I slide out of the back seat. Talia doesn’t move. Only when I come around to her side and open the door does she look up at me. With my back toward Jamison for a split second, I bend over her to undo her seatbelt. “Dandelion,” I say.
At first, there’s no reaction, and I’m not sure she heard me. But then as the seatbelt retracts into the door, she blurts, “Cobalt.”
It’s low. No one else will hear, and from the look on her face, she’s shooting some insult my way. I wink at her as Jamison brushes past me to point the gun on Talia again. “Move,” he orders.
Her shoes crunch gravel as she hops out and glances at the house. The place hasn’t been well kept. Paint peels off the wooden shingles in flakes that litter the yard. The windows are all open. Beside the house is an old well. As far as I remember, it works, though nobody much uses it anymore. The massive tree twenty feet from the house has the plank board swing Jamison played on when he was little. The ropes look tattered. I’m not sure it would hold anyone now.
As soon as we hit the porch, I’m aware of why all the windows in the house are open. A smell wafts out, pungent and sickly sweet. Rot.
Death.
“Oh my God,” Allie whispers. It’s the first time she’s spoken since Talia’s. She moves an arm over her mouth and nose and gags into her elbow. There’s a droning sound I can’t quite place.
Jamison turns to her slowly. “I told you,” he says, the words spilling out quietly. “My father wouldn’t be a problem.”
The droning. It’s flies. They’re clustered on the broken screen door, lining the windowsills on the inside of the house. “What did you do?” I whisper.
Allie’s hand moves to my wrist like she wants to comfort me, but just as her fingers brush my skin she catches herself and drops it to her side. I watch, waiting for the slightest indication that Jamison’s going to go for Allie, but he’s eerily still.
“Follow me,” Jamison says finally. Eyes on us, he walks backward around corners memorized in childhood. The smell gets stronger. I don’t look into the living room. Whatever’s in there, I don’t want to see, but I hear Talia’s gasp. Tiny winged bodies flit and bump against my skin. Despite the heat, I shiver.
We’re through the kitchen, standing in front of an aged door in the hallway.
The cellar.
I hate this place. Once, he gave me a shove down these same stairs and then held the handle while I twisted it in a panic. Only when I begged him for a full fifteen minutes did he laugh and tell me about the light. He hadn’t let me up for almost an hour.
As if he can sense my distress, Jamison picks this moment to look at me and smile. It’s not vicious. Almost an apology. We were kids when that happened. Stupid and mean and calling each other out on endless dares and tests of bravery. I give Jamison the slightest nod.
“Watch your head,” he says as he swings the door open to reveal a half rotten set of stairs. He makes Talia go first, and then follows. Allie is next. Rocks skitter and bounce as I take up the rear. Jamison yanks the string on the bare-bulbed light and a yellow glow bathes the exposed beams above us. When I’m down, he pockets the old skeleton key.
The floor is dirt, compressed through a hundred years to near concrete. The air still carries the sick smell of death, but riding its back is the heady scent of earth and roots. There’s a tree trunk in the middle of the room, left there as a support to the house. Around it are wrapped two sets of chains, shackles at the ends of them.
He’s locking them down here.
A rush of anger thrums through me. I never signed on for hurting people, for trapping anyone in a cellar chained up.
Talia starts to struggle, but freezes when Jamison cocks the gun at her again. He darts his eyes at the shackles. “Put them on,” he says.
“I’ll kill you for this, I swear to God,” she says. She does what he says though. When she’s fastened her wrists, he runs a padlock through the hinged clasp of each manacle. My arm is around Allie’s waist. I can’t let him do this to her.
I can’t do this to her.
Blood or power or money. I don’t care. But what am I supposed to do? Grab her and take off up the stairs and pray the bullets don’t hit us? Hope we get to the car? Fight him for the keys?
I could have stopped him, stopped this. Regret washes over me and cools the sweat breaking out on my neck. The air in the cellar is cold enough to pass for air conditioning. There must be some way to get them out of here without anyone hurt.
