Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
IF I EVER FORGOT MYSELF WITH THAT GIRL, I’D REMEMBER IT
Clara woke alone.
Well, of course she was alone; she was always alone... all the same, her eyes scanned the room as if she might see someone crouching like a vulture in the corner.
The heat and the pain and fog in her mind rolled in the moment she moved her eyes, little skillets in her skull heating up to fry the backs of her eyeballs. She allowed that she was still, maybe, potentially, possibly, a touch on the poor side. But not sick.
The chickens were calling, but she lay still for a moment, desperately trying to claw back the memory of her dream. Some thing had been at her bed, urging her to get a doctor.
She huffed at the very idea. No one in this town went to the doctor without returning in a box. Clara was no fool. No, she would take her arsenic in soap form like everyone else, thank you, not inside her veins. If she needed to be embalmed, the cabinet was full of hooch.
But something else was tugging at her, something she hardly even wanted to acknowledge in the biblical light of day. That thing in her dream, the thing that spoke to her and scolded her and sat at her bed, that thing had touched her. Intimately.
Heat rose to her already burning face at such a thought.
If she’d tried, she could have called up every detail—not in perfect clarity, but well enough to shake her to her ground floor.
There had been hands sliding up her nightdress, a hot tongue sliding somewhere else—something she had only seen an etching of in an Italian magazine in her coworker’s desk.
After that, she had never borrowed another pencil from Mr. Daniels.
The thing in her dream had made her body do things she had never even imagined, and she had craved it.
But Clara was a sensible sort, so of course she didn’t think on such things.
“Jiminy Crickets,” she sighed, getting to her feet and ignoring the raging fire in her skull. “Enough dreams, Clara. Duty calls.”
She washed quickly in the basin and shimmied into a gingham dress and apron, struggling to carry the three bags of feed she could usually manage without a sweat. It was time, she decided, to concede ever so slightly—she was feeling even worse than the day before.
“Nothing to do but soldier on, isn’t that right, Miss Pollyanna?” she said to one of the chickens at her feet.
Pollyanna just stared at Clara with the one eye that faced forward and let out a superior-sounding bawk.
“Well, you don’t have to be that way,” Clara said with a playful huff, scattering another handful of corn and grits before moving on to the next chore.
It was past sundown before Clara thought of her dream again.
Without the crisp autumn sun and the noise of animals to distract her, it was too easy to let those memories and feelings creep back up her spine and beneath her clothes.
How long had it been since she’d even thought of pleasure like that?
What a lonely old maid she must be to conjure something so obscene.
Which was not to say that Clara Bailey wanted it to stop. She knew she ought to want it to stop as a woman of even passable virtue, but doing what she ought had never been Clara’s talent.
“Might be safer on the davenport tonight,” she muttered, grabbing a book she hadn’t managed to look at properly in six weeks and sitting on the couch beneath the heavy brass lamp.
Within minutes, her head was dropping against the couch, though that sizzling heat on her skin still prickled her everywhere, little imps with tridents poking every inch to keep her from getting comfortable. She drifted into an uneasy sleep, unaware of her audience.
Shiver crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall as he watched her.
She was so stubborn, pretending all day that she was fine, even as the fever rolled and boiled inside her.
He had watched her shaking and struggling to carry loads far too heavy for her, unable to step in and do anything.
He was growing stronger while she grew weaker, and for the first time in his many ages, he hated it.
She worked so hard, and all for... what?
To keep a pack of freeloading animals healthy?
To repair every squeaky floorboard and leaking pipe in a house falling down around her?
To cook food she wouldn’t even touch? Shiver hated humanity, their futile nobility in the face of their own spiderweb-thin tether to life.
How did they do it, every day, knowing that one breath too few, and they were a feast for the worms?
People were cattle, groceries, a way to feed. Finish one and move on to the next.
But not Clara.
She was as hard and stubborn as a cactus while breaking up firewood or on her knees trying to repair the stove, but she was soft and sweet, humming to her chickens and patting each one in thanks as she took their eggs; in the same hour, she would talk to herself in the mirror, giving an interview after accepting her imaginary Pulitzer.
Shiver had never paid attention to humans before her.
Now he realized what he had missed all along: humans were complex and fascinating, composed of layer upon layer of memory, trauma, joy, comedy, mistakes.
This girl was a fully formed galaxy, hidden away on a lonely egg farm.
But that was not the only path his thoughts had taken as he watched his girl go about her day.
He knew a little of what she had hidden beneath that dress, those heavy underclothes that cinched and pushed her lovely curves into submission.
He recalled perfectly the flavor of her on his tongue, too sweet for a ghoul like himself.
Were he allowed, he would grab her away from those meaningless chores and shove his tongue right back where it belonged.
“Oh no,” said a gleeful voice beside him in the darkness. “Shiver, say it ain’t so. You’re stuck on this human girl, aren’t you?”
