Chapter 12

12

T he cafe is thankfully empty, the only conversations half-muted from behind the kitchen wall, and a bored looking waitress sits them in a tall back booth.

Highway signs and various car accessories adorn the walls, along with American flags and various star shaped paraphernalia. It’s bright, so Ambra doesn’t take off the tinted glasses.

The strip of magic pulses over to her, checking her out, before humming along its way, clearly not disturbed by the actual demon in its midst.

And the cafe is outside of Ambra’s protections, so the back of her neck prickles the moment the waitress leaves.

“You’re fine,” Gurlien murmurs, glancing over the plastic covered menu, an eyebrow raised over his glasses. “What did Maison tell you?”

“Well, he called you a dick,” Ambra replies, poking at the edge of the menu, instead of anything else. “He’s also invasive and rude and asks insensitive questions.”

“He’s going to be using his access to some systems to track Boltiex down, since he’s going to be the harder of the two to find.”

It’s more kindness than Ambra had anticipated from the Half Demon, so she sits with that as the waitress drops off waters and looks expectantly at Gurlien.

With a sigh, Gurlien rattles off an order, before giving Ambra a critical glance. “You okay?”

Ambra shrugs, one shouldered.

“Maison says you’re grieving.” He drops that statement in the middle of the table, like it’s the same weight as the frothy conversation about food, and watches her, sharp. “How do demons grieve?”

“He can fuck right off,” Ambra says automatically.

“Fair enough.” The waitress swings by with a steaming mug for Gurlien, who clutches it immediately. “What other locations are you thinking for setting up a safe spot?”

That, at least, is something that doesn’t hurt to think about, so she leans forward as well, propping her elbows on the table.

“How okay are you with caves?”

“I’d prefer running water and a stove,” he says dryly.

“That would narrow it down considerably,” she says, before idly flicking the straw that came with the water. “Currently has running water or can get running water? I can get running water pretty easily in places with pipes.”

There’s a flash of interest before his eyes narrow. “How?”

“I can show you,” she replies, a little bit of a taunt, and there’s the same hunger of knowledge she saw on that very first night. “Pipes just make it easier. If it has a sink, I could make it happen.” She sips from the water, and it’s incredibly cold, almost startling her. “Do you want remote or city?”

“Does that matter in terms of getting supplies? ”

“Only if you want to walk to a store instead of teleporting,” Ambra says. “Or the ability to leave without me.”

The moment the words leave her mouth she scowls, not meaning to say them.

“City,” he confirms, and she takes another sip of water to distract herself from the lump in her throat. “I like to walk to coffee if I need to.”

She could do that, get that for him at least, and lets her mind wander over where might be the best place, the most comfortable, and one she never took the body to before the merge.

There’s a house in the mountains of Mexico, cracked in the foundation, but just a mile walk from a town. There’s a cabin in the lavender fields in France—no, too close to Nalissa—that is the most beautiful out of all the locations. A high-rise studio apartment in a large city—Minneapolis?—with a beautiful view of a mighty river and unending grasslands probably covered with snow. A shack in the Rocky Mountains, only weatherproofed because the noise of rain was so annoying even without being in a live human body.

She could also probably swing running water in the old railway tunnel deep in Eastern Asia, but she doubts that he’d be terribly comfortable in it.

She raises an eyebrow at him, and the entire time she’s been thinking, he’s been watching her, like even her thought patterns were something he could observe.

The waitress drops off food without a word, and Gurlien silently switches the plates, giving her the large mound of eggs covered in bright red salsa.

“Mexico, Rocky Mountains, Minneapolis, or Tongliao?” she asks, picking up the fork. “All of those have or can get running water.”

His brows flash up. “I can’t speak Mandarin. ”

“They also speak Mongolian,” she offers, but he’s shaking his head.

“We’d both stick out there,” he says, which is a good point. “There and Mexico, unless it’s a big city. You’re avoiding Europe?”

“Nalissa,” she reminds him, before she pokes at the omelet. “It’s a very small town in Mexico, I don’t even know its name.”

