My feet move, swift and silent, carry me down each step. I can’t see all of Jamison, but his foot swings back and forth, in and out of the frame of view the stairwell gives me. And then one of his kicks spirals the body. Allie’s head slams against the ground hard enough to bounce. Blood pours from her nose. It mixes with the white foam that drizzles from between her lips.
The poison, I think instantly, but I’d checked her for the vial. She hadn’t had one. Had I missed it? Had Jamison? If she drank it, there’s no amount of healing that would help her, no boost from my blood that would save her.
I forget I’m supposed to be sneaking. I forget how much I need the element of surprise. There’s only her, dying. Maybe dead.
Jamison rears his leg to kick her again, aiming for her face and I don’t think, just launch myself from the fifth step up. He doesn’t turn in time to see me before I crash into him. I hear him screaming and then realize it’s me, my wrist bent back as he avoids the knife I’m driving down. I’m going to kill him. Gouge the terrified look out of his eyes.
And he is terrified. I’m covered in rot and grave dirt and blood and up until half a second ago he thought I was dead.
Jamison stumbles under my weight and as we hit the ground I roll us, end up on top. Spots cloud my vision as I struggle to breathe, stay conscious. My strength fades fast. He squeezes my wrist until my fingers lose hold of the knife. We’re tangled, punches slamming and knuckles grinding on dirt and when he reaches for the knife I do the only thing I can and kick it away. It clatters across the floor into the corner.
“You bastard,” Jamison grunts in my ear. He’s got an arm latched around my head, hugging it to his chest. His fist pounds my side. “Why couldn’t you stay dead?”
Instead of resisting, I grab his forearm and yank hard toward me. He’s not expecting the move. It throws him off balance and I get a few good punches to his kidneys. “Sorry about that,” I growl. “I know you hate surprises.” The words are stupid, distractions. I’m not here for some cliché fight.
I’m here to kill my best friend.
His fist cocks and then slams into my nose. I hear a crunch, feel the wet slip of blood down my nostrils, over my upper lip. My vision tunnels. Jamison struggles to his feet.
“Ploy!”
The voice snaps me back. Allie. My eyes search her out, find her with one cheek swollen and blood splattered, struggling against the chain to get closer to me. She’s alive. “Push him!” she screams, holding up her arms.
I throw my weight forward. My shoulder hits Jamison just above the knees. As he tumbles backward, she wraps the slack in the chain around his neck and squeezes the two strands of links together. Jamison’s hands go to his throat, fingers scrambling for purchase. His legs kick, frantic. I slide around him and grab the chain below Allie’s hands. Twist. His face darkens, goes purple.
Talia’s at my shoulder. She paws at me and at first I think she’s trying to free him. But her palm is under his chin, tipping his head up. She lowers a small glass tube to his lips. “Now!” she yells.
Allie slides her hands under mine, rips them away. The makeshift garrote loosens. As Jamison sucks in Talia tips the tube. He sputters, coughing a spray of mist. Talia leans and it catches her in the shoulder. “Hold him!” she yells, swiping frantically at the few spots the liquid came in contact with her skin. “Ploy! Tighter!”
He’s slithering out of my grip. Exhausted, I do the only thing I can and throw myself over him, use my body weight to pin him to the floor. Allie’s draped across his legs.
“You’re dead!” Jamison yells. “You’re all dead! I’ll...” The hate drifts out of his words. The last leave his lips slurred and quiet. “What’s?”
I climb off him and sit up. Jamison’s blinking slowly. His eyes aren’t focused.
He’s dying. I know this. It’s wrong, but I can’t help the sadness I feel. As I watch his throat convulse, I’m fourteen again, peddling my rusted bike behind him, fighting to keep up. I’m twelve, picking myself up out of the dirt and there’s no air. Told you I could punch harder, he says. Now, it’s his mouth that opens and closes like a fish thrown onto land. His chest rises and falls, one, twice, and then simply doesn’t anymore.
His eyes are open.
