Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
BEATS ME, I’VE NEVER HANDLED ANYTHING MORE COMPLICATED THAN A DUESENBERG
The next morning, like every morning, began with chickens.
So many chickens.
Clara Bailey liked hens. They made soft, soothing little sounds, like they were worried about her and were insisting she eat something, and when were they going to get some grandchildren, by the bye?
But those roosters... she could slap every one of them and not lose a wink of sleep.
Slowly, her mind began to defrost. She hurt everywhere, that full body ache that always signaled—like it or not —that she was, in fact, sick. As she pulled herself up from the bed on shaky arms, new aches presented themselves—aches that made her blush.
Having never been with a man, she had no idea what such a thing would feel like the next morning, but common sense gave her a few unsettling clues.
But... that had just been a dream. A very vivid dream brought on by this completely unacceptable illness, but still just a dream. One that Clara wouldn’t mind having again for the next few days. Months. Forever.
Still, as her mother had often said to her, “Dreams are for the pillow; there’s work to be done.”
Another pang came from between her thighs as she took her first steps away from the bed.
Among Clara’s few talents was denial—she practiced it with the determination her schoolfriends might have shown the clarinet.
But even Clara had to admit now, in the light of day, that something was happening to her.
Something deeply unsettling. Was it possible, out here all alone, that some man had been creeping in at night?
Looking around with a sudden icy arrow of panic slicing through her lungs, she yanked on her dress, half convinced a stranger was lurking in the corner of her room.
RAH-AH-AH-ROOOOOOOOO!
Clara flailed to the floor in an inelegant tangle at the scream right outside her window.
“Roosters,” she growled, getting to her feet again. “I hate roosters.”
Generally, walks into town were the most exciting part of her week. She would load up her little wagon with carefully packed crates of eggs and walk the peaceful and mostly empty road for a half hour until her little town swelled up from the road to greet her.
As alone as Clara felt each day, looking after the farm where her parents had died and from which she no longer felt brave enough to leave, it made her heart race each time she went into town, made eye contact with people, shared a bit of pleasant, meaningless small talk.
Chitchat with old Mr. Fenton at the market as he paid for her eggs might not be the thrill of her lifetime, but it was far better than simply talking to herself.
On this day, Clara felt very different about going into town. If some intruder had been pestering her, would he be following her on the road? Would he be the first face she saw in town?
Should she tell someone? Or would they just send her away to a madhouse?
“Clara!”
She cried out, jumping high enough to nearly upset her wagon, but the man on the other end of that voice was only Mr. Fenton, stepping out to help her get her wagon inside.
He was a big bear of an old man with a white beard and twinkling eyes, and he had saved Clara’s farm from going back to the bank by always paying extra for her eggs and finding her a buyer when the chicks were old enough for new homes.
“Morning, Mr. Fenton,” she said as he helped her pull the wagon over the pavement and into the market.
Clara might have had her suspicions about any other man she saw today, but not Fenton. She was fairly certain that, as the city folk might have phrased it, he was a friend of Dorothy. There was no safer man in town unless one counted the dead.
“Looking a bit on the peaky side, Clara,” he said, squinting at her pale face and the dark circles under her eyes. “Let me set you up with some Dr. Tom’s and whiskey. That’ll do the trick.”
Clara laughed, making a disgusted face. Dr. Thomas’s Electric Oil was the most popular cure-all these days, but there was a bit too much turpentine in it for her liking.
“I’ll take a rain check, Mr. Fenton. I’m just a little under the weather.”
Fenton sighed, having heard that line from her many a time.
Clara watched him as he counted up her eggs and wrote out a receipt with the tiny pencil he kept behind his right ear.
If she told him she was being visited by a huge, perverted, argumentative shadow creature, would he have the straitjacket ready to throw on her, or would he have to order it from town?
“I mean it, Clara, you’ve got to look after yourself,” he said, counting out a fortune in bills for her eggs. “If you get sick, I’ll have to get up and visit you for my eggs, and my heart can’t handle all that exercise.”
Clara laughed, even though it made her head pound.
“I’ll be just fine, Mr. Fenton. Thank you.” She took her winnings—four dollars, far more than he ought to pay her for a lousy ten dozen—and waved goodbye.
There, just out of the tail of her eye—wasn’t that a stranger? A sharp-looking man in a suit too fashionable for her town, and looking right at her as she crossed the street. Clara tried to look without looking, head down, eyes to the side when—
BEEEP BE-BE-BEEEEP!
“Clara!”
And in a whoosh of wind and road dust, she found herself on the other side of the street, barely clutching her hat and the handle of her wagon.
The truck that had nearly hit her was screeching to a stop, the driver yelling out rude and mostly inaudible things about women not having the sense to cross a road, and Mr. Fenton was wringing his apron in fear, looking through the cloud of dust to make out if Clara had survived the encounter.
With a dazed smile, she lifted a hand to wave to Mr. Fenton, letting a giddy and terrified laugh slip free before she turned back for home.
