Fever (17 page)

Claire Lottner
, followed by numbers and a street name, and
Residential District,
Manhattan, NY
.

“Who is that?” I ask Maddie. “Do you know who lives there?”

She sighs the hair out of her face. Now that it’s clean, it’s like the fine fuzz of a dark baby chick.

She turns the page, points to the first word there, above an illustration of two children jumping through puddles, and waits for me to read.

When Gabriel returns from his shower, there is a folded pair of plaid pajama bottoms waiting for him. They fit perfectly, like he’s stepping right into the ghost body of Elsa’s son. There’s also a T-shirt he’s too flushed and achy to bother putting on.

After Maddie has gone to bed—or rather, under bed—he lies on the mattress facing the wall, I think in an attempt to conceal his agony. But I can hear his strained breaths, see his muscles jumping under his skin.

After I’ve finished washing up, I return to the bedroom and lie beside him, rubbing gentle circles on his back. His body is all locked up, like Cecily when we found her on the bedroom floor in the early stages of labor. She had been so stunned by the feel of it, so horrified, that when she’d finally opened her mouth, it was to scream.

But Gabriel makes no effort at sound; I know the wheezing and gasps are beyond his control.

“Am I hurting you?” I whisper. “Want me to stop?”

It takes him a while to get out the word “No.”

My wet hair has dampened the pillow, but I’m too tired to do anything about it. Gabriel mumbles something about it smelling like apricots. “This?” I say, using a piece of my wet hair to paint a watery circle on his bare shoulder. He makes a small noise, like the trickle of water has brought him some relief, so I draw some more wet-hair swirls on his arm, over the hill of his shoulder, across his throat. From where I lie behind him, I can just see the smile swelling his cheek.

I inch closer, the coils creaking with the motion, so that my stomach is not quite touching his back, my forehead pressed against his skull. When I let out my next breath, his skin bristles with goose bumps. And I think:
This is his skin. This is the person I wanted to share my freedom with.
I should be happy that we have the freedom to be as close to each other as we’d like, to figure out our feelings for each other without worrying about noises in hallways, or my ominous father-in-law, or a basement of human remains, but it seems that a pall still hangs over us both even though we’ve escaped.

I know that I need to focus my attention on the present. I have been too selfish. While he was dealing with the shock of a world without holograms, and bearing the poison of that awful drug, I have been worrying over my sister wives and dreaming of down comforters, missing the taste of June Beans. And that is no good. I left those things behind. It’s time to let them go, tuck them someplace safe in my memories and never speak of them again.

But before I do that, before I leave them behind, there is something I need to know. “Gabriel?”

“Mm?” He is weary, but fully conscious. I feel some hope that the angel’s blood can soon release its hold on him for good.

“When we were in the truck, you said Jenna had talked to you before she got sick. She told you that I was so busy trying to be brave that I didn’t realize I was in danger.”

Gabriel raises his head a little, but doesn’t turn to face me. “I said that?”

I feel disappointment rising up from my stomach. “Did it ever really happen, or was it the drug talking?”

“It happened,” he says. “But I shouldn’t have told you about it. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

This confirms my suspicion that this is none of my business, but I can’t stop myself from saying, “Jenna was keeping secrets from me.” And then I realize the reason I can’t let this go is because I’m angry. “She was a sister to me. I confided in her. What could she tell you that she couldn’t tell me?”

Gabriel takes a long, measured breath. His shoulder spasms; he grips his pant leg, and I manage to weave my fingers through his so that he’s clinging to me instead. He makes a spluttering sound, and my heart wrenches for him. I am about to say I’m sorry for bringing this up, that he should rest, when he says, “She knew that Housemaster—that Vaughn was going to kill her.”

Vaughn. The cause for all the suffering my sister wives and I endured. Of course I knew that he had somehow brought a premature end to Jenna’s life, but hearing it out loud, getting actual confirmation, hurts in an entirely new and brutal way. I barely get out the word “How?”

Gabriel says, “She snuck into the basement just to find me.” That was the afternoon she disappeared, and later, when we talked in the library, she would say only that she had been to the basement, would answer none of my questions, and yelled at me for trying to prod her.

“What—” My voice catches. “What did she say?”

