Talia wants me dead. To her, I’ll always be a risk not worth taking.
“Lucky for me, no one gets to play God,” I tell her.
“Every resurrection, I play God. I decide who lives and who dies.” Her voice is logical, cold. In another life, Talia would’ve made a nightmare of a serial killer. “Allie played God when she brought you back,” she says. “And she played God when she forced me to let you walk out of that cellar alive.” Her attention shifts to Allie. “You get what I meant? Why he’s trouble?”
I’m guessing her questions are in reference to whatever they discussed while they were working out. I knew they’d be talking about me but it still sucks. I’m expecting Allie to stick up for me or tell Talia to back off.
“He shouldn’t be involved in this at all,” she says instead.
“So get rid of him!” Talia yells.
Allie cringes. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”
Confused, I watch her bolt for the door before she whips toward us. Her gaze on Talia is steely enough that the other girl flinches. “Never threaten him again.”
“I’m just giving him crap,” Talia says, clearly taken aback. “He knows I didn’t mean—”
“He knows exactly what you meant and so do I,” Allie says, each word a stab in the room’s silence. She goes for the knob and slams the door behind her. I listen to the sound of her pounding down the stairs outside, uncertain what to do.
“Welp,” Talia says, as she heads toward the small kitchen and clunks her cup into the sink. “Highlighting your flaws certainly struck a nerve.”
“Don’t make her choose between us.” I’m not sure why I say it. The instant I do, I know it’s a mistake.
Talia sniffs in disbelief. “You can’t think she’ll pick you.”
“No,” I say, weighing my response. “She needs both of us.”
“She doesn’t need you,” Talia says as she comes back into the living room.
“I’m worried about her,” I admit. “She’s not sleeping. Zoning out. Her nerves are fried. She doesn’t want to resurrect anymore. She doesn’t want to be in charge.”
My gaze slips to the pictures on the wall as I feel Talia reassessing me.
With a hard sigh, she leans against the edge of the couch. “This is literally in her blood. It’s not something she can walk away from. Her mother raised her to lead. Sarah dropped the ball, I’ll give you that, but it’s a setback Allie’s going to overcome.” The tension in her eases. “People don’t always get to choose the lives they want for themselves.”
I scoff, thinking of the Boxcar Camp. “Pretty sure I’m a shining example to prove your point.”
To my surprise, she nods along as I’m talking. “Can you see it’s not a bad thing to have a future laid out? A purpose to fulfill? You’ve seen that side of her. You’ve seen what she can do when she’s pushed.”
My jaw flexes. “You’re pushing her too hard, Talia. Her parents were—”
There you are, I think, spotting the picture of the guy I saw following me yesterday. I start to raise my finger to identify him.
“Allie’s tougher than you give her credit for,” Talia says, and her tone stops my hand. “You heard the stories about what she’s been through, but I was there, Ploy. Allie will come around. She just needs to catch her breath.”
“After Jamison, she isn’t—”
Talia barks a laugh. “You think I haven’t lost sleep over what happened in that cellar? I didn’t wallow in my trauma because someone needed to step up until Allie gets sorted. You’re distracting her.” She pauses, and in the space between sentences, anger burns through what’s left of her tirade. “I’m tired, too,” she says, annunciating each word. “I’d love to look the other way and pretend these hunters are simply curious about us. But who’s picking up the blame when another Fissure’s Whipp resurrectionist goes missing?”
“Is that going to be your life then?” I ask. “Standing behind Allie and shoving her in the direction she needs to go?”
“Who else?” Her voice is a quiet threat. “You?”
Me.
I consider the snapshots again. This guy knows me on sight. Maybe I can get his name or an address. Maybe I can get a clear number of how many hunters there really are and give Talia the information she wants, change the gray areas in her knowledge to a solid black or white. When I get what she needs, I’ll let Talia save the day.
It’s something to consider. I can venture downtown and see what happens. I can at least try. If I can’t find the guy, I’ll know I did what I could to help. I head for the door. “Hang in there, okay?”
