Vial Things (The Resurrectionists Book 1)

by Leah Clifford

“What’s going on?” she mumbles into my hair. “Are you okay?” She pulls back to get a good look at me. Concern radiates from her.

  The back door to the vehicle opens and Ploy tumbles in before I can answer. “Hey,” he says, all smiles as he leans over the console between us with a hand splayed. It’s as if the moment in the café never happened. “Any friend of Allie’s...” He fades off.

  Talia brightens a bit. If Ploy can sense the fakeness in it, his easygoing grin betrays nothing. “I didn’t know you had anyone with you, Allie. Who’s your friend?” I watch as she takes in his eyebrow piercing, the gauges in his ears.

  “This is Ploy,” I say. Luckily, she doesn’t comment on the name.

  His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He shoots me a glance and lowers his unshaken hand.

  “Yeah well a heads up would have been nice,” Talia says. She shifts her SUV into drive and merges into traffic. Her attention drags away from Ploy to the cars around her.

  She rolls through a stop sign, checking both directions before she coasts across the intersection. “So you two are close, then?”

  This life has taught me enough to grasp the underlying question. Does he know what we are? I take a deep breath. “Yeah, he already knows.”

  He knows too much. I can’t keep my eyes off his reflection in the passenger side mirror. Talia’s waiting and with every second, she seems to be piecing things together. Our bags. The gunshot wound I told her about. My silence. She doesn’t have enough to put the puzzle together.

  “Allie, what the hell’s going on?” she asks. The sentence hangs heavy in the air. Her attention skirts off the road to take me in for as long of a second as she can spare.

  I don’t want to say what happened out loud. Every time I do, Sarah’s death becomes more real. She’ll never have a funeral. She’ll never be buried. It’s too much. I feel something on my side, low. Fingers lace with mine and squeeze. Ploy has stuck his hand through the space between the seat and the door. It should make me sick, being touched by him. Instead, with his comfort, the words finally come. “She’s dead, Talia,” I say. “Sarah’s dead.”

  She gapes at me.

  Everything spills out in a gush until I get to the part about the old man. “My phone had no charge left so I couldn’t call you. We used Sarah’s casebook to find the closest resurrectionist. It was Jason Jourdain’s place.”

  “I remember Mr. Jourdain,” she says, leery. From my tone, I’m sure she knows the story won’t end well.

  “Can you describe him?” I ask.

  “He’s an old guy. A trapper.” I swallow hard as she speaks. “It’s been a long time since anyone took me there, but I remember him being Paul Bunyan sized. Just big as a house,” she goes on.

  “That wasn’t him then,” Ploy says to me from behind us and then fills her in on how he tried to convince me to leave, the gun.

  “Ploy knew something was wrong,” I say, picking up where he stopped. Glancing back at him, it occurs to me I never said thank you. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”

  “You said you got shot,” Talia says. “Wasn’t that bad, I take it. You’re healing okay?” Her eyes dart off the road for a second. “How’d you get away?”

  Murder. I open my mouth, but can’t come up with a way to answer. It was self defense. Some part of me knows that. My fingers tingle with the memory of my knife hitting skin. “I...we...”

  Talia takes a corner too sharp, tires squealing and pulls over to the curb. She throws the car in park. “Allie, what’s going on? Don’t lie to me. You called me for help so let me help.”

  I’ve known Talia since fifth grade, which is, incidentally, when her parents finally broke the news to her about her ‘blood condition’ as they so delicately put it. She’d fallen off the playground equipment at school and ripped open her knee. The school had called her parents. By the time they’d gotten there, the healing had already started and because they couldn’t explain, they’d pulled her out and moved cross country. She’d lost all her friends, and gained only me. Up until a couple months ago, I would have said she thought it’d been a pretty fair trade. And then I’d told her the side of our life she’d embraced, the money she’d started building in her bank account when she’d started taking on her own cases, made me sick. I’d thought she’d see it my way. Instead it’d opened a fissure between us that neither of us has figured out how to fix.

  “Be as honest as you can,” Talia says. Her eyes flick over to Ploy, so quickly that I’m sure he’s missed it. “If it’s something dangerous, I need to know.”