I fight to focus, use the moment to take stock of the room. Logs, the bark stripped from them a century ago, line the walls every five feet, holding up the house above. There isn’t much else—the three bare bulbs glowing on the ceiling, an old table made of rough leftover wood and a half dozen pockets carved into the dirt walls like shelves. On the shelves are dusty mason jars that look like they hold long forgotten vegetables. One nook has a set of rusted bolt cutters and a broken saw blade.
The locks he used on the girls have combinations. I can’t think of any reason he’d tell me what they were, not now. The bolt cutters might be their only way out of here. If they work. For now they’re not in reach. It’s better that way.
Jamison points at Allie. “Now you,” he says.
I can’t bring myself to watch. And then, I force myself to turn my head. Allie’s calm, collected to the point where I wonder if she’s in some sort of shock, but I saw this same murderous resolve in her at her aunt’s. I’d stopped her from killing Jamison then. Maybe I can talk him out of this. Diffuse things before they go further. Explain to him how the blood works, the immunity, make him believe.
Once Allie’s restrained, Jamison visibly relaxes. I try to catch Allie’s eye, give her some kind of clue that I’m on her side, that this is all going to be okay, but she won’t look. Jamison’s stare, however, burns into me. He’s gone silent.
“What now?” I ask. There’s a tremor in my voice. I don’t care. Let him think I’m the easily manipulated kid he’s been friends with all these years. Let him think I’m afraid. You are afraid, my mind whispers back. You’re the same person you’ve always been. A sheep. A follower.
Jamison seems to be weighing my words, my loyalty. “I know you hate it down here,” he says finally. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 20
Allie
Metal scrapes against ceramic as Jamison pulls each of the cords to the lights in turn, making his way toward the stairs. He’s already taken both mine and Talia’s phones. As he climbs the stairs, I realize he’s seriously going to leave us down here in the dark. Alone.
Okay, don’t panic, I think. Alone is a good thing. It’ll give us a chance to plan. But as the door opens and reality sets in, I can’t help but look up. Ploy’s standing in the stairwell, just over Jamison’s shoulder. Bastard, I think. I hate myself more for trusting him. How could I be so naïve? For just a second before the door slams shut and plunges us into darkness, his mouth opens, as if he means to say something. He’s cut off before he has a chance.
I concentrate on my breathing, slow it down as I wait for my eyes to adjust. The waiting does no good though. There’s no light for them to adjust to. Two sets of footsteps creak across the floorboards above us before I dare to move. Even then, it’s only because a sprinkle of dust drops into my eyes as I uselessly stare at the ceiling trying to track their path. The burning grit forces my eyes closed. I raise a hand, careful not to rub them. The chains rattle as I wiggle around. “Talia?”
“You really do have the worst taste in boys,” she sighs and despite everything, a chuff of a laugh pops out of me. I’m not debating. “This one though...” She trails off.
“Yeah, he’s a new level of fail.” Suddenly, I want to cry. My eyes are already tearing up from the dirt in them. “I’m sorry, Talia. I’m sorry I brought you into this.”
The chains are looped around some sort of thick wooden post, with slack for us to move, though not far. Talia slides closer to me. She raises her hand to feel for my shoulder. Cold
links of chain run across my arm and I shiver. Despite the heat outside, it’s freezing down here. “He unbuckled my seatbelt when we were getting out of the car. Allie, he said dandelion to me,” she says in my ear.
“Okay,” I say slowly, drawing out the word.
“Beckett and I. The code we use. Did you tell him about it?”
I flash back to the house last night, Talia waiting on the stairs to figure out if it was a trap and her cousin leaning over the railing to shout the same word Ploy had said to Talia. Dandelion and cobalt. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I told him it was how you guys told each other everything was okay.”
Metal clinks together as she leans against the post, her shoulder pressing against mine. “Well, I’m not saying we bet everything on him, but if we can’t find a way out of this, I wouldn’t count him out just yet.”
“Yeah,” I say, wrapping the slack of the chains around my wrists. “I’m not waiting around to see if that pans out. Does this thing we’re wrapped around have any give?” I lean forward until the chains are taunt. “If we both pull in the same direction, maybe we can knock it loose.”
