Still, just in case she’s swayed a bit, I have a few counterpoints up my sleeve. For one, I’m useful. After Allie’s confession about the rent this morning, I’ve found something I can do to help her.
Walking the street with the flow of traffic, I spot my mark, a decently-enough dressed woman, late forties, highlights in her hair, wearing a business suit and heels so tall they should qualify her for circus work. I whip out the baseball cap I’m spanging with today and hold it right underneath her chin, throwing my body into her space.
“Hi!” I say cheerfully. “I was hoping you could help?” She opens her mouth to say no, but I launch into my next sentence. “My girlfriend started her period and she doesn’t have any supplies. Anything you could spare would be an enormous help for her.”
My cheeks are hot. It’s the sun, not embarrassment. Still, the woman breaks into a grin as if she knows I’ve pulled one over on her and is in on the deal.
“Jesus, kid,” she mumbles with a laugh. She drops a flash of green into the cap. “Try to find yourself some air conditioning at least, okay?” she adds as she starts off down the sidewalk.
I toss an enthusiastic, “Thanks!” after her before I check the load in the hat. Two fives and a scattering of one-dollar bills. “Nice,” I whisper.
I cup the ones, and subtly tuck the bigger bills into my pocket and out of sight.
“Hey, man,” I say as I locate my next mark, a muscular jock in a jersey, the white of the fabric blinding. “Borrow a couple bucks? Hoping to grab some food.”
“You want free money?” he jeers and it’s only then I realize he’s already trashed and clearly pissed. He gives me a good once over, sizing me up. It’s obvious I’m not the type to go to the cops about getting my ass kicked.
I hold up a palm in apology. “No problem. Forget it.”
The dude follows me pace for pace as I retreat. I can’t keep watch on him and where I’m going. Someone behind me yells a warning and I assume I’m blocking their path until my ankle hits the curb and wrenches, spilling me onto the cobblestones. My palm grinds against the rough ground as I catch myself.
The jock laughs. The loud braying sound attracts more attention, and I feel myself go red for real. A blur flashes past, one of the other guys from the Boxcar Camp, LowLow, his sweaty, bare chest pressed menacingly against the bully who now has his own hands in the air, backpedaling.
If I didn’t know LowLow, I’d be doing the same. Ink decorates his deeply leathered skin wherever it’s showing, including a tattooed crown of black x’s haloing his forehead. His head is shaved save for two thick locs decorated with beads and bone that dangle almost to his waist. His voice is a growl all wrong for a twenty-year-old, made raspy from years of whisky and screaming.
“Not a wise move, my friend,” he’s saying as he backs the jerseyed guy down the sidewalk, glowering with eyes so brown they appear black even in the day’s brightness. “Karmically.”
I know from experience how intimidating LowLow can seem to strangers. The bully doesn’t even attempt an apology or an excuse. He simply staggers across the street and into a bar, hands still raised, to drink off what he no doubt thinks was a close call.
Too bad he has no idea LowLow is a pacifist.
Fingers clasp mine as the rough-looking LowLow hauls me to my feet again. He jerks me into a hard pat of greeting before he comes away grinning ear to ear.
“Picked up a new window,” I say lightly, corkscrewing a finger into the spot where two of his teeth are missing, slightly left of center in his upper jaw. “What’d you do?”
He chuckles as he dodges me.
“I don’t hit back,” he reminds me, his hands folding together in a praying motion as he bows deeply. His locs drag on the cobblestones. LowLow straightens. “Haven’t seen you down by the boxes in a while,” he says. “Finally let yourself get caged by one of those angels always after you?”
He’s laughing, but my stomach sours anyway. Angel is a loose term for anyone who takes us under a wing and tries to rehabilitate us into regular life. Nothing about Allie’s life qualifies as regular. At least not the snippets I’ve seen.
When I don’t immediately answer, he leans in close and takes a hard whiff at the air beside my armpit. “Smell awful clean, Ploy.”
