I run my finger down the list. 5:23. 5:30. 5:44.
My eyes fly to the last time, the one with no line through it.
7:12, it reads. Less than two hours ago. Next to it is a crudely-drawn flower.
With shaking hands, I unlock the screen on my phone. There’s only one person I can beg for help. One Hail Mary left. I cue up the number and hit send.
Talia actually answers. “Are you going to talk to me this time or just sit there again?” she snaps.
It throws me off so much that for a second, I don’t respond.
“Whatever,” she says. “I’m hanging up. If you want to talk, talk, but if you’re waiting for an apology, you’ve—”
“How many calls?” The words are gravelly and strained. “How many calls did you get?”
There’s a pause, as if for the first time, Talia’s realizing something’s not right. “Two,” she says. “I thought you were mad about this morning.”
“Oh my God. He tried to call you for help.” Now I’ve got her attention. The sudden wavering cry from me doesn’t exactly calm her.
Talia skips our code. “What’s wrong?”
I shudder a breath as I fight for control. I have to get Christopher help. I have to get myself out of here because the Doctor is coming. He could be here any second.
“Allie?”
“Yeah.” I press the back of my hand to my lips. “Listen, I screwed up. Bad. I’m in a house,” I start before my voice breaks and I take a second to search the darkening interior. “Um, it’s in the Chariot District. There are four bodies.”
Five, I think as I scurry toward Christopher’s prone form.
“The hunters?” Talia asks and even through my distress I can hear her surprise. “Did they come after you?”
I don’t answer her question. “They’re trying to sell me to the Doctor.”
I hear the noise of Talia rifling through a drawer stop. “Give me an address,” she demands.
I’m too rattled to remember it, but I dig into my pocket for the now-tattered note Christopher left me this morning, the one the hunters missed in their search for weapons. I read her the cross streets. Tell her which road. “Brown house. Chain-link fence in the front. Gold car in the driveway. Older model.”
She waits as I catch my breath. My chest aches from the bullet. I need to rest and heal, but even in my semi-rational state, I know now’s not the time. “They said the Doctor would be here in six to eight hours. It’s been seven.”
There’s silence on the line. “Get the hell out of there!” Talia blurts as I hear the sharp jangle of keys.
“Wait!” I tell her. I have to stop her before she leaves her place. “You’ve got to bring… Ow.” I hiss a breath through clenched teeth as pain stabs through me. “Supplies. For a transfusion.”
“For Ploy,” Talia says, her tone cold. “You cannot be serious.”
“I got shot. I just woke up. But he wrote the times so I would know because he wanted to stay.” My voice cracks. I’m not making sense. “I swear to God I’ll never ask you for anything else,” I plead.
“No,” Talia says. “I’m coming to get you, that’s it. Can you hide until I get there? Are there more hunters? How are you calling me?”
She’s trying to piece together the jumbled puzzle of facts I’ve given her, but I’m fairly sure there isn’t sense to make.
My fingers crawl forward and press against Christopher’s ribcage, over where his heartbeat should be. That heart is mine. I’m not letting it go. “Get your supplies,” I grind out. “Resurrect him and the cluster’s yours.”
In the stunned pause, I hear the engine of her SUV turn over. “It won’t change things, Allie. At the least, he’s got to—”
“He saved my life. Again. I can’t let it cost him his.” Even though he can’t feel it, I give Christopher’s hand a squeeze. “Hurry,” I tell Talia before I hang up.
Exhausted, I curl beside Christopher on the floor to wait.
Ploy
Apples. The scent of apples is the first thing I’m aware of as I regain consciousness. Apples and the iron tang of blood.
The first thing I feel is pain. It radiates through my side, through all the places Zen poked holes, every muscle in my body strained and aching. But the second thing I feel is the weight of a hand resting on my chest. Allie’s warmth chases away the chill of death where our bodies press together. She’s alive. I’m alive. I’ve got to get her out of here.
“Allie?” I wheeze. I can’t move.
Pressure lifts from the crook of my arm where she slept. She draws a sharp inhale and whispers my name.
“The Doctor,” I grate out through a throat sore and dry. “We gotta get you safe from him.”
A scoff that doesn’t belong to Allie makes its way to me from across the room and I realize we’re not alone. “All right,” Talia says, sounding resigned. “I will give you the fact he’s nothing if not consistent.”
With a groan, I crack my eyes open, the lids heavy and swollen. Allie smiles as I blink drowsily, trying to orient myself. We’re at Talia’s place. I’m lying on the pullout couch with Allie.
