Vial Things (A Resurrectionist Novel Book 1) (19 page)

P
loy’s glance darts between Talia and I, frantic and caged, panicked. I watch his hands. I need to be sure he’s not going for the knife I know he has on him, the one we never took back last night. “Tell me what?” he asks.

I cross the few feet separating us with tentative steps.

“Relax,” I whisper as I slip my arms over his shoulders, my wrists crossed lightly behind his neck. I don’t care if she thinks I’m naïve for letting this all play out. As I kiss him, I don’t think at all. A relieved sigh breaks from him, smothered away against my mouth. He leans into me, uncertain and too trusting.

When it’s over, my nose brushes his, our breath mixing and I can’t shake the feeling of his treacherous lips on mine. I know what needs to be done. “Tell him,” I say to Talia.

“Tell me
what
?” Ploy asks as I step behind him. “What’s going on?” He’s facing Talia. Perhaps he thinks we’re imparting some deep resurrectionist secret. Really, it’s all a rouse to get his attention off me.

Careful to avoid his line of vision, I lower my hand to the sheath strapped to my ankle and draw out the blade in a slow, silent motion. When I whip it up, I scrape it against his neck, the metal drawing blood. I need him to know I’m not messing around.

“That it’s over.” The words come out hard as I finally drop the act.

Ploy splays his fingers as he slowly rotates enough to see me. The disbelief in his eyes is worth every moment I had to act stupid, every lie I heard spill from his lips and played along with. “What are you doing?” he chokes out.

“You can tell me where to find him?” I ask. There’s no need for the name.
Let me be wrong
, I think desperately. Let it have been the pills, a hallucination, the pain. Anything. But don’t let what I heard him say on the phone in the woods be true.

Ploy’s shoulders sag. I almost cut, pull back at the last second.

“You know.” It’s all he says. All he needs to say.

Don’t get close. Don’t trust people.
How many times had Sarah repeated the advice? Probably as many times as I’d told it to myself, even while I’d kissed him, aching to feel safe, be touched.

Talia strips the knife tucked into his waistband. I’ve got mine at his jugular, though at this point, it’s pretty unnecessary. It’s obvious from the way he stands that he’s given up.

“When?” he asks. His eyes stay downcast. I hate the shake in his voice even more than I hate the way it makes me quake inside. “When did you find out?”

“Voices carry in the woods,” I say.

His head snaps up. “Last night though. We almost...” He trails off, perplexed and I almost laugh out of grief. What’s he expect me to say? That even with everything, I wanted him? That if Talia hadn’t come out of her room, I would have had him? I’m well aware of what kind of person that makes me, caring about him after what he’s done.

“I was playing the game, Ploy. I didn’t want you to get suspicious,” I lie finally. From the pain in his eyes, I might as well have used the knife on him.

Talia clears her throat. “Start talking or she starts cutting.”

Ploy glances at me warily from the corner of his eye and then speaks. “Jamison’s my friend. His mom was brought back years ago by one of you.”

“It was my mother,” I manage.

The change in him is instant, the shock rippling through him.

“No,” he says, his voice softening. He winces as if he doesn’t want to finish. “My God. She’s the one who killed Jamison’s mom?”

“Easy,” Talia whispers in my ear. It’s not until she uncurls my fingers from the knife that I realize I’ve dug a sharp line of red across his neck. His eyes are wide with fear. The time it took her to get to my side is gone, my mind a blank ball of fury. “Why don’t you let me have this, huh?” she says and I force a breath. She takes the blade from me as the room slows it’s wobble.

He swallows hard as Talia steps back.

“
His
mother killed my parents. Sarah killed
her
for what she did to them. Is that why Jamison killed Sarah? Is that why he’s after me?” I ask. Even without the knife, I’m too close to him. I stumble a step away and run my hands through my hair, trying to collect myself. When he doesn’t answer, I ask again, louder.

“I didn’t know,” Ploy says. “I didn’t have anything to do with it, I swear.”

“And Brandon? I suppose you had nothing to do with him either, right? Poor innocent Ploy dragged along for the ride,” I spit out, but the way he’s looking at me, I almost believe him despite everything.

“Allie, I didn’t know,” Ploy says. “I owed him. He told me we’d have power, money, be famous. I thought I’d be set.” He gives me a miserable look. “Can you honestly blame me?”

