Marcus looked down. “Ah, man! This was my favorite shirt. Who tore it?” he asked, trying to pull the ragged edges together.
“I tore it,” I snapped, “and I should have torn a hell of a lot more than that.”
By the stifled snickers, Yale and Nose got some enjoyment out of that comment.
“I thought you were dead,” I said, still feeling the fresh raw horror of it. “Just like I thought you were dead in the cemetery. Someone shot you in the heart. But you aren’t dead. You weren’t dead then, and you aren’t dead now because you have PSS of the chest, and all this time you’ve been lying to me.”
“I never lied to you,” he said.
“What?” I said in disbelief.
“I didn’t lie to you,” he insisted. “I just didn’t mention some things,” he ended lamely.
“You are a complete dick! I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I tried to give you CPR in the cemetery for Christ’s sake, and you didn’t even need it.”
“You gave me mouth-to-mouth?” he asked, that damn smirk flitting across his lips.
“Don’t even try it,” I said, glaring at him, hot tears prickling at the edge of my vision. “You’ve had PSS all this time, and you didn’t tell me? When I saw you get shot—when I saw the hole in your chest—” I couldn’t go on because the tears were coming, and the last thing I wanted was for him to see me cry over him.
I stood up and ran out of the ice house, the tears coming hard and fast before I’d made it around back. I leaned against the cold exterior wall, letting myself slide to the ground. I thought about just disappearing into the woods, away from Marcus and his band of brothers and his pack of lies. Instead, I just sat there crying, hoping he’d come find me, which made me cry even harder.
What a complete idiot I’d been. Now it seemed so obvious. Of course the leader of Piss Camp had PSS. That was probably how Marcus had met David, why they’d become best friends—two guys trapped in the system with one major thing in common. And it was why the others trusted Marcus so much, followed him so easily. He was one of them. He was like them. He was like me. No wonder he was so passionate about the list—about saving the others.
So, why hadn’t he just told me? Obviously, the guys had known, so why not tell me?
I heard him coming, his boots squishing on the soft ground, his arm brushing up against the side of the ice house. A thrill of gladness shot through me, and that pissed me off more. Why couldn’t I just hate him? I wiped my face on my sleeve and hoped he couldn’t see the tear tracks in the dark.
He sat down next to me, his long legs stretching into the underbrush.
We both stared straight ahead into the dark, ignoring the glow of his chest and my hand coalescing between us.
“The CAMFers could be out here,” he said, finally.
“Fuck you,” I said. He had been using the CAMFers to scare me. To make me trust him and follow him. He could have used himself, his honesty, but he hadn’t.
“You’re right,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “I should have told you.”
I didn’t say anything. I was all out of words.
“I have a hard time trusting people,” he said. “It’s not an excuse. I still should have told you.”
Another long pause while we both just stared into the dark.
“I’m sorry, okay?” he said.
“Sure. Fine,” I said, not looking at him.
“Hey, I apologized. What else do you want from me?” he growled in frustration.
“Nothing.” It was a lie and we both knew it. A lie in exchange for his. Maybe he could uncover the truth if he tried, but he’d have to work for it.
“I was born with PSS of the chest,” he said, as if we’d been having another conversation entirely. He was accepting my terms. He was finally going to tell me something true about himself. “As far as I know I’m the first and only case of internal organ manifestation. You have a hand of PSS. I have a PSS heart and PSS lungs.”
“How does that even work?” I asked, my eyes traveling down to his torn shirt and the glow emanating from it. I was still mad at him, but that didn’t change the fact that he was absolutely fascinating.
His PSS was fascinating. That’s all I was interested in. His PSS.
“I mean, how can something made from energy pump blood or process oxygen?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus shrugged. “You have theories about your hand. I have theories about my chest. Maybe my body transforms PSS energy into the material and vice versa. When I’m cut, I don’t bleed PSS. When I breathe, I breathe air. I don’t know exactly how it works. I’m just really glad it does.”
“And what? Your PSS just re-forms when you die or get shot in the chest?”
“My PSS is more sensitive than yours. When things pass through it, it gets disrupted. But it regenerates after about ten minutes.”
“But I’ve never heard of PSS organs or regeneration, not in any of the medical studies or anything.”