The deodorant I’m wearing is strong. In the heat, I’m basking in a cologne of Pure Sport Alpha Male. Allie picked it out, along with some body wash that doesn’t smell like apples. I don’t think she’s caught on yet that I still use hers. I stare down at the new sneakers on my feet. She even got me to toss the duct taped-together shoes I expected to make last until fall.
LowLow’s expression shifts from teasing to serious. “For real, though. Where you staying?”
Uncomfortable, I hike my pack and cinch the straps tighter. “Messed me up a bit when I found Brandon dead,” I admit. “Had to get gone awhile.”
Brandon had been a resurrectionist. We’d shared a boxcar while I slowly worked him for information on the blood. He never told me a thing before Jamison gutted him for the same and left him scraped clean of vital organs in the space I normally slept. Brandon’s death had been the catalyst to get me into an extended stay at Allie’s place. Again, Jamison arranged pieces, tearing apart people’s lives to benefit himself.
Good riddance, I think, and my face must change because LowLow bows his head with a nod.
“Saw Brandon before the squads showed,” he says. “Whoever got him…brutal.”
“Brutal,” I echo, my voice almost inaudible. I remember the sandwich I dropped when my headlamp caught on his gutted body, the crunch of the lettuce I trampled into gore still tacky along the boxcar floor. My throat tightens and I swallow the gorge rising there.
“You comin’ back?” LowLow asks.
It reminds me why I’m here, what I’m doing.
“I’m couch surfing with a friend for now,” I say. “Not sure when I’ll be at the camp. Might work this angle for a bit.”
It’s what Jamison used to call Allie, an angle to work for information, another resurrectionist to befriend. But when Jamison decided shanking me was the best way to force her hand, he screwed up. I bled out. Allie brought me back from the dead. Even then, she’d already been more than an angle.
Now, I use the term to play her off as unimportant. LowLow might not be so bad, but he’s got a mouth on him and the last thing I need is every gutter punk and street hustler in Fissure’s Whipp getting wind of where I’m crashing.
“This ‘friend,’” he says, throwing up air quotes. “She?”
I offer a noncommittal grunt.
“She aware you’re just hittin’ skins or she got feelings involved?” he asks and I stutter through a partial denial before I end up shrugging.
“I don’t know, LowLow, she’s…” I hesitate. Allie and I have kissed, and once or twice things have gone further. Each time she seems like she’s all in, there, with me, and then she gets this weird tension in her I can’t seem to figure out. I wonder if something bad happened to her she’s not ready to talk about yet. Or maybe she just doesn’t want me that way. “It’s complicated,” I say.
“She the jealous type? Type to have you followed and see what you’re up to?”
I cock my head. The way he’s pushing this has me on edge. I told Allie I’d be around later tonight. If her talk with Talia soured, she might have come to find me. “Blonde girl?” I ask. “Tiny?”
He laughs as if we’re having a casual conversation and starts us walking down the street. After half a block, he grabs the back of my neck and leans toward my ear. “Nope. Your girl got a brother?” he asks.
Allie never mentioned siblings. I don’t know why, but I think of Jamison. He’s dead, I remind myself. So unless it’s his ghost trailing you…
I shake my head as much to answer LowLow as to rattle away the thought of Jamison.
“Scrawny dude. Don’t think he’d raise fists against you with any hope of winning,” LowLow says. It could be a vote of co
nfidence. Or he’s subtly convincing me not to kick the stranger’s ass. “He’s pretty obvious. Locked on your tail a couple blocks before your trip and fall and I wanted to see what he was getting up to.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, genuinely grateful. How long would it have been before I noticed I was being followed? And why is whoever they are trailing me? “He still there?”
LowLow bursts into a laugh and releases me, jogging ahead before he turns to walk backward. Those near black irises slide into the pedestrians behind me. “Sure is!” he says brightly. “You’ll see. Ready?”
It’s my only warning before he grabs my arm and yanks me forward. He uses the momentum to spin us both in a half circle. It ends with me wobbling and unsteady, stopped just long enough to risk a glance at the guy.
