Vial Things (Resurrectionist #1) - Leah Clifford Page 0,16
soon as she’d heard he was gutted, she’d figured it out, why he was killed, that whoever did it knew what he was. Just like Jamison is suggesting, it’d rattled her. “You’ve got to trust me to work this right,” I say. “She spooks easy. I’ve gotta let her come to me, and that takes time,” I tell him. “But it’s going good. I’m in at her place for a week. Maybe more.”
“You know why you’re in?” he asks.
I know. I wouldn’t have pushed to stay with Allie if Brandon had still been alive. If I thought it had half a chance of working, I’d tell Jamison she’s a dead end, too. But now I know what Jamison does with dead ends. My shoulders sag. “No,” I say. “I get it.”
Worse, he’s right. Jamison’s talking but I tune him out, focus on the excited way his hands move. It’s always the same when he talks about the power. Nothing’s changed since one of them brought back his mom when he was fifteen.
It’d been his mother who’d, with her dying breath, told him a number to call. The unknown friend of hers had banished him and his father to other parts of the house. Half an hour later, Jamison’s smiling, raised from the dead mother had hugged him tight.
Even being best friends, it’d taken a full year before he told me what he’d seen these people do. How the powers they’d given his mother left her able to heal. How she’d gotten her son to help her test the boundaries. A hot curling iron to the wrist. Broken glass through her foot. How at some point, everything went wrong and he’d had to call that number again when the wound didn’t knit itself together. That time, his mother had still been alive when she’d been treated. The third time the woman had come, they hadn’t called at all. She had calmly killed and then cut open his mother, taken the heart with her when she’d left. She’d told Jamison to forget what he’d seen. Warned him that if he didn’t, she’d come for him next.
The threat hadn’t stopped him.
In Jamison’s mom, the ability to heal had faded. We want more than that. Permanence, like Brandon and Allie have, like the woman who fixed Jamison’s mom. Once we have the power, instead of hiding in the shadows, we’ll go public. People will pay big money to be able to feel immortal. And then in a month, when it fades away, they’ll pay big money again.
We’ll be gods, he’d said. If we can make them tell us how bringing people back to life works, we’ll be practically invincible. When we’d grown a little older and gotten a little more rational he’d pointed to my fresh black eye, a gift from my father. My embarrassment had kept me from looking at him. You could heal that, he’d said, tipping my head to see the shiner.
Jamison had been the one to convince me to get the hell out of there, shown up and packed me a bag when I’d wavered. When my father had tried to stop me, it’d been Jamison who’d taken care of things. I owe him. It’s the only thing keeping me next to him on this sidewalk.
Now, he takes in the torn jeans I wear, washed in a shower. The stained t-shirt. His eyes drift to my sneakers, the tip of the left one wrapped in fresh duct tape. “We’ll be famous. Rich. Just like I promised you.”
I wiggle my toe. “Rich enough to get me some decent shoes?” I say and he scoffs.
“Come on, you can afford to dream a little bigger.” He’s joking. The words cut anyway. Jamison’s busy dreaming up mansions and fast cars and I just want a room of my own and dry feet.
I smirk at him. “Two pairs then, asshole,” I say and throw a punch at his shoulder.
“Two pairs,” he echoes. “This will all be worth it. Everything.” His tone is off. Not sad but almost...regretful? “I think you’re on the right track with this girl. We need to move things forward though, like we did with Brandon. Sacrifices for the greater good. Do you get where I’m coming from?”
My muscles tense. It’s almost involuntary. The same way I used to know my dad had polished off a bottle of Wild Turkey the second I stepped through the door. Bad things in the air.