It’s almost dead.
I hit send. Somewhere in the house, I hear her phone ringing. I drop mine to my side, following the sound.
As we turn into the living room, Ploy’s hiss of surprise is my only warning. His fingers wrap around my wrist as he jerks me to his chest, his startled, “Wait!” coming too late to stop the image from burning into my brain forever. Sarah’s body is in the middle of the floor. Her eyes are open, her mouth wide.
She died screaming.
Ploy reaches for me as I step forward. His fingers drift across mine a second too late to catch them. I can’t stop the clues flooding my brain. Defensive wounds on the arms. A spattering of arterial spray across the filmy sheer fabric covering one of the front windows. She fought. She knew what was happening.
Sarah had been alive when they’d started to gut her.
My eyes catch on a vial beside her body, the glass blue. The top is missing.
“You can’t bring her back, can you?” Ploy asks. The words pound the air out of my lungs. Even if they hadn’t taken out her organs, once she drank that vial, she was done.
The vial. Aniline to change the hemoglobin in the blood to methemoglobin and stop oxygen from being absorbed, adder venom to break down the red blood cells. Everything rendered useless. The last ingredient is a powerful paralytic. It goes into effect in less than a minute. Our breathing slows, along with our heart until unconsciousness steals us away from the painful death the other drugs would have us endure as our blood turned toxic. Even if a sample is taken, the blood is nothing more than broken, worthless cells.
We can’t let people get a hold of our secrets. In her last moments, Sarah hadn’t had a choice.
I concentrate on my breathing, focus so I won’t faint. That’s not Sarah anymore, I remind myself. It’s a body. Just a body. Distancing myself from emotions comes naturally. After all, most times, the dead are up and walking around fine a day after I see them. I can’t let myself think about how this time will be different.
“Allie,” Ploy says again, more urgently this time.
Sarah’s dead! my head pounds.
But we’re not, I remind myself. And if we want to stay that way, I need to think clearly.
“No,” I answer finally. “It’s too late. Whoever killed her, they knew how to stop me from helping her.” Sarah’s words echo in my head. What do you do if I don’t come home from a case? We’d run through the scenario a dozen times. My brain shifts into automatic, my legs moving on their own. As I skirt the edge of the room, my foot crunches the vial into powder. I take the stairs without looking back. Ploy follows with a weak protest. I ignore him.
I know exactly where to go. I slide the drawer of the nightstand open. Reaching blindly, I unlatch the false back. The thin strip of wood clatters. I feel around until my fingers close on the spine of a notebook. “Got it.”
Sarah’s scrawl decorates most of the pages I flip through. The book is split into sections. On each is the name of a resurrectionist, their address, and multiple phone numbers. Some even have favorite restaurants listed. When time was of the essence, Sarah would need to know how to get hold of them at a moment’s notice. Following their personal information is each case they’ve worked on. Some are only a name and a few brief notes of the death and circumstances, what price was charged for the resurrection and whether anything was still owed. Others detail complications, mostly from brain injuries and cases pressing the three hour time limit. Stroke-like symptoms as the synapses reconnect. Problems with speech and recognition. Loss of fine motor skills. Usually they resolve within the month. Others linger into permanence. They’re the reason we have time constraints.
“It wasn’t the same person who killed Brandon,” Ploy says quietly, the end lifting in just the hint of a question. “This was different right? Something else?” I can’t think about that just yet, can’t think about Sarah. I clutch the book to my chest and go for the closet. Brushing aside blouses, I find the wooden chest and open it. Inside are extra medical supplies. Amidst the tools used on every job are inhalers and bottles of pills. I glance through them, scanning the labels. I grab some narcotic pain killers and