Page 25 of You Give Me Fever

"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!" Clara backed away, ducking down to grab for her iron skillet once more. She felt like throwing up, and not because of her illness. She had actually begun to trust Shiver. More than trust.

"I was supposed to, yes, that was my assignment!" said Shiver, heartbroken to see the fear in her eyes directed at him. "I'm a fever demon. I am supposed to drain your energy until the fever takes you. Only then can I move on to the next."

Clara felt her mind spinning and rattling, struggling to make sense of it all and shove her emotions to the side.

"But you said… you said when I recovered, you would just leave," she said, remembering that conversation vividly. It was the first time she had imagined her new companion leaving her, the first time she realized she would be shattered if he were gone.

"I will leave," Shiver shrugged his mountainous shoulders. "Back Below… to die."

"You kill me, or you die?!" Clara held the skillet between them with hands that shook, even though she knew she couldn't bring herself to hurt him.

Shiver cast her a furtive look. Well, it was all on the table now.

"If I can't feed, I starve. And I will not be assigned another fever. I have been… terribly good at my work," he growled at the floor before looking up at Clara again and crumbling inside. "Until now."

Clara's heart was hammering so hard in her throat, she could feel it in her eyes. There were a hundred things to say, but with every word in the English language at hand, she couldn't find a single one to help her now.

"I am going to save you," said Shiver, walking slowly toward her, heedless of her skillet. "Whatever it takes, whatever happens to me, I need you alive and safe in this world, and all the better without me to tarnish you, because Clara—Clara, don't you understand how much I⁠—"

Shiver had only just grabbed her shoulders when he felt something… off. Something off with Clara.

He met her eyes—wide and confused, but no longer burning bright and red at the edges. At the same time, he felt a flicker, a familiar tugging from his ribcage.

"Your fever broke," he said, feeling numb.

"My… my fever broke?" She felt just as numb, reeling from too many gigantic feelings all crashing into each other at once.

Shiver opened his mouth to say something, but before the words could come out, Clara realized she could see straight through him, and then he was gone.

She dropped the skillet, grasping the air around her where he had been, desperately snatching at anything that looked like a shadow.

“No…NO!” She looked around in vain—all that was left of him was the bloody sigil on her kitchen wall. "I AM sick! I still am! Come back!"

She sank to her knees, pressing her palms to the floor as if she could raise him from Below, and whispered, "I love you too."

Chapter

Eleven

ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR, AND THIS IS REVOLUTION

Clara had to take a ride on an outgoing vegetable truck to get to the nearest library. Her own town was too small and too rural for such a thing, unless one counted the small shelf in the school, which anyone was free to borrow from, provided they brought it back within a week and it was not sullied by animal leavings.

The real library was in what her neighbors jokingly called "the big city,” a town called Denville about five miles away, which boasted a tailor, a sweet shop, and two churches. Clara's heart was so shattered, she didn't even have a moment to be terrified of the rattling horseless carriage she was riding over the unpaved farm roads, which sent sacks of turnips tumbling into her lap with every stone in the road.

Shiver was gone. She'd waited for him to appear when night fell, even knowing he wouldn't, and then she sat up all night, imagining every awful thing he must be going through. If he were even alive.

This was all Clara could think to do—go to the library.

She remembered the city library from when she had (too briefly) moved to Los Angeles. It was glorious, gigantic, quiet, beautiful. There were more books than she could ever read, and on more subjects than she could ever hope to imagine.

She'd heard whispers about the library in Denville. Spiritualism was a growing fad, even in the rural parts of the country, and books on the subject were cropping up everywhere, even at the risk of all involved being labeled occult.

Someone must have answers. Clara did not. She had red eyes from crying, sore hands from slapping at the floor, a heart so shattered it hurt her lungs and her throat, as if the glass from the break had gotten into the air for her to breathe back in. She had a thousand questions with no one to ask.

The truck rumbled to a stop in front of the Denville Library, and Clara crept out of the rear, calling her thanks to Mr. Hansen before he drove off. It just looked like an ordinary building rather than a trove of hidden knowledge on every imaginable subject, but Clara had to hope she could find something, anything to grab onto.

When she stepped inside, a woman behind the counter looked up and smiled. She was young—well, younger than “ancient," as Clara had supposed all librarians to be—though she had one of those faces that could belong to a woman of fifty or a girl of nineteen, depending on the light and whether she had switched to decaf for the day.