Page 9 of Uncontrolled

Balanced awkwardly, Talia croaks once before she drops off my feet and to the cushioned floor with a strangled noise. Her palm smacks. She grabs her throat then whacks the mat again, furious. I can’t tell if she’s tapping out or if the rib I broke punctured her lung.

“Let me guess how you think this plays out without me resurrecting,” I say from my spot beside her on the floor. “I spend my life working some crap retail job, barely scraping by. Since you hate him so much, no doubt you’re positive Christopher will leave me. Maybe steal the rent money and anything not nailed down on his way out?”

She contorts, breathless and cringing on the mat, but if she’s done treating me with kid gloves, I’m more than happy to return the favor.

“I’ll end up a shell of what my parents wanted for me, what Sarah wanted for me? Good thing they’re all dead, so I don’t have to live with the shame of their disappointment!”

Talia gurgles and then sucks a wheeze of air.

I roll myself into a sitting position. Talia loves nothing more than a movie monster scare, a finale flinch, a flash of blade between unsuspecting ribs and the seesaw of loss to win. This time, though, she appears well and truly done.

I give her a second to see what she does. “You okay?” I ask, wary.

Pain lances her expression. One of her hands is shoved against her ribs to ease the agony of her inhale. “Same trainers,” she gasps. “Same workout regimen. Same damn leggings bought on sale.” She shoots a glare in my direction. “And you hand me my ass every time.”

Despite everything, my grin flares, exhaustion and pride battling inside me. “Don’t forget, I haven’t so much as lifted a dumbbell in at least three months.”

Talia oofs as she sits. She’s reeling from my kick, but she’ll live. “Really thought I had you that time,” she says shaking her head.

My lip tingles, the split healing. She stares at me and then sighs.

“Allie,” she breathes, my name a warning of what’s coming. “Everyone knows what happened to Sarah. To Brandon. To Jason.”

I think of my aunt, taking poison meant to protect the blood even as Jamison and the hunter with him slaughtered her. And the others, Brandon, who was gutted at the Boxcar Camp, and Jason Jourdain, who is so far only missing from his cabin at the edge of the swamp since a body never materialized.

“Three of ours, dead,” Talia goes on. “The cluster here in Fissure’s Whipp might be isolated, but we’re not off the radar.” Her voice falters. “I’m being asked questions.”

Fear slicks through me. I plant a palm on the mat and scoot toward her. “What questions?”

“Why haven’t you reached out to the other leaders? Colorado,” she starts, listing them off on her fingers. “Texas, Montana, California? They want to get together and offer their condolences, make your leadership here official. They’re wondering why you haven’t neutralized the nest of hunters yet. If you need help.” Her voice rises an octave. “The last couple days? They’re mostly curious as to why, other than that stripped down story you made me write to keep Ploy in the clear, I’m no longer answering their questions.”

I think of what Talia said earlier. You are who you hang with…

“Currently, no one knows about you and Ploy. You cut him loose, chances are, the three of us will be golden. You keep him, and those leaders will deep dive your boyfriend. His background. His friends.” She waits to be sure I heard the threat. “They’ll tie him to Jamison, and us with him.”

Her dark eyes burn into mine. She sucks a staggered breath before she can continue. “You’re a sister to me. I’d move Heaven and Earth to protect you, Allie,” she says in a voice meant for confession. Then it hardens. “But I will not go down for Ploy.”

I cringe at his old name, Ploy, used against me in every way. That’s not who he is anymore. Except on paper, he looks like a hunter, and on paper I’m the stupid girl starry-eyed over a bad boy. A girl who isn’t resurrecting and hasn’t willingly in months, who has a single guilty degree of separation from hunters she hasn’t stepped up to thwart. And on paper, in official documents, I now realize Talia covered for him and me both.

She grips her ribs. The tightness of her inhales proves this conversation is costing her. She goes on anyway. “All three of us will wind up on the short list for heart removal if you don’t snap out of this fantasy world. You need to take over the cluster. The resurrectionists are bringing in money. I’ve already doled out the first payment. These people depend on that cash.”

Aunt Sarah used to be in charge of redistributing the wealth. I remember watching her at her kitchen table, the stack of white envelopes growing as she calculated and counted and divided, separating her own portion to help others of our kind.

When I don’t respond, Talia struggles to her feet. I watch her limp across the gym to the small changing area. She reappears with something in her hand.

“What is that?” I ask as I stand. When she gestures I hold out my hand.

“It’s your share.” She smears money I don’t want to acknowledge against my palm. Still, I can’t help but see the bundle is largely comprised of twenties and fifties. There’s got to be at least a thousand dollars. “Oh my God, would you take it, Allie!” she scolds, as if I’m a child refusing medicine.

“I don’t need it,” I say.

Talia clutches her side and forces a breath. “You had no problem accepting money from Sarah in the past.”

“That was different!” I move off the mat and onto solid ground. We’re done training for now. I tell myself Talia needs time to heal, but in truth, I’m spent.

“How so?” Talia presses.

I struggle for an argument against taking the payment as I cross the gym to the bench where my battered and fraying duffel sits beside Talia’s name brand bag. The beans for the coffee Christopher and I drank this morning were bought with resurrection funds. The secondhand couch I debated abandoning if I have to move. The sheets strangled around my body during my nightmare this morning and now stained with Christopher’s blood.

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