“Yeah, no,” he replies, and he’s eating his food like it takes no effort.

“I have other places, but not with the restrictions you gave me,” she says, out of some odd want to make sure he doesn’t think poorly of her. “The Rocky Mountains is a small town, too, along a highway.”

“Minneapolis,” he replies confidently, then points at the omelet with his fork. “Try it. You need the calories.”

She wrinkles her nose at him, before taking a small nibble of the bright red salsa.

And immediately, heat blooms against her tongue, brilliant and amazing, watering her eyes. She coughs, once, before taking a larger bite, including the omelet this time.

It’s sharp, the eggs not dulling the edge at all, and it is by far better than the salad the day before.

“Okay yes, spicy food,” Gurlien says, and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips, softening his entire face. “That doesn’t hurt?”

“It burns, but it’s good,” Ambra replies, taking a long drink from the icy water. “Why would you eat food that doesn’t do that?”

“It’s not everyone’s taste.” He eats his food, the smile still around his eyes. “As long as it doesn’t hurt your stomach, eat as much as you can. ”

It’s a directive that’s easy to achieve, at least, and she falls silent, mulling over the idea of the high-rise apartment.

It’s hidden from the other apartments, a quick spell twisted around it to stop anyone from remembering it’s there, no matter what documentation it exists on. There’s a bed—no blankets—but a functioning fridge, stove, and pipes.

She hasn’t been there for a few years before the merge, as it’s too populous for her to spend too much time, though the demon who considers it his territory is somewhat friendly.

Or at least not antagonistic. At least not terribly interested in fights and struggles for power.

“I bargained with the demon in the area for a safe space, gave them art in exchange,” Ambra says, after a long moment of almost companionable silence, her eating and him poking at his phone. “Unless something disrupted the power balance there in the last…four years? We should be okay.”

“Demons collect art?” he asks.

“Some do,” she answers. “I guess the same percentage that humans do. Picked the city because they liked the museums.”

“Huh,” he responds eloquently. “Well, that makes sense, with Maison and all.”

She squints at him.

“If you ever spend any time with Maison, he paints excessively,” he continues. “Says that if he hadn’t been born as he was, that he would have gone to art school.”

It’s at odds with the competent fighter and frankly terrifying bond he had with his Necromancer.

His phone beeps again, and it takes Ambra a few seconds to realize that it’s a softer sound, like he softened it for her, and he prods at the phone.

“When I finish setting up this closed loop, you’re going to take the extra phone,” he says, then rolls his eyes at her wrinkled nose. “That way if we get split up, we can contact you.”

“If we get split up it’s because I’ve been captured,” Ambra shoots back.

“And,” he forges on, “so Maison and Axel can text you directly so I don’t have to play translator.”

“Do I have to?” Ambra asks, and Gurlien briefly grins. “I want to talk to neither of those people.”

“And Axel’s experts,” he says, and Ambra sits up. “For very obvious reasons they don’t want you to talk face to face, but text it could be good.”

“Alright,” she agrees cautiously, falling back to her food, into the silence, as they finish up the meal and Gurlien pays, only stepping outside the diner before she teleports.

The apartment is immediately much warmer, even though storm clouds brew outside the tall windows, and Gurlien still stumbles the moment she releases the grip on his wrist.

“Is Axel any better in text?” she asks, shaking out her hands at the memory of his grilling. “Or is he just as pushy?”

Instead of answering, Gurlien just gulps in breaths, before he half staggers to the bare bed.

The single room apartment is unchanged, of course. No speck of dust, no fold of fabrics, just the empty furniture and light streaming in from the windows.

Her books still cram together on the shelf, the one sign that this isn’t just a model floor.

Her footsteps echo as she crosses the wooden floor to the window, craning her head to see down. They’re far from the top floor, but still, people are mostly small dots on the streets below, between shining white piles of plowed snow lining the sidewalks.

“Are there lights in here?” Gurlien asks, and there’s a hint of nerves behind his question, so she flexes her power to the switches, flicking them on all at once.

