aside to reveal the rest of my torn, bloodstained shirt. I can see the angry scarred edges of the wound, puckered and barely healed around the stitches. Healed. My fingers brush over it as my jaw drops.
“You told me you didn’t want to die,” she whispers.
She did it. I can’t believe she actually did it.
“You healed me,” I say in disbelief. I have enough sense to twist the end into a question.
“I can heal people.” There’s hesitation in her voice. “But you needed more than that.” My head snaps up. “Left side, right under your ribs is your spleen,” she says, laying a hand on the spot she’s talking about, the place Jamison got me. “I think that’s what the knife hit. By the time you got to my door, you’d lost too much blood.” She scoots away a bit as if to give space, almost like she’s afraid of how I’ll react to what’s coming. “You were dead when I found you.” she says.
“You—” brought me back I start but I have the sense to swallow the words. A tremor starts in my fingers.
“It’s not a joke and it’s not a trick.” She keeps her voice steady, projecting a calm I can’t grasp as my heart hammers. “You’re alive now only because I got to you before the death became permanent.”
The bubble of fear and excitement and disbelief building inside of me bursts. My breathing ratchets up, pulse skyrocketing and suddenly the pain is back, throbbing and awful. Dead. I was dead. “What did you do to me?”
She winces as if I’ve accused her of something terrible, when really I need to know how, what. How did she bring me back? What’d she put in the syringe?
“I’m human, okay? Don’t look at me like I’m a monster!” she spits. “You’re human, too. Nothing’s different. You’re not a zombie or anything.” When I don’t react, she drops her eyes. “Do you think you can stand?”
The question throws me off. I nod distractedly as I flex my fingers. I don’t feel anything except for the ache low on my side. No power. No sense of being something more. She grabs the hand hovering in the air between us and I shift my legs under me, rise to my knees. If anything, as I stand I’m weaker, drained. My knees wobble. She catches my elbow and steadies me before I can fall.
“We need to get you to the couch,” she says, grunting under my weight as I struggle to keep balanced. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
I take tentative steps, sure any second I’ll drag us to the floor. I have to focus. Now’s the time to ask questions. She seems shaken. She might answer them. “I don’t understand how you can do this,” I start.
“What, drag your ass to the couch?” she says, and I roll my eyes. It earns me half a laugh from her before she goes serious again. “It’s a genetic thing. My mom had it. So does my aunt.”
“And now me?” It comes out breathless. I can’t hide my anticipation.
To my disappointment, she shakes her head. “Don’t worry. It just gets you up and moving again.”
“Oh,” I say quietly. Jamison is not going to take this news well. She lowers me onto the couch. For a long moment, she only stares at me, biting her lip. I should be pumping for information but the odd mix of heartbreak and terror in her eyes is like cotton in my mouth.
“Ploy,” she says finally. “You can’t tell anyone what I can do. Geneticists would give anything to study us if they knew we exist. Test blood. Dissect our bodies. What government wouldn’t kill to have a soldier like me in their arsenal?” I feel like she’s reciting a speech she’s heard a dozen times. She sits down beside me and hugs her knees to her chest. “Other kids had nightmares about monsters under the bed. My monsters were always dressed in white lab coats, after bad little girls who couldn’t keep secrets.” Her eyes meet mine. “You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone about me, okay? People are killed for this ability. My parents. They were gutted to make sure they stayed dead. My dad wasn’t even a resurrectionist.”
“Gutted?” When I speak, my voice is small. “Like Brand was in the boxcar.” It kept them dead, scraping their insides away. I knew that much.
“My aunt knew Brandon. He was one of us. In hiding. The only way to kill