Running my fingers through my hair, I give up on the idea. She’s pissed. She might have already tossed it. Huddled on the other side of the boxcar are the lumpy shapes of LowLow and his roommate. I ball up the sheet and drop it on top of LowLow’s backpack, and then I slip through the opening to the outside and head to Allie’s.
I wonder what she’ll do if she sees me.
And then, as if the universe throws me a bone, I spot her.
She moves down the stairs and follows the path through the roses to the street. She’s close enough to see me lurking, but she doesn’t, slumped under the weight of a duffle bag. From the way she’s dressed, the yoga shorts and tennis shoes, she’s headed to that gym.
Her expression is indifferent, as if this is any other day to her, as if last night never happened.
What if she’s taking off?
None of this matters, I remind myself. It’s not like I’m supposed to take some perverse comfort in the fact that she’s in the same city as me.
Once she’s gone, I cross the street and climb the stairs, feeling criminal. But criminals don’t have keys. I put mine in the lock, open the door, and then I’m inside Allie’s apartment.
It’s wrong to be here. Things have changed. I’m not wanted.
My pack is exactly where I left it, leaned against the armrest of the couch. Get it, get out, I think, before she comes back.
Shrugging the pack on, I buckle the hip belt and turn. This is the last time I’ll ever be in this apartment.
There’s a fiery rush through my insides. In my hand, the key is warm between my tightly clutched fingers. I’m not sure why I tiptoe as I make my way to the kitchen. If Allie had a bag packed, there’s a possibility she’ll never be back. In the dish rack are the two mugs we dirtied yesterday morning. The coffee maker sits unused.
It’s a tiny, inconsequential thing—the coffee maker. She’s off her routine. Maybe it means something. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.
My toes flex in my shoes as I lean forward and rise onto the balls of my feet. I bounce twice.
She can take care of herself. She doesn’t need you. She never needed you. She’s better off without you. The thought curls around my brain like smoke, bitter and black and suddenly, I can’t breathe.
I need her.
No. What I need is a clean break. She wants this over. She made it abundantly clear without the added message of a blade between my ribs.
In my head, Jamison’s laughing in his satisfied I-told-you-so tone, that syrupy accent of his. Of course you screwed it up. How did you expect this to go?
Wrapping my arms around myself, a shiver rolls through me despite the heat.
Everyone’s worse off when you come into the picture. Coward, Jamison chirps.
From some dark nook inside myself, a thought rises like an air bubble through tar. What she said last night, about wishing Talia had shot me in the cellar, she said it to hurt me. She wanted to hurt me. I survey the kitchen. I could hurt her.
Inside me are angry ghosts, waiting while I decide who I am.
An eternity passes in the few seconds I take to make my decision. When I come to, I’m standing by the end table, folding a note. I open my palm and set down what I’m holding.
I force a breath. The apartment is stuffy with no fans running, the faintest scent of apples tinging the air. I should want to be sorry. I should want to make apologies and promises. I don’t.
She’s the one who was wrong. She’s the one… The thought trails off. I don’t want her forgiveness. With a final knock of my knuckles against the table, I head for the door.
“Her loss,” I say, vicious enough to shut up even Jamison’s ghost for once.
Allie
I stare at the armrest of the couch. When I left for the gym, Christopher’s pack leaned against it. Now, it’s gone.
“Hello?” I call into the apartment.
On the end table, I can see a folded-up piece of paper, the house key I made him two weeks ago abandoned beside it. The door was locked when I came in, but the deadbolt wasn’t engaged, so he’s already come and gone. A weary sigh breaks from me as I force myself forward.
I guess I should feel violated. Instead, I’m just sad. My fingertip taps once against the key. Then, all in one motion, I snap up the letter, unfold it, and read.
Allie, it starts. Please don’t be weirded out that I came to get my stuff. I didn’t want you to have to see me again. I left the key so you know you’re safe.
There are a series of dots and small dashes on the paper where he held the pen before deciding what he wanted to say next.
