Page 12 of You Give Me Fever

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!”