Page 30 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Chloe opens her mouth to respond, but—

As fast as it begins, Chloe snaps back, and she’s back on the couch that’s more springs than not, and the Wight’s scribbling frantically on the sheet of magic with the polished stick.

Chloe opens her mouth to say something, but it’s dry, and she shivers, suddenly soaked with sweat.

“Here’s your shirt,” the Wight says absentmindedly, handing back the undershirt, still covered in an amount of blood. “Shower’s over there.”

After a less thanstellar shower where Chloe turns extra towels under the sink into extra clothing for herself, she emerges to find the Wight finishing writing on the pad and Stella sitting cross legged on the floor, peering at it.

“So here,” the Wight says, pushing the incomprehensible scribbles over to Chloe, “I got a good lock on him, you’ll know where he is—and where that thing he grabbed, I think it's bag shaped—is at all time.”

Chloe glances at the scribbles, then over at Stella.

“Ugh, humans,” the Wight mutters, then taps the wooden toothpick against it a few times, until a series of coordinates appear, along with a set of kilometers. “There. Can you read it now?”

At the very least, she can see he’s about fifty kilometers away, and she’ll have to touch up on her coordinate reading.

“That’s way closer than I thought,” Chloe replies numbly.

“It won’t last, demons go all over the place,” the Wight says grimly, then tears the paper from the strip of wild magic, folding it and handing it to Chloe. “Two coordinates will appear if he separates from the backpack, the pack will be the second one.”

“That’s…extraordinarily useful,” Chloe says, and her mouth’s still dry from the scrutiny of the demon, despite the lukewarm shower and the cup of stale water she took from the bathroom sink.

“It’s tied to your levels,” the Wight says, conversationally, like it’s something Chloe should know. “I watched you in yourcabin for over a year, I know you skate close to that line far too often.”

“What does that mean?” Chloe asks, and the Wight closes her eyes, like Chloe’s the exasperating one.

“It means if you don’t take care of yourself, the writing will fade,” the Wight says. “If that happens, get some sleep, get some food, it’ll come back.”

Chloe shoves the paper into her pocket. Fifty kilometers is way too close for her to not track it down, though…

Though the compass points in a different direction.

“I got to get it before the college finds my research again,” Chloe says, standing. “This entire area is crawling—”

“Your college isn’t going to exist for much longer,” the Wight says, and it stills Chloe, and that’s something new. “The Toronto base fell last month—”

“—yeah, that was a fun afternoon,” Chloe interjects.

“—and now the Ottawa one. The Paris catacombs got breached, the leadership council is in shambles, so many humans are getting killed by random things imprisoned for centuries,” the Wight says, her smile sharp.

It’s a nice thought.

“There’s not going to be a college to go back to,” Wight finishes. “Just a bunch of scrambling humans trying to get power.” And she stares, hard, at Chloe.

Chloe pauses, tries to understand what exactly she’s trying to communicate. “I’m not gonna be sad about that,” she says cautiously. “They locked me away, they tried to kill my friends, they’re not good people.”

From the doorway, Stella makes a soft noise.

The older Wight’s eyes flicker down the hall, then back. “Don’t let the spirit fox fall to them,” she commands. “They still can reverse their fall.”

9

The next morning, once dawn lightens the sky through the blowing snow, the Wight walks Chloe to another cabin hidden deep in the forest, leaving her with a mumbling human who doesn’t talk directly to her, just drives her silently and dumps her two cities away.

First thing Chloe does is walk herself into a cell phone store, break the automatic location tracking of the phone, then pushes the changes into place that Axel taught her—really nifty, by the way—and punching in Gurlien’s number into texts.

CHLOE (11:02 AM): Charter oak. I’m safe.

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