We haven’t put a label on what’s happening. It’s too delicate, built on lies neither he nor I seem to know how to shore up into anything stable.
When I don’t immediately answer, his brown eyes fall to the concrete of the sidewalk as if searching the weeds there. I can’t stand seeing his doubt, because whatever this is, it’s important.
He whispers my name and the last of my willpower crumbles.
“Yes,” I blurt because there’s nothing I want more than him in my life, no matter how much I hate myself for it. “We make a good team.”
“Then why won’t you let me in?” he asks, and suddenly we’re having a vastly different conversation.
I think of my parents. Of Sarah. The closer Christopher and I get, the more we’ll risk for each other. “Because you’re going to die,” I say, too tired for anything but honesty.
There’s a pause, almost as if he’s making sure he heard me right.
“I’m what?” he asks. His tiny chuckle of disbelief breaks me.
“This isn’t funny,” I say. “I’m going to get you killed. If it’s not the hunters, it’ll be someone angry a resurrection didn’t take, or—”
“Or a car accident,” he interrupts. “Or a heart attack when I’m eighty and your wrinkly hand is holding mine, even though our fingers are gnarled with arthritis. Even though it hurts.” He rocks close to tuck that same stupid loose lock of hair behind my ear. “People die.”
“Around me? Everyone dies,” I say. “They die early and tragic, and I don’t want that to be you.”
For a long moment, he only takes me in. “It already happened,” he says. “Is this what you’ve been freaked about? I died. Right outside your door.”
“Exactly,” I cut in.
“And at the farmhouse. I died, and I came back to you.” Leaning forward, his lips graze the curve of my frown. “I promise I’ll always come back to you.”
“You can’t promise that,” I whisper, indignant.
“I can, though.” His mouth skims mine, the kiss impossibly gentle. “I do. I promise,” Christopher says, a hopeful glint in his eyes. “Accept it and come here.”
I stutter-step, bits of me resisting until his arms circle me and I cuddle closer. My head rests against him in the familiar spot where I can hear his heartbeat best, already settled to its steady rhythm. I only need a minute. One minute of calm and I’ll get my walls back up enough to protect him. His hand caresses over the back of my shirt.
“You’re not alone in this,” he says. “Not on good days. Not when things go bad. Not if you don’t want to be.”
When I speak, the miserable question is crushed between us. “How do you not understand how this is going to end?”
“It’s going to end with us together.” His breath stirs the hairs at the crown of my head and a shiver runs through me. He sounds so sure. And yet, what he said is what terrifies me most. I don’t want to be there when he dies in a way I can’t fix.
By some miracle, he seems to withdraw the ultimatum. Instead, stepping away, he starts us walking. We approach the decorative gate, head through the path up the center of the backyard garden to the old Victorian, the steps leading to the hallway, the former servant quarters that function as my apartment.
Home, I think, ignoring the bloodstain outside my door. I’ve scrubbed the stain where I found Christopher dead a half dozen times. It won’t let go.
I slide my key into the lock and step inside. Christopher follows. The exhaustion I felt on the bus waned with our fight and makeup. Now, it’s an oppressive blanket. I pause, lost, not sure what to do next.
Lunch, I think. One of us should cook an actual meal from the groceries Christopher bought yesterday. We both skipped breakfast to catch the bus to Talia’s, so he’s gotta be as hungry as I am. Or I could have Talia text me the pictures of the hunters she found. Help with research. Or—
“Allie?” Christopher says.
My blinks are slow as I turn toward him, waiting.
“Hmm?” I prod. I’m having trouble focusing on him.
With a sigh, he leads me into my bedroom. Too tired to argue, I watch in a fugue as he straightens the fitted sheet.
“Come on,” he says and gently urges me onto the mattress.
“I can’t sleep now. I—”
“Do you remember what you said to me when you got off the bus?” he says. “When I asked you what was wrong?”
I don’t answer.
“You were limping?” he nudges. “You told me a tracking device stabbed you.”