The wall is still covered in pictures of the hunters I can’t bear to face right now. Avoiding them, I focus on Allie.
“You woke up for a couple seconds halfway through the transfusion,” she says. “Scared the hell out of Talia when you started flailing and ranting about the Doctor coming for me.”
“You’re okay?” I ask.
The question brings an even heavier sigh of consternation from Talia, but Allie laughs.
“Yes,” she says, as she tucks herself against me again. “You should sleep. I’m okay. We’re very safe. Both of us.”
I take what I’m almost sure is nothing more than a long blink, but when I open my eyes again Allie is gone. Talia’s voice drifts from the breakfast bar near the kitchen.
“I mean, there’s a slight chance he came in and found everyone dead and figured you escaped, but I think it’s more likely the little hunter did what they trained her to do. Either way, the house was stripped by the time I got back there. I found nothing. No laptops. No notebook on the desk like you described. Nothing incriminating.”
“They didn’t find the girl yet?” Allie asks, and there’s a pause where I assume Talia’s shaking her head.
Keeley escaped. I’m still too worn through to unravel how I feel about it.
“Nothing on the Doctor, either?” Allie asks.
A pang shoots through my thigh as it cramps. I remember this from the last time Allie resurrected me, the blood clots working through my system. I’ve got hours of the random aches ahead of me. Trying to get comfortable, I adjust on the lumpy mattress. It creaks.
“Are you awake?” Allie calls.
Despite the cramp, I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the mattress. The room starts a slow sway. Okay, I think. Definitely not at one hundred percent.
Allie crosses the room to ruffle my hair. “Think you can eat something?”
The thought of food makes my stomach lurch. “Water,” I say, surprised by how weak my voice sounds.
“How about some soup?” she says. “You should eat. You’ve been in and out for about twenty-four hours now.”
My head whips up in surprise. “A full day?”
Allie gives me a sympathetic nod. “Transfusions are tricky,” she says, and then her voice lowers. “Your body tried to fight off the blood. I didn’t think you were going to make it.”
I braid our fingers together and give her hand a squeeze. “Told you I’d come back.”
“Yeah,” she says, sounding unconvinced. “You did.”
After a long moment, she bounces my hand twice before she drops it and heads across the room into the small galley kitchen. Through the open area of the breakfast bar, I can see her searching the cabinets.
Talia’s leaning against the door frame of her bedroom, arms crossed as she watches me watching Allie. “Can’t figure you out,” Talia says.
>
I reluctantly rip my gaze off Allie and turn to her friend. “Talia, can we not do this now?”
But Talia’s brow furrows as if in confusion. “She’d be dead or being tortured without you.” She’s quiet enough Allie wouldn’t have overheard with the whir of the can opener. “Do you have any idea what the Doctor would do if he got his hands on her?”
“Nothing good,” I sigh and rub a palm over the nape of my neck to work a kink there.
Talia goes on as if I never spoke, her tone strangely distant. “It’s mostly rumors, the bits and pieces we hear. Tales of bodies. Their hands gone black. Blood poisoning. Necrotic tissue. Experimented on and then dumped when whatever he’s trying to do fails.” She studies me. “One of the resurrectionists here found Jason Jourdain yesterday. His body. Not much left.”
“Damn it,” I say.
“Allie said you wanted to bring him back alive. Find the Doctor and…” She trails off, shaking her head. “Do you have any idea how stupid that would have been?”
We both watch Allie as she empties a can of soup into a pan, oblivious to us, a content smile flaring and fading on her lips almost as if she’s afraid of it. It breaks me. “Whatever it takes to stay with her, I’ll do it.”
Enough time passes that I think maybe Talia’s done for now, and then suddenly she moves to sit next to me on the mattress. Uncertain, I rear away from her as she reaches for me, only relaxing when she yanks me into a hug.
“Thank you for saving her,” she whispers into my ear, her tone grateful. Her hand clasps at the back of my skull as she draws me tighter. “I’m glad I was wrong about you.”
“So does this mean killing me is off the table this week?” I joke.
Taking my cue, Talia drops her hold on me and scoots to put some space between us. “Kill you?” she says, amusement dancing in her features. “Like I would waste my blood that way.”
I freeze. “Your blood?”
“Allie wasn’t kidding when she said it was touch and go with you. You about bled her dry and we were cutting it close on time. Unless we overloaded your system with resurrectionist blood, you weren’t coming back.” Talia shrugs like what she did was nothing. “She pleaded your case. Made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” she says. “You know how these things go. Everybody’s got a price.”