A few seconds later, she’s in position, slightly behind me. “Ready?” she asks.
I count down from three and then yank for all I’m worth. Though I’m gripping the chain in my hands to keep the pressure off my wrists, I can feel the burn of the shackles rubbing as I struggle. The post doesn’t give. It doesn’t so much as shudder. “Harder!” I grunt, digging in with the balls of my feet.
“Allie, stop. This isn’t going to work,” Talia finally says, collapsing back to the trodden earth. “Let’s try kicking it.”
We count down. Our soles slam into the wood. “Again,” I command. We’re not near giving up. At this point, I’ll pick the damn thing apart splinter by splinter. We’re getting out of this basement.
On the second kick, my shoe slips and hits her ankle. She gives a short cry of pain. “You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she answers after a moment. “Watch it though. I don’t need to be hobbled.” She sighs in the darkness. “That thing’s not moving anyway.”
“Okay, what do we try next?” I grind out through clenched teeth. I’m not about to give up. In the quiet, my mind starts spinning. Spiders and bugs don’t exactly send me into hysterics, but in the pitch blackness, my imagination is playing tricks on me. The stiller I am, the more I’m sure things are crawling on me.
I have to cut the thoughts off before I start to panic. “He turned us in to Jamison, you know. He did do that.” I want the words to call up rage. Instead, they only make me confused. I hadn’t expected him to turn on us so quickly. I’d thought he was at least struggling. He could have told Jamison so much more on the phone in the woods than he did. He could have turned me in then. But he didn’t.
And though I wouldn’t ever admit it to anyone, when we’d been on the pullout couch last night, my kissing him didn’t have anything to do with making him believe me. Everything inside me burned for him and I was tired of fighting, tired of playing coy once I’d found out he knew Jamison, tired of resisting. It had nothing to do with trust or lies. It had to do with how many nights I’d spent sitting alone at my aunt’s, then at the apartment. I’d known it was going to come crashing down around me. Of course I did. But I’d wanted one good night. Hands on me that were gentle and needy and made me feel like I was special. Because I believed him. When he told me without using the words how he felt. I believed him.
“He didn’t really have a choice,” Talia says. “Not saying that puts him in the clear by any means. Just pointing it out. He might be making messed up decisions, but he’s torn, and we can use that to our advantage.”
Though she can’t see it, I tilt my head a bit. She’s right.
“He’s in love with you, Allie. That’s our weapon. It’s gonna help us much more than trying to break chains or kick down this damn thing,” she says and I hear what I assume to be knuckles crack into the post. “Ow,” Talia whispers a second later. “Hey, Allie?”
“Yeah?”
“If it’s us or him…” She hesitates. “You’re going to choose us, right?”
My pause is too long. “Yeah, of course,” I say anyway. Talia’s words warp through my mind, distort the hate down to other emotions—disappointment and uncertainty.
From above us, there’s a hard thump and then a dragging sound. Dust rains down into my hair. There’s another drag across the floorboards above, the thud of heavy footsteps.
“What do you think they’re doing up there?” she asks.
The boards creak and shift, but no light leaks through. “Getting rid of Jamison’s last problem,” I say.
Chapter 21
Ploy
The stench is unbelievable. I’m wearing a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves Jamison handed me when we got upstairs. I keep flashing back to Brandon in the train car. How I thought he was sleeping until I peeled away the sleeping bag.
There’s no chance Jamison’s dad will ever pass for sleeping.
Sores have opened up on his skin, weeping yellow fluid. There’s a puddle of it under the wooden rocking chair he died in. Was killed in, I think. Because he’s not going to pass for sleeping any easier than this would pass for a natural death. Half his skull is splattered on the wall behind him.
“I know it looks bad,” Jamison says. “Trust me, he deserved it.”
