Chapter 3

3

G urlien stares at her, wholly unimpressed, and it’s more interesting of an expression than she thought it would be.

“You described three of the highest profile members of the College,” Gurlien starts, and he’s not wrong, “and you want to just waltz in and kill them?”

“Oh, no,” Ambra says, a fission of disgust going through her. “I never want to step foot in any of their bases ever again.”

“Oh, okay, that’s good, that makes it easier,” he replies sarcastically, and it’s far more interesting than him faking being bored. “You want to find three highly paranoid, highly secure individuals and off them?”

“They all have houses, they all have other places they live. They all have apartments in multiple cities, labs in weird parts of the world. They shop, they consume food, they leave footprints.”

He says nothing, his eyebrows raised, until he finishes the bar he’s eating and carefully folds up the wrapper, creasing the foil in precise lines .

“You can’t talk, you broke into their base to save an old lady,” Ambra preempts, when he opens his mouth to speak. “That’s infinitely more insane than ambushing some individuals in places they aren’t expecting it.”

“It’s not just some individuals, all of them could kill either of us—”

She scoffs at that.

“—could kill me with barely any effort, and they knew me.” He sets the carefully folded piece of foil aside. “And apparently, they could control you, easily.”

“That’s why you’re here,” she interrupts, gesturing with the leash again, and he stares down at his wrist, like he gets some feedback with it. “You stop them from doing that, I kill them, then I’m…”

Her mind blanks out at that, for a few seconds, like the concept is just as foreign to her as the stasis chambers once were.

“Then I can do whatever I want,” she finishes. “Figure out how long I’ll live like this, be away from humans, hide from other demons. Simple.”

“Simple,” he echoes, brows still raised.

It, of course, isn’t simple at all.

“So besides murder,” Gurlien starts, “did you have any concrete plans?”

“Not terribly,” Ambra replies. “It wasn’t like I knew a rescue was coming today.”

Or that the people letting her go were people she’s faced in battle. Or that there would be someone so perfect for the leash.

Or that another of her handlers would be dead.

“Korhonen was the one I was most concerned about,” she says, and he blinks, like it’s a change of subject. “He’s the fastest out of all of them, so thank you for that. ”

Gurlien swallows, before staring out the window.

“How close do I have to be for the leash?” Then, at something in his expression, he holds up his hands again. “I know, they can get you anywhere. But what about me?”

“We will have to test the limits,” Ambra replies, because again, it’s a good question, one showing a scientific mind that’s not prone to assumptions. “I hope…I hope we have a day before they try anything.”

“That long?” Idly, Gurlien starts inspecting the kitchen, opening the drawers and the cabinets, and it’s the actions of someone who doesn’t like to be lacking information about his surroundings.

“They’ll want to control the beasts on site first,” she murmurs, hugging herself again. “I shouldn’t be a priority.”

“No, you’re just the first successful result of the Terese project, a controllable demon with massive amounts of power that could be in their hands, couldn’t see how that would be a priority, not at all.” Still, Gurlien shakes his head, grabbing the single glass out of the drying rack and filling it with water, drinking deeply.

She flinches, but doesn’t stop him.

“I’m exhausted,” he states. “I’m exhausted and very, very confused. I didn’t fully expect to live through today, and now I’m somewhere unfamiliar, with a clearly unstable experiment, being asked to control a magical process I have not studied and have no abilities in.”

“Exactly,” Ambra says again, because he seems to be missing the point that that's entirely what she wanted.

“And my friends are still in Eastern Canada and I’m on an entirely different coast because I got teleported.” He levels her with a glare over the top of his glasses, which spoils any sort of threat from it. “So pardon me if I’m not feeling comfortable with your level of plans. ”

It’s fair enough, but Ambra scrapes at her mind for something else to do, some other lever to pull at this very moment, besides sitting back down on the chilly tile and recuperating.

“And you’re still obviously not in good condition,” he points at her, almost accusatory, and she stares down at his hand as if it personally offends her. “You’re shaking, you keep on jumping at things that aren’t there, there’s still blood on your face—”

Instinctively, she reaches a hand to her face, and sure enough, some dried blood flakes off.

