Vial Things (A Resurrectionist Novel Book 1) (13 page)

“If he tries anything?” Ploy’s expression deadens. “I’ll gut him.”

Something inside me coils tight. I don’t like seeing this side of him, violence there like alligators, hidden just under the surface. He never struck me as dangerous before. We killed that man at the cabin, me with my knife and Ploy with the gun. I’m a murderer. The realization hits me fast and hard. I ended a life.
Had you killed anyone before?
I want to ask him. I think of the leaves in the little hut he built me and wonder if he slept, if he could. He’s spent the night on my couch countless times. I’d thought I was so clever. It only reminds me how little I know about him.

Gut him.
He had to choose those words.

And then a smile breaks out of him and just like that, the threat is gone. For the first time, I wonder if Ploy isn’t the perfect villain I’m giving him credit for. He reaches over my shoulder and gathers my hair until it flows long and loose. The ends, tangled with blood, are hidden by my pack when I put it on.

“Ready?” he asks. I swallow hard and nod, watch as he ducks down into the tall grass near the forest’s edge.

I’m tense, uncertain. I want to dive in front of the first vehicle I see and beg them to call the cops. Tell them the boy hiding in the tall grass had something to do with my murdered aunt. ...Except...
Why is her aunt dead?
Ploy’s voice echoes in my head and there’s so much anger in the words I hesitate when a car does finally pull up, a middle aged business man inside.

“I...”

The man’s gray haired and looks about as nervous as I feel. “You alright, young lady?”

I am not. Not even close. Ploy’d been angry about Sarah dying. He’d told Jamison not to hurt me, not to go near me.

“Do you need a ride?” the man asks.

Ploy knows how to find Jamison. I can use Ploy to find Jamison.

“Young lady?”

I nod and wave my hand, low. Ploy breaks free of the swaying cattails in the ditch and slides in beside me. Just as he said, the man doesn’t say a word.

Our ride takes us all the way to Fissure’s Whipp, the awkward silence broken only by the sound of tires on the road.

Half an hour later, as we head down the main drag in town, I spot a café. “You can let us out here,” I say.

When we enter, the waitress shoots us a dirty look. Right now, the promise of a decent meal overrules the need for a shower. I don’t even smell myself anymore. I ignore her and Ploy follows me to one of the unoccupied booths in the back. My ATM card is in my pocket. And then I remember the envelope of cash from my aunt’s house. I order a bowl of gumbo with extra bread. Ploy does the same. “To go,” he adds as the waitress turns away. He covers a yawn and leans his head against the worn leather backing of the booth. “You needed to get a hold of your friend?” he asks me as if I’ve forgotten.

The dim lights cast shadows under his eyes. Both of us need sleep and food first and foremost. I don’t know if that makes my priorities messed up or not. Jamison is out there, hunting, and I’m sitting in air conditioning, shivering as the sweat on my skin dries and thinking of a shower.

“Yeah, Talia. My friend,” I say, finally answering Ploy. I’m going to put her in danger if I make that call. Bring her in on things. But it seems like Ploy has a bubble around him Jamison’s unwilling to tap. It’s kept me safe so far. Maybe it’ll keep her safe, too. And I need help. God, do I need help. “I should call her.”

Ploy doesn’t respond. His eyes are shut, his chest rising and falling in even breaths. His face is relaxed, slack. Most people look younger when they sleep, but Ploy looks worn through. Hidden by a set of double doors, what sounds like a stack of plates shatters, followed by a round of claps and laughter. Ploy doesn’t stir.

Halfway to our table, the waitress sees he’s asleep and creeps quietly up to hand me the check and a bag with our food in it. I give her my debit card. If I have to run later, it’s better to have cash. “Do you have a phone I can use? It’s kind of an emergency.”

Luckily, she’s perceptive enough to realize I’m not messing around. She reaches into her apron pocket and hands me her cell phone. I dial Talia’s number.

She actually answers. My plan hadn’t gone any further than calling her. Now that she’s on the line, it hits me how much I’ll have to trust her with, how immense the favors I’m going to be asking of her will be.

“Hello?” she says again.

“It’s Allie.” I rush the words before she can hang up. “I was shot,” I manage, cupping my hand around my mouth to muffle to words so no one else will hear. “I’m in trouble.” My eyes blur. “Still up for that cup of coffee?”

“Where are you?” she asks instantly.

Relief floods through me. I give her the name of the restaurant and tell her I’ll be outside. For some reason, she doesn’t question why I’m there with a bullet wound. “Ten minutes, Buttercup,” she says. A long moment passes. She’s waiting for me to say a certain word, a code. She’s done it since we were kids, to let each other know we were okay.

I am so far from okay.

“Got it,” she says when I don’t speak the answer she’s expecting. “On my way.” She hangs up.

“Thanks,” I say, handing the phone to the waitress. She runs my card and is back in a few minutes.

As soon as she’s gone, I scoot out of my seat. “Hey, food’s here,” I say and then raise my voice. “Talia’s picking us up outside.”

Ploy puffs a whisper of a snore.

“Hey. Time to go.” I lay a hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze.

The second I do, he’s awake. One arm covers his face, protecting himself from some imagined threat. His other hand grabs my wrist. The bones grind as his fingers tighten. My cry of pain brings him fully conscious.

For a second, he only stares at me, lost. Then he realizes what he’s doing and just as quickly lets me go. “Oh God, did I hurt you?”

His fear catapults me into confusion. The shame in his eyes only cements the feeling. He cares that he hurt me. He cares about me. It’s obvious and undeniable and I don’t understand.

“Allie, I’m so sorry,” he says. He reaches for me and then seems to think better of it.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, blinking hard as I bend to pick up the bag of food I dropped. “I scared you.” I plaster on a smile and look up at him. “Really, it’s fine!”

Around us, the restaurant has gone quiet. His eyes dart over my shoulder, then to the ground. Though I don’t look, the stares of the other customers are heavy on my back. I step closer to Ploy and tentatively take his hand in mine. With a bend to my knees, I get low enough that he has to look at me. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“No,” he says quietly. “It’s not.”

He keeps his head down as I lead him through the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. The city’s busy, the sidewalks swollen with people. They mill around and above us, drinking on balconies. I’m as oblivious to them as they are to me. I watch Ploy pacing. Finally, I thrust my wrist at him. “There’s not even a mark!”

He doesn’t answer.

“Ploy,” I say, losing patience. “Stop.” I jerk his hand to get us out of the flow of foot traffic. “Talk to me.”

“It’s just...” He bites his lip. In the cacophony of the crowd, his whispered words are all I hear. “He used to grab my shoulder like that before he hit me.”

“Who?” I ask.
Jamison.
At the thought of him hurting Ploy, a rage builds inside me, overwhelming. A day ago it would have been justified. Now, it’s all I can do to stamp it down into a bright white ball of incandescent hate.

“My dad,” he says and I can’t hide my surprise. It’s the first time he’s volunteered anything about his home life. Now, I know why. Not that I expected it to be an idyllic story. No one chooses a boxcar and scrounging for food unless they have mental problems or a seriously messed up living situation. Did he meet Jamison on the street? He must have. I don’t say anything, give Ploy time to see if he’ll go on. Instead, he takes my hand again, like he’s tethered himself to me. I let him. He doesn’t say anything else.

Talia’s grey SUV stops in front of the restaurant. “That’s her,” I tell Ploy.

Without even taking my pack off, I open the passenger side door. Relief pours over me when I see Talia with her arms held out. I slide into her hug. “Oh God, you have no idea how good it is to see you!”

“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.

“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 to join our cluster. 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 been 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.”