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Mason’s hand was still on Boston’s arm to keep it affixed to Allie’s wrist, and Von was clutching Graham’s shoulders like a boxing coach. Von counted down from three, and though I felt the instinct to close my eyes, I couldn’t look away when Von belted out the final one. “Now, pull!”
All four men shouted out with varying degrees of surprise and confusion, each falling back after a belabored pause. Mason and Von shot back the farthest, and Von smacked his back against the wall. His hands fluttered over his chest in panic, as if searching for his cigar. “Oh no! No, no, no! I didn’t touch her! How could... No!” Von dropped to his knees and clutched the back of his head, bowing down to the floor with so much angst, I didn’t know how to help him.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” My head whipped around the room, surveying the multiple shades of befuddlement, amazement and horror as I watched the four men each drop to their knees.
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t pull from her, I swear!” Mason wore a similar expression of horror to Von’s, looking to Von and then gazing up with shame and desperation at me. “I didn’t touch her! You saw me, right?”
I made sure Allie was securely laid back down on the pillow before I stood, running to Von and placing my hand on his back. “What happened? Why are you freaking out?”
Von banged his head to the floor in self-flagellation as he swore on repeat, giving me no useful information.
The door popped open, and I saw that Ollie had managed to drag his body over to the entrance. “Help!” he bellowed down the hallway to the nurses’ station. “She’s awake!”
I snatched up Finn’s bloody knife and slid it into the hook on my belt. Then I quickly threw a blanket over Geon. I tucked the cloth into his shirt like a bib, and tugged down the brim of his hat so the obviously dead guy wouldn’t be made.
Mere seconds after Ollie called out the herald, a nurse came running into the room, ignoring everyone on their knees and zeroing in on Allie.
A minute later, the room was swarming with several nurses and two doctors, who asked Allie any number of questions she didn’t have the ability to answer yet, while they checked her from head to toe.
It was when a third doctor showed up that we were ordered out of the room. I wheeled out Geon into the hallway, my hands shaking and my knees barely supporting my weight. Boston and Graham hoisted Ollie off the floor and dragged him out to sit on a bench in the hall.
Boston pried my grip from the wheelchair and gingerly lowered me to the bench next to Ollie. “I’ll go get rid of the body. Stay here and make sure to pay attention to everything they tell you about her.” His normally blasé eyes danced with excitement. “We did it! She woke up, and I felt the life force go into me. It was incredible! You’re brilliant. I can’t believe it actually worked.” He clenched and loosened his hand before shaking it out. He stood up straight, beaming with pride. “I did it!”
“You were amazing, Bos.” It was all I could manage as the shock continued to hit me in droves.
“Be back in a few.”
Boston wheeled Geon down the hall and into the elevator, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.
It was quite a different story for Von and Mason, who were on their knees in the hallway at my feet, facing Allie’s door with me. I ruffled my hands through their hair, but jumped when they both gripped my wrists in fear. “Something’s wrong,” Von whispered mournfully. His black t-shirt was twisted around his torso. “I didn’t mean to do it!”
Mason turned to face me, burying his forehead to my thigh in supplication, like a dog. “I didn’t touch her! I swear I didn’t put a hand on her when the countdown started!”
I took in the fear that coated both of them, my heart racing anew. “What? What’s wrong? What’d I miss?”
Von turned and ground his forehead to my other thigh. He slammed his fist against the wall the bench was pushed up to, making me jump. “The soul split!”
I nodded, looking on their distress with confusion. “I know. It worked. Thanks for helping Graham and Boston. Boston seems happy, and Graham, well...” I motioned to Graham, who had already sneaked back into the room to be a fly on the wall, so he didn’t have to be separated from his new charge. I kinda loved Graham in that moment.
Von was uttering a constant stream of curses as he pounded on the wall with the side of his fist, still not looking up at me, his face buried on the outside of my thigh. Finally Mason picked up his head, gazing up at me with distraught eyes. I didn’t like him so upset. “Mason, what’s wrong?”
Mason slowly cradled my hand in both of his, smoothing the skin on the back and massaging my forearm as if to soothe my ache. I didn’t have any aches, though. My sister was awake, so I was pretty much living at Party Central in my mind, brought down only by the two great men in my life acting like their puppy died. “The soul didn’t split two ways, hani. It split four ways. I don’t know how, but part of it went into Von and part of it went into me after Boston and Graham. Allie doesn’t have just two Pullers. She’s got four.”
Von let out a frustrated shout into my thigh that was muffled by my jeans, and banged his fist to the wall again. My brow wrinkled in confusion while my free hand drifted to rest atop Von’s head, stroking his short hair lovingly to calm him. “I don’t understand. I thought you had to be touching her.”
Mason hung his head. “I didn’t touch her when the soul split. I promise. I don’t know how it happened, all I know is that it’s happened.” He punched his fist to his chest. “I already feel her. It’s the same way I felt you from the beginning.”