  “It’s complicated.” It’s the truth. “I did get shot. I’m okay, we just need some place to clean up and crash while we plan our next move. It was a chest wound. Fatal.” I lick my lips. “Ploy used his blood to help bring me back, speed up the process. He got me out of there.”

  “His blood?” Talia eyes him.

  “He carried me into the woods,” I say. “Miles.” He needs to understand how much what he did means to me. Even Talia would have left me to save her own skin as long as she knew I had my vial with me. Our lives are brutal. Another reason I want to pull away, make my own path, my own choices. “He kept us hidden.”

  The car falls silent as Talia slowly swivels to the boy in the backseat. “You did that?”

  He shrugs like saving my life was no big deal.

  “Where’d you move from? Colorado? Washington?” she asks and I tense.

  “No,” he says, confused. “I grew up here.”

  Talia’s hand clenches the steering wheel. “He’s not one of us?” she says. Suddenly, Ploy has gone from friend to being a ‘he’, excluded.

  “No,” he says, straightening a bit as he catches her wave of hostility. “I’m not ‘one of you.’” He throws air quotes up around the words. “Apparently I’m only a temporary addition to ‘your’ club.”

  Talia doesn’t take her gaze off Ploy, though her words are meant for me. “You resurrected him,” she says.

  I nod and then add, “I did,” because I’m not sure she can see the motion.

  “Was he a case?” Talia asks.

  “Not exactly,” I whisper.

  “And then you told him how we do it?”

  “Only when I had to.” The judgment in her voice springs tears to my eyes. I press my lips into a tight line and wait for it to pass. “It was that or a permanent death.” I’m not sure it was the right decision.

  After a beat, Talia faces the road again. Slowly, she lowers her hand to the gear shift. “Wow,” she says quietly. “You really are in trouble.”

  “We all are,” I say. “A guy asked Ploy if he knew me and knifed him. He can identify him. Talia, someone’s killing the resurrectionists.”

  Her eyes flash between Ploy and I. “You’re together?” she asks.

  “No,” Ploy and I say at the same time.

  He being my boyfriend might have justified the mess I’m in with him. Risking my life for someone I loved. Explainable idiocy.

  “What’s with the luggage?” Talia asks. Ploy’s sleeping bag is strapped to the top of his pack inside its plastic garbage bag.

  “I’m in the process of moving,” Ploy says.

  Talia snorts. “How long have you been moving?”

  He gives her a smartass grin. “Little over a year?”

  Talia’s already sizing him up in new ways. “Damn, Allie. Is he why you cut and ran?”

  I feel Ploy’s eyes on me, questioning, but I won’t look at him. Talia seems to sense the tension and awkwardly changes the subject.

  “How did you meet then?”

  For the second time in as many days, Ploy comes to my rescue. “Well...I have my spots I hang around. This girl,” he says, arching a thumb at me. “I start noticing her around a lot. One day, I say hi. Next day, I think I asked her if she knew someplace that had free Wi-Fi, like I own anything I need Wi-Fi for.” This earns a grunt of a laugh from Talia. It’s not much, but it’s something. As he talks, I sit in the passenger sea
t dumbfounded. This isn’t at all how I remembered this whole game between us starting. To me, I’d been stealthily adding words to our little ‘encounters’ each day so I didn’t scare him off. I’d worked so hard to tread a thin line between being too friendly too soon so he didn’t get the impression I was interested in him.

  Something must be wrong with me, to see anyone as being disposable, to justify what I did to him as long as it kept me safe. And it went on that way for months. Growing up around resurrectionists, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to undo what I’ve clearly already become.

  Even with his shady living situation, most girls would have snapped him up in a second once they saw what seemed to be beneath the gritty surface. And then the eyebrow piercing and ear gauges only added to his appeal. The picture of him I’ve made in my head has shifted violently in the last twenty four hours, gone pixilated. I can no longer make sense of the whole.