“And me?” It’s the question I’ve been waiting to ask. The one I need the answer to most. “What about me?”

He bites his lip. “I got you to trust me, tell me things. I wasn’t supposed to...you and me...we weren’t...”

When he looks up at me, the shame in his eyes burns through me. “You had me laid out on your couch like some sort of sacrifice! Things changed for me the same way they did for you. Can’t you understand that?” he growls out. Talia tightens the grip she has on him from behind and he settles into compliant misery again.

Back at my apartment I’d had my blood in the syringe and the needle in my hand. I’d wavered.
Did you think it was a trap?
Jamison’s words reverberate through my mind but it’s in Ploy’s voice that I hear them.

“I should have left you dead on my doorstep.” The sentence leaves my lips, emotionless, an afterthought barely worth my time, like he should be now.

“But you didn’t,” Ploy says. His words are hollow echoes of the hope already fading from his eyes. If I were Talia, I’d use it to my advantage. But I’m stalled out, all of my questions answered save one.

“At my apartment,” I say. “How did you know I’d bring you back?”

“We took one of those calculated risks you’re so fond of,” he snaps. The ‘we’ strikes me like a slap. We means him and Jamison – a team. “He wanted you scared so he killed Brandon.” Ploy slumps and Talia shifts the knife. “He wanted things moved forward so he killed me. I didn’t exactly have a say in it.” He fidgets like a little kid caught doing wrong. “He didn’t mean to do more than cut me. He didn’t. Things went too far. He gets caught up and he...” Ploy glances up at us as he trails off. “He gets caught up.”

Talia lets out a whistle of a short breath. “And this kid is your friend? This is who you betrayed Allie for?”

He spins. She doesn’t have time to use the knife. If he’d wanted to, he could have overpowered her, but that doesn’t seem to be his goal. “I didn’t betray Allie.”

“Look at her and tell me you didn’t.”

They both turn. I hate her for drawing attention to the way my chin quivers, the tremor in my hands. I know what she’s doing, using his emotions against him, drawing this out, making him suffer for what he did.

And she’s testing me. My resolve.

“Allie,” Talia says softly. “Tell him how upset you were. You were falling for him. It crushed you to know what he’d done. ”

“I wasn’t.” I shake my head. “That’s not true.”

Ploy takes me in, a flicker of triumph in his eyes and I want to kill it, kill him. His hand twitches and I step out of his reach in case he thinks he’s going to get a sudden rush of courage and dare to touch me. “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life,” I say, because I want it so badly to be true. Hurt burns through me.

Ploy takes a slow step, then another when Talia doesn’t stop him. His eyes are on me. He doesn’t see her behind him, matching his pace, the blade near his spine. Talia’s too close. If he turns, he’ll have a knife between his ribs. “Give me the word,” she says.

“No,” I breathe out. “Don’t...I have to.” I can’t process. It’s too much and they’re both creeping toward me as I back away and then the wall hits my shoulder. There’s nowhere to escape. I draw a knife from the sheath on my other ankle, but it doesn’t have any effect on him.

His fingers slide down from my shoulder to my wrist. “Look at me.” He moves his hands, wraps them around the bottom of my jaw and head to tip it, so I don’t have the choice. “I want you to look at me when I say this.”

I clench my jaw so tight the muscles ache, but I meet his brown eyes. I won’t lose myself in them. I’ll listen. He’s nothing. Just a stupid boy.

“Okay, talk,” I tell him when I’m sure my voice won’t break. I’m conscious of every place our bodies touch, the heat of him spreading into me like a virus. I played my own game too well. I’m shivering from adrenaline and anger and all I want is his warmth.

His fingers skate across my chin. “Be angry,” he says.

“Don’t tell me what to feel,” I grind out.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You’re right. Be anything you want. But I need you to know, what happened to Brandon? What happened to your aunt? That wasn’t me. I didn’t know. I swear to God, I had nothing to do with that.” His lips plead empty words in my ear. “Allie, I...” I feel his sigh in every fiber of my body. And then he yanks away, leaving me off kilter. His hand runs through his hair as he paces. “I’m not saying it. Not like this. But you
know
,” he says before he turns to me. His lips press against mine. He holds the kiss as if waiting for me to return it. When I don’t, he pecks my cheek. His eyes skip across mine, desperate. “It’s real. Isn’t it?”

