Page 19 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

And somewhere, beyond the completely irrational fear in his eyes, something close to calculation enters his gaze.

Chloe doesn’t know which one is worse.

He straightens, removing his hand, and grains of magic fall from his motions.

“Where’d you get this?” This time, his voice is controlled, and it’s definitely worse, as panic seeps into Chloe’s stomach.

She scrabbles to roll the scroll up, but between one moment and the next he gently lifts her hand out and teleports her across the room, behind the still standing shield, then teleports himself back over to her research.

“Hey!” Chloe manages out, rushing forward before the hard wall of the shield stops her, cold and yet burning at the same time.

She recoils back from the magic.

He watches her, intent, for a few seconds, before turning towards the scroll, smoothing it out against the steel table. The sand begins to fall back into place, settling back into the familiar motions.

“There’s someone else tracking it, too,” the demon murmurs. “Someone who is quite a few steps ahead of me.”

“Not me,” Chloe says, though her heart pounds. “I just started.”

He slates his eyes down to her scrolls. “I think not.”

She can’t deny that.

“You’ve been at this a while,” he murmurs, tracing a finger between the magic now streaming from the cuff to the paper, translating it. “Beautiful work.”

Chloe’s heart drops. “It’s tied to me, you can’t read it,” she blurts out, and gets a flicker of a disinterested glance her way. “It’ll be useless to you.”

“I don’t think useless is the right word,” he says.

“If the entire college hadn’t been able to translate it away from me, neither will you,” Chloe says, as fast as she can. “Only I can use it, it won’t work for you.”

Ignoring her, he rests the other cuff against the paper, and it sparks anew, a different aspect of the magic, narrowing it down. Distance and resources and…

“Hmm,” he says, and she pushes her hand against the warping shield, but it does nothing. “Well, Chloe the completely normal alchemist, this is definitely helpful.” Deliberate, he rolls the scroll up, properly so, fitting it in the backpack, and his brows raise when his fingers trail on the other scrolls.

All the other scrolls she wrote, some years old, some within the last month as she consolidated everything down, as she dug herself deep into the research once more. The scrolls she risked her life for in Toronto, on the way to get Maison’s mother.

Scrolls she dreamt of, before they broke back in.

“You can’t,” she says, and her voice squeaks.

“Easy,” he murmurs. “I absolutely can.”

He zips up the backpack, such a mundane motion against the barely contained power she can see.

“Why would you want this?” Chloe asks, desperate. “She’s my friend, she saved my life.”

“Power,” he replies simply. “Same thing everyone else who searches for her wants.”

He loops the backpack on his arm, and before Chloe can think twice, she snaps the gun out of its holster.

The demon in front of her stills, raising a brow, and immediately, the fear slams back into his expression.

“Put it down,” Chloe says, and she has no way of knowing if the gun goes through demon shields, though everything would suggest that it does. “I will…I can shoot you.”

A calculation over his eyes, and he shifts the bag and—

Chloe squeezes her eyes shut and fires.

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