“—and I don’t know if it’s because you’re a demon or if it’s because nobody ever expected to have this experiment go well ever again or because you’re in a human body and I don’t think you know how to care for it.” He crosses his arms, like it’s the end of an argument.

It’s not anything she didn’t know, but there’s still a sting to it.

She stares at him back. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he repeats, face blank. “Just…okay?”

She shrugs one shoulder, and it reminds her of the muscle tightness that the body always had there, tightness verging on pain that she has never quite figured out how to heal. “You’re not wrong on any of that.”

“Good,” he says, forcefully to the point of it being comical. “Thanks. Super validating.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmurs, then pushes herself away from leaning against the sink, even though her legs wobble precariously. “Eat what you want, sleep on the bed. Don’t leave the house until we have more information on the range, I’m going to clean up.”

With a flick of her hand, she twists the wards tighter around the windows, and the very structure creaks around them.

He jumps, eyes wide, before he spins back to her.

But instead of angry and scared, instead of the fake boredom or the sarcastic mask, he’s fascinated.

The expression lasts just a split second before he schools his face back down, but another shiver winds its way down Ambra’s back.

“That was just protection to make myself feel better,” she informs him, then turns on her heel and marches to the meager bathroom, slamming the door behind her in the way her handlers used to do when they wanted her unnerved.

The bathroom in the motorhome is tiny, with barely enough room for her to turn around, but the plumbing still works and dust covered towels still hang over the sink.

Ambra inspects her appearance in the dirty mirror. Gurlien was right, she still has a rather ghastly amount of human blood on her face, along with some of her own. The wound from the necromancer, where she had the audacity to slam a strip of raw death into Ambra’s face at the bar, still takes up the majority of Ambra’s cheek, with flaking, peeling skin.

She pokes at it. It’s not as painful anymore, but the skin around it is tight, like it’s stretched too far over her cheekbone.

And no matter how much she prods it, how much she concentrates, it doesn’t heal.

“Alright,” she mutters, rubbing at the edge, which doesn’t help. “Necromancer wounds don’t heal.”

In the cosmic balance of things, where most necromancers end up dead from demons while they’re still a child, it makes sense that they could be one of the few things that could hurt a demon.

Ambra sheds the sweater again, then peels off the functional yet incredibly boring rough clothed pants the College always put her in, and cranks on the shower.

It’s not an action natural to her, but the body had insisted on it, and they both always felt better after scrubbing the skin under hot water, and Ambra just hopes it still works. That she could get a glimpse of the peace with this action that she did before, despite everything that had happened in between.

She hisses, the impact of the water stinging against the new scar on her stomach, but holds still, letting it run over her hair and stream down her face, before she suds up the soap and attempts to get every last bit of blood off of her skin.

Through the thin door, Gurlien’s voice carries, and she stills, as if her motion is the thing causing all of the noise and not the rush of water and the creak of pipes.

Not every word reaches her. “…northwest somewhere, judging…trees. Phone doesn’t…location.”

She tilts her head, and the water streams down her neck instead of her face, which is immediately better. It washes underneath the leash around her neck, almost startling her with the soothing sensation, and she bends her neck more, so more water runs underneath it, against the irritated skin and her own claw marks.

“Demon,” he says, clearly, and his footsteps pace by the door, into the bedroom, then back out, circling the small motorhome. “Clearly suffering, very confused.”

She raises an eyebrow at the plastic shower curtain. He’s not wrong.

“I don’t know!” He bursts out, clear as day. “I don’t know, that’s why I’m calling you, since you apparently have been hiding…”

His voice fades out a bit, and she loses the next few sentences, so she hastily scrubs up and dries off the best she could, though now the one side of her hair is thoroughly tangled.

Gurlien’s not speaking, but he’s still pacing, making quiet sounds as if he’s listening on the other side of the phone.