“Neither have I, and I’d really like to keep it that way.”
I understood that. Doctors and researchers would have a field day with Marcus and his magical regenerating chest. How had he avoided the media? “What about when you were born?” I asked. “Didn’t they test your PSS at the hospital and record all that stuff?”
“I wasn’t born in a hospital,” Marcus said, his voice gone low and quiet.
I could feel it. We were closing in on something he didn’t want to talk about, something that would send him running back to all his protective lies if I pushed him. And I wanted to push him. But another part of me knew I shouldn’t. I had to approach him like a deer in the woods, slowly, quietly, ready to stop at the slightest hint of him bolting.
“The guys say you saved us back there,” he said, changing the subject. “That you rode that CAMFer like a bull.”
“No,” I shook my head. “It was my fault we needed saving in the first place. I thought they hadn’t shown up, my mother or the CAMFers. And then I saw one of my dad’s paintings. It had survived the fire.”
“When you moved toward the interior of the house, that chimney was blocking our view. We couldn’t see you, but Nose thought he heard a struggle. Why didn’t you just run like we’d planned?”
“I wanted the painting,” I said, knowing it sounded stupid, “and then he was there, grabbing it, grabbing me.”
“We ran for you as soon as we realized. But I never saw a painting.”
“It disappeared,” I said. Is that really what had happened? Maybe we’d just dropped it. No, one moment it had been there. And the next it hadn’t.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“We were fighting over it,” I tried to explain. “I mean, he didn’t want it. He wanted me, but I managed to keep it between us. I kicked him. He tried to shake me off of it. And then it was just gone. Poof. No more painting.”
“And that’s what happened to him too?” Marcus asked, sounding like he actually believed it.
“Pretty much. Ask Nose and Yale. They saw that part.”
“When he disappeared, were you touching him?”
“Of course I was touching him. I was clinging to his back, but what does that have to do with—?” I stopped, my mind grinding to a halt on one horrible thought.
Had my ghost hand done this too?
“What were you thinking?” Marcus pressed. “Did you want something? Did you need something?”
“He wasn’t going to stop. Nose was going to shoot him.”
“So you needed him gone,” Marcus surmised, “and you had the bullet with you.”
“Yes,” I exhaled, finally understanding what he was getting at. It hadn’t been my ghost hand. It had been the bullet. The bullet had manifested an ability in answer to my need, just like the blades had. It had made things disappear. First the painting. Then Mike Palmer. I could feel it in my jeans pocket, digging into my hip, such a tiny thing. “But where did they—?” I started to ask.
“Shhhh!” Marcus hissed. Suddenly, he was in a crouch, back to me, peering around the corner. “Cover your hand,” he whispered, and I heard him zipping up his jacket, the glow of his PSS suddenly doused.
My right glove was off—gone—lost back at the house during my struggle with Palmer. I stripped off the left one, put it on my ghost hand inside out, and our little hiding spot grew a shade darker.
Were the CAMFers coming? I didn’t hear anything except the wind in the trees and the beating of my own heart. Even Nose and Yale were dead silent in the ice house, the low mumble of their voices gone, which meant they’d probably heard it too—whatever Marcus had heard.
“Follow me,” he said, slipping around the corner toward the front.
THE CAMFER SPY
Nose and Yale were already on alert and flanking the doorway, Mike Palmer’s gun gripped firmly in Nose’s hand.
“We heard something,” Marcus told them as we slipped back inside.
“Us too,” Yale whispered. “Something moving through the brush.”
“Could be an animal,” Nose said, keeping his voice low, “but it sounded bigger.”
The loud snap of a branch broke the silence of the night, followed by the rustle of bushes. It didn’t sound like an animal. It sounded like someone walking through the woods toward us.
“Stay here with the gun,” Marcus ordered. “I’ll try to flank them, and if they get too close, I’ll draw them off.”
He was gone, out the door and into the dark, before I could protest.
I glanced from Nose to Yale, feeling panic rise in my throat.
“He’ll be fine,” Nose said, “He’s hard to kill.”
Hard or impossible?
I wanted to ask, but the sounds outside were getting closer. For a second, off to the left, I thought I saw the beam of a flashlight cut through the blackness.
A minute later, from that same direction, there was a loud crashing of brush followed by a yell cut short, followed by more crashing of brush. And then silence.