In the end, he wrote Ploy, the four letters inked into the paper like a wound and then underlined.
Below it is a hand-drawn map. The cross streets are written in a careful scrawl. Squares represent the number of houses from the corner. There’s an arrow pointing to one. I don’t remember the exact address, he wrote. House is brown. Under the note is a list of names starting with Quinn, the hunter he mentioned last night. It describes each of them along with the role they play in the group.
It’s everything I need to pull off the big move I alluded to with Talia.
If he’s giving me the information on the hunters, he knows I’m going to do something with it. It’s as close to a guarantee he won’t be there as I can get. So, he’s not with them after all.
It still won’t put him in the clear with Talia; she’ll count his hurried note as an attempt to manipulate me. Or she’ll think he only told me this information as a trap.
I cross the room and make for my closet, ripping my bloodied shirt over my head and tossing it onto the floor beside the dirty clothes basket. In it is one of Christopher’s undershirts.
Before I can stop myself, I stoop and press the fabric to my battered face, but I can’t inhale his scent through my swollen nose. I should take it to him, the shirt. He’ll be downtown if he’s sticking to his old routines. In person, I could convince him to leave town. He won’t appreciate it, especially not coming from me, but he might listen.
His shirt’s still clutched in my hands. I hesitate and then toss it into the laundry basket, trying not to think about how unhealthy it is to cling to the crumbs he’s left behind. I get dressed, and I make a quick stopover in the bathroom to take stock of my injuries.
I’m wrecked. My nose is clearly broken. Worse, near each of my tear ducts is a smudge in a horrific shade of blue, the skin under both noticeably puffy.
“Damn it,” I whisper to the mirror. I need ice. I need painkillers and a nap and instead I’m about to go traipsing around the damn city searching for Christopher. I don’t have a choice. If I don’t find him before Talia, he’s dead.
I can’t be the reason he dies. I can’t.
He saved me in the cellar at Jamison’s, and like it or not, he gave me information I needed on the hunters. This is only me returning the favor. If the second part of my plan doesn’t work, at least I did this right.
Tilting my chin, I swipe a wet washcloth to clear the last of the crusted blood from my nostrils. I debate using some cheap drugstore coverup in my medicine cabinet, untouched since I moved in, and then decide it won’t be worth the time and effort.
I head out of the apartment, locking up behind me, my mind on Christopher’s note. I left the key so you know you’re safe.
A missing key isn’t what kept me awake last night. Neither did knowing there was no one to thwart intruders. What had me tossing and fitful was how I sensed the empty living room. I’m acclimated to the sound of his breaths. The springs on the couch never creaked.
I just need time, I tell myself.
The second I hit the sidewalk, I break into a quick walk that nudges its way into a jog. My escalating pulse thumps pain through my head with every beat. I ignore it, scanning the growing crowds in snips of faces I dismiss until I catch a shaved head, a row of x’s trailing across the base of the skull like the bottom of a crown of thorns. LowLow’s distinctive enough to recognize instantly
, even from behind.
I search for Christopher, but don’t find him. Can I trust LowLow to pass him a message? Or, better yet, will he have Christopher’s phone number?
There’s another gutter punk pressing herself against LowLow’s shoulder in a lazy lean. When she rolls her head to whisper something in his ear, it’s all I can do not to stare at the prickly blue spikes of her pixie cut. Not just blue, I think. Cobalt.
Sadness floods my chest. My steps slow. The girl spots me first, her attention drawn to my staggered pace as I watch them. She straightens. Her brow furrows in confusion, though I’m not sure why. She doesn’t know me.
Her lips move and LowLow swivels toward me. The plastic heart-shaped sunglasses he’s wearing go askew as his head tilts to the side. His gasp is loud enough that I hear it from where I’ve finally stopped a good twenty feet from them.
I wait, not sure where I stand with him. I picture Christopher slinking into the Boxcar Camp yesterday after dark and hate the thought of him going back there, but where else would he have ended up? What would he have told them about me? About our fight? Would he have kept my secrets? Thoughts like this are why Talia’s convinced we should kill him, but even now, I trust him.
