Chapter 3

3

L ater, hours later, when any window shows the deep dark that only the middle of winter can get, Chloe’s mind races and sleep evades her.

She huffs out a breath at her dark room, at the uncomfortable cot and the pervasive silence. In the cabin they had to abandon, the cabin she was honestly starting to call home, there had always been a creak of branches outside, the whistle of wind, or the purr of the cat wherever she went.

It had been silent in the prison, too.

“Okay,” she whispers to herself, before tapping the same BIC pen and sending it glowing, casting a warm light across the small room. Despite a tugging sense of exhaustion, despite fatigue in her limbs, her brain sparks from thing to thing, from possibility to possibility, like she had just consumed way too much caffeine too late at night.

Still in her pajamas, as declaratively as she can make herself despite being alone in the room, she stands, testing her balance on the balls of her feet.

Still fine. Still normal. Nothing to remark upon.

The floor chilled against her feet, she grabs her research and pads across the room, a foul taste in her mouth. She had eaten a rather bland meal under the watchful eyes of the Necromancers, but that had been hours prior.

The hallway outside her little ‘apartment’ remains the same, a dull pseudo corporate carpet and grey walls, all perfectly unremarkable. Chloe hated it when they first got here and hates it still.

Except…

With the lights off, lit only by the soft glow of some protective runes imbedded into the walls themselves, a tendril of magic trails down the hallway, a lazy, almost meandering sort of creek, wild and untapped.

That wasn’t there before.

Or, rather, Chloe hadn’t been able to see it before.

“Neat,” Chloe whispers to the dead air, and the magic flutters in the movement from her breath.

She follows it, not quite touching it but hovering her hand near it like it’s a heater in a chill room, stepping close to it like a child sticking near a parent in a grocery store.

It floats through the hallway, dipping into doorways before emerging again in front of her, remarkably lifelike. Alette had spoken of seeing more of the basic fabric of magic after she was brought back, but Chloe had thought she had been speaking metaphorically, as spellweavers are known to do.

Instead, this little bit of actual, physical magic, twists along merrily, avoiding the grand mahogany doors of the sterilized ballroom, until it ends through one of the closed doors of one of the many small kitchens in the compound.

It’s one that Gurlien avoids, Chloe knows that, from his somewhat traumatic time in the compound before he got kicked out, so she twists the doorknob, and it gives another small spark against her palm.

A notification spell. One to inform someone of every time the door opens, some sort of inventory.

Chloe had wandered in here many times, never knew that her actions were being recorded.

It’s empty, the lights flickering on with her step, another small spell activating motion sensors. Inside, the strip of magic spools in one corner, like a pet in a dog bed, overwhelmingly content.

“Weird,” she murmurs, though the hairs on the back of her neck prickle at the possibilities.

She can see magic itself now. How much will that help her, how much will it reveal, how much will she be able to discern from it, how much—

“So you got the ‘can’t sleep’ side effect.”

Chloe startles, spinning around, and without making a sound, somehow Alette’s Wight boyfriend is standing there, casting shadows and everything.

“That’s a known thing?” Chloe asks, when it becomes clear he’s just standing there observing her.

“That we know, at least four of the resurrected people go through a period of insomnia,” he replies, and he’s inhumanly still. “We figured you would, Alette and Axel thought someone should stay up for you.”

Hesitant, as if she is a bug under a glass, Chloe grabs a water bottle from the fridge, gingerly sitting on one of the kitchen chairs.

Another small notification spell. Like they had to track how often people sat down.

“Have you just been here the entire time?” Chloe asks, after another long silence.

“I’ve been in and out,” he replies neutrally, and Chloe gets a sudden shock of memory of Ambra complaining at how cryptic Wights are. “I try not to intrude on private conversations with those who can’t see me.”

“Cool,” Chloe says, still a bit wigged. “Well, I’m wide awake, no doubt about that.”

He nods, then pulls out a chair and sits in it across from her, and now Chloe wants to know if every chair has the same notification spell, the same surveillance.

“You don’t have to sit up with me, I’m definitely okay without that,” Chloe continues, as the silence stretches on and twists into awkwardness. “I’m gonna leave tomorrow so I’ll be out of your hair, don’t worry—”

The Wight tilts his head, and she falls silent, like she’s been scolded.

“You don’t want to stay and be monitored for a few days?” His words aren’t judgy, but Chloe has to stop herself from bristling. “Don’t you think that would be wise?”

And he’s probably correct, but she wouldn’t want to really sit here and think too hard about what exactly had happened, not when her best friend is angry at her and everyone else is treating her like she’s made out of a particularly fragile sort of glass.

“Eh,” she replies, shrugging with more casualness than she’s feeling. “Wise doesn’t really factor into things. I have flights to catch, hotels to check into, things to hunt down.”

“What would you want the spirit fox for, anyways?”

She stares, somewhat mutinously, over at the Wight. “She’s my friend.”

“She’s also a source of power,” he says, almost severely, and Chloe’s suddenly reminded of being a preteen and new to the entire college. “People have killed and will kill to lay their hands on her.”

“And maybe if she’s with me,” Chloe starts, and being lectured only brings out the petulance in her, “then I can stop people from draining her over and over again.”

The Wight’s very creepy blue eyes—seriously how does Alette do it—just watch her for a long second. “And if she doesn’t want to be with you?”

It’s a possibility. Her friend is barely sentient, more cat-like than human intelligence, and if it wasn’t for a trick of nature, she would be more akin to a wild animal, avoiding humanity and dwelling outside.