I stare him down. “Maybe for you.” I raise the knife in my hand as the harshness of my lie breaks through him. The tip knicks him just under the chin. We’ve got him covered from both sides now. “I’m going to kill you.” The words break from my lips, flat and cold. “I’m going to take your heart out.”

Ploy moves closer, a dare. “You lied to me. You used me. I thought you were protecting yourself, your people. And it was okay because I wanted us all to come out of this alive, too. I fought for that. I fought for you!” When he swallows, his Adam’s apple comes away with a papercut of a slice. I watch it seal shut. “Allie,” he whispers. “Please.”

The slam makes the three of us jump. A boot kick at the front of the apartment.

“Talia! Door!” I yell, but she’s already bolting toward it. Two strides away, the lock splinters and the door flies open. It catches her in the side of the head and knocks her off her feet. She lands hard against the half wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the room. Before I think better of it, I drop the knife from Ploy’s neck. As she slumps, the door opens again and a guy bursts into the apartment.

He’s scared. It’s my first thought. But it’s not fear of Talia or me. His eyes flash pure panic until they find Ploy.

“You okay?” Jamison asks.

“Fine,” Ploy responds. His voice is a mirror of my own from seconds ago.
There it is
, I think.
The part he kept hidden.
His hand wraps around mine, twists my arm and forces my own knife to my neck. The blade is still warm from his skin. “Perfect, actually.”

A
llie’s fingers claw into my arm, but I ignore the pain, tightening my grip until she lets go. Jamison tries to close the door behind him, but the latch plate is knocked sideways from where he busted it open.

“They’re armed,” I tell Jamison. “Knives. Strapped to their ankles. Check for more.” I have no idea why he picked this moment to show up. Maybe it was Allie’s goading over the phone. Either way, I’m grateful. She looked seconds from drilling the knife I’m now holding against her throat into my brain.

She’ll kill you when she finds out.
Jamison had been right. She planned to carve out my heart like some kind of trophy.
She knew.

He holds a gun to Talia’s head and orders her to stand. His hands grope every inch of her, stripping away the weapons as he finds them. He tosses the knives out of reach, into the kitchen. “Forward,” he commands and then grins at Allie. “And you thought I was a coward.”

Talia stumbles further into the living room. She’s shaking off the blow her head took when it hit the door, but the glare she levels on me is hardened with hatred. “I told you,” she says, and I can only guess she’s talking to Allie.

“Yeah,” I shoot back. “I wouldn’t have wanted to prove you wrong or anything.” I’d overheard what she said about me in the bedroom. Allie’d fought for me.

It wasn’t real.
The thought hits me suddenly. She’d known about me since the woods, so whatever was said about me in that bedroom was part of her game. Manipulation.

Allie lets out a moan and her weight drops against me as if mirroring my own disappointment.

Jamison’s coming closer. I don’t want him touching Allie. There’s no reason for me to care anymore but it’s an instinct I don’t fight. I move her so she’s standing on her own again and start with the knife at her waist, methodical as I make my way up, sure I get them all. If there’s any doubt, Jamison will search again himself.

As I pull each knife off her, I toss them at his feet. He throws them into the pile in the kitchen.

“The SUV outside is yours?” he asks Talia. My head snaps up. He’s moving them? Talia seems to think through her options before she nods.

“Jamison.” My voice comes out hard. “She’s got a bag with syringes in it. Let’s just take some blood and go.” My heart starts to pound faster. “We don’t need them.”

“You said it was temporary.” At the bite in his words I realize I’ve screwed up. He eyes me warily. “You lied?”

I blow out a breath meant to make his accusation sound ludicrous, but it falls short. “Of course not,” I add.

He pauses, considering me for too long. “Then we need them. Keys?” Jamison asks Talia and I can’t help but feel something between Jamison and I shift into all the wrong places. When she moves for her pocket he tsks. “I’ll get them,” he says and then slides his hand in to retrieve the key ring. He searches the rest of her pockets, comes up empty and then glances at me. “Check her for a blue vial. It’ll be the size of your finger.”

Allie wouldn't do that. Drink poison, kill herself. Not in a million years. But I think of her aunt, and Brandon, and what Allie knows must be coming if she goes with Jamison and I, and I’m not sure what lengths she would go to, to keep Jamison from her blood.

When she speaks, her voice is dead. She won’t look at me. “I don’t have one on me,” she says.