“What was your price?” I ask. A little voice at the back of my brain tries to argue that I’m not worth whatever Allie bartered away, but I know what I would do to save Allie and somehow it makes things a little more okay.
Talia doesn’t answer my question. “You got about two pints of me running through your veins,” she says instead. She slugs me in the shoulder almost gently enough to be playful, but not quite. “We’re even now, so don’t go expecting any more favors.”
“Will the Doctor come after her?” I ask.
Any sign of our friendly banter fades from Talia. “He moves around constantly. He could be in the area. If so, I might get lucky and pick up his trail.”
“But you doubt it?” I guess.
“But I doubt it,” she says.
I can’t help but look over at Allie. As if she senses my attention, she raises her head, a smile lighting her face as she stirs what’s on the stove. She purses her lips to blow me a subtle kiss.
“Let him try,” I whisper.
Allie
Christopher rushes through the kitchen, half of a bagel with cream cheese shoved into his mouth as he fights with the buttons on his shirt.
“Come here!” I say, laughing. I reach to wrangle him by the sides of his undone collar. Snapping the rest of the bagel from his mouth, I take a bite for myself before I set it on a plate on the counter. While I chew, I undo the three buttons he managed to get in the wrong holes and do them up properly. “There.”
I pat him on the chest. Under the fabric, his heart’s racing.
“Allie, I don’t know if I can—”
“You’re going to do great,” I promise and then amend it with, “Better than great. This is just first-interview jitters.”
He huffs a calming breath and then holds out his hands. “Do I look okay?”
I’m not about to pass on an invitation to ogle my boyfriend. His hair’s cut shorter on top and gelled. The hunter green button down sets off his brown eyes. He’s freshly showered, and the aftershave he’s wearing smells ridiculously good.
Holding a finger up, I twirl it and he starts an obligatory slow spin, his shiny leather shoes squeaking on the tile. He completes his circle and gives me an expectant look. I sidle up to him, straightening his collar before I plant a kiss on his mouth.
When I pull away, his lips chase mine for another.
“Tomorrow we get to do this all over again for you,” he murmurs and butterflies flutter through my stomach.
My interview is for a simple job at a clothing store, and while we won’t be rolling in cash, if we’re both hired, we’ll have enough income that we won’t have to worry about losing the apartment.
Which is good since I’m not resurrecting anymore. For right now, Talia’s granted me a temporary leave of absence. In a week, she’ll have her meeting and officially take over the cluster here in Fissure’s Whipp. It’s the tiniest price to pay for a happily ever after. My aunt Sarah was right. I would never be the leader they need. I don’t want it. Talia does.
I lean against Christopher’s chest as he sways us through the kitchen in an impromptu slow dance. We’re not in the clear yet. His past could still come back to haunt us. My future is still uncertain. But as his heart beats steady against my cheek, there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than here, with this boy, his arms around me. His pack is in our closet, empty. I’m still getting used to waking up snuggled together.
His hand finds the small of my back, his fingers curling into my hair. “I love you, Allie.”
“I love you, too,” I tell him.
Someday, I know my blood will win out and pull us both into the dangerous world my life has always been.
Someday, I think.
But not today.
Check out The Siders Series by Leah Clifford, starting with book one - A Touch Mortal
* * *
Getting involved with an angel, especially a half-Fallen one, might not have been Eden’s best idea. Still, she never thought a summer fling with Az would end up costing her mortality.
* * *
Now, there's no way of telling what will happen when Eden's fingertips graze human skin. The power that builds inside her, Touch, strips away morals and logic. Some people only feel a high; others are overcome by their darkest thoughts.
* * *
Worse, word's gotten around that her Touch can kill her own kind, a skill Luke and the Fallen are desperate to harness. The last thing Eden needs is the rumor to spread. Especially since it's true.
* * *
With the Fallen closing in, and loyalties in doubt, Eden must rely on the guy who broke her heart to keep it beating. Working with the Upstairs, Az is determined to defeat Luke and win back more than just Eden's loyalty. But Eden will be damned, literally, before she lets him off the hook that easily.
* * *
Get your copy today: books2read.com/u/banaPa
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Reviews make a huge difference to the success or failure of a book, especially for writers like myself. The more reviews a book has, the more people are likely to take a shot on picking it up. The review need only be a li
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With all my thanks,
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Leah Clifford
About the Author
Leah Clifford was born and raised outside of Cleveland Ohio. She has an affinity for all things weird and creepy as made evident by her oddity shop Petite Grotesque and her previous young adult novels, A Touch Mortal, A Touch Morbid and A Touch Menacing.
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You can find her on Twitter and Facebook.
Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two Page 24