One bulb crackles, but the other bloom on, flooding the space with warm light.

“Right,” Gurlien says, still unsteady. “When you said studio apartment, I thought much smaller.”

He stands, and even in the nice clothing the space dwarfs him.

“Is this…is this the entire floor of this building?”

She shakes her head. “Just a corner.”

“This place must be…Christ, a few million dollars?”

“Probably,” she answers. “If I paid for it.”

This stumps him, and he gapes at her for a long moment, before digging his phone out and snapping a picture of her in front of the window.

She jerks back, one hand up to snatch the phone away from him, before she stops herself.

“Why?” she demands, baring her teeth.

“Because Chloe won’t believe this,” he informs her, already tapping on the phone. “Because we’ve been living in a tiny cabin for a year and you casually have places like this.”

She swallows down whatever reaction she’s having, letting him have the moment, before he stuffs the phone into his pocket and surveys more of the room.

The kitchen is nestled into one corner, with an expansive wooden table left unused. A fridge runs, completely empty, but still thrums with electricity.

A makeshift office, only marked off from the room with the packed double-sided bookshelves, and a grand mahogany desk and a plush chair in the center. They still gleam with newness.

The bed is nestled against one wall, giant curtains around it, as if it could shield from the light pouring in from the windows. A wardrobe rod stands alone, wire hangers carefully placed on it, and empty.

“And this place is safe?” he asks.

“Safe enough,” she replies. The wards shine through, barely any degradation over time, easy to fix.

The ley line of the city pours through, far enough away that she’s out of the main thoroughfare, close enough that she could reach out and taste it if she wants.

Huffing out another breath, Gurlien wanders over to the bookshelves, and she smiles at his back. Of course he went there first.

“You can hang up any clothing you want,” she says, and he startles away from the books, like he’s doing something he’s not supposed to. “You’ll need food, but otherwise it’s fine.”

She crosses to the other corner of the apartment, gauging the distance with her steps. It’s not the cave, but there’s more room than the motorhome and the bunker combined.

“Pull the leash, first,” she instructs, and he blinks at her, owlish behind his glasses. “Compel me over there.”

It takes a moment, before he straightens, any smile and friendliness evaporating from his face.

“You still think I can do this?”

“You disrupted Johnsin,” she challenges, though her heart is pounding, “I want to see what else you can do.”

“There’s a big difference between breaking a concentration and compelling someone,” he cautions and just then, there’s a flicker of something in his eyes, something in between insecurity and…eagerness.

“Yeah,” Ambra replies. “Practice.”

Of course there’s more, he’d know it, too.

His chin lifts, jaw tight and shoulders back, and his hands loosen in a stance she’s seen from hundreds of magicians.

A thrill goes down her back.

Dud or not, traumatic accident or not, this is Gurlien the magician, and each line of his body belies years upon years of training.

She grins at him, at the change.

“Do you know the theory?” She taunts, and his lips twitch. Not quite a smile, not quite a smirk.

“I just talked Maison and Delina through a few weeks of theory,” he shoots right back, “All without seeing any of it.”

Considering the fidelity the Necromancer had, at the utter destruction she unleashed when she compelled the Half Demon, he did a good job of it.

“From what, reading a few books in a warded cabin?” she says, shaking out her hands and lifting her chin. “I made it easy for you, it’s tied on your wrist. See what you can do.”

Again, the flash of insecurity, visible from across the room, before he wraps the leash around his free hand, tangling his fingers in it.

It twitches around her throat, the hint of movement. Not tightening, not hurting, just reminding her of its existence.

She swallows, as he tests the sensation of it against his palm, obviously calculating.

“You can feel that?” he murmurs, but his words carry across the hardwood floor.

“Of course,” she replies, then paces, and his hand briefly tightens on the leash. “Just like if you’re paying attention, you can feel that.”

“Intent, control, and willpower,” he mutters, and she wants to laugh at the three words. It’s a massive simplification of the theory, boiled down to a child’s understanding, but still accurate.

Ambra herself had told the body that, before the merge. Before they shared a space.

