk, not all locks do that, but carefully, ever so carefully, she manipulates the metal around the latches to raise, until allof them are in a row, listening to the tiny clicks of the pins lifting into place at the lock.

Success.

Slowly breathing out, she manipulates the metal latches until they turn, until the deadbolt slides rusty out of the frame, and a quick push of her fingertips swings the door open.

Before she can even ask, Killian twists his hand, and the space illuminates with bright magic.

And it’s…

Too small.

There’s a cage, the size you would fit a cat into, plastic and grungy and half melted, and a charred cot shoved into the corner. No running water, no electricity, no blankets in the bottom of the cage, nothing.

And the walls are entirely burnt, like something exploded in the small space.

Chloe moves to take a step forward, but Killian twists his finger in her belt loop, holding her back.

“Look,” he murmurs, lifting his other hand with the light

A charred skeleton lays crumpled in the corner, the bony arms huddled over the skull, the rest of the bones twisted among themselves.

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