Page 27 of You Give Me Fever

The librarian smiled and held up a small card.

"Library card, Miss Bailey, of course." She scribbled a note in her ledger, tucked a borrow slip into the pages, and handed over the book. "I just love a good love story."

Chapter

Twelve

MAYBE IT'S BEST IF YOU DON'T KILL HIM, I MAY WANT THAT PLEASURE MYSELF SOMEDAY

Shiver groaned and spat blood on the floor, making the other demons jump back with a scratchy chorus of upset sounds.

“Oh, lighten up, you ghouls, you've seen worse," said Shiver, trying to focus on any of them. He was so weak and dizzy, and his former colleagues were just a wash of red and charcoal.

"On a human," said one of them in a tremulous croak. "Not… us."

"It's unseemly."

"Impolite!"

"Gross."

Shiver might have laughed if his whole body didn't feel like one big bruise. He hung by his wrists as dozens of eager demons took their turns batting him about like some infernal cricket game. The torture crew was dismally uninventive after all these eons, but he had to admit—you just can't beat the classics.

"He shouldn't be bleeding, you half wits, he should be dust."

Everyone went silent at a voice from behind them that barely spoke above a mutter. The air left the room, and Shiver felt as if he were breathing sand.

"Hello, my lord," he said, trying to lift his head. "I'd bow, but I’ve got a headache like you wouldn't believe."

The head demon approached slowly, minions parting the path for him and averting their eyes. Shiver had never seen Eligos in the bright firelight of the main pit, but he brought darkness with him like a fine cloak of furs.

"Look at you, boy," Eligos sighed, taking in Shiver's lighter color, defined face with a big nose and messy hair, actual blood running down his neck where an actual pulse thumped out its staccato beat. "Guess your winning streak finally caught up with you. Had to lose one sometime, you outlasted all your old classmates."

Shiver stayed quiet, knowing the denizens of Below were too thick and self-absorbed to grasp what was happening to him. Yes, he had been around longer than any other demon. Yes, this was his first loss in a long career of claiming fever patients. That wasn't why he was still kicking when every other demon had crumbled to dust in starvation when their human survived.

The reality was so good, so pure, so beyond their ability to comprehend, that Shiver wanted to laugh at them all. If they could only understand what he felt, even for a half-second, they all would throw down their spears and beg for the grace to become human, the very cattle they had farmed since life began.

Shiver was in love—painfully, horribly, helplessly—and the feeling was both older than even himself and fresher than spring apple blossoms; it was so big that he felt he was keeping something in his ribcage the size of a planet. He knew the moment he saw that girl, she would be the death of him. At least now he had the memory of her soft cries, of her taste on his tongue and the slick heat inside her—her laugh, her scowl, the way she scolded, the things she daydreamed about—all of that belonged to him now, and he would go to dust with the only precious thing in this world. These sad little rock dwellers would never understand.

The pain outside of his heart—the pain of hunger, of torture, of having a functioning body for the first time since his demise—was intense, and he shook and sweated and coughed just like a person. Even that pain was special to him. How many thousands of years had he gone feeling nothing? Now he felt everything. What a way to go.

"What can I say, boss?" Shiver smiled with split lips. "It's been a slice, but everything has to end."

Eligos' eyes narrowed.

"I know who did this to you."

"If they don't lock me up in the loon house for doing this, it'll be a damn miracle," Clara muttered as she squeezed out the wet cloth she had used to clean Shiver's blood from her kitchen wall. "Of course, they might still lock me up for consorting with a demon. And talking to myself."

Roger, the rooster, gave a little huff. After all, she was talking to him; did he count for nothing?

"Sorry," said Clara, collecting as much of the blood-tinged water as she possibly could before tossing away the cloth.

She had already tramped through the marsh to harvest some Angelica, then raided the herb garden for rosemary, basil, and a bay leaf, on which she had scratched Shiver's name with a sewing needle. A long piece of red twine she had, per the book's instruction, tied to one of her wrists, leaving a loop secured with a loose square knot in the other end.

Roger was the last piece of the puzzle, but he was, as usual, being no help at all. The sun was beginning to set; she could see it dipping below the tree line from the back porch where she and Roger sat with her concoction. She needed him to crow—a sound she was not looking forward to, so loud it could shatter an eardrum up close— but Roger was an old man of old habits, and he didn't care to sound the alarm after supper.

"Come on, old boy, just give me a good loud one," she said, waving the bowl of blood and herbs under his nose. "I promise not to chase you with the broom this time, just… have at it."