Vial Things (Resurrectionist #1) - Leah Clifford Page 0,15
place, I’m squatting down near the river. House no one bothers.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” I say. We both watch as a small girl comes up to him with a handful of change given to her by a parent. He shoots her a toothy grin as she drops it in the cup and doubles his rhythm. Eyes widening, she flees to her dad. One of the faces in the crowd behind them jumps out at me.
Jamison.
I give a subtle nod and he returns it before stepping back into the throng of tourists. Anger twists through me, makes me want to forget it all and just start walking in the opposite direction. Get out of this while I still can. But it’s already too late. I know that. Jamison must too, because he’s not even waiting for me, so sure I’ll follow.
“Gotta go,” I mumble to the kid on the bongos.
Jamison’s a block down before I draw up to his side and pace him. When he speaks, his condolences come slow and syrupy, tinged with a Southern accent. “Sorry about Brandon.”
Vicious words rise up my throat, but I swallow them as I glance his way from the corner of my eye. He’s rubbing a hand across his shaved head. It’s a tick. He knows I’m mad. “Look,” he says. “You weren’t going to get anything out of him.”
“I was working on it,” I say. “I needed a little more time.”
He shrugs. “You ran out.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Another is you left chunks of him where I slept.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Yeah, well, he didn’t give up his secrets with a knife through his stomach, so a little extra time wouldn’t have gotten you any better.”
It would have kept Brandon alive, I think. We’d known going in that we might need to use a little muscle, but now someone’s dead.
I give Jamison an uncertain look, but he only clomps his open palm against my back, his tone jovial. “You’re not beating yourself up over this are you?”
He knows me well. He should. We’ve been best friends for six years now. So I don’t need to look at him to know the scowl he’ll be wearing. “Hey!” he says. His mouth hangs open a bit as he shakes his head. “It had to be done!”
“No, it didn’t.” I reach up to tighten backpack straps that aren’t there and end up with my fingers gripping my shoulders. “If Brandon didn’t tell us how to do it, I could have moved on to someone else.”
“You did,” Jamison says. “You moved on to Allie.”
“No one had to get hurt.”
“This sends a message,” he says, the words flat and cold. We stare at each other, him blank faced, me in a mix of horror and not-quite-acceptance he’s actually said what he just said. He sighs. “They’ll be afraid. Scared people talk. Eventually, one of those scared people will talk to you.”
I don’t like the way he talks as if the ones with the power we’re after aren’t people anymore. Because once we have it too, what will that make us? Uncertainty wriggles down my spine like a water droplet, easy to brush away and undeniable just the same. I want to tell myself it’s Jamison’s way, getting overexcited, taking things too far. It’s always been my job to make him see the line he’s crossed and scale him back.
“We’re not doing it that way,” I say carefully.
It’s as if a switch flips and he suddenly remembers he’s a person, with a moral compass and a sense of right and wrong. His face falls. “You’re right,” he says, tucking his hands behind him, into the waistband of his jeans. “I shouldn’t have done that to Brandon.”
I heave a breath, spare him the lecture on how it’s too late. Sorrys won’t help Brand. Jamison bumps into my shoulder as we walk. When I look up at him, he locks eyes with me. “I messed up bad on that one, okay?” he says. “But it wasn’t for nothing.”
Given time, Jamison has a habit of twisting even the worst things he’s done into sense.
“You’ve been working on this Allie girl for a couple months now, right?” he asks when I don’t take the bait.
I work hard to keep any trace of emotion from my face. She’s just a girl. I don’t care what happens to her. I nod.
“And how’s that going? Is she scared?”
I think of the fear in her eyes when I’d told her about Brandon. As