“She knew that we were planning to escape, and she was worried. She said that you were always trying so hard to take care of everyone, to be in control, that you didn’t pay any attention when you were in danger. And that place was full of dangers. She asked me to take care of you even when you didn’t let on that you needed it. The rest of it, she asked me never to tell you. But—and this is the truth—I would if I thought it would help you. But for your own sake, Rhine, let it go.”

Let it go. Let Jenna’s secrets die with her.

I say nothing more, but I reach behind me and turn out the lamp. Maddie rustles under us in the darkness, perhaps dreaming her strange, wordless dreams.

Just when I think Gabriel has drifted off to sleep, he says, “I don’t trust these people.” I don’t either. Elsa is lost in the wistful wasteland of her own mind, and Greg seems to terrify Maddie. I’ve tried to reason this out by considering that Maddie, after spending her young life watching the customers come and go through Madame’s carnival, has come to fear men. But no, that doesn’t make sense. She showed affection to Jared, and Gabriel has never managed to upset her.

“I’ll keep watch,” I say. “I’ll wake you if I get tired.”

His shoulders shake with a soft laugh. “Liar,” he says. But there’s no malice to it. The next second, he’s gone.

Gabriel’s sleep is a fitful one. Through the night I grip his clenched fists to stop the thrashing, sop up the perspiration with my sleeve, bear it when he snarls hateful things in his semiconsciousness that make me wince. I know the words aren’t for me. What frightens me is that I don’t know who or what he is speaking to. Something is visiting him, and maybe it really is the ghost of Elsa’s son pulsing in the walls, because at one point he opens his eyes and looks right past me, as though there is someone standing over the bed.

I turn on the light, both to show him there’s no one there and to prove it to myself. But instead I notice the wild things his blue eyes have become, the pallid skin, the white lips that make him look dead. “Rhine?” he says, as though he’s surprised I’m here. As though whatever trip his mind has taken him on has made me invisible all night while I’ve tried to console him.

“Hi,” I say, and push the sweaty hair from his face. “Do you need anything?”

My voice seems to relax him a little. I’m sitting over him, and when I put my hands over his, his fingers unclench. He watches me a long while, bewildered and weary, and then he says, “Were we just talking about flying back to the mansion in a helicopter?”

I can’t stop myself from laughing. I shake my head. “No.”

“Oh,” he says. “I could have sworn. And then your hair turned into bees.”

I dangle a piece of my hair over his face, the multi-hued blond waves bouncing like tangled, coiled wires. “No bees,” I say. “Are you thirsty?”

“A little,” he says, and his eyes roll back as they close. He will be okay, I tell myself. This will pass.

This will pass.

This will pass.

“Be right back,” I whisper.

I make my way down the hallway, which is pink from all the rosy night-lights Elsa has plugged into its sockets. Perhaps she thinks it will keep her son’s ghost at bay, or guide him.

The kitchen is dark, though, aside from the moonlight and the glow of the fridge when I open the door and find a plastic bottle of water. Plastic, my brother says, is the most brilliant chemical invention because it never deteriorates; once it has served its purpose, it can be melted down and made into anything else, or left to rot forever in a landfill.

Scientists could make bottles, he says, but not humans.

“Your husband’s not long for this world, is he?” Greg says.

I start, and the refrigerator door slips out of my hand and closes. In the darkness I can just make out Greg’s form hunched over the kitchen table. “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.

“It’s okay,” I say, my voice not quite as steady as I’d like. “I was just getting some water.”

“For your husband?” Greg asks. His tone is deadpan, almost dazed.

“Yes,” I say.

“It’s nice that you take care of him,” Greg says, and his head turns toward me, though I can’t make out his face. “But don’t forget to take care of yourself, too. When they’re dying like that—it just sucks the energy right out of your soul. It makes you feel like you’re the one dying.”

My next breath catches in my throat. Gabriel is not dying; his body will recover from the aftereffects of the angel’s blood, and he’ll be all right. But Jenna
was
dying. And, kneeling beside her in her sickbed, cradling her head, sweeping the blood from her mouth only to have it return, I did feel like I was dying along with her. I promised myself to let my sister wives go, but that is a pain that will never leave me. It’s trapped at the back of my mind, always, and now, to hear Greg describe it, I feel sick with it.