“He told me he killed you.” Allie launches herself at me and clutches on. The chains around her wrists rattle, her body blocking the view of him long enough to sever the hold. Her hands are on the back of my neck, my head, desperate and tight. It’s a long moment before I think to hold her. She should hate me for the things I’ve done to her. Jamison said she would, and he was right at the apartment. “He said he took everything out. I thought...” she murmurs but the words are lost as she pulls away to look at me. Her hands cup my face. “Ploy,” she whispers. Her eyes hopscotch across mine. “You’re alive.”
I don’t answer. Even with him dead, my skin crawls. He’s staring at me. It's over, I think dully. He's dead.
It's finally over.
A breath shudders out of me and Allie’s expression shifts from relief to concern. “What happened to you? What did he do?” Her eyes fix on my chest, the hole in my shirt and come up questioning.
I nod dumbly, knowing she’ll figure it out. “He didn’t know you resurrected me,” I manage, my voice breaking. “I woke up in a hole with his dad’s body.” As my brain starts to come out of the shock, my body burns through the last of the adrenaline keeping me going. I lean my forehead against hers. “I saw him kicking you. The blood and the foam on your mouth. I thought you took the poison.” My head’s getting fuzzy. I squint, pull back from her and give it a small shake.
The barest smile touches her lips. “Alka-Seltzer tablets,” she says. “Talia found them in the bathroom.”
On the other side of the trunk, Talia shrugs. “We made him think we drank the vial so we could get him to come close. Of course,” she adds. “Allie getting kicked like that wasn’t part of the plan. He was supposed to check me.”
The skin under her eye’s gone blue, the edges a darkened grey-green where it’s started healing. Allie swipes her hand over her swollen cheek bone. Her wrists are wrapped with gauze.
“What happened?” I ask but she shakes her head.
“Escape attempt gone wrong,” she says and then her voice changes, softens. “I really thought you were dead. He said he gutted you.”
I glance over at Jamison’s body. Part of me wonders if he couldn’t do it. I picture him standing over what was supposed to be my grave, knife in hand. Then again, he could have thought he’d come to bury me sooner, if he even figured out Allie had brought me back.
My fingers start to tingle. The feeling spreads to my arms.
“Can you get us out of here?” Talia says but her voice fades in and out. “There are bolt cutters. Over there.”
As I stand, my head tips toward the shelf. The motion throws me off balance and I stumble.
“Allie?” Talia sounds worried. “Is he okay?”
The room shifts violently. Allie calls my name as I fall. When I open my eyes, I’m on the floor, staring up at the beams of the ceiling, my fingers clenched against the packed earth of the floor.
“Stay with me,” she says. The words drift and ooze, rain down around me. She sounds weak, afraid, but I want to tell her she’s not. I want to tell her she’s the strongest person I know. Her hand finds mine. I try to squeeze, but I can’t get my arm to move.
“I can’t,” I whisper as the cellar around us, and then Allie fades to black.
Chapter 26
Allie
“If he dies, we’re leaving him,” I hear Talia say. “He’s got your blood in him. He'll revive on his own. We can be long gone by then. It might be better that way, Allie,” she adds.
“We’re not leaving him,” I snap. Ploy’s head is in my lap. He’s been like this for an hour. Unresponsive. But his breathing is slow and even, his eyelids twitching. When he’d first passed out, I’d checked him over for wounds and found the healed bulle
t hole in his chest. Hearts are temperamental things. They take a long time to heal.
I run my fingers over his dirt smeared cheek, thinking back to the cabin, the woods after. “I’m not leaving him,” I say again. “He didn’t leave me.”
Talia sighs hard. “He’s lucky I can’t reach the bolt cutters myself,” she says. I shoot her a look and she raises her hands innocently. “I’m ready to get out of here. All I’m saying.”
I can’t really argue. I’m exhausted and my face hurts. I just want to go home and forget any of this ever happened. But Sarah will still be dead. The house gone. I don’t know what I’m going to do. In my lap, Ploy winces. His hand twitches and I grab for it. “Ploy?” I turn to Talia. “I think he’s waking up.”
She rolls her eyes. “You thought that fifteen minutes ago,” she says and then a sarcastic smile breaks across her face. “Well, well! Looks like she was right this time! Welcome back to the land of the living!”
