You Give Me Fever (Time For Monsters #13)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

I’M IN HEAVEN, AND MY HEART BEATS SO THAT I CAN HARDLY SPEAK

A disturbing horde of creatures had been visiting Clara Bailey for the past week.

Maybe she had been alone too long on what was once her parents’ farm, or maybe the crisp air of autumn had brought upon it some devilry.

Perhaps it was the evening she’d been stuck walking home from town in the rain, soaked and freezing, that was to blame.

There had been flashing bright flies swirling at the corners of her vision on Monday, scuttling spiders on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, shadow cats and snakes were undulating beneath her feet, only to disappear the moment she stepped down.

By the week’s end, a hulking black shape had taken up residence in the corner of her room, and the visions were accompanied by shakes and a chill.

None of that was a problem, however, because Clara Bailey was not sick. She had no time to get sick with chickens to care for, eggs to sell, endless firewood to chop, and something in the house breaking every day or three.

At twenty-eight, she had already cultivated a stubborn streak to rival a ninety-year-old cigar-smoking widow. Sick was out of the question; she was only “a touch under the weather.” Or so she told herself the days following her monsoon jaunt, even as she rattled and shook like the barn in a storm.

So if she was still awake when the Grandfather clock in the study below marked three in the morning, alternately throwing off her blankets and then bundling herself up tightly into a gigantic quilted pastry, it was not a fever.

It was far more likely—even preferable—that her old family farmhouse was haunted.

It was a little over a hundred years old, after all, and any dwelling or, for that matter, book, pair of trousers, or cocker spaniel that old surely had a ghost attached.

If not, Clara reasoned, then its owner must be very unlucky indeed.

“Get out, ghost,” she said in a groan, rolling over.

Unfortunately for Clara, her instincts were correct.

She was not, in fact, alone. The thing’s eyes went wide as he watched.

That thick, smooth thigh, perfectly on exhibit, flung out of the bedclothes, with her nightdress hitched up practically to her hips, was giving him the insane urge to run his tongue along its curve.

Her face was turned away from him, her nimbus of dark curls masking what he knew to be her freckled nose, her long dark eyelashes, her lips so soft he wanted to sleep on them, and that flush all over from the raging fever she refused to acknowledge.

What was turned toward him was her backside, and there his eyes were locked.

Round, luscious... sizeable. He could practically feel it beneath his palm.

Oh... and then she groaned.

Could the thing blush? He came from heat, was made of heat, had heat for every meal, but what rose to his face at hearing that soft sound was hotter even than he.

What sounds might she make if he touched her? If his fingers should find their way between those delicious thighs? Would she sound different if those sighs and groans came from pleasure—from him?

The thing was made of nothing solid, made of shadow, steam and ill-intent, and yet, in that moment, he swore he could feel a tightening between his hips, an ache on the tip of his tongue that he felt he might be able to soothe if he could slip it between her—

He snapped to attention. Hands of shadow were creeping up the bed, crawling spider-like toward his girl. They were not his hands.

Just as the long fingers reached the swirling typhoon of sheets around Clara’s legs, the thing grabbed it and yanked, slamming this new threat against the wall. He narrowed his eyes at the creature squirming in his grip.

“Frenzy,” the thing growled.

“Ahh… is this one yours?” Frenzy asked with a thin shellac of courtesy. “I didn’t realize you had already been given another one. Dropping like wheat in the field these days, aren’t they?”

“Out,” said the thing, squeezing with his huge hand until his rival made a noise of protest.

“Yes, yes, of course.” Frenzy held his palms up and smiled. “This one’s a fighter. I’m looking forward to seeing how you handle her.”

“OUT. NOW.” This time, the thing bared his bright teeth.

“Relax, Shiver,” said the other fever demon. “I’m out.”

Frenzy dispersed slowly, his dark form breaking up in wisps of steam. The last bit to go was that slippery smile.

Shiver kept his eyes on that smirk until it disappeared. Only when he was finally sure that he was alone with the girl did he flash to her bedside, looming over her to inspect for injuries. If that obscene worm had so much as tousled her hair, Shiver would bury him sixteen hells deep.