Folding the sunglasses and tucking them into the pocket of his tattered pants, LowLow hops to his feet and beckons me closer as if he’s expecting me to bolt. To give us privacy, the girl with the blue hair saunters to the other side of the street and hovers a few storefronts down.
“Hey,” I say as I approach him. “Listen, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’m looking for Chri… For Ploy.”
“He said you got in a fight,” LowLow says. Today, his drum is missing, but he’s got a small broken bucket on the sidewalk at his feet, the bottom coated in a smattering of coins. The chunk of cardboard beside it reads “Spare Fortunes” in black marker letters.
“A fight. Yeah.” I bite my lip and force myself to hold his gaze. This was a mistake. He’s never going to help me. But if Christopher told LowLow about our fight, it means he’s seen him.
When he raises a hand toward my face, I flinch, not sure what he’s doing. He catches my chin. “What’s this about?”
“What?” And then I remember my bruises. Embarrassment and anger heat my cheeks as I tear out of his grip. “Jesus, LowLow. These aren’t from him.”
This only seems to confuse him more. “I didn’t say they were.”
“I spent the morning sparring with a friend of mine.” I don’t owe him an explanation, but I have an irrational need to clear the air. “I got distracted, caught knuckles. It looks worse than it is.”
He frowns. I can see him calculating in his head. “Those bruises aren’t that fresh.”
Shit. I hadn’t expected my blood to work so quickly. Normally it takes at least a few hours for bruises to bloom through a sick, muted rainbow of greens and blues and murky yellows, a full twenty-four before they’re nearly unnoticeable. I’m not sure how much I can shorthand. I need to get gone before there’s noticeable change while I’m standing here in front of him.
You fuck up, Talia’s voice whispers.
“Listen, I really need to talk to Ploy. Do you know where he is?” I ask.
LowLow studies me. I brush a self-conscious hand across my cheek and then slide free the elastic band in my hair before I shake it loose. The pathetic attempt to hide my bruises most likely only draws more attention to them.
“Should I head to the Boxcar Camp then?” I say when he doesn’t answer. My step backward is a cross between a bluff and a dare. I know damn well I don’t belong down there.
LowLow tugs on one of his locs in what appears to be a nervous habit. “No,” he says, and it’s so decisive I think for a second I won and he’ll point me in Christopher’s direction. “You need to stay away from him right now.”
“Me?” A pathetic sort of laugh crackles through me. “Like this was my fault? He’s the one who lied!”
LowLow grunts as if scolding a child. “Must have been some lie.”
“It was. He… What did he tell you?”
“Nothing. Makes it hard to help him.” LowLow sighs and runs a palm over the shaved part of his head. “Never met anyone who plays their cards closer to their chest than Ploy,” he says, and the tension inside me wanes a bit. “I’ve known him almost a year now and I couldn’t tell you where he’s from, what originally got him stuck up in the Boxcar Camp, his real name.” He considers me. “Something tells me you can answer those questions.”
I meet his probing stare but don’t respond.
“Can’t you, Allie?” he pushes.
“Do you have his phone number?” I ask. He gives me a dubious look. I’m too embarrassed to explain why I don’t have it anymore. “He said he was texting with you the other day. If you aren’t comfortable giving it to me, call him yourself. I’ll say what I need and be done in two seconds.”
“I haven’t had a phone in years,” he says, sounding pained.
So who was Christopher texting? “Another damn lie.” I kick the toe of my shoe into a crack on the sidewalk, my attention locked on the motion. “I was just an angel to him, after all, I guess.”
“How dare you,” he chides. “You know he would keep you like a secret if you let him.”
“That’s not happening,” I say. There’s a beat of silence and then LowLow hums a short melody and the childhood rhyme it matches pops into my head. Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
Startled, I raise my face to his.