“Hey, Ploy?” she says.
Hand on the knob, I pause.
For a long moment, she watches me, her expression unreadable. “Leave her,” she says. “Before we all end up hurt.”
A dangerous smile slashes across my mouth. “No one’s hurting Allie.”
I wait for her to lob another insult in my direction, respond, anything. Finally, she nods. “Then watch out for our girl,” Talia says.
With that, I twist the knob and step into the sunshine.
Allie
The bus rattles, bouncing over the potholes of the back roads. I’m tucked against Christopher, the arm he has around me warm enough that my skin’s gone sticky under his touch, but I’m not willing to shake free of him.
I stare out the window, lost in thought. The view slides from suburbs to farms to suburbs as we make our hesitating return trip to Fissure’s Whipp.
Christopher’s fingers curl around a lock of hair that’s slipped loose from my bun and he tucks it behind my ear.
I’m exhausted. From the resurrections I want no part of, to the hunters after us, everywhere I turn and no matter what I do, I’m surrounded by death. I hoped I could talk to Talia today, get rational backup with how I can protect Christopher, and found her half delirious from lack of sleep with a photographic hit list based on nothing more than social media follows.
Still, it’s a mistake to wait until someone gets hurt before I act.
Like it or not, the cluster of resurrectionists in Fissure’s Whipp needs protecting. How did Sarah keep tabs on the hunters? Did she have a spy in their midst? How would she have handled this? These are things I should know, I think bitterly.
At fifteen, before my parents died, I’d been resurrecting, training, learning. Once I moved in with Sarah, everything stopped except the most straightforward of resurrections, and only when she had no other choice but me. Between fifteen and eighteen, as the heir apparent to the Fissure’s Whipp cluster, I should have been groomed for the role I’d fill later in life. Why hadn’t she done that? Surely my teenage angst wasn’t sufficient to convince Sarah to keep me in the dark.
The tip of Christopher’s finger slides across my hairline, past my temple, the motion soothing. My blinks grow longer. I almost drift off to sleep, lost in the floating weightlessness between dreaming and awake when we hit another pothole.
My teeth clack as the bus bounces. I jerk upright. Christopher grabs for me, steadying me as the shocks creak and groan. I’m clamped onto his thigh. Adrenaline surges through my muscles in the split second it takes to orient myself before the bus settles.
“Nice nap?” Christopher asks.
Outside, I’m surprised to see familiar ground. Two stops from now we’ll need to hop off. “Guess so.”
The bus slows. A handful of people meander toward the exits. The doors close with a mechanical wheeze. We rumble past the stream that runs through the center of downtown, cutting its rut through the city.
Rubbing the heel of my palm against my eye, I stand and grab a looped support hanging from above. Christopher follows, catching himself on the worn fabric of the seat in front of us as the driver hits the brakes. My hip slams painfully into the corner of someone’s briefcase. I groan and drop a hand to the spot. The owner of the briefcase doesn’t apologize.
Jerk, I think. But it’s not his fault. A random movement of the bus. Maybe he is
n’t aware he hurt me.
Too much hurt for a minor bruise, my brain insists. I stare at the briefcase as the pain in my hip sharpens. And suddenly my over-exhausted brain is spinning. I’ve seen movies where villains use the tips of umbrellas to inject things. Poisons.
Tracking devices? I wonder. Is that how the hunters know about us?
“Allie?” Christopher nudges me. The guy in front of me is gone.
The bus doors start to shut.
“Wait!” I call to the driver. “Sorry! We’re getting off, too!”
There’s grumbling from the surrounding seats, even though no one’s particularly inconvenienced.
The doors reverse, open again, and a whirlwind of exhaust fumes and heat swirls onto the bus. My hip throbs as I rush forward and take the stairs, landing hard off the slightly longer step to the cobblestoned street. Some days I’m all for the kitschy Fissure’s Whipp aesthetic. Today is not one of them.
The bus engine knocks into gear, spewing a toxic fog from the tailpipe as it continues on its route. I hobble forward to the sidewalk.