Silence once again held the room, broken only by the raspy breaths of the girl.

Clara was far away, her head burning so hot she could hear it against her ears like bacon in the iron.

There was no way to be comfortable, freezing and burning and freezing again.

She flipped over and squinted into the darkness of her room.

Had she left a lantern on? Or... two? Or were those eyes burning white hot against the blackness?

“Thought I t-told y’to take a powder, ghost,” she slurred. One might find it funny that she was talking to eyes in the dark—well, why not? Clara talked to everything since living alone, the chickens, the eggs, the trees, the radio. May as well talk to a ghost.

Shiver froze. She was looking right at him. If she could see him already, things were worse than he thought. She could be in real trouble. Which... he was not supposed to care about.

“I said m’not sick. Shoo.”

He pulled back, feeling... offended? Amused? Had this little human actually shooed him? He had watched kings die.

“Yes, you are,” he said without thinking. His voice was the roll of thunder across the plains in summer, lower than the floorboards, buzzing just at the edges as if he had a chorus of cicadas for accompaniment.

Clara frowned. Had she left the Marconi on? Nothing could be speaking to her in this house unless it was a rerun of The Shadow.

No… it had come from inside the room, and the radio was in the kitchen.

This was new, something talking back to her, and a part of her fevered brain was shouting at her to be frightened, to turn on the light, but those thoughts were so quiet in the buzz and crackle between her ears, and as she struggled to grasp at something to understand, all she could think was—Some man contradicted me. In my own bedroom.

“Listen, missster,” she vaguely pointed a finger where the darkness seemed to gather. “M’not. Not. Maybe slightly... unner the weather.”

Shiver could not believe this girl was arguing with him. He ought to tell her what an expert he was on the subject, but he didn’t want to frighten her.

“Yes, you’re so far under the weather you’re practically in the ground,” he said. He reached forward to press the back of his shadowy hand to her forehead. As hot as he was, she still burned him. “You need a doctor, girl.”

“Nuh,” she shook her head, but the buzzing became a roar, so she stopped. “No doctors. Crooks.”

Her parents had not returned from their last trip to the doctor.

What had come back was a bill Clara couldn’t afford, and an envelope of her parents’ personal effects, minus her mother’s wedding ring.

To Clara, doctors were much like shotguns—a useful tool but distasteful, and one’s relationship with it often ended in death.

“Dry up, go back t’your... cemetery.”

Shiver looked around the room, as if he might find someone else to turn to and ask, with respect, if they could believe this shit.

Shiver was not, for the record, supposed to be helping this human.

He was there to feed from her fever, soak in her heat and pain as he drew from her ever-swelling mind the energy he took to survive—and once she expired, he was fed for years.

He had collected many in his time. The influenza, the consumption, even plagues— Shiver never allowed a full recovery. For him, this was a job well done.

Until her.

“I am not leaving until your fever breaks,” he said. He was telling the truth, but not all of it. He would leave one way or the other—with her, if she perished. If she recovered, it meant his death.

Clara squirmed in her hot sheets. There was something about that voice, the way he spoke to her, imperious and haughty and arrogant—with an undercurrent of concern.

It had been so long since anyone showed her true care.

It had been so long since anyone had even spoken more than a few polite words to her.

Clara hadn’t spent her whole life on the farm.

She’d had a job, once—the first taste of freedom she had ever experienced.

It wasn’t the newspaper’s front page, covering gruesome murders and Hollywood scandals, but it was a start—a tidy little advice column for women, tucked away in the section of the paper most people didn’t get to if they were in a hurry.

For a girl who had grown up sequestered away from anyone her age, living and working and being educated on a farm with parents who were already in their golden years before she’d turned sixteen, life in a real city, with so much potential for adventure and even love, being able to talk to hundreds of women every day through her little column was a thrill, a safer way to ease in to making connections with people face to face.

Which she was very certain she was likely to do again one day. Soon.

She had cried as she packed away her meager assemblage of things to return home. She knew what was waiting for her—more seclusion, her only company a temperamental old goat, a smattering of hens, and her parents, too sick to leave their beds.

In too short a time, she was down to only the goat and the hens. Then, just the hens.