Page 5 of Uncontrolled

“I moved out of Sarah’s place and into the apartment a couple months ago, and since then, she covered my bills. It was only supposed to be until I got on my feet. But now that she’s… She should have had business accounts. Money. If it’s there at all, it’ll take time to track down. It might be under assumed names and the fire wiped out all the paperwork. As far as I can tell, I wasn’t on it yet anyway. It should have been decades before I took over.”

“Allie, what are you trying to say?”

“Rent’s due in two weeks,” she says. “Not to mention utilities.” Her throat bobs as she swallows. “My bank account is at zero.”

“What?” I remember our trip to the grocery store a week ago, the extra bag of chips I grabbed, a package of cookies I dropped into the cart. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I thought I could fix it. I assumed I’d get a job and there’d be time to—I didn’t want you to get worried.”

My anger flares. “Stop acting like I’m along for the damn ride,” I say through gritted teeth before I force a breath. “You should have told me.”

I stare into the water, watch as the current slings loose a dirty plastic bottle. It slows, catches in a patch of cattails and spins twice before it goes under. I’m doing math in my head, frantic rounding, zeroes.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says. “Sarah always told me the next step in the plan.”

She stares at me as if she expects me to fill the role of her dead aunt, but I’ve got nothing. “What am I supposed to say here, Allie?” I ask.

“You’re supposed to say I’m being stubborn. You’re supposed to say I need to give in, start resurrecting again, run the cluster. Grow up.” She pauses. “Before one of my resurrectionists gets hurt, I need to root out those hunters Jamison found.”

She says his name as if speaking it aloud will raise the dead. He wanted her blood, her freedom, her powers for himself.

But I couldn’t let him have her.

When I imagine anyone laying an unkind hand on Allie, a spike of rage splits my brain. If one of those hunters even attempts to touch her, I’ll gut them.

The ferocity of the thought scares me. Jamison was my best friend. I came too close to choosing wrong, choosing him, to deny something inside me is wrong, dark, evil. Being with her means I can never, ever let that part of me see sunlight.

“I should have told you,” Allie says in a voice brimming with shame.

I shrug, the movement too casual for the riot inside of me.

I’m not going back to the Boxcar Camp. I can’t deal with night after night staring up at the leaking metal roof, lucky to scrounge a meal, wishing for shoes not held together by duct tape. I think of desperate dreams and believing in the riches we’d earn from resurrectionist blood and “a few more days” day after day after day. I think of the stench of the swamps and the heat and the mosquitos and the discarded needles half-buried in the gravel around the abandoned tracks. I think of finding Brandon’s gutted body where I typically laid my sleeping bag. How I ran to Allie, to the only safe place I had left.

Allie doesn’t run. She’s no coward.

There’s a difference, though, in being brave and being easy prey. Jamison was working with a group here in Fissure’s Whipp. Allie’s right. “We need to find the hunters. That’s the first step.”

“How?” she asks.

“We’ll figure it out,” I say, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“And the rent?”

“Let me work on it, okay?” I spent the last year busking for change downtown. A couple weeks’ haul won’t be enough to cover expenses for both of us, but at least I’ll be contributing. “We’ll get the rent in time.”

“You’re not going to tell me it’s stupid to stop resurrecting?” she asks.

It honestly never occurred to me. “You said you don’t want to anymore.”

She clutches her elbows, folding in on herself. “Thank you,” she whispers before uncertainty clouds her expression. “If I lose the apartment—” She cuts off and gives her head a sharp shake. “If the hunters find me and you get in the way—”

In the way? I can’t help the bitter sound that breaks from me. Except this isn’t the time. “It’s going to be fine,” I say, rubbing my hands over her arms. “We’re going to be fine. I promise.”

We stare out at the water and then almost at the same moment move toward the path.

“Hey,” she says, stopping me just before I start the trek up the embankment. “Thanks for showing me this place. It’s pretty here.”

“No problem.”

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