I look down and find Ploy blinking in confusion. I can see in his eyes the moment everything comes rushing back to him. Just as he tenses, I lay a hand on his chest. “Shhh,” I tell him. “It’s okay. He’s dead.”
“Dead?” he echoes.
“Jamison. He shot you. You came to help Talia and me but we were already escaping.”
“Badly,” Talia grumbles.
“Yeah,” I say. “But still. We were holding our own.”
Talia snorts. “Those kicks you took to the face would suggest otherwise.”
Ploy sits up. “Are you okay?” he asks me.
I can’t help the sad smile on my lips. “Yeah, you?” I ask, and he nods. Jamison’s body lies beside us. An hour ago, I closed his eyelids. The poison in the vial means he won’t be able to come back, we won’t have to cut him open. Ploy follows my line of sight slowly, like he’s not sure he wants to look. “He was dead the second he killed my family,” I say. “The second he killed Brandon.” The second he killed you, I think.
When he takes me into his arms he moves carefully as if waiting for me to pull away. I don’t.
“Cute.” Talia’s voice is deadpan. “When you’re done with your little reunion, we need you to get the bolt cutters,” she says, shaking her wrists to emphasize the point.
Ploy stares at me for a second. His lips part. I’m sure he’ll say something or lean in to kiss me, but he does neither, and instead gets to his feet.
“Easy,” I tell him but he seems to be holding his own.
He takes the ten steps to the carved out shelf holding the rusted bolt cutters. As soon as he turns around again, Talia’s stretching hard enough to make the chains holding her creak. Ploy offers the bolt cutters and she grabs them. I hear the sharp shing of the metal breaking apart. She blurs by, fluid motion. She lines up the bolt cutters on one of the padlocks holding me, her eyes darting to Ploy every couple seconds as if she’s waiting for him to attack her. Finally, I’m free. Relief wells tears in my eyes. “It’s over,” I whisper.
She takes my face in her hands. “Hey. Not yet.” Before I can ask, she breaks away, edging around Ploy to Jamison’s body.
Ploy comes to stand behind me. “She’s not going to cut him up is she?”
I shake my head, confused as Talia flips the body over. She reaches into Jamison’s waistband and pulls out the gun tucked there.
“Talia?” I ask as she raises it. The barrel is pointed just over my shoulder.
“All right, Ploy,” Talia says. “Let Allie move aside so she doesn’t get hurt.”
“What are you doing?” I demand. This wasn't part of the plan.
“Protecting us,” Talia says. "Now get out of the way, Allie."
It takes me a moment to realize she's serious. She’s not looking at Ploy, her eyes focused far beyond the wall behind him. She means to shoot him. Before she can pull the trigger I leap in front to block him. “Talia, don’t.”
Disappointment carves her mouth into a frown. “He was after us, too, Allie. He turned on us. He’ll do it again. We agreed on this.”
“No!” I yell. I press an arm against Ploy, willing him not to move. She won’t shoot with me in the way. At least, I think she won’t.
“We can’t trust him. We just needed him to get the bolt cutters.” She cocks the gun. “This has to happen.”
I turn to face Ploy, my arms around his neck, covering as much of him as I can. I don’t know how he feels about me anymore, but it doesn't matter. “We can trust you, right?” It comes out frantic. He doesn't deserve to die. Not like this. “I can trust you?”
In my head, my aunt’s voice is begging me to step aside, let it happen because Talia's right, it needs to be done. He’s a danger to us. To anyone like us. He knows too much about me. That’s my fault, though, not his. “He’s not like Jamison was.”
Ploy’s face is pure confusion. “You’re going to kill me?”
“Get out of the way, Allie,” Talia says again. She levels the gun on his head. “I’ll take care of this. He won’t come back. You don’t even have to watch.”
I ignore her, focusing on Ploy. “You said you wanted to have this life, save people." His hands are around my waist, the fingers clenching every few seconds. "We can do it together, even if you can’t bring them back, too. You can help me,” I say. “Do you still want that?”
“Allie!” Talia’s voice is sharp behind me.