I wince. I said it, but I hadn’t been serious. Not really, not totally.
“You said you didn’t know if you were too paranoid or not paranoid enough.” He waits to see if I’ll acknowledge him. I study the sheet in my hands. It’s torn, my backup set, the one not marred by the stains from when I stabbed Christopher.
A mad thought wriggles into my head. Everything I own is slowly being covered in his blood.
“You said you were losing your mind.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I insist. I lay back. Beneath my head, the pillow is cool and calling.
“The paranoia, the nightmares…” He radiates concern as he kneels beside the bed. He pauses as if waiting for me to get angry. I’d take up the cue, but I’m caught in the memory of when I took the bullet in the cabin and Christopher smuggled me into the woods. He kept me safe then, protected from Jamison.
It was also when I overheard the phone call that clued me in on all the lies.
I trust him now.
I’ve told myself a thousand times. I trust him. I have to trust him.
“This isn’t a life, Allie.” He adjusts until he sits cross-legged on the floor and I scoot on the mattress so we’re almost eye to eye, inches apart. “You’re smothering yourself away in this apartment, jumping at shadows. I can barely get you outside.” He scrapes at his thumbnail. “Talia’s burning out, same as you. She’s going to need your help soon.”
“Yeah,” I say after a beat. Talia’s taken on too much. I’m supposed to be there for her. I have to step up.
“If Talia’s right, if the hunters are coming…” He pauses and I know why he’s wavering. He doesn’t want to add to my paranoia. He doesn’t want to make me worse.
“I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?” I ask. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me?”
Lines dig between his brows. “No!” he says with such force that I wonder if I am imagining things. “You’ve got to snap out of this before you can’t. It’s like you’re shutting down.”
As exhausted as I am, I can’t quite work the rampage into my voice I’m shooting for. “I’m sorry my grief and uncertainty are inconvenient for you. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.”
“I know,” he says. “It’s okay to let people help you.” With every blink, he fills my vision, the only thing I see. He’s here, he stayed, and now he’s desperate to get through to me and I hate every caustic word I’m using to push him away. Because none of them are working. If I’m honest, I don’t want them to work. What does that say about me? “It’s okay to let me help you,” he adds.
“Not with the hunters,” I finally concede. “Not with anything having to do with the blood.”
He hesitates as if weighing his choices. “Rent, then,” he says. “Bills. I’m allowed to do that, right?”
“How?” Unless he got an interview he somehow forgot to mention, our job hunt is utterly bleak.
“On a stellar day, I can get fifty bucks busking down by the creek by the shops.” His thumb sweeps my cheek. “It’s not much.”
It’s more than he’d earn at any of the throwaway retail jobs we’ve applied for in a shorter period. Though, downtown is also where the hunter spotted him.
“If—”
He leans forward and kisses me to swallow the argument he knows is rising to my lips.
“I have to do something,” he tells me. The word puffs against my skin and I nod. He’s right. I can’t hold him priso
ner. “A couple hours,” he promises.
One of my hands hangs over the edge of the bed.
His fingers skate up the inside of my arm and goosebumps flare over my body. “I’ll wait until you fall asleep,” he says.
“Swear?” I ask, hating how I sound.
“I swear.”
His touch strokes up and down, the motion soothing. I’m relaxing, my muscles tingling, limbs heavy. All I have to do to save him is stay awake. If I don’t fall asleep, he’ll stay here with me, safe.
One more thing I can’t do right.
My eyelids shut.
Ploy
I sit on the floor, running my pinkie across Allie’s knuckles long after her breathing evens. I’m not naïve enough to expect a nap will fix all her problems.
But it might help me fix one for her.
I rise to my feet and tiptoe from her bedroom, careful and silent. When I hit the threshold, I pause. Her arm hangs over the mattress edge, fingers curled and reaching toward the spot where I sat.
“Damn it,” I whisper as I sneak to tip her hand and tuck it against her side.
