Chapter 16

16

T he next day, after using up the last of her meager travel hair conditioner and thoroughly breaking her travel comb, Delina informs everyone else that she's absolutely going to drive to the nearest big box store and get supplies.

Of course, this gets met with scoffing on Gurlien's part, some truly dire suggestions from Chloe on what she can use instead, and flat-out denial from Maison, but Delina does what she does best and ignores all of that and grabs her car keys instead.

"Wait," Chloe blurts out, dashing back into her room and coming back with a notebook and a pen, of all things. "If you're actually going—"

"Not alone," Maison grumbles.

"—then actually make a supply run."

Delina holds out her hand for the book, and Chloe hands it to her, and the list is full to the brim of obscure ingredients and herbs and components.

"You actually think Target is going to have one of these?"

"If you go to the Target past Birmingham, there's the tractor supply store and the gardening store," Gurlien replies idly, because the two of them have actually been here a while and, apparently, have all the local town stores memorized.

Chance the cat is curled up next to him on the couch, the tip of his tail flicking, eying them all.

Maison grabs the list out of Delina's hands. "You are not sending her on a run to get ingredients for a tomb break," he says, deeply skeptical. "Are there even any tombs here for you to break into?"

"Surprisingly, yes, lots of bunkers, that sort of thing," Gurlien drawls, then he sits up straight. "You're not going with her to a major city alone."

"Ugh," Delina says, because now this seems like it's become a thing. "Sort yourselves out, I'm gonna get the car started."

Outside, sun streams down muted through the tree branches, and her breath puffs up around her face, ethereal. Birds chirp in the forest, like they've been waiting this entire time for the sun to come out from behind the clouds, and an idle breeze dances through Delina's disastrous attempts at a hair style.

Spruce needles litter the floor of the dirt driveway, fragrant and damp, and even though it's almost winter, green underbrush still shines around the trees and twists among the deadened blackberry canes. A squirrel dashes between trees, almost too fast for her eye to track.

And the dead bird still overshadows all of it.

More bugs crawl over its bones, and the sharp chill of the air seeps deeper into it, until all that is there is the cold.

"Maybe we should burn it." Maison steps outside the plastic door, his jacket tossed over his shoulder. "If it bothers you so much, giving it a proper sendoff might work."

"And then we can see how far along into that process you can sense it," Gurlien says, following after him, and Chloe's carrying her backpack. "Good data."

"And does that normally affect Necromancers?" Delina asks, to which all three shrug. "Ugh."

Burning it doesn't sound better, except maybe to ward off the pervasive chill. Something to stop the eternal cold that is imbedded in the bones.

"You're gonna need to be careful around hospitals," Chloe says, shooing the cat back away from the door and then locking the door behind them. "And any graveyards bigger than the one the other day."

The entire trip down to the nearest target takes an hour of driving through the mountains, and Delina wants to claw her own face off at the constant squabbling between Gurlien and Chloe.

It's not that they're not getting along, but that everything they do and everything they say immediately gets a comment from the other, spiraling down into tangents and counter arguments and examples half explained from their background until Delina's…exhausted.

There's a reason why she's usually insular. Usually an introvert.

Chloe splits the moment they park back behind the store, heading straight for the garden store.

"Remember to actually make sure the seeds are accredited this time!" Gurlien calls after her, and Chloe waves back without even looking at them.

Maison's still scowling, standing close to Delina, like he's half afraid something's going to jump out at him and that by being close enough, he could somehow ward off everything bad.

It's something he used to do when they traveled, though she had thought he got over it.

But the best she can do is ignore it, and she strides quickly into the familiar store.

Given enough time and inclination, she could absolutely spend hours wandering the store, smelling all the candles and browsing the clothes, but she instead heads immediately towards the hair care supplies with both men trailing after her.

It crawls underneath her skin, at the constant monitoring, but there's the ever-pervasive sensation that if she tried to get rid of them, she couldn't.

"So every time I made you come with me to the store, were you always just there to make sure I didn't get shot or something?" Delina asks Maison, raising an eyebrow at him.

They hadn't talked much the last day, not directly at least, and it doesn't help.

"Not every time," Maison replies, almost plaintively. "Just when there were known threats."

"I'd hate to see those security briefs," Gurlien says, and thankfully he got a basket too and seems to be filling it with actually normal things. "What, ‘mother of target pissed off Shaman group, keep an eye out for people with staffs chanting ominously?'"

"Not funny," Maison sighs.

It's a little funny.