I stood with Nose and Yale, peering out into the dark woods.
A figure, lumpy and misshapen, stumbled into the clearing.
“I got him,” Marcus called, emerging from the bushes as well, his hand locked on the arm of what looked like a headless torso dressed in black.
It took me a moment to realize that Marcus had thrown his jacket over his captive’s head and cinched it shut.
Marcus shoved the CAMFer forward and the spy struggled a little, muffled protests coming from inside the jacket. He was a pretty small guy, much shorter than Marcus. He hardly looked threatening.
“That’s it?” Nose asked. “That’s all they sent?”
“Looks like it,” Marcus said. “Let’s get him inside and get some answers.”
I slipped off my glove to provide some light as Marcus propelled the CAMFer forward, guiding him over the threshold. Marcus pushed him down to a sitting position, and we all stood over him, Nose with the gun ready in his hand.
“You’re sure no one else is out there?” Yale asked Marcus. “I doubt he came alone.”
“I didn’t see anything but this idiot crashing through the brush like a drunken cow with a flashlight.”
That comment elicited a muffled protest from under Marcus’s jacket. Apparently, this CAMFer didn’t appreciate being compared to inebriated bovine.
“Anyway, let’s have a look,” Marcus said, reaching down and yanking his jacket off the CAMFer with a flourish.
And there sat Emma blinking up at us, the static electricity from the jacket making her red hair float away from her head like some kind of angelic Medusa.
“Emma!” I exclaimed, throwing myself down in front of her.
“Thank God I found you!” she said, hugging me, nearly squeezing the breath out of me.
“Are you okay?” I pulled back, looking her over.
“I’ve been better,” Emma said, rubbing her arm. “One of these guys has a nasty tackle.” She looked disapprovingly from Yale to Marcus to Nose, her glance lingering on his ski mask and falling to the gun in his hand, her eyes widening. “What is going on?” she asked, her voice halfway between fear and concern.
“Nose!” I said. “Put that thing away.”
He lowered the gun, but he didn’t put it away. Yale and Marcus didn’t look pleased either. They were eyeing Emma as if they still thought she was a CAMFer spy.
“This is Emma,” I explained. “She’s my best friend.”
“What is your best friend doing out here in the woods at night?” Marcus asked.
“I was looking for her,” Emma answered, staring Marcus down, not letting him intimidate her in the least.
“And you just happened to come here, tonight, right now?” he sounded skeptical.
“I’ve been checking all her hang-outs,” Emma said. “I figured her sudden disappearance had something to do with you. Looks like I was right.”
“What do you know about me?” Marcus demanded.
“Oh for Christ’s sake, would you two just stop it!” I cried. “She is not a CAMFer spy,” I said to Marcus, “and he is not a bad guy,” I said to Emma. “We’re all on the same side.”
“A CAMFer spy?” Emma scoffed. “Is that what he thinks I am? I’m not even a Republican. Besides, since when do political lobbyists have spies? That’s just ridiculous.”
“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “Mike Palmer is a CAMFer spy. He burned down my house. I saw him do it. And there’s at least one more in town.”
“Mike Palmer, the Fire Chief, burned down your house?” Emma asked in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“Why would he do that?” she asked.
“It’s complicated,” I said, looking up at the guys.
Yale looked at Emma, sizing her up.
Nose shrugged.
Marcus shook his head.
They didn’t want me to tell her anything.
“She might know something,” I argued. “She’s been in town. She might have seen something that could help us.”
“Fine,” Marcus said coldly, “then ask her.”
But don’t tell her
, his eyes said.
“I have a few questions of my own first, thank you very much,” Emma countered. “I know who he is,” she said, nodding at Marcus, “but who are these other guys?”
“They’re my friends, and that’s all you need to know,” Marcus answered.
He was so melodramatic.
“This is Nose and that’s Yale,” I said, gesturing at them and ignoring Marcus’s glare. “They’ve all been helping me since I ditched the hospital, and Nose is going to put the gun away, aren’t you Nose?”
Nose quickly tucked the gun in his belt, looking apologetic.
“Why don’t you two go check outside,” Marcus said to the other guys. “Do a perimeter sweep and make sure there’s no one else out there.”