Vial Things (Resurrectionist #1) - Leah Clifford Page 0,10
a tingle of nerves, anticipation, fight or flight. “How long had you known him?” I ask, trying to mask the panic in my voice, make it comforting, but this time it doesn’t work. Maybe he picks up something in the tone or maybe it’s the wrong question to ask after a bombshell like that. Either way, he looks up at me. I force a sad smile and hope he’ll think I’m just uncomfortable. Luckily, he seems to take the bait.
“Couple months. He came from up North.” Up North is code for not from here. Everywhere is North from Fissure’s Whipp.
“Was he on the run?” I swallow hard. I shouldn’t ask, but I have to know. Have to be sure. “From the police…or something?”
The last two words hang in the air between us. I watch him weighing the pause I hadn’t meant to include, my awkward silence. But the missing organs, they can only mean one thing. He was like me. My head spins. He was a resurrectionist like me. Someone killed him. Someone had known his own blood would heal his organs, even damaged. Someone had known the body can’t heal what isn’t there.
Someone is hunting us.
“Allie?”
I want to tell Ploy that it’s okay. Not to panic. That this isn’t like my parents. That it must be a mistake. Flashes come to me. Going in the door. Two bodies on the floor. And I’d left them there. Just left them and taken off running, not stopping until I’d gotten to my aunt’s house the next town over, my sneakers bloody and my parents dead and…
“Allie?”
I can’t catch my breath to answer him.
He’s off the chair and at my side in the space of a blink. “I don’t know why I told you that. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking and it freaked me out so bad to find him like that and—”
“Stay,” I say suddenly, cutting him off. His concern turns to confusion. “That’s what you’re asking, right? If you can?” I grip his wrist. His eyes meet mine, shoot down to the hold I have on him and back up. I swallow hard and unwind my fingers. “You can stay with me,” I say.
Allie
He doesn’t tell me where he plans on hanging out and I don’t ask. From my month of scheduled run-ins, I know Ploy’s patterns well enough to find him if the need arises.
I’m not crazy about him sticking to his normal routine, begging change and whatever else his crew gets up to but if Ploy doesn’t know what the organ removal means then he’s not a resurrectionist. Not a target. He’s a million times safer when he’s not around me.
“You know how to use that?” I ask as he tucks a closed knife into his pocket.
He snorts. “I don’t carry it around for fun.”
No, I want to say. Do you know how to block when someone comes at you with their own blade, how to observe your opponent for weaknesses in technique, how to cut where it’ll count? Do you know how to use it, not how to flash it around to scare off a gutter punk after a couple dollars? I have half a mind to show him just how effortlessly I can disarm him and have his own blade at his throat. It’d wipe the patronizing smirk off his face pretty damn quick.
“Of course you don’t carry it for fun,” I grind out through clenched teeth and a pinched grin. That’s weapon training one oh one: Never carry a weapon unless you intend, and know how, to use it.
“I’ll be back around dark, cool?” Ploy says as he opens the door. I nod. I only need him here when I’m asleep. Otherwise, he’d probably just get in the way. “Listen…” His fingers brush down the edge of the frame and tap twice against the knob. He clears his throat and looks up at me, his voice lower than it was before. “Thanks for, you know, letting me stay and stuff.”
I can barely get the corners of my mouth to lift. “No problem,” I say. “See you later.” The probability of someone coming after me at the apartment is slim to nil. He has a much better chance of getting shanked under a bridge or something.
But he also has a right to know what he’s signing up for.
The second he closes the door, I twist the deadbolt and slide the chain into place. Even as I move, I’m pulling my phone from my pocket.