"Or ‘Frisse attempted to destroy the world again, keep an eye out for FBI agents,' was it that sort of thing?" If Delina hadn't spent the last few days with him, she would swear that Gurlien is actively trying to bait Maison, but no, he just talks like that. "Frisse bought property in France and we don't know why, don't let any Frenchmen near the target?"

Delina snorts.

"The France thing wasn't a problem," Maison reassures her, and she quick flashes over to evaluate her life in the fact that he didn't reassure her over the other ones and she has to find out in the hair care aisle. "You were never in any danger with that one."

"You're kidding me," Delina says, grabbing her favorite shampoo and conditioner in their actual sizes. "You two are absolutely just messing with me now, you joined forces with the sole purpose of getting me to believe the most ridiculous things about my mother with no actual reason."

Maison smiles, suddenly, with a brightness she hasn't seen since the letter, and her knees almost go weak at the shock of it. "If you want ridiculous stories, I have ridiculous stories."

"He's just trying to charm you, don't fall for it," Gurlien says, and the smile is gone from Maison's face in a flash. "If you truly wanted ridiculous stories, you can find them in the basement."

Delina hesitates at the lost smile and at the reveal of information. "When we get back, both of you decide on the funniest, most ridiculous story, and let me know."

Both the men still, wide eyed.

"Why?" Gurlien says, recovering first.

"Because she's probably only heard bad things about her mother so far, I'm going to guess," Maison says, and it's absolutely correct. "It's not like this entire thing has been fun for you."

Which is even more true, but she doesn't want to give him that, so she moves on to adding actual skin care products to her cart before pushing it towards the clothing.

"Her mother was awful, though," Gurlien continues, honestly confused. "I don't see why we should sugar coat anything."

"Which you've made clear," Delina says, grabbing a few shirts blindly and thinking fondly of her closet back in Arizona. "But if I was under threat by mysterious Frenchmen—"

"—You weren't," Maison interrupts.

"—then I at least want to know the funny things."

They follow her in silence, as they get the items they need, and Delina refuses to think of this place as permanent, despite all the things she's purchasing to make it so, and Maison adds a few familiar items of his own. His favorite brand of pretzels, his preferred deodorant, a razor that won't mark up his skin. All things she has memorized in the file in her mind for him, all things she would buy if she had the need to get something for him.

It hurts, just a bit. To do something so normal as shop through a Target with him, and have everything about their relationship be so completely ruined.

In her purse, his phone beeps, and all three of them still in the junk food aisle. Beyond the daily trips into the town for the check-in, there had been no response to his work phone.

Gurlien straightens, staring Maison down, like he could fight him in the same place they were discussing cheez-its.

"Okay," Delina says, half placating and half annoyed. "I'll just…"

HUMAN RESOURCE DIRECTOR (3:21 PM): trg spt grp 1 rpt.

"Oh that's interesting," Maison says, though his voice is anything but happy.

"Are they really saying there's an active threat right now?" Gurlien asks, crowding around them because of course he can read that jumble of text.

"Group 1 is around the Prescott condo," Maison informs him. "All the condos on the block and the bar at the corner."

"Someone's threatening Lyzzards?" Delina asks, glancing back at the words that still make no sense.

"No, someone they have marked as a danger to you showed up in that block," Maison says, squinting down. "If we were there, it'd be important, but we're…not."

"What are the chances it's an automated report?" Gurlien asks, deeply skeptical.

"Slim," Maison says. "Type out ‘still in Washington with target.'"

She still bristles at being called target, but does anyways, and his hand comes up to the middle of her back, the same motion he used to do to soothe her.

She throws him a glance, flat, and his hand falls away, his face pinched.

"How often did you get these?" Gurlien asks, shattering the moment to pieces. "Are they really that common?"

"At least once every six months," Maison replies, which isn't a number she wanted. "When her mother was dealing with the Terese project it was once a week."

Terese was apparently the demon in the live body, Delina knows that by now, but that doesn't make it better.

"Did you ever see her?" Gurlien asks.

"Terese? Twice." Maison's lips tug down into a frown, a clear indicator he doesn't want to talk about it. "Not from close, and she wasn't coherent."

"Surprised she didn't try to off Delina, you wouldn't have been able to do much to stop that," Gurlien says. "No offense."

"Thanks," Delina responds, the want for shopping waning drastically. "I'm gonna have to learn how to protect myself, the way this is going."

Maison's lips tighten at that, like she's honestly supposed to believe that he's just going to stick around forever just to protect her, before he looks away.

"We should get back to the cabin," he says, instead of anything else. "If they think there's a threat to Delina, then we should be somewhere defensible."