Shiver clenched his teeth, even if he would rather clamp them around Frenzy’s neck. Frenzy spent more time around people and had, annoyingly, picked up on their way of speaking.
“I am not stuck on anything,” he said, shouldering away from the grinning shadow.
“You are. You’ve fallen for this little hot pepper. Oh, this is going to be just awful.”
“Buzz, will you?” he snapped, but he was not too forceful about it. A part of him wanted this simpering boob to keep talking because... what if it was true?
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” said Frenzy, producing a glowing ember from nothing and lifting it to his lips to inhale. He truly had been among these humans too long. “I’ve taken my fair share of them. Delicious little morsels, aren’t they?”
Shiver glanced at the other demon, who blew out a stream of smoke.
He had to admit that Frenzy was right. Delicious.
Little. Hot. Even now, with such a hateful creature beside him hissing taunts, Shiver could feel that coiling tension in his lower back, the itch of his palms, the ache in his tongue.
It didn’t matter how many times he told himself he shouldn’t; he knew he would try again.
“But no matter what I may do with a human, I never forget,” Frenzy poked Shiver in the chest with the hand that held his smoking ember. “What. I. Am. You get me, cousin?”
Shiver turned away, rubbing his chest and trying not to look at Clara, squirming on the couch as she fought to relax. Yes, he understood. He couldn’t fall in love. He was supposed to kill her.
Frenzy sighed, inhaling from his ember again and puffing out more smoke that broke up in wisps in the shadowy corner where they stood.
“Don’t be so boring,” he said, flicking the glowing butt at Shiver before disappearing.
The irritated demon growled in response, rolling his neck and shoulders to relieve some tension, even though the source of it had left the room.
Well... he glanced over at the girl, moaning softly under her breath as she burned ever hotter. Not all his tension.
He approached slowly, taking in her dress, the way it hugged her curves and hitched up her legs.
Had she stayed out of her bedroom tonight, kept her clothes on, because she wanted to avoid his touch?
Shiver was certainly guilty of leaving every prior intimate encounter with averted eyes and a vague promise to keep in touch, but he wanted this girl to see him, remember him, know that he was real.
Clara opened her eyes and took in the hulking black form in front of her, two glowing eyes set into blackness that waved ever so slightly at the edges, like the road on a summer day. If she had felt like herself, she might have screamed and bolted from the house.
“You’re back,” she said softly. She was not quite smiling, but she didn’t say it with disgust either. She looked at him with curiosity, not fear.
“I’m back.” Shiver matched her tone, trying to keep his thunder soft and low. “You are still sick.”
Clara rolled her eyes, turning away from what she believed to be her dream-thing. “M’not, don’t be such a bunny.”
Shiver frowned. “I’ve been called many things, but I‘m fairly certain I’m not a bunny.”
Clara chuckled. Her time in the city had left an impression on her vocabulary. At least she didn’t sound quite as slurred as she had the past night.
“Not an animal type bunny, a stooge, a mook, a... a dumb guy.”
“Oh,” said Shiver, and then he frowned again. “Wait a minute, how dare you? Listen to me, girl, I have been at this for eons, if I say you’re sick—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clara waved her hand in dismissal. “Every man in th’ world thinks he knows his onions b-better than every girl in th’ world.”
Shiver crossed his arms, hardly able to fight with her there, but marveling at this obstinate little wench. If he came to tell her the sky was blue, she would call him a moron and run out to inspect the heavens herself.
“I’m just...” Shiver struggled with what to say. Worried? Anxious? Professionally interested?
Clara groaned as those golden fireflies swirled in front of her vision again.
They were getting worse, not even waiting for her to stand up too quickly or keep to the edges of her vision.
She was far too hot down here, in all these layers, but Clara suspected it might be rude to leave her dream-guest in the middle of a conversation.
Besides that, she wasn’t sure she could move.
“Come on,” Shiver said, bending down to lift her into his arms.
“Mm? What, whasswrong?” She tried to lift her head, but that was no good. She dropped it against his chest, fighting to keep her eyes open. “Wha’ya doing?”
“Carrying you.”
“Why?”
“Because you should be in bed.”
“Oh,” Clara tried again to look around her. She couldn’t make out anything but that bright glow from the thing’s eyes, the color of the sky just before the horizon eats it up. “We’re goi’na bed? Together?”
Her words rocked the demon. He had to stop walking at the top of the stairs for a moment to regain his composure.
In bed. Together. Though he had been seated on her bed the previous night, this was different.
A matter of six to ten inches of cotton real estate meant the difference between simply allowing his touch and wanting it.
“Well,” he said, using a tendril to open her bedroom door before carrying her in to lay her on the bed. “We’d better not. It’s not safe.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said, pressing her cheek to her cool pillow.
I wasn’t thinking about myself, he thought, trying to force his mind away from those delicious thoughts.
This proved impossible the moment he began to unbutton her dress.