Page 163 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

And in front of them…

Seated comfortably in a lab chair is the man with blue eyes, one hand scruffing the spirit fox and the other lazily holding a leash.

Chloe jerks forward, held back only by Killian’s grip.

Immediately, Killian slams up a shield. His power’s so thick Chloe can barely breathe, barely think, it spirals up her lungs and her throat and—

The spirit fox blinks up at her, its eyes beady, and it jerks, too.

“You’re about an hour behind what I thought you’d be,” the man says, almost idle, and he has his nails digging into the skin on the spirit fox’s neck like some goddamn supervillain. “I could have sworn you’d be here earlier.”

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It makes no sense.

It makes no sense, and the sheer illogical nature of it stabs through Chloe’s fog, shaking her out of the panic.

Behind the man with the sinister blue eyes and the cruel grip on her friend, a crude leash around his neck, is the demon they didn’t kill in Minnesota.

He meets Chloe’s eyes, a world of pain behind his gaze.

Chloe’s seen that before, and by the inhale from Killian, so has he.

“Were you just waiting here?” Killian grits out, and the man doesn’t answer, but the demon inclines his head into a nod.

“Conner, is the other demon speaking?” the man asks, only tilting his head towards the demon. “I named him Connor, he doesn’t remember his name.”

“Yes,” the demon says, toneless.

“Good,” the man says, and the spirit fox jerks in his hands again, its tail sparking up. He ignores it, ignores the obvious motions of distress.

“You’re hurting her,” Chloe blurts out, and the spirit fox jerks towards her, at the sound of her voice.

Oh god, her friend recognizes the sound of her voice.

“What, this?” The man raises the spirit fox by the scruffy, and her legs scrabble at the air wildly. “I don’t care about this.”

Behind him, the demon meets Chloe’s eyes once more, some sort of silent plea. Some sort of attempt to communicate, attempt to send some information to her, before he stares hard at Killian.

Killian shifts, as if he gets the message.

“Is that your name?” Killian asks the demon, and he shrugs, pain bleeding into indifference.

It’s strange to see the demon in the body like that, after only seeing it so terrified and drenched in blood before. Now he wears a shirt as if it’s a straight jacket and pants that fit poorly, and he shifts in them, like the clothing cuts into him as cleanly as the scalpels did.

And they had let him go, instead of offering more help, and here he was, now in captivity, now controlled once more, now just as unable to move as Ambra once was.

No wonder Killian had seen it as a mercy to try to kill him.

“This isn’t what I’m here for,” the man continues, loving the sound of his own voice, and Chloe could use that. Use the inclination to monologue, use it to distract, to set something in action. “This is just bait.”

Slowly, Chloe forces herself to exhale, forces herself to relax, to grasp at the battery in her pocket.

Then she smiles at him, as sunny as she can force it. “I don’t understand.”

The man pauses, his lips quirking downward. “What?”

“I don’t understand,” Chloe says, stepping out from behind Killian, even though his hand twitches out towards her. “Why the bait?”

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