Page 39 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

With another deep breath that tastes like dust, Chloe grabs the edge of the spell, and it sparks up against her hand, vicious and angry, and before she can stop herself, she pulls.

With a sharp crack, the darkness in front of them peels apart, the beam of her penlight penetrating into the shadows, hitting the floor made of the same hewn stone as the one they’re currently standing on.

And deep in that darkness is a low rumble.

It’s barely on the edge of her hearing, sending shivers up her back and raising the hair on her arms into goosebumps. It’s not dissimilar to the far away rumble of traffic on a freeway, or a distant machinery barely chugging to life, except…

It’s wrong. Itfeelswrong.

It sinks into her teeth, jarring, and with every breath Chloe pulls more of it into her lungs and less air.

Chloe tilts her head towards the room, as if she can hear more clearly just by that iota of movement.

“Great,” Chloe whispers, all her instincts telling her to run.

Instead, she flicks the beam of light to and fro, and it lands on a rusted cage, the metal decayed and flaking apart.

A splotch of black blood seeps from underneath it, and inside…

Inside is…something.

It’s not a demon, at least not a demon in a body, and Chloe’s eyes desperately try to look anywhere but at the cage, at a hunched figure huddling in the corner. At the mouth pulled tight, at the glowing eyes watching her, reflecting the light from her hand.

Chloe swallows, then flicks the light to the other side of the room. There’s a splash of black blood, like a demon was struck and almost bled out—if demons could bleed out—and more traces of demon movement, an almost distinct pacing path of footsteps, the exact same length that she saw the other demon pace before.

The thing in the cage shifts again, snapping Chloe’s eyes back, and behind it, a flash of color catches her attention.

Her backpack. The research.

It’s tucked behind the cage, black blood smeared on it, like the person who had grabbed it had bloody hands, pulled tight against the cage.

Like whatever it is that is in the cage grabbed it and took it from him.

“Okay,” Chloe murmurs, forcing herself to do her basic security scan of the room. There’s no traps on the floor, no snares on the ceiling, nothing.

Besides the monster in the cage.

“Can you hear me?” Chloe asks, and the monster blinks at her, darkness covering the reflective eyes for a split second. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“That’s what your friend Killian said, too,” the monster—maybe demon?—rumbles in response, with a nod to Chloe’s hand. “I hurt him back.”

Chloe swings the light to the splash of black blood on the wall, her spine crawling. So the other demon has a name. Maybe.

“Well, I just want my backpack, nothing else,” Chloe replies, falsely keeping her voice light, glancing back at the gun.

So his trap is really involved, if he’s dangling the tool needed right in front of her.

“You’re trying to take the cage?” the thing without a body, the demon with ever shifting features, says. “Killian wanted my home. Said it belonged to someone before.”

As if accentuating the words, it rattles the cage, and flakes of rust peel off.

And underneath the rust, Chloe catches a glimpse of a demon trap, so similar to what Lyra had spray painted to protect herself and Delina before raising her from the dead, embedded into the metal itself.

The backpack is within the protections.

Ah. That’s why the other demon—maybe Killian—left it. And probably why he left the gun, so she could get it back for him.

It’s almost a letdown of a puzzle.

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