I lock eyes with Ploy. “No, let him answer,” I say to her calmly. I watch as he swallows hard and I lick my lips, trying to find the right words. “If that’s what he wants,” I add. Behind me, I sense Talia getting restless. I’m surprised she’s given me this much time. If he answers wrong, he’s not walking out of this house. Worse, I’m not even sure what the right answer is.
There might not be one.
If he dies, I’m not going to curl up in a fetal position and beg death to take me too. This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, except for the body count, but I deserve him, damn it. He’s something I want for me.
Emotions war across his face. Each word strains out. "Allie, I...I don't even want it. The blood. Power. I don't want any of it anymore." He glances over my shoulder at Talia. "Does that get me shot or no?" he snaps.
My head cocks to the side to catch her in my peripheral vision. She's still holding the gun out, but there's hesitation in her eyes now. As I watch, her stance loosens, the gun lowering a few inches.
Ploy grips my shoulder and forces me two steps away from him. "Pull the trigger," he challenges Talia. "If that's what you need to do, then do it."
"No!" I start, but Ploy moves forward until the barrel digs against his dirty shirt, against the dried blood from Jamison’s bullet where it hit him in the chest.
"Don't push me," Talia grates out.
"Do it," he says. My breath catches, eyes darting between them. When there’s no movement from Talia, Ploy slowly nods. "Okay, then."
His back is to Talia as he moves toward me. I get a glimpse of her over his shoulder. Her mouth opens as if she wants to say something, but then she closes it again, and finally lowers the weapon. It's only then that I relax.
Ploy stops just in front of me and closes his eyes for a beat.
"You don't want any of this anymore?" I say when he stays silent. "Does that...Does that include me?"
He shuffles closer until his lips brush against my own. Before I can kiss him back he pulls away, his mouth twisted as if he's tasted something sour on mine. “How do we get past this?" he asks.
I’m not sure if there’s a way for us to start over. “We were both doing what we needed to survive.”
“What he had me do...” he says quietly and juts his chin toward the body beside us. “I never wanted anyone to get hurt. I should have stopped him.”
“You did,” I whisper.
“Not soon enough to save Brandon. Your aunt. Not soon enough to matter.” He raises his head until his eyes meet mine. The shame in them rips through me.
“It mattered to me,” Talia says quietly. “And it mattered to he
r.”
I press my lips together. I hate how much I want to tell him it wasn’t his fault, how much I want to believe that.
“Is that all this was?” he asks. “Survival? Or were we more than that? Are we more than that?”
“Ploy—”
“No,” he blurts. Frustration ripples across his face. “Don’t call me that.”
He leans forward then, his mouth pressing against mine. I remember how safe I used to feel knowing he was asleep a few yards away on the couch. The way he stopped me when I kissed him in that hunting cabin, because he wanted to make sure I was doing it for the right reasons. My hands come up, clutch his shoulder, the back of his neck. This time, it’s right.
When we part, he kisses my forehead once and then leans in to my ear. “My name,” he whispers. “It’s Christopher.”
Epilogue
Allie
Christopher. The name tumbles through my brain as he helps me up the stairs, his arm gently resting over my shoulders. He reached for my hand at first, but my wrists are raw and sore, the scar tissue knitting together. Every muscle aches as I climb, but we’re alive, the three of us. I clutch my bruised ribs.
“You gonna make it?” Ploy asks. Not Ploy, I think. Christopher. For some reason knowing his real name feels like flipping to a new page in a book.
A fresh start. “I’m good,” I tell him, managing a weak smile before I let myself lean against his shoulder. His lips press against the top of my head. I won’t pretend everything’s magically perfect between us. There’s trust to be gained and earned on both sides. But we’re going to try.
On the way out, we stop for Talia’s medical bag. He lets me go to snag it from where it leans against the couch in the living room and hands it to Talia, but is at my side a second later. My head throbs. The bodies will need to be dealt with and while I know Sarah would have had a source to call, I don’t. I’ll have to ask the others in the notebook. Learn to trust them. Lean on them. The thought doesn’t scare me the way it would have even yesterday.
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