“Hey, are you okay?” Christopher asks. “What happened?”
“Probably got stabbed with a tracking device,” I mutter before I think better of it. It sounds ludicrous.
The concern on his features shifts to something deeper as he lowers a hand to where I’m pressing the hip I’m favoring. I wave off his worry.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I say. A weariness weighs down my bones, so heavy I’m dreading every single step of the walk home. Christopher caresses my cheek as if he’s waiting for tears I haven’t shed yet, on guard to catch them. I lean into his touch. “I don’t know if I’m too paranoid or not paranoid enough.”
“About the hunters?” he asks. “Because I have an idea of how I can help.”
“Honestly, I’m ready to consider anything.” I say.
He ruffles his hair, stalling. I’m not sure what to make of his hesitation.
“Out with it,” I prod.
“Jamison told them about me,” he starts. “At the least, they know he and I were going after you together.”
I nod in agreement. “Exactly, which is why we’ve got to figure out a way to get you off their radar.”
He pauses as if to give my exhausted brain a moment to make the connections I’m clearly not seeing. When I don’t react, he hitches a breath before forcing himself to go on. “They’re assuming I’m one of them, Allie, because until two weeks ago I was one of them. Hell, Talia still thinks I am.” Shame burns his cheeks. “I helped hunt you.”
I fiddle with the corded bracelet at my wrist. Does he want absolution? He knows he has it, at least from me. Talia is a different story.
“You need their plans,” he says. “You could use someone on the inside.”
Finally, it hits me what he’s hinting. “No!” I say, startling him with the sudden fury in the single word.
Fresh anxiety floods me. At least it gives me the energy I need to start the walk home. Christopher trails, fisting and unfisting his hands.
“Look,” he says. “That hunter found me once, he’ll find me again. When he does—”
“No!”
He reaches for me, but I snatch my arm clear.
“Hear me out!” he pleads.
Barely twisting enough to see him, I don’t hide the emotions roiling through me. Anger. Disappointment. Fear. I make my demand cold and utterly final. “You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me.”
He balks like I’m talking crazy and then eases into a placating hum of a question. “Who said anything about sacrificing myself?”
“That’s exactly what you’d be doing!” I scream. “I’m not throwing you to the wolves to save myself!”
Not even if I should. Not even if it’s what Talia would do. Embarrassment creeps through me. Around us and across the way, people are openly staring at what probably resembles a heinous public breakup.
Maybe it should be a breakup. I can’t stomach the idea of something bad happening to him and the longer we’re together, the higher those chances climb. Eventually, he’s going to get hurt because of me. I know this. I watched it happen to my parents. The people we love become cannon fodder.
…the people we love. There it is again, that word.
I cannot love him.
“No,” I say. I can’t decide if it denies my feelings, or his plans, or the deaths looming on the horizon. Turning away, I stalk past the library, pulling ahead of him as I shake my head. “I’m not doing this,” I murmur to no one, or possibly the universe.
Christopher follows a few steps behind. “Allie!” he yells finally. “Talk to me!”
I slow to a stop to tell him it’s a bad idea after all, him staying with me, but Christopher’s expression of pure heartbreak splinters my arguments.
“You’ve got to quit closing me out,” he says. “I’m trying here. I’m really trying, but you just keep… I mean, I don’t even know if you…”
My chin quivers, the exhaustion fighting the anxiety, and he falls quiet. My thoughts won’t stop spinning. Talia and the hunters and all the things I need to do and the responsibilities I’ve dropped and all the ways I’ve let everyone down or will let everyone down. If I could just get a few hours of silence in my brain, I could settle on what to do first. Construct a plan. Talia wants nothing more than for me to take the load off her and Christopher’s standing here offering to help me bear it.
“That hunter followed me,” he insists. “If he’s after me, if he wants to talk to me, why not let me see what he wants?”
Shaking my head, I start us walking again.