“Well, Clara, that was a narrow squeak,” she muttered, shaking all over now, and not just from the fever raging through her.
“Not narrow in the least, young lady, you were going to be struck!”
Clara jumped and swung her fist at the sound of the voice, only to find it caught in a much larger hand—solid black, as if light died in its void. Her eyes traveled from the hand, up the muscular arm, up well over a foot above her to the face of… was there even a face?
It was familiar and still alien, the contours of a jaw and a stern mouth, large horns curling upward and ending in wisps like smoke, shocking blue eyes that glowed like lighthouses in the night.
Clara knew him at once—her shadow. The shadow who had lain with her the past two nights, who had apparently just saved her life. The shadow that was supposed to be a figment of her feverish mind.
She opened her mouth to respond and then shut it, dropped her wagon in the road, and broke into a sprint.
Fear hadn’t even fully registered yet. She was still riding the wave of adrenaline from her near miss and here—in the light of actual, God-fearing day—was this creation of her dreams. Nightmares?
Her worst fear had been that a man had broken in and that she had been too delirious to know it. But now... something that was not a man had broken in. Her mind simply fractured at the notion.
What was worse, she could hear it behind her, heavy footfalls pounding after her, much faster than she could hope to run.
She had no energy to begin with, and her clumsy feet were beginning to tangle her up when she felt herself grabbed by the waist and pulled to the ground, landing on the soft grass.
“Forgive me—forgive me!” the thing said in that low rumbling voice as it held her still, looming over her with inky bulk and glowing eyes. “I couldn’t help myself; you were about to be struck!”
Truthfully, a hint of self-preservation was to credit for his heroics—if the fever killed her, Shadow lived. Otherwise, the rules were very clear about his fate.
But it was much worse than that, although He didn’t realize it at the time. He saved her because he loved her.
“You’re real?!” Clara asked, though clearly the answer was all around her, as his hands held her wrists and he sat across her legs. No human man had ever taken such a liberty. “How is that possible? And then you…you did THAT—”
Shiver winced. He knew she wasn’t referring to being rescued, but... that other thing.
“Well - well yes, but... you seemed to need it.”
“NEED IT?” She struggled in his grip. “Nobody needs that! Nobody needs to be manhandled by some… some scarecrow!”
Shiver made a soft sound of offense. Scarecrow was a new one.
“Miss Bailey, I must say—don’t I even deserve some thanks for rescuing you?”
“I didn’t need that either! I can look after myself perfectly well! You men are all the same, even the ghouls among you!”
“Oh yes, let’s talk about how well you can look after yourself, shall we?
Stumbling around that farm in a fever daze with no help, determined not to see a doctor, walking into town alone.
Have you no concept of the danger you’re in?
There’s more than an infection that could kill you; there are motorcars and… ruffians!”
“Yes, I can see that right now!” She took up her struggle again, but her body was too weak to do anything against his huge form. “How dare you put your hands on me after you… put your hands on me!”
“I seem to recall, Miss Bailey, that you were more than willing —“
“You weren’t real!” She thrashed harder, only because going still would mean having to meet those glowing eyes. “Having a fantasy is one thing, but being preyed upon by a monster is another matter entirely!”
“I hardly need remind you, you enjoyed—”
“YOU! WERE! NOT! REAL!” she struggled in his grip. Had she really believed she was only seeing visions? Deep down, hadn’t she thought something bigger was going on? It hardly mattered now. She had worked up a good rage, and she hadn’t had one in so long that she reveled in it.
“Why would that have been better?!” he glared into her eyes, trying not to become distracted by how warm she was under his hands, how he could feel her pulse along every inch of her skin, how her lovely face was flushed with the fever and her run and her anger at him—gods below, how he wanted to kiss her anger away, whatever her protests.
“Why would you be so willing to offer your touch to an imaginary phantom... but not someone real?”
She fixed her dark eyes on his, teeth clenched, her body quaking with rage. Had she allowed herself to look closer, which she dared not do, she would have found some other hot, slick, buzzing feeling equally responsible.
“You do not know me,” she said.
“I know all about you, Clara,” said Shiver, releasing one of her wrists so he could trail his fingers along her pink cheek.
To have this now, feeling her delicious body beneath his, even warmer than ever, to touch her cheek and really feel his fingers against her skin, little ridges as if he had fingerprints again, each pad of his finger registering the pillowy satin softness of her face—now, when she looked at him with such fury—it was exquisite torture.
Shiver couldn’t help himself. The girl might never allow it again, so he had to take one last kiss.
He leaned in to press her lips with his, pushing her gently back against the grass.
How his body raged for more of her, his hands just itching to rip the clothes from her and touch every inch of her mouthwatering curves.
Then the slap met his face and snapped his head to one side with an inelegant woof. Clara rolled away from him and took off for home.
“Stay away from me!” she called over her shoulder.
Shiver couldn’t help a low laugh as he rubbed at his face. Pain, how refreshing. He had missed pain. This girl was a keeper.
“I can’t,” he said, mostly to himself as he let her get away for the moment. “I’m your fever.”