“You mean... You’re telling me that you’re my sister’s Puller now?” The shock of the impossible coming to fruition before me made my mouth drop open. “But you’re my Reaper. You’re my Puller. You can’t reap for two Omens. Is that even possible?”
“I guess it is now. I mean, it has to be.” Mason sat back on his heels. “I didn’t want the job in the first place. Me being with you at all is a fluke. Now I’m doubly tied to this job? It’s a life sentence!” He hung his head, slicing us both through the heart with the harsh swing of his words.
Von picked up his head from my leg and reached out, cupping Mason’s shoulder. “It always was a life sentence. Now we’re just on double duty.” I could see him finally puzzling through the mess with methodical reasoning. “Maybe it won’t be that bad. I mean, Graham and Boston are her Pullers, too. They can look after her, keep her healthy, and we can just stay on our normal day-to-day with October. Maybe all we are is backup for them if one of them needs a holiday.”
“I need a holiday!” Mason argued. “I wasn’t even on the active duty list when October was awakened. I’m too old for this. I don’t want to be scooping two dying women off the pavement like Danny had to do for Mariang. I’m not built for this. I need to be with the undead, Von! They don’t rip my heart out every time they sneeze twice. I can’t feel this much! You saw what it did to Danny!” He pounded his chest once with his fist in anguish. “I can already feel her confusion in there! And I know you’re mad with me, hani, and I don’t care right now. I should be in Sombi, burying the undead and living on my own! I’m not meant to be around the living!”
“Oh, shut up,” Ollie mumbled, sitting up a little straighter. Von’s excessive pulling had started to wear off, so Ollie was marginally more himself.
“Excuse me?” Mason reared his head at Ollie, his face souring.
“You heard me. Pulling’s supposed to be this all-important revered position, right?”
“I don’t care about any of that. I’m not meant to live Topside. I’m not meant to be in the middle of someone’s marriage!” Mason lifted my hand to display my ring.
“So you’re extra useful now. Is it really that big a deal that you can help two Omens? The workload isn’t the same as it was for Mariang. She was run into the ground because there was no other choice. There was no way she could’ve kept up. Now there are two Omens with double the Pullers, and far less work demand than ever for them.” He shrugged. “Don’t pull for Allie.”
Mason’s bitter attitude came out in his voice. “I don’t get a choice in it, Ollie. If we don’t pull, they could die, and all of Terraway dies with them.”
Ollie jerked his thumb in my direction. “Only pull for this one. Von’s right. You can be a backup, sure, but I doubt you’ll ever need to do it. October only has to reap one person a day to keep Terraway going. I vote you go on a tear and rip through a dozen bodies a day a piece for a week straight, and then take a month off. Go fight zombies during your time away. Shoot, I might even go with you one of these days.”
“Bite your tongue,” I snapped. “It’s bad enough Mason goes back to that. I won’t let you risk your life so you can live out your zombie apocalypse fantasy. You’re not Bruce Campbell.”
“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me. I would never tell you that you’re not Bruce Campbell.” Ollie wrapped his arm around my shoulders, ignoring my warning completely. “Oh, so you’re the only one who gets to fight an army of zombies?”
“Yes. That’s exactly right. It’s me and Bruce Campbell, and the list ends there. You can make us tea when we get tired of kicking butt.” Ollie grumbled under his breath, but I ignored him. I squeezed Mason’s hand and slipped my other one into Von’s. “If I have my way, Allie won’t reap a day in her life. I only wanted her awakened so she could break out of that coma. Graham, Allie and Boston? They’re backups. Allie’s been through enough. So’s Graham and Boston, for that matter.”
Von brought my hand to his cheek, leaning into my palm. “That’s all well and good, but we can feel her. You’ve no idea what it’s like to feel bullet-taking loyalty to two people like this.”
I raised my eyebrow, stiffening. I reached out and snatched at both of their chins roughly, bringing their faces closer so they didn’t have any room to look away. I didn’t mean for my words to come out in a slow building seethe, but I was too incited by them to talk myself down. “Oh, I don’t know what it’s like to give myself to two people? I do it every stinking day with the two of you, you know. My heart’s divided, even when it belongs to you, Von. Even when I was with you in the beginning, Mason. I can feel when Mason walks into a room. I know when Von needs more blood sometimes even before he even does. I can tell when either of you are staring at me without turning around to look. I live with my heart in two places every waking moment. It’s hard, but you’re both worth it.”
Von’s mouth dropped open, a thousand unreadable thoughts flickering across his face. “This is what you feel all the time? I hate it already, and it’s barely been a minute.”
I leaned forward and sunk off of the bench to kneel between them. I kissed Mason’s cheek and then Von’s, looping an arm around each of their waists. “Yup. And I wouldn’t trade either of you for the world.”
Though I could feel their nerves, they both leaned their foreheads to my temples, holding onto me even when life turned us on our heads yet again.