“I know,” I say.

“Our boy died over thirty years ago,” Greg says. Then he repeats the words, slower and with more punch. “Thirty years. Elsa’s still not quite right about it.”

He takes a sip from his drink, and I hear the ice clinking against the glass. At once I can smell the alcohol, and realize that he’s been slurring his words. “We failed you kids,” he says, and the chair tips and then crashes to the ground as he stands. He is unfazed. He comes toward me, and I press my back against the freezer to be out of his way as he opens the refrigerator door. The blue glow shows me the sadness in his dark eyes, the messy hair, the misery just radiating like an awful song. He turns to me and says, “What does it feel like to know exactly when you’ll die?”

I am inching away from him, blood cold, my palm sweating around the bottle of water I came in here for. I don’t think Greg even expects an answer. He’s smiling at me, a distant, sleepy, awful smile. Maddie’s letters flash into my mind:
Run.

I take a step, and he grabs my arm. “Wait,” he says. “Just—wait. You have so much life in you still. You’re the warmest thing I’ve seen in years.”

I jerk my arm, but his grip tightens. His eyes darken. “Let go,” I say.

“In a couple of years you will be nothing but ash,” he says.

He kisses me. It’s a hard, forceful kiss, his tongue prying my mouth open, attacking me with salt and cheap liquor and hot, coppery breaths. My struggle is immediate, my body moving on its own, pushing, kicking, resisting. None of it eases his grip. None of it takes his mouth from mine. I feel like his tongue is slithering down my throat, choking me. His other hand moves past the drawstring of my sweatpants. He has calloused papery fingers like Vaughn has in all of my nightmares, and they’re traveling down, gripping the fleshiest part of my thigh.

I scream, but his mouth is suffocating me and the sound gets trapped in his throat. The room is eerily silent. My heart, pounding in my chest and head and all my fingertips, can’t make a sound.

I don’t even hear the water bottle hit the floor.

Then there’s a cracking noise, bone against bone, and Greg has moved away from me. No, not moved. Fallen. He lands on his hands and knees, a stream of blood trailing after him. Is it possible that I did this to him? I stare at my hands, unbelieving. No, I’m sure I was pushing him, but I hadn’t been able to hit him that hard.

Then I see the other form moving in the doorway, panting with rage, his foot poised over Greg’s crumpled form as though to kick him if he tries to fight back.

“Gabriel?” I gasp.

“Are you okay?” he asks me, not looking away from Greg.

“I—yes,” I say, blinking, pushing down a sick wave in my stomach. Suddenly the room is full of sound again. Life, which had inexplicably paused, has resumed. And that awful moment feels so much smaller now that it’s behind me. I wipe my mouth and tongue on my sleeve as Gabriel takes my hand and pulls me from the room.

“I could kill him,” he’s muttering as he pulls me down the hallway and into the bedroom. “I could
kill
him.”

“It’s the withdrawal talking,” I say. “This isn’t you. You aren’t like this.”

“Oh, it’s me,” he says. “Maddie, get up. We’re leaving.” He’s reaching under the bed and tugging the poor girl to her feet before she can even register awareness. I grab Lilac’s bag from where Maddie dropped it on the floor, and I’m surprised to find that my hands are shaking. The room tilts. I have to close my eyes for a second to get my bearings.

We can hear Greg in the kitchen, and before I can stop it, Gabriel runs toward him. “Don’t!” I whisper. “You’re going to wake Elsa! Let’s just go.”

“I’ll meet you,” he says. “Take Maddie and get outside.”

The only way out is through the restaurant, though. I run down the steps, clinging to Maddie’s hand to help her along. But she’s faster than me; she’s used to running for safety, but has she ever truly been safe?

Have I?

She bolts away from me when we make it to the bottom of the stairs. I’m just forming the word “wait” when she tugs open the door, triggering the security alarm, which blasts through the ceiling. It’s like the sound of the tin cans all crashing together in the trap my brother and I set, magnified by a hundred, a thousand. It’s so loud that I’m seeing red. And there is no catching Maddie after that. I see her for an instant in the door frame, bounding into the darkness and disappearing, a bird in flight.