“Do you want to know how this ends?” he asks. Something close to curiosity flashes in his dark eyes. They’re the strangest shade of brown I’ve ever seen, almost a match to the pupils at their centers.
This is a parlor trick. Psychic bullshit. A scam. But as his fingers coil around first one dread, then the other in a complicated pattern,
it occurs to me resurrection might not be the only strange trait to slip into the human genome. I want to ask him if he’s like me, not a resurrectionist but something other, chased to the outskirts of society. Or maybe I’ve got a guilty conscience and a hell of an imagination.
“For you?” I snap. “It ends badly if I don’t find him. What I’m mixed up in is dangerous enough to swallow my pride and offer him a warning. Now, can you help me find him or not?” It’s more incriminating than I’m comfortable with but I need him to know how serious the threat is so he’ll drop the games.
LowLow considers me for a moment. “I’m not telling you where he is, but I’ll pass along a message if the opportunity arises.” His jaw works and the tiny stick-and-poke tattoo of a sword along his temple shivers. “If there’s no message, we’re done here,” he says when I hesitate. “You’ve got places to be, no?”
I mull over the offer. It’s probably the best I’m going to get. “Do you expect to see him soon?”
“I charge to tell fortunes,” is his only answer. He juts his chin at the girl he was with when I came upon them. I shade my eyes as I watch her stand and begin to meander toward us. “Message,” he prompts me.
“Tell him…” I tuck my hands into my pockets. “He’s got to leave Fissure’s Whipp. Immediately. Tell him it’s Talia. I can’t stop her.” I hope it’s enough. I swallow the lump in my throat. “Tell him, I—” I stop myself before I can say it.
LowLow nods once, as if in encouragement.
“Tell him I said dandelion, okay?”
“Dandelion?” LowLow repeats in a monotone. His wrinkled forehead sends a wobble through the crown of black x tattoos. “When you’re ready to unburden yourself of this cryptic shit, I’m all ears.”
“I say much more and you’ll have to ditch town with Ploy,” I warn, trying to straddle the gray area between joking and serious.
“Curiosity killed the cat, right?” he says as he tucks the blue-haired girl under his outstretched arm to welcome her.
The girl winks at me. “But the satisfaction brought it back,” she says.
I start a staggering path
through the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
“No,” I hear LowLow say from behind me. “It wasn’t satisfaction.”
Ploy
Rocks crunch under my shoes as I take the small path that leads away from the Boxcar Camp where it’s nestled apart from the rest of the city. The muscles in my neck ache with disuse after two weeks without the tension of life in the camp. My plan was to hang alone in LowLow’s boxcar until I could investigate any spots available and claim one for myself, but the air held a violent current, a keyed up edge I learned long ago not to trust.
Then Quinn texted that Nico wanted him to collect me. Through his hints, I gathered they still intended to sell a resurrectionist.
It surprised me.
I warned Allie about the plot to steal CJ. I gave her everything I had on them. Did she and Talia set a trap? If so, I can tip her off if things go south from this end and be another ally on the inside.
Hiking my pack, I jerk on the straps to tighten them.
I come to the curb and peer down the street. No Quinn. I fish my phone from my pocket and check the time to make sure I didn’t miss a follow up text from him, but there’s nothing so I stay put.
“Hey!” The deep baritone of the call catches my attention, and then I hear a sharp, “Ploy!”
Searching, I see LowLow across the square and down near the benches by the river. Ruby is tucked under his arm with her blue spikes of hair. Her name made a lot more sense earlier this year when her hair was a deep shade of cherry. She told me once I shouldn’t let my identity depend on the things I’m saddled with by others. I’d told her to stop cribbing life advice from fortune cookies to seem more mysterious, and we’d been instant friends for the couple weeks she’d stayed in town. It’s been months since I’ve seen her. I start toward them at the same time I hear a car horn.
Instinctively, I know it’s Quinn. I hold a finger behind me, a signal to buy me a second to say hello but the horn sounds again, twice this time.
Something Grave: The Resurrectionists Series book two Page 19