Delina's not going to leave without paying, but Maison's scowling the entire time, bouncing on the balls of his feet, like he does when they've stayed too long at a party.

Or, apparently, when he's on the lookout for threats. Which was all the time, if she had to judge it, and the fact that so many moments of the two of them had him distracted because of nebulous dangers leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

It'd be easier if he isn't here, and the thought pops into her mind unbidden as she watches the clerk bag their items. That if he had just washed his hands of her, then all these complicated and awful emotions would be further away.

But now he's just an arm's length away, waiting at the end of the checkout line, his arms crossed and his eyes sharp, an ever-present reminder that he only dated her and lived with her for the job.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't," Maison says, suddenly. "What, that's your thinking face, you're thinking of something frustrating."

"That just looks like her normal face," Gurlien chimes in, which doesn't help.

"Thanks," Delina throws back, picking up as many bags as she can before Maison takes them all from her, like in addition to defending herself she's incapable of carrying a bevy of Target bags.

Gurlien just shrugs. "Congrats, this is the nearest place of civilization to your cabin."

For a dingy target next to a tractor store and a garden shop, it's not exactly inspiring hope, though the air is crisp and fresh as they step back outside to begin the annoying trek back to the car.

"Chloe loves it, but she grew up rural," Gurlien continues. "One gas station and one fast food sort of town in the middle of cornfields, so this is downright cosmopolitan."

It's not that she lived in a big city or anything, but at least it has more than this. More variety.

"Prescott wasn't bad," Maison says, in a way of conversation. "Anything we couldn't get local, there was always Sedona or Flagstaff or Phoenix. It had its charm."

Gurlien squints at him. "The smallest city you've lived in was Atlanta."

"And now Prescott," Maison insists, and it's such a nonsensical argument. "We had a brewery and a meadery and all the weird whisky bars you could ever want."

"There's a brewery half an hour away, if you want to go sometime," Gurlien says, and it's just a breath away from normal. "They do a good Irish Red and a decent Cream Stout."

Maison actually looks interested, before he shrugs. "Maybe in a few days, after this threat."

"There's also the dive bar in Sequim, it's awful but it is cheap." Gurlien ticks it off his fingers. "And there's the family diner that has a surprisingly respectable variety of wines, when Chloe and I have people visit—which does happen, by the way—we usually go there. Chloe takes dates there, that sort of thing."

It's true, Delina hasn't really thought hard about their social life outside of the tiny little cabin, but it's logical they have one.

"I like a decent wine," Delina says, once again approaching the sensation of normalcy, of not being entirely ripped away from everything she knows. "I like this idea."

Maison shoots her a glance, his dimple on his chin.

Right before everything goes to shit.

They swing around the building to the view of the car, and Chloe's standing there, her backpack clutched to her chest, with a strange man right next to her, a hand gripping the back of her neck, holding her there.

Immediately, Maison drops the bags, swinging Delina behind him, her shoes skidding on the still-damp pavement. The bags burst open, products rolling and clattering around.

The stranger is tall, clearly in his mid-fifties, with grey-blond hair and annoyingly blue eyes, and Delina abruptly shudders when his gaze glances off of her.

Something about him is wrong.

Very wrong.

On the ground beneath him is a neatly drawn circle, similar to the one spray painted in the graveyard.

After a split second, Gurlien strides forward, his shoulders back.

"Korhonen, hello," he calls, and Maison tenses, his hand tight on her arm. "Thought you'd never stop by."

The man doesn't look at Gurlien, not even a glance, instead focusing on Maison, unnaturally still.

"It's been what, a year?" Gurlien continues, and by the whites of his eyes, he's bluffing. "How's your family, how's the job?"

Maison takes a step back, still holding Delina behind him, forcing her back as well.

"It's been interesting up here, you know," Gurlien says, still chatting, "Never thought the College would take an interest in us up here."

Ah. The College.

"Delina, you might need to run," Maison whispers, barely audible over Gurlien's chatter, his back straight. "If I tell you to run, you need to run."

The man—Korhonen, apparently—tilts his head at Delina, and her skin crawls again, before he idly waves his free hand at Gurlien.

As if hit by an invisible brick, Gurlien reels back, and even from this far away she can feel pain blossoming across the side of his head. He staggers, keeping his feet under him, before another wave of the hand crashes against his stomach and Gurlien doubles over.

All in complete silence, all still keeping a hand on Chloe.

"So, you failed," this man speaks, and his voice is slightly accented, some Northern European country that Delina can't place. Norway or Finland or something. "And instead of calling in, you just followed her up here, to this…town. Frederick."

