Chapter 21

21

T he 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.

ALETTE (10:02 AM): That is absolutely not enough information for either Maison or Zoel.

CHLOE (10:02 AM): I figured.

ALETTE (10:03 AM): Zoel doesn’t like any of this. He thinks you should run away while you still can.

Chloe glances up at Killian, who’s staring straight at her, a scowl on his face.

“What is the spellweaver telling you?” he asks dryly.

“Normal stuff,” Chloe replies. “She and I don’t get along terribly well, she hates my best friend.”

His eyebrow raises. “This Gurlien? Or Ambra?”

“Gurlien,” Chloe replies, unsettled.

He shrugs, loose, but still scowls at her as her phone beeps again.

This time, it’s Melekai, and Chloe raises an eyebrow that he bothered texting her at all.

MEL (10:05 AM): Tell him if he comes near me or mine, I will kill him.

Chloe sighs, heavy, then rubs her forehead.

CHLOE (10:06 AM): Alette got him to swear.

“Who’s that?” Killian asks, and he’s still sitting across the room, there’s no way he would know that it’s not the same person texting her. “Are you getting threatened?”

“Just my friends making sure I know that they think you’re sketchy,” Chloe replies, before setting her phone upside down on the desk and ignoring the follow up text that came through. “What do you think, diagnostic or stasis levels for the spirit fox?”

He narrows his eyes at her, then deliberately looks out the window, like she insulted him.

“Come on, you’re a demon who kidnapped me and you’re looking for a power source, they’re gonna think you’re dangerous,” Chloe says, almost exasperated. “That’s not something personal, that’s common sense. I got real worried when Ambra kidnapped Gurlien.”

This drags his attention back, and Chloe snaps her mouth shut.

“Really,” he says, deeply skeptical. “Is she the one with red hair?”

She is, but Chloe doesn’t say anything.

“Skinny white boy with glasses and yellow hair? The one who fried himself in a ley line? That’s who you’ve been referring to this entire time?”

“…yes,” Chloe says gingerly.

He glowers at her, then sighs. “Yes, I know your friend ‘Ambra,’ apparently. No, she is not in any danger from me, I owe her a favor.” This is said with a deep grudging, like he can’t believe his luck is so bad again. “Figures.”

“…good?” Chloe says, then shakes her head, to clear her thoughts. “Well, she’s a friend, I’ve been texting her like this entire time, I’m not gonna stop.”

“Of course you’re not,” he says, resigned. “Of course it’s them.”

Her heart pounding for no reason whatsoever, Chloe bends back over the floor print and he continues to stare hard at her.

“What I’m trying to figure out,” he says, slow, voice deep as if he’s controlling it tightly, “is why they would allow you to die.”

“I really don’t think you want the answer for that,” Chloe grumbles, running a fingernail around the line of a wall, traced with care. If they’re accurate, the wards should be weak there, not extending the entire way through the wall.

It’s where most people fail in their defenses. They never take into account how easy it is to blast through walls when the door is locked and warded.

“I think you don’t know what I want,” Killian says, after a long moment of her ignoring him.

“Okay, I think that’s a cryptic as fuck sentence and I don’t like that,” Chloe says, finally sitting back. “I knew I needed to be able to see demons and other creatures to find my friend, I knew that people brought back by Necromancers can see them easily, I knew two Necromancers. Do the math and stop bothering me about it.”

For a split second he doesn’t react, before his chin spasms and the expression of terror crosses his face, quickly smoothed away.

She holds his eye, willing herself to pour all personality into that connection, all force of will, how much it matters to her.

And all of the frustration, all of the difficulties with Gurlien being mad at her and the soft judgment of the Wights of her actions, all the discomfort and the lack of sleep.

He doesn’t glance away, but stands, stalking close to her, and she refuses to be cowed, craning her neck to keep the eye contact, until he looms over her, both his hands braced on the desk around her, leaving her trapped.

Of course she’s trapped.

The silence between them stretches on, twisting and warping into something thick, something weighty, until Chloe can do nothing but taste it.

“And I’m not going to apologize,” she says, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll do anything to get my friend to safety. Anything.”

“They didn’t warn you?” he whispers back, barely on the edge of hearing. “All those friends, all those connections, and they didn’t warn you away from this?”

There’s something in his tone, something she can’t parse, so she bares her teeth at him in a smile, like how Ambra does when she wants to unsettle or when Mel does when trying to get someone to back off.

“They did. I did it anyways.”

His eyes narrow, ever so minutely, like he’s seeing her once more for the first time. Like she’s once more a stranger to him, once more an enigma.

Before his face splits into a grin, wide, fitting well over the human skin and the demonic presence underneath.

She represses a startle back.

“So, Chloe, the perfectly normal alchemist, who dove underground to save her friend, who willingly faced death, who has befriended now multiple demons…you’re starting to finally make sense,” he says, voice low, but a smile coats his words, like he’s finding glee in this discussion. “How many of them, if you asked, would stop what they’re doing and run to help you?”

Chloe opens her mouth, but he beats her to it.