A warning tickles at my consciousness, maybe I should stay. It’s the coward inside me, fighting to the surface, making excuses. I’ll only be gone a few hours max. Allie’s not exactly helpless.
And neither, it turns out, am I.
I grab my pack and go before I rethink it. Once I’m in the touristy section of the small downtown, I do my thing, hustling the smiling day drinkers with stories that give them an excuse to donate to my cause.
It’s half an hour before I catch sight of the same guy as yesterday, while I’m midway through giving directions to a “bar the locals drink at” to a giggling trio of college girls. At the end of the explanation, I slide out my hand. “Tips for the tour guide?”
I flash them a grin and a wink, dialing up the cheese factor so I don’t appear sleazy. They take the bait, a chorus of good natured groans as my palm fills with green. I shove the bills in a pocket and shoot a stealthy peek at my stalker.
There’s not a lot of variety to the places I venture, so I’m not surprised he found me. He’s got a ball cap pulled low as if it’ll make him invisible. One thing’s for sure, LowLow was right. This dude sucks at blending. He’s hunkered in the entryway of a shop, looming like a Scooby-Doo villain until someone tries to exit and practically knocks him over when they open the door.
I leave the cover of the trio of girls and collect head shakes and sorries until an older lady in a red sunhat gifts me a dollar and reminds me how much Jesus loves even people like me. I don’t thank her. Instead, I take a side street, away from the foot traffic.
We’ll see how much Jesus loves me when I try to pull this off, I tell myself. Shotgun houses pepper the shops, though the area doesn’t exactly pass as residential. I pause and undo the chest clip of my backpack, then the hip belt. I wasn’t crazy about lugging it with me today, though it helps with the panhandling if everyone assumes I’m traveling and not holed up anywhere nearby. Psychologically, they believe they’re helping me leave.
I squat and drag a battered water bottle from the fraying mesh of the side pocket. Screwing off the lid, I throw back the drink and take a few long chugs, waiting. Finally, a cautious head dips around the corner of the building at the start of the road before slinking out of sight. A second later, he’s there again.
He can’t be one of the hunters that have Allie and Talia living in fear. Not this frightened little bunny. He steps forward, wavers, darts behind the building again. At this rate, I’ll be waiting all damn day.
It occurs to me I haven’t considered my plan.
Jamison must have told the hunters he’d started working with about me or I wouldn’t have a shadow. At the cabin, Corbin acted like I was in on the joke of using Allie. He’d asked me what I was playing at when I didn’t go along with his plot of keeping us there. But Corbin had been dead before he could have told anyone I was in the early stages of crossing Jamison. Even later, on the phone, Jamison took it for granted that Allie shot Corbin.
So what did I tell them? Jamison’s voice whispers. Or did I warn them you couldn’t be trusted? You were going to abandon me over a girl? He grows more insistent, almost sorrowful, and something in my gut curdles. What did you do to me, Ploy? We were friends.
Don’t play like I didn’t make the right choice when I went with her, I snarl back in my mind. Jamison lured me into a freshly dug grave and then put a bullet in my chest to make the grave mine. Without Allie’s blood in my veins, that’s where things would have ended for me.
The ghost of Jamison’s laugh rattles through me. How many people have you killed for her? he asks. How many more bodies are coming?
A glimmer of a thought. As many as it takes to keep us alive.
And then Jamison again, his tone a self-satisfied smirk of a thing I can almost picture. We always were so much alike, you and me.
The hunter peeks around the corner and I whip a neutral look onto my face and lift a hand in greeting. He freezes as if it didn’t occur to him I’d spot him and then ambles forward, crossing the space in uneven steps.
“Help you?” I stand, rising to my full height. I’m not tall, only about five nine, so it throws me off a little when he’s so clearly intimidated. His posture rotates inward, hands splayed as if to show he means no harm. Now that he’s closer, I can see I underestimated his age. He’s got five or six years on me, closer to twenty-three, twenty-four.
“I, uh…” He grins, forcing it at first before a sort of relief comes over him and the smile goes natural. “We haven’t met.”