Chloe makes a small sound, barely over a squeak, but again, the man pays her no attention.

Maison takes another step back, and his shoulders ache from the tension.

"And you found…what, she has some talent?" Korhonen says. "Found some dusty research papers of her mother's with two delinquents?" He gestures again, a welcoming gesture, and Maison backs up another step, the hand tightening on her arm.

And all at once, the gold blooms in her vision again, and Delina gasps, before Maison taps his fingers against her arm. A signal.

The stranger in front of them has his hands tightly tied in with two strips of magic, tight and angry, one of them pressing into the back of Chloe's neck.

"Is it worth it?" he asks. "Throwing away a promising career and the contact with your mother just for some…girl?"

Maison inhales, but doesn't move.

"So what are you?" he directs at Delina, and the magic coils around his fingers, sparks shivering down the length. "What did your mother do to you?"

"We don't know," Delina lies baldly, and Chloe's eyes are wide. "We haven't figured it out yet, not really."

The man thinks for a few moments, obviously evaluating. "Pity."

"Let her go," Delina says, and Maison backs her up another step, practiced. "I can chat with you, you don't need to hurt anyone."

"Frederick?" he asks. "What is she?"

Maison opens his mouth, then closes it. "We don't know."

"No ideas?" the man asks, and Maison shakes his head. "No educated guesses on the bomb her mother left in the world?"

And Delina's mind races.

Gurlien's still huddled on the blacktop, pain across his face and his stomach, and Chloe practically vibrates with the need to be anywhere else. His grip on her hurts, viscerally, in a way Delina can't quite get her mind to touch.

The man himself…is blank. Not a black hole like Gurlien is, not vivid and bright like Maison, but something more akin to an oil slick, all light slithering off of him until she can perceive nothing.

"Delina, stop," Maison breathes, and she does, shuttling her mind to the surroundings, to the vivid gold elsewhere. "She's not a bomb, she's completely safe."

Completely safe sounds like a misnomer, but she's not going to chime in now.

"That's not for you to judge," Korhonen says, then gestures Delina forward, his hands still full of magic. "That was an interesting scan. Come over here, let me see."

There's no way Delina's going to do that, not with his grip on Chloe or Gurlien still doubled over, and Maison's hand on her is downright terrified, but he doesn't need to know that.

"Can you let Chloe go?" she asks, and her voice doesn't quiver. "Let her step away?"

The man releases Chloe, who scrabbles over to Gurlien, the pain vivid on the back of her neck, burning, as her knees hit the damp pavement next to Gurlien, but still clutching her bag.

Her bag with all her supplies.

Delina forces herself to not look, to not give it away. "I want reassurances that you're not going to hurt them," she says, and Maison breathes deep, like he recognizes her tone of voice. Like he recognizes her bluffing. "And don't do anything to Maison's mom."

"His name's not Maison, that's a lie," he says, before inclining his head. "That can be arranged."

Out of the corner of her eye, Chloe slowly, deliberately slowly, unzips the backpack, every motion slight to not draw attention.

The magic coils tighter in his fists, and the man pays it no attention, like he doesn't know she can tell.

The creepily blue eyes bore into her, barely visible from over Maison's shoulder, and all at once it's like she's drenched in water, cold climbing over her skin, shuddering through her body.

"Don't scan her like that," Maison blurts out, skirting her further back behind him. "She doesn't know—"

His hands tightening over the magic is the only warning, before it snaps out towards Delina, the air cracking in its wake.

Maison jerks his hand forward, and the magic crackles to the ground, useless, sparks shimmering through the air.

"You found one," the man snarls, all pretenses of civility gone, abrupt, "you can't let her live free, you can't."

"Delina," Maison starts, before the man twists the magic again, crackling it against whatever barrier Maison puts in place. "You need to run."

Delina backs up, half turning before the strip of magic snaps at her, shattering through whatever barrier.

Maison grabs her, a spark cracking between them, yanking her back, and the spike of magic just grazes by her shoulder, ripping into the rain jacket and sending a long line of fire down her arm.

She stumbles, her own pain blocking out everyone else's for one brief second, and she gets one crystal clear moment of seeing everything.

One crystal clear moment, where Korhonen twists his hands around more magic, a bored expression on his face. Where Chloe draws her hand out of the backpack, a dagger in her fist, balanced for a throw. Where blood wells up against her cut, immediate and vivid red, redder than she would have ever thought. Where the pavement is damp and the sun is shining and there's nobody else around and birds trill in the background and Maison's in front of her and the line of his shoulders is long and —

Korhonen snaps the magic over to her, lancing towards her, too fast, too fast for her to move, too fast for anyone, too fast for her to breathe, too fast for her to evade.

