Page 136 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Clever.

Chloe huffs out anyways, glancing around the giant space.

There are fragments of anti-demon wards everywhere, deep and astringent, all decayed to pointlessness.

Some of them are the type that breaks when the caster dies.

In normal situations, on a normal day with all the time in the world and no stress, she would pick through them. Evaluate them, see what she can co-opt and learn from them. There’s a difference between breaking traps and learning from them, and this…this would be such an opportunity to learn.

Carefully picking around the shattered edges, Chloe makes her way to the righted desk, swinging her backpack off her shoulder, unzipping it with the sort of mind-numbing practiceof someone who’s had to do it too much and pulling out her research.

Of course, it can’t help her with this, but it gnaws at her as she spreads the scroll across the desk.

Her scrolls put the next place for the spirit fox in Southern Washington, at one of the small bases tucked in between the hub that is Seattle and the city of Portland, hidden deep in the farmlands that spread there once you leave the mountains.

Chloe could’ve driven to it in a few hours on any day of the last year.

Hell, she drove past it once to go shopping at a specialty metals store, just a few miles away, and she never knew that the college had any presence there.

It burns in the back of her throat, acrid.

She could’ve been so much further along, if she only had her original research back then.

The scroll buzzes under her hands, like it too is aware of all the broken magic in the room, so Chloe twitches the scrolls up in her hands—her heart leaping.

Too much of the magic is still remnants here. Too much of it is still active, and the moment it sensed the whisper thin scroll it started to buzz towards it.

Quick, she rolls it back up, shoving it into the inert backpack.

Killian may think that all the magic is dead, may think that everything in this room is beyond any function—any maybe it is, for a demon—but oh, Chloe’s going to have to be careful.

“Fuck,” she mutters.

The compass had posted due west, but when she pulls it from her pocket now it swings wildly left and right.

Which means she’s pretty much on the exact opposite side of the world.

Interesting.

Unwilling to bring out any other page of research, she reaches back into her backpack, grabbing her little travel kit hairspray and her roll of plain butcher paper.

Too many people scoff at plain butcher paper, but it’s one of the better casting and transporting materials Chloe’s found.

She heard from Alette that the late Dr. Frisse, the mad scientist who caused so much heartbreak in all their lives, would cast on a thin surface of magic and wrap it up as if it’s cloth for transport, but Chloe can’t quite comprehend doing that on any scale.

Keeping a careful eye on the still too-alive magic, she rolls out the butcher paper on the desk, and it doesn’t fully react, just buzzing on the outside of it.

She never would’ve noticed that before.

And, somehow, with that idle thought, everything crashes into her.

She never would’ve noticed it before. Never would’ve noticed the extra magic flitting around. She never would’ve had a thought for any malignant magic around—because she wouldn’t have been able to see it. She had been, her entire life, fully unaware of all of the broken parts of the universe, and it’s all because she died.

She died.

Halfway between transforming the bottle of hairspray into the simplest of spray paint, it slips from her hand, clattering against the wooden desk.

The wooden desk she would’ve never looked twice at.

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