I pat her down anyway. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” I ask.

Her eyes finally wander to meet mine. “What do you care?”

My laugh comes out a sharp breath. She winces when the air hits her cheek. “You think I don’t care? You know what?” I snap in a harsh whisper. They’re only for her, these words. No one else. “I think more than Jamison, more than having your blood stolen or even drinking whatever’s in that glass tube you found on your aunt. More than any of those, I think you’re afraid of
me
.” I’m close enough now to curl a hand around the back of her neck, and when I feel her cringe away from my touch I wonder if I’m wrong. I keep talking anyway. “You must have been grateful when you heard what I said in the woods. It gave you what you wanted.” I release my hold on her, give her the chance to yank away. To my surprise, she doesn’t move, save for her eyes. They raise slowly, defiantly, until they meet mine. “It gave you an out,” I finish.

Her jaw flexes, the little muscles tightening over themselves while she no doubt weighs which words will hurt me the most. I won’t let her see. I won’t give her the satisfaction. “I didn’t
want
out,” she says, her eyes filling with a pity I don’t understand. “Why do you think you’re alive?”

I lower my hand, break the contact between us. “Why I’m—” My voice cracks and I swallow hard. It’s so easy for her to get in my head, rip apart everything I believe. We’ve never been anything but useful to each other.

Except now we’re not.

I need this over. “I’m alive because I have a talent for getting people to give me things.” I watch her face as I say each word, the way the pity drains from her eyes, the way they fill with emptiness. “A place to sleep, food. Anything really.” Her lip quivers before I deal the final blow. “Even hearts.” I’m distantly aware of the silence in the rest of the room. “You wanted to rip mine out and I got you to give yours to me and that’s why I’m alive. Because I’m better at this than you.”

As she stares me down, two tears gather in the corners of her eyes but don’t fall. “I guess you win,” she says.

But I haven’t. She knew what I did, the terrible lies. She wanted me anyway. I could have had Allie, figured out a way to get Jamison clear. I could have saved them both. If I’d only told her the truth.

I chose wrong.

“You won’t be alive long, Ploy,” Talia whispers.

Jamison sounds positively jovial when he levels the gun against her forehead and then digs the barrel against it hard enough to make her wince. “Let’s not threaten my friend,” he says. “We’re all taking a drive. You know how this is going to go, right? You fight, I kill you first, and then I come back for your parents. Clear?”

I tense. Apparently any promises he made me against killing are now off the table.

“Yes,” Talia seethes.

He glances at me. “Lead the way,” he says. “Oh and hold hands. Play the happy couple in case Talia’s lovely parents are watching. No reason for unnecessary bloodshed.” His left arm falls around Talia, the gun in his right hand now pressed to her side. “Shall we?”

Slowly, I loosen my hold on Allie. I’m worried she’ll try something, attack me. Instead, she only stares, her expression dead.

We head down the stairs and out to Talia’s SUV. I see Jamison’s car parked a block and a half away.

“Get in the back,” I start to tell Allie, but Jamison interrupts me.

“No. You and Talia in the back. Allie and I will sit in the front.” His eyes meet mine. “If you take her away like you did at the cabin, I’ll put a bullet in her brain before your feet make the asphalt, understood?” He waits a long second to be sure I get the message. “There won’t be any gray matter left to piece together.”

I don’t even bother with a response. Instead, I open the passenger side door and shove Allie in before climbing in the back. Jamison waits until Talia’s buckled up beside me before he climbs into the driver’s seat.

As soon as the key is in the ignition, he turns the gun on Allie. “I mean it,” he says to me. “You so much as flinch and she’s done.”

I could argue. Say she doesn’t mean anything, but he’s not stupid enough to believe it and I’m not a convincing enough liar. Hell, even when I’d thought I’d pulled one over on Allie, she’d known.
You win.
Her words echo in my head.

“Where are you taking us?” Talia asks. Each word is sharp. Demanding. They bring a smile to Jamison’s face.

Without answering, he reverses out of the driveway and into the street, taking a few turns until the road spits us onto the highway and I know exactly where we’re headed. Right now, Jamison’s living in a shitty apartment downtown, in the opposite direction. But he was raised on property handed down through his mom’s side of the family, a farmhouse on what used to be a good chunk of land until they’d sold it off. Still, it’s isolated, the housing development three years in the making not yet started.