She exhales past the ghosts of the moment. The body never visited this apartment, there are no memories in this space tainted by the grief.

Instead, there’s Gurlien, testing the feel of the leash, a scholar's intellect behind his brown eyes and a traitorous eagerness in his stance, mulling over the best way to achieve what he wants, even at the disadvantage he’s at.

“Is it dangerous to do this in a city?” he asks, the leash twisting against his fingertips, sending a resulting shiver down Ambra’s back. “It was dangerous for Delina and Maison.”

“I’m gonna assume that was because he had zero experience with that side of him,” Ambra says, and Gurlien nods, thoughtful. “And the Necromancer had so little subtlety in any of her actions.”

Another twitch of a smirk before his hand closes fully on the leash and he pulls.

It’s not much, it’s not nearly enough to make her do anything, but she jerks forward, teleporting a few steps towards him, halfway between instinct and compelled to do so.

And her breath squeaks out of her throat and he drops the leash like it burns him.

“Sorry,” he blurts out, holding up his hands, as if to show he’s unarmed. “I didn’t— ”

Ambra coughs once, then straightens, and he blanches.

“No, you were fine,” she says, running her fingertips under the leash. He didn’t break any skin, it wouldn’t leave a bruise. “Not bad for a first effort.”

But he’s pale, the white of his eyes visible from across the room.

“Do it again, it’s good practice,” Ambra says, resetting her stance, widening her legs. “Don’t you think it’d be nice to have a demon at your beck and call? Good weapon?”

“No,” he blurts out, drawing her up short.

She tilts her head up at him, and even across the grand wooden floor, he’s pale.

He shakes out his hand, turning away, so she stalks across the apartment.

“We’re going to be practicing that more,” she warns him, her brow furrowing. “This is the best opportunity for me to avoid them.”

“I understand that,” he says curtly, then shuts his mouth with a click, crossing his arms.

She raises an eyebrow, stepping close to him, and his jaw tightens.

He’s taller than the body—most humans are, it’s not a shock to anyone—but even still, he raises his chin.

It’s such a sharp departure from the confidence of just a few short moments ago, and she aches to poke at it, aches to peel apart what could be causing this reaction.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she starts, guarded. “Believe me that I would tell you if you did.”

He swallows. “Good.”

That’s not it, or, rather, that’s not the whole picture.

“We practice this, we practice distance, there’s a bigger chance you can go back to your friends and I can be out of your life,” she says, and he nods. Of course he understands that. “I’m offering you security. Anytime you need backup, anytime there’s anything out of your league, I’ll be in your hands.”

There. A twitch on his jaw, a tightening around his eyes.

She leans back, so she can regard him a bit better, giving him space to answer, where he obviously struggles with his words.

The moment stretches on, and his phone beeps quietly in his pocket, but he doesn’t shift to pull it out.

“I’m not someone who should have a weapon,” he says, finally, his voice low.

That’s definitely not what she thought he’d say.

“You literally have a gun,” she protests, and despite the tenseness, his lips twitch up a brief moment. “And a knife, you took one from the trap.”

“There’s a little bit of a scale difference,” he starts, heated, “between a normal human gun and an actual demon.”

She shrugs, loose, and that gets a ghost of a smile.

“I’m not the College, I’m not a part of the College, I shouldn’t be…wielding anything—anyone—that could cause mass death.” There’s an inflection in his tone, something reflected onto himself.

Despite his words, this has nothing to do with her.

“Hmm,” she says, instead of anything else. “This have anything to do with how practically everyone calls you an asshole?”

That diffuses the tension, and he huffs out a sigh, rubbing his face. “Pretty much,” he says, then shakes out his hands. “Distance and disrupting their grip is one thing, causing more destruction…I shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Okay,” she responds.

“Okay? ”

“Sure, no problem, I won’t teach you that.” She shrugs again, even though her skin buzzes to find out more. No human she’s ever met turns down free power, not without substantial reasons.

But she steps back, disengages, and puzzles over what his mystery could be.