I commit his features to memory. Sunken cheeks, slight stubble, about twenty. He’s not wearing sunglasses, so even with the distance, I can tell his eyes are light. He can’t be more than a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet.
I could ditch the pack, toss it aside in a second and chase his ass down, use the lessons Jamison taught me to get what I want. Answers. Apologies. Fear.
LowLow steps into my path as my fingers slip to the backpack’s chest clip. “Easy, Ploy,” he says. “No need for that.”
“Move,” I tell him. My tone leaves no room for argument. To my surprise, he steps to the side. I stare into the crowd, searching for the blue shirt the guy was wearing. A frantic fluttering starts in my gut. I can’t find him.
I charge forward a few steps before I realize it’s useless. “Damn it.”
“Got him off your scent,” LowLow offers as if it’s some consolation. “At least for now.”
“Would have rather known why he was on it in the first place.”
I know, though. As I stand there watching the crowd, deep inside, I already know.
Jamison’s hunters have found me.
Allie
When I count the pile of twenties again, I come to the same total. One thousand, three hundred and forty dollars.
I pick up the pen and scrap piece of paper, flipping it over to the clean side before I add the numbers. I subtract rent from the total. The two utilities in danger of getting shut off, water and electricity. I stare at the remainder. Enough for groceries. Enough for more than Ramen and peanut butter sandwiches.
Blood money, my mind echoes.
Money that’ll keep me going another month. The dented refrigerator humming beside me is empty aside from condiments and the last inch of a questionable half gallon of milk I’m afraid to smell.
There’s a single bowl’s worth of cereal. I have plans to convince Christopher I ate early and skip breakfast tomorrow morning. How many times has he gone hungry in his lifetime? Surely, I can sacrifice this go around.
Or, the rational part of me insists. You grocery shop and fill the shelves.
I stare at the pile of bills resting on the stained wooden laminate countertop. Stare again at the paper where I did the math.
Blood money. Nausea rolls through me. I gather the funds into a single stack that I fold over and jam into my jean shorts.
I can’t spend cash brought in with the same tactics that got my parents killed, Sarah gutted. Tactics that almost wiped out Talia and I in Jamison’s revenge plot, that take advantage of terrified people desperate to save their loved ones.
But I need this money.
Would I have taken this same moral high ground if it’d been Sarah depositing into my account instead of Talia tucking it into my gym bag?
“It’s different!” I blurt to the empty room. But in all honesty, the only difference is two weeks ago, Sarah had still been alive. The money she gave me came from resurrections, ones I fought against performing even as I lived off the spoils.
“It’s different,” I mumble.
The sound of my voice reminds me how alone I am in the apartment. I check the time on my phone. Six hours since I left the gym. Christopher told me he’d be here tonight.
I study the window ledge, the fading dregs of sunset not enough to penetrate the cheap, scratchy fabric of the makeshift curtains.
What if he doesn’t come?
The thought sends a rush of nerves rolling through me. It takes everything inside me to swallow down the emotions. If he’s gone for good, then I go back to normal. I made it alone fine before Ploy showed up.
Christopher, I correct myself. He’s Christopher, now.
My life is utterly different since he came into it. Any ground I’ve fought under my feet is shaky and if I’m honest, it’s Christopher holding me together, his presence steadying me as solidly as his touch at the small of my back. I feel like I can’t breathe without him here.
“God,” I snap. “Could you be more dramatic?”
The scorn in my voice only makes me more embarrassed.
As if on cue, I hear a key rattle in the lock. I leap to my feet and then freeze when no one enters. A tentative knock echoes through the room.
Mentally, I assess what’s within reach. Knife on the end table. Another under the couch cushion. A canister of Mace in the second kitchen drawer. My knuckles ride the curve of my spine until I grip the hilt of the knife strapped to me. “Who’s there?”
“Can you help me?” Christopher asks.
Slumping in relief, I cross to the door, unlock the chain he wouldn’t have been able to disable anyway, then the deadbolts, and finally the little twist lock of the knob. He’s got his key pinched between his lips. Grocery bags hang from his wrists.
