Page 87 of The Girl Who Only Died Once

Killian settles back in the chair, crossing his arms, as if he’s daring Alette to say something further.

Alette glances, a little bit obviously, to Chloe’s chin, then to her hip, right where Killian gripped her the night before, before releasing her so suddenly.

“I’m not getting involved,” Alette says delicately, which sounds like someone who’s meddling would say, “but text Ambra if you need advice.”

“I always need advice,” Chloe says, then smiles sunnily at her, which always seemed to frustrate Alette.

If Alette was raised from the dead, she can probably see all the same traces of demon that Chloe can.

Chloe just smiles a bit wider at her, aiming to unnerve more than anything else, and it works, Alette swallowing and glancing away.

“Are you going to be safe?” Alette asks. “Going in there?”

“Not at all!” Chloe says, then gives her two thumbs up.

21

The moment they’re back in the hotel room, Killian tilts his head at Chloe, like he’s evaluating her.

“Go ahead and say it,” Chloe says, munching on a muffin she swiped from the buffet. “Judge away, she’s not the funnest person to be around.”

“Of course not, she chose to tie herself to Zoel,” Killian says, but he’s standing there, stock still, inhuman. “You know Alerin’s son works for your college, right?”

“Oh yeah, he used to,” Chloe says, plopping herself at the meager hotel desk and spreading out the whisper thin papers across it. “Not by choice, they held his mother captive, that’s the whole reason we took down the Toronto base.”

He just watches her.

“You know about Dr. Frisse, the mad scientist behind the Terese project, yeah?” Chloe says, and he nods. “Alette’s her niece.”

This gets some motion, and he sighs, settling himself to sit on the armchair, still watching her. “Of course Zoel would get her on his side as soon as possible.”

“Near as I can tell, they actually like each other,” Chloe says, smoothing out the papers. Faint pencil marks trace along the architecture, even lines that mean that Maison absolutely had a blast writing them up. “But yeah, if Ma…Frederick gave me these, he wants them absolutely taken down. He hated working for them. So much.”

Another long moment of silence, as Chloe takes in the protections, the runes, the traps, before Killian sighs again.

“How the hell did I not hear about you before,” he complains. “Somehow, you are involved with so many major players, you know the heir apparent to the Frisse knowledge, and you’re friends with the college’s pet Half Demon.”

“Oh, he’d hate being called that,” Chloe says, then peers at the base.

It’s four stories, two of them underground, which is standard for any type of processing base—it’s a far lot easier to keep people captive if their cage is underground. There are eight standard cells, eight stasis—Ambra must’ve been kept there—a cubicle level and a diagnostic level.

Most of the protections are to nullify non-human entities, to stop them from giving off their normal power. Stopping teleportation, stopping free movement, stopping extra senses. One to sever Wights from the natural energies of the land—that’s vicious—and one to make them visible to the naked, unaltered eye. There’s traps to keep Demons in place, of course, tied with all sorts of anti-unravel spells.

Chloe’s hand twitches when she sees them. Those are gonna hurt.

The diagnostic level is the most protected, the wards written in Ambra’s jerky scripts instead of Maison’s. Invasive wards, meant to dissect, to control bleeding, to stop the heart but not kill the brain, wards to peel the skin off but not result in death.Wards to read brain activity underneath all of them, to see how the synapse fire and the nerves react to all of them.

Killian’s still watching her, unblinking, and if she didn’t know better, she would say that he’s being moody.

“You passed through here?” Chloe murmurs, keeping an eye on him surreptitiously. “Nasty stuff.”

“They’ve added to it, apparently,” he drawls, even though he hadn’t been the one hunched over it. “There were only four stasis chambers when I was there four years ago.”

“Were you held in one?” Chloe asks, still pretending to keep her focus on the papers.

“Not there,” he replies, sour.

It’s another hint to his background, but before Chloe can dive into it, her phone bings with a text.

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