Maison grips her arm, and jerks himself in front of her.

The magic lances through his chest, bright, crackling blinding against her awareness, and blood splashes against her.

He doesn't make a sound, doesn't say a thing, just slumps back towards her, heavy, and she scrambles to keep him upright, her hands catching on his jacket, fumbling.

Chloe screams, high pitched and loud, and Delina catches a glimpse of a dagger in flight, striking Korhonen deep near the hip, before he twists away and disappears, the dagger clattering to the ground.

And all at once, all the sound slams back into Delina, and she staggers, her hands slick with blood already, and—

"Here, get him down," Gurlien is saying, and his hands help her lower Maison onto the damp pavement, and Maison's face is pale, too pale, his eyes wide open and panicked.

"Here, put pressure," Chloe says, pressing a sweatshirt into the wound on Maison's chest.

Maison gasps at the contact, like he can't quite take a breath, can't get enough air. There's pain, somewhere in all of it, almost drowned out by the fear and horror and terror.

Delina scrabbles for the sweatshirt, holding it against the blood, against the actual wound in Maison, but there's blood bubbling up in Maison's mouth, so acrid Delina can almost taste it.

He's scared. She can feel it in the throb of her shoulder and the wheeze coming from his breath and brilliant fire of pain in his chest.

"Gurlien, help here," Chloe instructs, and Gurlien does, leveraging his weight onto the sweatshirt.

There's too much blood, and a distant part of Delina refuses to latch onto that, and her hands shake. He can't be this injured, he can't, he was just joking about her mother and Frenchmen and grabbing the bags from her.

Maison's grey eyes lock on hers, his hand curling up around her wrist, a small sound wrenching from his throat.

There's blood on his hand, too, slick against her skin.

He gasps, again, and not enough oxygen is getting to his brain, electrical signals going haywire, sparking against her awareness like static.

"It's okay, I got you," Delina babbles, as Chloe unrolls bandages from her bag, moving fast. "It'll be okay, you'll be okay, it's okay—"

And then, with his hand holding onto her, he dies.

It punches through Delina, wave after wave of contradictory sensations, knocking the breath out of her.

But his brain stills, his nerves cooling and settling to stillness, and his eyes are still open.

He's vivid against her awareness, unmoving, his blood not pumping, his heart quiet, all crystal clear and bright and…and…and…

Dead.

"Shit," Chloe says, scrabbling at her bag. "Shit shit shit."

Dead.

"Fuck, no pulse," Gurlien is saying, his fingers against Maison's pale skin, and there's blood smeared there, too. "Call an ambulance, make a defibrillator, something."

Dead.

Some deep part of her knows that a defibrillator wouldn't do a thing. That it might shock his heart, a few beats might happen, but it would stop again, and it would happen all over again.

The wound is too big, stretching through his lungs, grazing past an artery in his heart, tearing a ragged hole in it, the blood still leaking.

She can't see it, she can't see anything but the crimson and black blood splashed all over his front and the terror in his still open eyes and his paling skin, but still, she knows. The injury is too big, would need too much repair, too much effort.

It pulls at the back of her stomach, at the wrongness, at the brightness and the itch in her hands and whispers that she could change this.

That she could fix this.

Not seeing, she scrambles until she can press her hand against his cheek, and…and lets whatever that is in her snap into place.

Her ears pop, and again, no sound reaches her, like she's back at the cabin in the bio-trap, but gripping his cheek she pushes the blood back into place, snapping the artery closed and smooth again, purging the liquid starting to pool in his lungs.

His body jerks like it's fighting her, but she just leans in more. Like putting her body weight against him could make this work, like she could actually do something.

"No, stop." It's Gurlien, but his voice is far away. "Shit, stop."

There's a chip of bone off of one of his ribs, she sockets that back into place. Smoothes over the skin, though blood still smears over it, soaking into his clothes.

Then, with one last bit of something inside of her, she clenches her hand and sends a spark of electricity into his heart.

And for a beat, nothing happens.

Her stomach drops, and she stares down at his still open eyes, her head swimming.

Then all at once, he sits bolt upright, gasping, coughing, hacking up blood, and her hand falls away from him.

"Fuck," Gurlien says, scrambling away from them.

Maison clutches at his throat, then at his chest, then looks up in horror to Delina.

"Hi," Delina says, and her own voice wavers, her head light for a few giddy moments, before she blacks out.