“What is all this?” I say, dumbfounded as he shuffles awkwardly past me, tipping his head toward a pair of plastic bags strained to bursting and abandoned in the hallway.
He puffs the key free and it clatters to the floor.
“Food!” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to show up bearing a week’s worth of goods.
As I grab the two shopping bags, I glimpse what’s inside. These aren’t knockoff store brands. He bought the good peanut butter, crunchy, the way I like it. There’s a pound of bacon. Eggs. Toaster strudels with those little packets of too-sweet icing.
“Where did you get money for this?” I ask.
I move into the apartment, transferring the bags as I redo the locks and chain. He’s already in the kitchen, putting away the unexplained spoils of his adventure. I watch as he tosses the old milk into the garbage as if we can suddenly afford to waste food. He slides a new gallon into its empty place.
Apparently, we can afford to throw out the old milk.
“Hey,” I say a little louder this time. “Where did you get all this?”
“Robbed a grocery store,” he says as he stretches to open the cabinet where we keep the creamer.
“Did you really?” I say, baffled.
He turns to me. His face cycles from disappointment to amusement so fast I’m not sure I didn’t imagine it.
“You think I’d rob a grocery store?” he asks, as if it’s not a loaded question.
My skin prickles with embarrassment. “Of course not.”
I’m picturing him fumbling groceries into the thin bags, THANK YOU written over and over in stretched and strained block letters as the police chase him from the scene.
“Of course not,” I repeat. I gesture at the bags on the counter. “This wasn’t necessary. You should have kept your money.”
He goes back to putting the groceries away.
“So…where’d you get it?” I ask awkwardly when it’s clear he won’t offer answers.
“How’d things go with Talia?” he asks instead, which is definitely something we need to discuss, but I can’t let this go.
“Where’d you get the money for the groceries?”
I think of the wad of cash in my pocket, burning and dirty. Now, I don’t have to spend it. He and I are fed. One more day without tapping into resurrectionist dollars to save my ass at the cost of screwing over my morals.
Christopher slides a few cans of vegeta
bles onto the counter along with a packet of chicken before he balls up the bag in his hands. He moves toward me, his lips brushing the tip of my nose. “I figured if I’m staying here, I should contribute.”
Again, that lightness in his voice like thread-thin gauze. I can see right through his words to the tension running underneath them.
“Am I?” he asks.
I raise an eyebrow, confused.
“Staying here?” he whispers, his breath on my lips. He pauses, as if he doesn’t want his kiss to influence what I’m about to answer.
Studying him, I try to decipher what changed. Is he reading my damn mind? Am I giving off subtle cues?
“Talia,” he offers. “I know she’s not thrilled we’re still…” He trails off as if not sure how to fill in the blank. His fingers fall to my waist, the balled-up bag tucked into his palm, crinkling against my hip.
“Listen,” I say. I weave my hands together behind his neck and consider him. Everything in me fights to break our locked gazes, but this is important. “I want you here. I’m obviously a mess right now, and I’m being selfish bringing you into what I’m mixed up with.”
He opens his mouth to argue. I cut him off before he can.
“This isn’t like, a typical relationship or whatever. You…you made some mistakes, and I trusted you when I shouldn’t have,” I say. The words are heavy stones in my throat. “Point is…it’d be better for both of us if I didn’t but…” I swallow hard. “I want you here.”
What happened to giving him up to keep him safe? I ask myself. Waxing poetic about how I want him to stay before I yank the rug out from under him is an extra level of cruel.
I rise onto my tiptoes to kiss him. His hand leaves my hip, the grocery bag drifting to the floor. Christopher’s fingers snake through my hair as he deepens the kiss, his tongue finding mine, slipping up and over, around it before he suddenly jolts away as if I’m electric.
He stares at me, guarded and uncertain in a way I don’t understand. We’ve kissed dozens of times over the last two weeks. It’s not like I’m overstepping boundaries or anything.
Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two Page 4