I don’t have it in me to argue. Possibly because, even though I hate violence, hate this side of Jamison, I know exactly where he got it. My dad beat me and I curled up and took it. Jamison’s dad beat him and he used every punch like a sharpening strap against a straight razor. Made himself lethal. For years now, I’d been the sheath, talking him down, keeping him calm, reining him in.
Brandon in the boxcar. Allie’s aunt in her living room. Jamison, the weapon that killed them both. And in front of me is the dead body of the man who made that weapon. “He deserved it,” I say finally, and Jamison’s sigh sounds almost relieved as he fetches a tarp from the couch.
He spreads the plastic in front of the chair. “We’ll tip it,” he says. “He’ll fall off and we can drag him outside.” He couldn’t have done this part without me.
“And then what?” I ask. Someone’s going to come looking for him. I’m not saying it’ll happen soon. His dad never was one for holding down a job long, making friends. But it will happen.
“And then we wheelbarrow him behind the barn,” he says, straightening after the tarp is aligned. “I already dug a hole.”
It’s sick, but one of those not-so-clever sayings pops to mind. Friends help you move. Real friends help you move a body.
Jamison’s standing behind the rocking chair. “Ready?” he asks. The back of his shirt brushes the wall. The gore there is dried—his dad’s been dead a few days at least—but I can’t help the shiver of revulsion that passes through me. “I need your help,” he says, and starts to push the chair.
It slides forward, screeching across the floorboards. I give it a hard shove and pull my hands off as quickly as I can.
The body spills over, crumpling mostly onto the tarp. Flies launch into the air. The stomach moves and for a second I have a delusional thought that he’s alive somehow until I see maggots wriggling out of a tear in his skin. The abdomen slowly deflates as a horrendous smell fills the room.
Jamison gags once and then takes off across the room. He pukes into the fireplace, chunks of whatever he’d eaten earlier spattering against the grate and onto the bricks. Nausea turns my stomach. For the first time, I’m glad I’ve gone hungry, barely ate the breakfast I cooked. It’s the only thing keeping me from following his lead. He wipes his mouth on the back of his arm and then brushes the arm against his jeans. His face is pale when he glances up at me.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. Instead of coming over, he leans, palms on his knees. “He was a bastard, but I never thought I’d be tossing him in a hole to rot,” he says and I suddenly have a furious hope it’s not the smell that got
to him. That the old Jamison, the one I trust with my life because he saved it, the one I’d do anything for, is in there.
“What happened?” I ask carefully. I don’t want to shut him down. If I work this right, maybe I can make him see how messed up all of this is.
“Allie and you. Figured things would go bad sooner or later. So, we were going to have to hold her until we figured things out. My apartment’s a shithole. Thin walls. I thought maybe the barn here would work. I don’t know,” he says. He stands straight and laces his fingers together before running them over his shaved head, the rubber of the yellow gloves squeaking against his sweaty scalp. “Once I got here it just seemed easier to kill him.”
My mouth opens automatically to spit out some answer he’ll want to hear. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing for years. This time though, nothing comes.
He’s quiet for a long time before a smile spreads slowly across his lips. “You and me,” he says. “You’re the only one I could ever count on. I got you out of your dad’s house. You know the police took me in for questioning? Never told them where you were,” he says, a bounce to his voice. I was the only one he could count on, but the examples he’s bringing up are things he did for me. I’m not sure if he’s doing it on purpose. If I’m supposed to get defensive.
“I never knew that,” I say, my voice deadpan, carefully void of emotion.
“Yup,” he says lightly. He rubs his hands once more over his head and then drops them to his sides. “Twice, but I didn’t break. You should have seen him at the station, your dad. Eye all bashed up where I hit him with the bat. I knew if he found you again, he’d kill you. Hell, for a bit there, I thought he was gonna kill me.”
My throat tightens. I don’t want to think about it.
“When I got my apartment, I saw him in the parking lot a couple times, just watching. That’s why I never said you could stay at my place.”
The words run through me like cold water. Some nights, Jamison had visited me at the boxcars. He’d told me about his apartment in an offhanded comment but never once invited me over. He brought me food. Gave me money to keep me in the basics. But he never offered me so much as floor space.
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