Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Author:Lauren DeStefano
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

At the bus station in Pennsylvania, Maddie and I leave Gabriel only long enough to use the women’s bathroom and to wash up. Gabriel is waiting for us outside the door, looking tired but not as beat-up. We wait on the plastic chairs, eating Callie’s Kettle Snacks and warm, flat soda.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Okay, I think,” Gabriel says. “My head hurts a little bit, and my back.”

“It’s because you were so clenched up,” I say. “Your muscles are stiff.”

“I know,” he says. But there’s something he’s not telling me. Hallucinations, horrors that he endured while I was sleeping peacefully on his chest. Or more secrets he shared with my sister wives. More things I’m not meant to know.

While he’s chewing on a Kettle chip, I search his eyes. I see a bright and youthful blue, the boy who brought me June Beans in the early hours of morning. I see none of the darkness of the angel’s blood holding him hostage, but when I glance, subtly, in Lilac’s bag, I see that the vial of liquid is still there.

On the bus Gabriel is asleep even before we’ve started moving. He’s directly beside me, head on my shoulder. His lips move against my neck and form words that have no sound. “Dream of good things,” I whisper, and hope my voice will reach him. I imagine it as a mist entering his nightmares, coiling around the monsters and then tightening, causing them to burst into oblivion.

“Rhine,” he whispers. “Look out.”

The seat in front of us is empty, so Maddie makes a game of hooking her knees over the back of it and hanging like a bat. It seems to entertain her, at least, even if she is annoying some of the first generations that are eyeing her. I can feel the stigma they’ve placed on Maddie. And on me, and on Gabriel. For our youth. For our looming deaths. As though it’s our fault we were born into this world.

Still, I don’t want us to draw attention to ourselves, especially after Vaughn was able to find me at Madame’s carnival.

“Maddie,” I say. “Come and read with me.”

We read from her worn children’s book, and after that we read the pamphlet in the pocket of the seat before us. We read about how many miles it is from a top-rated hotel to the water, and where to get the best seafood. But eventually that gets old too, and we’re back to the book. Only this time Maddie opens it to the page with the crayon scribbles. She traces each letter with purpose. G-R-A-C-E L-O-T-T-N-E-R. Then she turns the page, and she follows the blue scribbles for a while, and traces the other words too. C-L-A-I-R-E L-O-T-T-N-E-R. I stare at the address, which would only be a few miles from my district of Manhattan. I think it once used to be called Queens. But it could be a coincidence. This book is probably secondhand, something given to Lilac by one of Madame’s customers who couldn’t pay in cash.

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