  As his story builds momentum, he talks with his hands, exaggerated gestures while he recounts our first hangouts. He’d played me. I’d only noticed him around because he’d put himself in places he’d be seen, remembered, gave him an opportunity to get to know me. It’s why I’d chosen him. Just as the story finishes, he locks eyes with me and the smile drops from his lips. “I thought I finally convinced her to take pity on a street urchin but I guess she wanted me on her couch in case someone came after her. Turns out I was nothing more than a guard dog.”

  The sudden, “Smart girl,” from Talia doesn’t break the hold Ploy and I have on each other, both of our faces expressionless. I search his eyes for more. His cheekbone wears the last smudge of the bruise he got protecting me. What do you want from me? I think. What’re you after if not the blood I already gave you? “I thought we were over that, Ploy,” I say. The name comes out in some terrible hybrid of a plea and a sneer.

  He blinks once, twice, and the spell is broken. “We’re over it,” he says quietly.

  From the driver’s side, Talia lets out a laugh. “If you’re not dating you’re at least sleeping together.”

  “We aren’t,” Ploy and I answer in tandem. In any other situation, it would be comical. He flicks his gaze toward Talia for a split second and then his lips hit mine. Before I can react, he deepens the kiss, leaning closer.

  As suddenly as he started it, he drops back against the seat. “We’re over it,” he says again and a dozen questions I don’t dare ask blossom behind my tingling lips.

  Talia cuts the lights before she pulls into the driveway. “Listen,” she says. “My mom’s a little overprotective. She and my dad don’t carry the gene. I got it from my biological mother,” she explains to Ploy and then turns to me. “Are they in danger? My parents?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

  “Yeah, well,” she says, shutting down the engine. “I feel better being here with reinforcements, for them and me. It’s best if they don’t know what’s up.” Talia is an expert at lying. “Ditch the sleeping bag. Take your pack. I’m in the in-law suite around back, so with any luck, we won’t run into them at all. If Mom decides to stop by, which she does from time to time, we’re having an old fashioned sleepover. Completely innocent. Are we understood?”

  Ploy slides out of his seat and opens my door for me.

  Talia leads the way to the garage. A staircase up the side stops at a door. “No place like home,” she says as she unlocks it. Now that we’re in the light, she takes us in. “Jesus,” she whispers. “You guys look like hell.”

  Somewhere between the restaurant and here, Ploy seemed to get his second wind. I, however, am fading fast. There’s a mirror in the entryway. When I catch my reflection I can’t believe we were even allowed in the restaurant. Dark streaks of what looks like a mix of blood and mud fade from my temple into my hairline. My blond hair is tied back, but a few strands have come loose, stringy and coated in dirt and gore. The dark circles under my eyes have actual weight. The lids are puffy and red. In short, I look how I feel.

  “Let me see the wound,” Talia says.

  I lift the side of my shirt enough to show her. She bends down and runs her finger along the now scarred skin. “He gave you a couple stitches?” she asks and I nod. “Not bad.”

  “Yeah, the boy learns fast,” I say. The exhaustion in my voice is almost tangible.

  “Go take a shower and wash the gunk off,” she says. “Towels are in the hall closet.”

  The clothes I dig out of my bag are wrinkly, but I can’t be bothered to care. I make my way down the hall. I need this one moment of calm. I need to think.

  The shower feels glorious. The hot water cascades over me, washing away more than dirt and dried blood. My muscles unknot for the first time in days. It’s not until then I realize how much tension I’ve been carrying around. I wonder if I should cry, let the spray clear everything away, but the tears won’t come. As much as I want to, I don’t linger. In the living room, Ploy’s waiting for his turn and I need the time alone with Talia to talk.

  I come out carrying an armful of dirty clothes, my hair wrapped in a towel. “All yours,” I tell him. He’s off the couch before I have a chance to shove my stuff in my backpack.

  Once the door’s closed and the shower turns on, Talia calls my name from the small kitchen. I take a seat on one of the bar stools and rest my head on the counter.

  “Heated this up for you,” she says. “He plowed through his in about two bites.” A bowl slides across the counter, heaped high with the gumbo we bought earlier. I’d almost forgotten about it.

  “Thanks,” I sigh, picking up the spoon. “God, I don’t even know the last time I had an actual meal.” She lets me get in a few shovels before she speaks.