“We already proved that Zoel would send his girlfriend across the country just to deliver some papers,” he says. “Ambra—she was the one who teleported you in, when we first met, she must’ve been—would help the moment you let her.”

“She doesn’t want to come in the no teleportation zone,” Chloe interjects, weak.

He waves his hand. “And you have a Necromancer friend who’s willing to bring you back on something not critical. Something you volunteered for.” The smug smile is back on his face. “Necromancers are in danger each time they use their power, and this one was willing to go along with your scheme.”

Chloe crosses her arms, keeping her chin up to match his eye contact, and the little wrinkles around his human eyes crinkle up, the demon face beneath it matching.

“Do you have a point?”

The hand on the chair lifts, draping over the back of her neck, and she freezes, like he cast a spell on her.

“Yes,” he says, low and amused. “I think I finally figured you out.”

Chloe shivers a bit, underneath his warm hand. Which is weird, that his hand would be so lifelike, considering he’s in a dead body.

But the physical touch is the same as it would’ve been if anyone else touches her.

“And?” she challenges, after the momentary lapse in the conversation. “You can’t just say that with that lead up.”

He grins at her, sudden and charming, and she just squints further.

“No, that’s not the end of the conversation,” Chloe protests. “That’s not—”

“If you tear down those wards without issue—” he nods back at the maps in front of her, and her neck prickles at the reminder, “then I’ll tell you.”

“Asshole,” Chloe remarks, and again, he grins, even though her heart pounds. “That’s a coward's way out.”

“Sure,” he says, shrugging and casually removing his hand from the back of her neck, leaving her suddenly colder. “I never proclaimed myself to be brave.”

Chloe blinks at that, because nobody without bravery would be attempting what they’re doing, but she turns back to the maps, her mind racing.

“Chances they tracked Alette to us?” she murmurs, desperately trying to focus, but her skin prickles.

“Medium,” he replies, voice matching hers. “She’s a known player but they can’t officially tie anything back to her after the spellweaver who lost his powers. Your Gurlien.”

The fact that he knows them, somehow, and she doesn’t know how, buzzes at the back of her head, but she blinks through it, staring at the onion paper in front of her.

Ambra had written some approximations of descriptions of the wards, of the impressions she got when passing through. Of feeling doused with water, unable to breathe, everything pressing against her skin.

Maison wrote less, just terse words with definitions. Focusing. Shattering. De-powering. The sort of definitions that came from their studies, not from experiences.

Behind her, Killian drapes himself across the back of her chair, leaning against her shoulders and peering at the outlines, a smug sort of confidence in the set of his jaw.

He definitely knows more than she does.

It takes her an additional hour with a looming demon at her back and more floors than she thought, but she eventually puzzles out the fastest way in and then the best way in.

“Do you want easiest, fastest, closest to target, or least risk?” she asks, and it’s been a bit since she talked and her voice croaks.

“You’ll need food first,” he replies idly.

“That’s not the point,” she says, then sighs, stretching her shoulders. “There are the closest to the diagnostic tables, there’s the way with the least amount of traps and protections, there’s the long way that’ll take us a hell of a lot longer but the least risk, and then there’s just the…” She gestures at him. “Then I take down one ward and we blast our way in.”

He grins at her, still smug, and it drives her nuts.

“I think blasting will happen one way or another,” he replies, drifting over to the bed where her research lays, digging through her backpack.

She straightens. “Hey.”

But he’s unrolling her tracking scroll, the one they had back in the house with the child, spreading it across the cameo comforter, before digging into his pocket, pulling out a simple coin.

She squints at it, and he tosses it to her.

“It’s not your compass,” he says, still way more casual than he has been throughout the entire thing. “But tie it to your research. Make it roll towards the clue if dropped.”

It’s a perfectly featureless coin, like someone had rubbed off the relief of a golden dollar, smoothed it down.

Her neck prickles again.

“It’ll only tie to what you currently know, yes?” he asks, and she nods. “Then that way, if you’re stuck somewhere, I can use that.”

“Oh, you are not leaving me behind,” Chloe protests, and he has the temerity to roll his eyes. “Absolutely not.”

“I can’t even get in there without you,” he reminds her. “And further study would be useless without you. Don’t be sensitive.”

He’s the one who’s been acting odd.

“If we get separated, that way I can still succeed on this part,” he says.

“You swore to Alette, doesn’t that mean some things to demons?” she asks, and everything in her is screaming that this is different, that this is a trap she’s walking into.

“Of course,” he says idly, “then tie it to you.”

“What?”

“Tie it to you. That way, we get separated, I have to get you first.” He gives her a smug smile, like she fell directly into his machinations. “It’ll be inconvenient, it may cost me time, but that’ll work.”

She narrows her eyes even more at him, and wishes that Ambra had come along, so she could actually ask more questions about what all of this behavior means.

“I find it hard to believe that you couldn’t track me already, from what I know,” Chloe says, but twists the structure of the metal, making it into a compass where she is the true north, and it takes so little effort his eyebrows flash up. “It’s twenty minutes away, yes?”

“About.”

And now, Chloe swallows, because there’s a big difference in breaking into an abandoned base and an active, currently under high security one.

“Then let’s go.”