Ambra steps back into the undergarments, then shoves the sweater back over her head, but kicks the boring pants to the side. The body kept so many changes of clothes here, she never has to wear the ones the College put her in ever again.

It’s a small thrill at the thought. Where she can dress in the clothing that would feel good against her skin, instead of the constricting and structured clothing they had forced her into.

“You can’t be serious,” Gurlien says, pacing back by the door, and a smile tugs on Ambra’s lips. Someone has clearly given him news he didn’t like, and the obviousness of his reaction is charming.

She attempts to finger comb through her hair, before giving up in boredom.

“What’s not serious?” she asks, stepping out.

Gurlien stops in his tracks, the phone still in his hand and pressed against his ear, and blinks at her.

There’s a whisper of someone speaking from the phone, but Gurlien just stares.

So she stares back, gesturing for him to answer.

“Hey, Axel, I need to go,” Gurlien cuts off whatever monologue the other person’s giving him, before he stuffs the phone back into his pocket. “It’s a turn of phrase. ”

“Okay,” Ambra replies, then steps into the bedroom for the first time since the merge, and gets a few steps to the closet before…something…slams into her.

Not something physical, but almost like a wave of emotions, a wave of chemicals flooding through her body, staggering her.

The body had slept in the bed, had curled up against the pillow and pulled the coverlet over her head, and it had been the most comfortable Ambra had ever been through the entire process. They had placed all the clothing in the closet, one bit by one bit, and Ambra had marveled at the fabrics, at the clean motions of folding each piece together. She organized it all by color, and the open doors show her the rainbow, all still meticulously in place. The body had chucked off her shoes, and they both stood, feeling the carpet between their toes, and Ambra had giggled at the sensation.

“Why aren’t you wearing pants?” Gurlien calls from the hallway, voice dim behind the rushing of her ears.

Her lips part to answer, but no words come out.

Like he’s expecting some sort of attacking creature or trap, Gurlien steps into the doorway, but instead it’s just her, her legs wobbling.

The carpet is still plush under her feet, despite the time and the dust.

Gurlien cranes his neck to glance at the closet, then back at her. “Is it something I can’t see?”

Mute, she shakes her head, then lowers herself to sit on the bed.

There’s so much emotion, so many contradictory sensations flickering over her body. She’s hot, but she shivers, tugging in her knees to her chest, as she stares at the rainbow of clothing, now only marred by dust .

“Okay,” he murmurs, then disappears down the hallway, quickly returning, and tosses her the protein bar she had left on the counter. “Eat this.”

She breaks her gaze on the closet to stare at the bar, half numb despite the growing pit of chemicals filtering through the body’s blood. “What?”

“You were shaking like a leaf and staring at some clothing,” he says, voice perfectly serious. “I don’t know why, I don’t know what the College told you, but if you’re in a human body, you have to actually eat food.”

She pokes at the foil package, and it’s a bit easier to look at than the clothing. “I was just having some emotions, I think.”

His brows draw together and he tilts his head, like he’s calculating something, and that is just enough action to break through all the nonsense adrenaline flooding through her.

“I don’t know what you know of demons,” she says, as loftily as she can. Which isn’t much, when her voice still quakes. “But we experience things very differently than humans.”

“So I’ve read,” he replies dryly.

“And some parts of that haven’t translated very well to having actual nerve endings.” She swallows down the lump, risking another glance towards the closet.

It’s still the beautiful kaleidoscope of colors. All lovingly put into place by the body.

“Okay, logical,” Gurlien says, interrupting another surge of sensations. “Probably disorienting, definitely an explanation for some of your twitchiness. Eat the bar.”

She squints at him.

“If they try to bring you back right now, are you in fighting shape? ”

The answer to that is a resounding no.

“If they pull you back now, and I get pulled into it, they’ll probably kill me.” His words are clinical, like he’s stating a conclusion he already came to. “They kicked me out, definitely, over a year ago, and I just helped a high value prisoner escape. They’re not going to be merciful to me.”

It’s probably true, and she nods. It’s a good thing for him to keep in mind.