  “Was everything true that you said earlier? In the car?”

  “Which part?”

  She stares at me for a long second and then busies herself with putting away the clean dishes in the drying rack. “Sarah’s really dead? They did that to the house?”

  “Burned it down, her inside.” I should feel some emotion, I know I should, but I’m too exhausted to do anything except shove spoonful after spoonful of food into my mouth. “Look, I’m putting you at risk being here...and I know you and I are...things are...” Different? We’re basically supposed to be enemies if Sarah wasn’t able to convince me to come back into the fold. And resurrectionists don’t survive long alone. Maybe the whole idea of thinking I had a chance was stupid. Two months and I had some sort of junior hunter practically living with me. Two months and I’d missed it. I’d only wanted to shed the awful parts of what I can do and instead I’d lost the last of my family and cost another two resurrectionists their lives. “Um,” my mouth decides on.

  “Allie...” She closes the cabinet and spins to me. “I get why you wanted to stop taking payments. And I hope you can get why I’ll keep taking them.” When she doesn’t go on, I drag my eyes up to her. Her smile is weak, but genuine. She sighs and watches me eat for a bit. “You’re my best friend. You know that right?”

  I’m too tired to do anything but shrug.

  Her chin juts toward the bathroom. “Trust him?” she asks.

  I open my mouth, uncertain what I’m going to say until I speak. “We need to talk.”

  Everything about Ploy spills out—my side of how we met, how I feel for him, what I know. I hold nothing back. When I finish the whole twisted thing, I’m surprised the shower’s still running. “So now you know it all,” I say. “You can change your mind about us staying here. I’ll understand.”

  The dishes forgotten, Talia only stares. “You’ve been busy,” she says. The pause draws out, becomes uncomfortable. “You know what needs to be done, right? To Ploy?”

  My nod is uncertain, but there’s no doubt what she means. We have to neutralize any threat. “Not yet though. We convince him to give up Jamison first.”

  “That boy’s got it bad for you. You’re willing to use that against him?”

  “Of course,” I say. I wish my voice sounded half as confi
dent as I want. Talia shoots me an incredulous look. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Part of me thinks no matter how this started, he’s wavering. I’m not sure he’s on Jamison’s side anymore.” I give her a tired sigh and rub my face. “Maybe I’m talking crazy. Stockholm syndrome or something.”

  She sniffs a laugh. “We’ll give him a stay of execution for now, talk more in the morning.”

  I stifle a yawn. “He’s got a phone hidden in his pack. Jamison won’t know where we are unless Ploy tells him. I think we’re safe if we keep him from using it.”

  “You’ll keep an eye on him?” she asks. I nod and she shifts. “Allie, about Sarah, I—”

  “Let’s not,” I answer. My blinks are getting longer. My entire body is sore and buzzing for sleep. “We’re not Hallmark moment girls.”

  She gives me a small smile. “Okay. I’m here though. If you need anything.”

  My head bobs. I come awake instantly, feeling sheepish. “You better take this away before I faceplant in it,” I say, pushing the mostly empty bowl toward her.

  She eats the last couple bites herself and tosses the bowl in the sink. Brushing her hands together, she comes around the edge of the counter. “All right, little girl. What are the sleeping arrangements?”

  I stare at her blankly until it occurs to me what she’s hinting. “With him?” I say self-consciously. “It’s not like that I just... I want him close. To watch him.”

  She shoots me a look bridging the gap between confusion and concern. “You’re sure about this?”

  I’m too tired to explain. Everything inside me is tangled and twisted around itself. I wobble while she takes the cushions off the couch and jerks the pullout into a bed. Luckily, it’s already made. I’m not sure I could have stayed awake long enough for her to search for sheets. I collapse onto the mattress. A bed has never felt so good. My eyes close.

  Her words are fuzzy and far away. “She’s pretty much asleep. Said she wanted you close though.” It’s not until then that I realize I dozed off, that she’s talking to Ploy.

  “Thanks for this, Talia,” he says, his voice careful and low. “We’ve been running scared for two days now. She got some sleep when she caught the bullet, but she’s been pushing herself hard.”