We make it almost a block before he grabs my wrist and yanks me to face him. I’m expecting him to launch into a pretty speech and a stronger offer to save the day. Instead, his rough grip holds me firm. “Why are you—” he starts, but I don’t let him finish.
“You’re not helping with this. You don’t get to be involved. That’s how you get hurt.”
His gaze snaps to mine. “I get hurt when you leave me on the sidelines. I get hurt watching you suffer. I get hurt when you don’t trust me to—” He cuts off abruptly and then sucks a dramatic lungful of air, letting it out slow. “Listen, I get it. You think you’re a death sentence for me. I’m doing my best to let you work through that. You’ve gotta understand, Allie, anything your life throws at me is less dangerous than a night at that damn Boxcar Camp.” His voice drops to a hush. “Or a night at my dad’s place.”
The admission is enough to silence me. I’ve seen his scars. Over the past two weeks, I’ve learned not to grab him unexpectedly by the shoulder. We don’t talk about the why.
He leans in enough that his lips touch mine. It’s not a kiss. Instead, I see it for what it is—an attempt to prepare me for whatever he’s about to say. “Stop acting like you’re a grenade,” he whispers.
The anger I’m desperately clinging to fizzles. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
His mouth meets mine and I open to him on instinct. As he deepens our kiss, his tongue finds mine, darts forward in a tease I echo. The strangling ivy of tension from the last few hours tears loose at his touch and suddenly I can breathe again. When he finally breaks from me, his thumbs hook through the loops of my shorts.
“Grenade,” I remind him.
“Once you decide to yank that pin, you lob yourself straight into danger, no plan, no exit strategy,” he says. “If that initial explosion doesn’t take out your enemies, you’re screwed.”
Even with the gentle touches to dampen the blow, or perhaps because of them, vulnerability trickles through me and I stiffen. He should not know me this well. “It doesn’t matter if I die.”
“Don’t ever say that,” he growls. His nose nudges my jaw and I tilt until he nips the side of my neck. “Ever.”
My fingers claw him closer, in his hair, at his ribs, desperate. “I’ll resurrect,” I argue into his skin. He groans in response. “No?”
As I extract
myself from the tangle we’ve become, I don’t trust the satisfaction in his chocolate eyes.
“You resurrect. To what? Another Jamison?” he asks.
Without Christopher’s intervention, my existence as I know it would have ended at that cabin.
“I could infiltrate their group,” he says. “Give you and Talia actual names to go off instead of out-of-focus pictures.”
He has a valid point. The thought’s there before I can stop it.
“I can do this,” he says. His voice fills with certainty. “Give me a chance.”
I force my mouth into a sneer. “What happens when they figure out what you’re up to? Or have a suspicious inkling and panic?” I challenge, hoping he’ll see the stupidity in his idea. Despite the heat, I shudder. “What if Jamison pissed them off and they’re after revenge? You don’t know what you’d be walking into!”
When he doesn’t respond, I double down. “What if I forbid you from doing this?” I ask, part of me terrified of the answer. “If I make you promise me you won’t get involved?”
His eyes catch mine. “What if I’m not asking permission?”
Fresh rage ignites inside me. I wait for a beat, praying the spark will die. Instead, my chest heats. “So you’re giving me an ultimatum then? I give my blessing or what?”
We’re going to argue. He’s going to push this and I’m going to resist and I think of all the other times we’ve fought, each a moment he watched me react to threats on a hair trigger, where a mistake could have cost me my life. Could have cost me his.
Shit, I think. I am a grenade.
What if he can get close to the hunters?
If he’s in danger, it’s not worth the risk, I argue.
“Or what?” I snarl louder to compensate for his silence. “You walk? We’re done with whatever this is?” I twirl my hand through the air between us, the motion flippant and cruel and dismissive. He flinches. Inside, bits of me cringe.
“Whatever this is?” he repeats. “I’m involved, Allie.” His face corkscrews through disbelief, then anger, then hurt. “You don’t think we make a good team? The two of us?” he asks, and the question is so much bigger than the words it contains. Us. A couple instead of two people struggling alone.
Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two Page 6