But when Chloe was young, right when Chloe needed saving, her friend curled up next to her, fur bristling with warmth, and kept her company in that long cold darkness she should have died in. Followed her out, padding softly, when a rescue came, before being captive instead.

And Chloe can’t let that happen again.

“Then I’d let her go free,” Chloe says, slowly, after a long moment of just being watched. “But at least she wouldn’t be drained anymore.”

Again, the expression that people think she’s being ever so slightly foolish.

She hates that expression.

She doesn’t sleep, instead substituting rest with caffeine in a way she hasn’t done since her early twenties, and by the time the sun rises she’s scrolling through the airline websites, puzzling over the best way to hop a border a few times with her best approximation of a passport.

Sure, she could be a genius at breaking traps and picking locks, but passports are complicated for a reason, and fooling scanners is a lot harder than fooling people.

“You shouldn’t do that.”

Chloe jumps at the voice, at the split familiar tone of Ambra and the odd growl underneath, and twisting to look back at her just triggers another small jump.

“I’m scrolling the internet,” Chloe says, clutching her phone to her chest, like she had been caught cheating on a test.

Her eyes drag with each blink, but her mind fizzes with the caffeine, entirely too awake and too tired to have a conversation.

“I mean leave without talking to people,” Ambra remarks, passing her and pulling out a bag of candy from a drawer—some of the spicy candy, the type she leaves in almost every room.

Candy’s not a great breakfast, but Chloe’s not going to quibble as long as Ambra’s actually eating. Let Gurlien worry about nutrition.

“I wasn’t,” Chloe lies, and Ambra raises an eyebrow at her. Even with the double appearance, even with the shadow self-overlayed, her expressions are still the same, and it’s a small comfort. “I was at least going to say something.”

Ambra has the temerity to roll her eyes, a hilariously human expression. “You have your bags packed?”

“Yeah.” It had been easy to do so, after running from the cabin. She can obtain clothing, make more out of things that most would throw away, and alchemy the rest.

Her research takes up the majority of the bag, anyways.

“I’ll teleport you to your drop site if you go talk to Gurlien right now.”

Somewhere in the last few months, with Ambra integrating into their little circle, she learned the truly annoying fact that she can bribe people with the use of her powers to do things she wants. Gurlien finds it charming, apparently, and everyone else is torn between amusement and irritation.

“Right now?” Chloe asks, glancing at the clock. “There’s no way he’s awake…”

“He is,” Ambra interrupts, narrowing her eyes at Chloe. “Was your theory successful? Yes. Did it cause him a non-insubstantial amount of terror and upset? Also yes. Talk to him so he’s not upset for however long you’re gone with this research of yours.”

Chloe opens her mouth to say something, but Ambra preempts her.

“And you know he’d be pissed if you didn’t,” Ambra continues. “And teleportation will be the fastest way for you to get there with the least amount of risk.”

She’s right, of course, so Chloe shrugs, rubbing her forehead, as if that could chase the exhaustion away.

Gurlien doesn’t answer the door to her knock, and Ambra rolls her eyes and opens it for Chloe anyways.

“Please talk,” Ambra says, still clutching the bag of candy and pushing past them standing in the little space that passes for a living room for them, before she disappears into the small bedroom Gurlien and her share.

Gurlien scowls at her back, and Chloe’s known him long enough to recognize a defensive scowl instead of a real one.

Chance the cat, tightly curled up in his favorite pile of blankets, opens one green eye to stare at Chloe, before closing it again. Because she barely gets any sort of acknowledgement from the cat she helped save anymore.

“You’re not gonna convince me not to go,” Chloe starts. “You cannot begin to convince me—”

“Obviously,” Gurlien snips.

“And I know you disapprove of my ‘methods,’” Chloe can’t resist using the quotation marks, “but I’m fine, I’m okay, and I’ll be okay.”

“Will you?” he shoots back, then scowls at her, this one a real scowl, before he crosses his arms. “Or are you going to continue to just take risks like that without any thought of what happens if it goes wrong?”

“It’s not gonna go wrong,” Chloe says. “Necromancy is a single occurrence magic, you know that. It’s not something that has to be sustained or can revert. And now that I’ve done that, I don’t have to again, the risk is over.”

“No, you’re just going into a place where you are gonna take more risks and be around unknown demons,” Gurlien says, his voice rising, like his actual-demon girlfriend isn’t just in the other room and could likely hear everything they say. “They’re not all nice, and if something happens to you out there, you’re not gonna have the multiple backup Necromancers to save you!”

“What, would it help if I keep a tracker on me so you could find me if something does?” Chloe says, then squeezes her eyes shut, frustration and lack of sleep warring in her brain to produce a truly horrendous headache. “I’ll take the gun, I’ll have my full combat kit. I broke out of prison. I can go dive into some tombs and find…”

She trails off, and the silence is truly horrible. Chance lifts his head to glance at them, like the lack of noise alarmed the cat as well.

“You really think you’ll find what you’re looking for?” Gurlien asks, voice quiet.

And in that ask are all the rough days they spent on the run. The days when Gurlien barely knew what to make of himself and Chloe was just trying to find something, anything, she could do to help anyone.

All the days when they argued and fought and collaborated and tossed around theories and ideas of how to find her research again, how to get his powers back, how to survive outside of the framework they both grew up in.

“I wouldn’t do all this if I didn’t,” Chloe replies, aiming for surly and missing it. “Gurlien, I have my research. I have actual starting places. I can now see and therefore counter my biggest risk. I can’t not go.”

“Right,” he mutters, before his face pinches off. “Right.”