A line he’d said in our phone call floats into my head.
Once we can do all the things they can, we won’t want anyone else having that power, right?
I wonder if he’ll want to take out those others that were trying to find how the blood worked. Most likely I’ll have to talk him out of it.
And what happens when he realizes that if there are two of you he’s not so special?
He won’t. I convince myself I’ll let this play through. I chose him over Allie. That has to mean something.

It’s all gone wrong.
My gut churns. I’ve got a death grip on the door handle, my thumb grinding against the leather. He’d promised me no more killing. So why had he taken both girls?

Half an hour later, we exit and eventually wind up on the long, gravel driveway to his parent’s house. It’s been years since I’ve been here.

His dad lives alone as far as I know, just as he has since Jamison’s mom died. I wonder if Jamison brought him in on everything. The man was always hard to read, and veered from normal to a domineering asshole in the flash of an unexpected backhand. I’d watched Jamison catch knuckles more than once growing up.

There’s a car close to the barn that serves as a garage. “Is the old man home?” I ask.

Jamison shrugs as he puts Talia’s SUV in park and then shuts off the engine. “He won’t get in our way,” he says.

I don’t like the confidence in his movements, his words. They come from someone who is certain. Resolved.

I slide out of the back seat. Talia doesn’t move. Only when I come around to her side and open the door does she look up at me. With my back toward Jamison for a split second, I bend over her to undo her seatbelt. “Dandelion,” I say.

At first, there’s no reaction, and I’m not sure she heard me. But then as the seatbelt retracts into the door, she blurts, “Cobalt.”

It’s low. No one else will hear, and from the look on her face, she’s shooting some insult my way. I wink at her as Jamison brushes past me to point the gun on Talia again. “Move,” he orders.

Her shoes crunch gravel as she hops out and glances at the house. The place hasn’t been well kept. Paint peels off the wooden shingles in flakes that litter the yard. The windows are all open. Beside the house is an old well. As far as I remember, it works, though nobody much uses it anymore. The massive tree twenty feet from the house has the plank board swing Jamison played on when he was little. The ropes look tattered. I’m not sure it would hold anyone now.

As soon as we hit the porch, I’m aware of why all the windows in the house are open. A smell wafts out, pungent and sickly sweet. Rot.

Death.

“Oh my God,” Allie whispers. It’s the first time she’s spoken since Talia’s. She moves an arm over her mouth and nose and gags into her elbow. There’s a droning sound I can’t quite place.

Jamison turns to her slowly. “I told you,” he says, the words spilling out quietly. “My father wouldn’t be a problem.”

The droning. It’s flies. They’re clustered on the broken screen door, lining the windowsills on the inside of the house. “What did you do?” I whisper.

Allie’s hand moves to my wrist like she wants to comfort me, but just as her fingers brush my skin she catches herself and drops it to her side. I watch, waiting for the slightest indication that Jamison’s going to go for Allie, but he’s eerily still.

“Follow me,” Jamison says finally. Eyes on us, he walks backward around corners memorized in childhood. The smell gets stronger. I don’t look into the living room. Whatever’s in there, I don’t want to see, but I hear Talia’s gasp. Tiny winged bodies flit and bump against my skin. Despite the heat, I shiver.

We’re through the kitchen, standing in front of an aged door in the hallway.

The cellar.

I hate this place. Once, he gave me a shove down these same stairs and then held the handle while I twisted it in a panic. Only when I begged him for a full fifteen minutes did he laugh and tell me about the light. He hadn’t let me up for almost an hour.

As if he can sense my distress, Jamison picks this moment to look at me and smile. It’s not vicious. Almost an apology. We were kids when that happened. Stupid and mean and calling each other out on endless dares and tests of bravery. I give Jamison the slightest nod.

“Watch your head,” he says as he swings the door open to reveal a half rotten set of stairs. He makes Talia go first, and then follows. Allie is next. Rocks skitter and bounce as I take up the rear. Jamison yanks the string on the bare-bulbed light and a yellow glow bathes the exposed beams above us. When I’m down, he pockets the old skeleton key.

The floor is dirt, compressed through a hundred years to near concrete. The air still carries the sick smell of death, but riding its back is the heady scent of earth and roots. There’s a tree trunk in the middle of the room, left there as a support to the house. Around it are wrapped two sets of chains, shackles at the ends of them.