I fiddle with a zipper on my pack. “Guess you must have a damn good reason you’re trailing me for the second day in a row.”
He balks. I take it as a victory. I need him aware he’s not getting anything past me. My plan is to stake a claim on Allie early and convince these guys I’m still working her over myself. If I mark her off limits, it’ll keep her safe, buy she and Talia some time.
When I duck to grab the water bottle again, he actually startles. It has to be an act.
With another drink, I jab a palm across my mouth to wipe the water slipping to my chin, the sweat there. “If you’re joining my personal fan club, it has membership dues.” I glower at him. “You want something? My time is valuable. Pay me or get gone.”
He shoots me a startled expression and then digs into his rear pocket for his wallet. I can’t decide whether or not to laugh. He riffles through the bills and hands me a fifty, then adds another for good measure.
I wonder how much I can push him before he gets pissed. When I was still crashing at the Boxcar Camp, I could have come across as more threatening. Since I moved in with Allie full-time, I’m a lot less crusty. LowLow wasn’t kidding when he said I smelled clean. Life at the camp gets you a ground in sort of grime that soap alone won’t rinse away. With my new shoes and clothes run through a few cycles in a coin-operated Laundromat, even my eyebrow piercing and gauged ears are skewing more mall punk than anti-establishment.
I shove the money into my pocket with the rest I’ve collected today. “Now I’ve got time for you.”
He grins as if he’s in on my hustle. “So this is probably weird, but I think we have a friend in common.”
I can’t explain the cold creeping through the marrow of my bones. This guy thinks I’m like Jamison. Maybe they weren’t close and Jamison was normal to him, not a murdering psychopath. I could say no. Tell him he’s mistaken. Bolt and disappear.
The coward inside me died beside that barn, I remind myself. In this moment, it doesn’t ring remotely true.
“We don’t run in the same circles,” I say, not because I’m bailing, but because I know how to keep him interested. There’s a reason he’s been following me. I’m just not sure what he wants, yet.
He gives me a cocky once over I’m impressed he has the stones for. “I mean, obviously,” he says and then it dawns on him what a dick thing he just said. He rushes on. “This m
utual friend, he mentioned you, and our group, we’re a…” He flounders. “We’re interested parties.”
I pretend I’m not following. “Interested in what?” I press, but in my head, I’m caught on the wording he used. Have. I think we have a friend in common.
Jamison was after the blood for himself. He wouldn’t bring these guys in any more than necessary to squeeze them for info. He had me on the inside with Allie. He made his move, kidnapped her and Talia. Killed me. No loose ends. He wouldn’t have told anyone else his plans.
“Have you talked to Jamison lately?” he asks. “In, say, the last week?”
Holy shit.
They don’t know he’s dead.
“Two weeks ago,” I say, not having to fake the edge in my voice. “I saw him two weeks ago.”
“Would two weeks be about normal?” he asks me. “For how often you see him?”
I watch him watching me, my throat tight.
“Is there somewhere we can go to talk?” he asks. “I can buy you some food.” He pauses and does this weird, slightly crouched motion. He reaches toward me, palm up, as if he’s ready to jerk away at my slightest flinch. Like he’s luring a dog. “You hungry?”
My humiliation crests into indignation. I go for my pack, knock the weight of it onto my knee, then hoist it into position on my back and get my arms in the straps. “Piss off,” I growl before I can help myself.
“Wait,” he cries.
The way I’m stalking off down the street has nothing to do with a plan. I’m not dealing with this. I’ll come back another day. Find another in. And screw over Allie because your feelings got hurt? I think furiously.
“I really believe Jamison’s in trouble!” he says, trailing after me. “He might need our help! Another guy in our group, Corbin, he’s missing, too. Jamison was gonna help us search for him and then he never showed. None of us have heard from either of them since.”
I slow. What if it wasn’t information on Allie they were after at all? What if it’s Jamison’s whereabouts they want?
Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two Page 7