“I don’t particularly want to die,” he says, which again, makes sense. “So my best ticket to surviving the next few days is, until I convince you to undo whatever this is—” he gestures with his wrist, “—is to keep you alive and able to resist. So eat the food.”

“Did your Axel give you that conclusion?” she asks, and his face twitches, like he’s a bit unhappy with her figuring it out that quickly. “Is he a demonology expert?”

Gurlien opens his mouth, then closes it, obviously thinking better of his answer.

She waits, letting her eyes stray back to the closet.

“He’s about as close to an expert as you can get to the Terese project who wasn’t…actively involved in breaking the people,” he says, guarded, and that catches her attention again. “So yes, he gave me a list of things to do, and unless we have a bad reaction to it, I plan on following his tips.”

“I don’t like the experts I’ve met,” she mutters darkly, but picks up the bar, inspecting it.

It’s one of the ones that came in a variety pack, not one of the flavors she tried with the body. Buzz words like ‘protein’ and ‘muscle’ are all over it in bright font, and the body had eaten a few of them when she had described herself as ‘peckish.’

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t either,” Gurlien says, heavily. “He’s also kept his knowledge very quiet. He laughed,” Gurlien says, suddenly, full of frustration. “He laughed when I told him what happened. He laughed at me for this.”

She raises an eyebrow at him.

“I was literally kidnapped, and he laughed out loud.”

“That doesn’t sound like a great friend,” Ambra ventures, peeling open the foil around the bar. It doesn’t smell appealing, but the body’s sense of smell has puzzled her since the beginning.

“Wouldn’t call him a friend.” Gurlien leans against the door jamb, watching her actions like a hawk. “If you don’t like that, there’s a cabinet full of food to pick from, but even if you don’t think you need to, you should eat.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re pushy?” Despite the casual words, Ambra glances back at the closet.

It’s still so empty without the body with her, even while full to the brim.

And she has to exist like this, now. With evidence of the body existing all over the place, when she’s left alone.

She shivers, suddenly, and Gurlien sighs, before he crosses to the closet and abruptly pulls a pair of sweatpants off the hanger. “Here, put these on, you’ll be warmer.”

Warmth had nothing to do with it, and Ambra had teased the body for even hanging up sweatpants, but she shucks them on anyways, then smoothes her hands on her hips in the unconscious way the body always did.

The fabric is, of course, much better than the rough canvas pants.

“Glad you’re getting invested,” Ambra says, pushing herself to standing, clutching the unappealing bar in her hand. “Did your friend know how to remove the leash entirely?”

Gurlien’s lip twitches, and somehow she knows, deep down, that she’s not gonna like the answer .

“He can’t,” he says, and despite the guarded tone, Ambra can tell he’s not lying. “He’s a dud like me. Had magic then had it taken away.”

It wasn’t something Ambra knew of happening, but she never paid all that much attention to too many humans to form observations of it before the merge.

She knew the body had had magic of her own, a small smidgen of power that was quickly eclipsed by Ambra’s.

“Do you want to wash all the scuffs off of you?” Ambra asks, gesturing to the shower. “I can’t imagine you like all the blood and dust caked on you.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Any of those clothes in there men’s clothes?”

The body had some old T-shirts, worn soft with time and care, and a pair of men’s pajama pants left over from a ‘boyfriend,’ so Ambra pulls them off the hanger. They’re a lot easier to look at than the other clothing.

“She slept in these a few times, said it reminded her of her ex,” Ambra supplies, at his blank look. “I don’t understand it either.”

“That’s not the part of this I don’t understand,” Gurlien grumbles, but takes them anyway. He holds out the rumpled pajama pants, clearly meant for a shorter person. “Do you have anything else?”

“You can wear some of the body’s clothes, but I don’t think they’ll fit any better,” Ambra offers, and he closes his eyes. She’s once again missing the point, the human conversation strange.

“Answer my phone if it’s Chloe, Maison, Delina, or someone named Axel or Alette. Nobody else.” He dumps the phone in her other hand. “Go eat some food.”