Fever

by Lauren DeStefano

Page 13

 

  God. I crush myself against him.

  “I could hardly move,” he says. “I could hear you crying out in your sleep. I could hear you fighting back against that woman. But I couldn’t stop her. ”

  “This is romantic and all,” Lilac whispers sharply, “but get down or you’ll get us all caught. ”

  Maddie whimpers pitifully, and Lilac kisses her face and says, “I know, baby. ”

  There’s someone else kneeling in the grass too. I think it’s the little blond girl who tended to Gabriel earlier. She is talking to Lilac, saying, “Her arm is definitely broken. I’ve done what I can to set it, but her fever isn’t breaking. This air is only aggravating it. ” She’s saying other words too, like “pneumonia” and “infection,” and Lilac is keeping calm, just like I kept calm watching Jenna suffer and knowing I could do nothing about it.

  “I thought Maddie was dead,” I whisper so only Gabriel can hear me.

  “They’ve been hiding her,” Gabriel tells me. “Everyone is hiding. This woman—this Madame—has everyone scared for their lives. ”

  “It’s because of Vaughn,” I say. “He’s here looking for me. ”

  I don’t get to hear Gabriel’s response to this, because all of a sudden the carnival lights up, and Jared is yelling for Lilac to come out, it’s all right, Madame doesn’t want to hurt her. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Come out, girls, come on out.

  Lilac flattens herself in the grass and gestures for us to do the same. The lights don’t quite reach us, but I realize with despair that, despite what felt like miles of walking, we are still close to the carnival. There’s a chain-link fence keeping us in.

  Other girls reveal themselves, apprehensively.

  “It was a false alarm!” Madame calls out. “There are no spies! Just a man looking to do business with me. But there will be no work until this is settled. Go on and make yourselves beautiful. Vite, vite!”

  She claps. It turns into the next roll of thunder. “Vite, vite!”

  Gabriel is half-covering me. I can hear his shivering breaths, can feel the rough stubble of his chin against my face. His arm tightens around me.

  My hands are pinned under me, knotted into fists. I hold my breath. Vaughn is here. It’s like I can feel him. Feel his footsteps coming for me, echoing as though in his basement hallways.

  I can’t let him get me. At least as Linden’s bride I served a purpose. I kept my husband busy and alive and not lost in grief for his first wife, Rose. But if I go back there now, Linden will have turned his back on me for sure. Vaughn will be able to do whatever he pleases. Sedate me, kill me, cut me open, scrape the blue and brown from my eyes and study them under a microscope.

  Without meaning to, I whimper.

  We’re far enough from the lights that we can hide in the shadow. But there’s enough light for me to see Lilac staring at me. Jared is calling her name, and my fake name, Goldenrod, telling us to come out. She shakes her head.

  Jared speaks again, in a lower voice that I have to strain to hear. I think he’s talking to Madame. “—don’t know where they could have gone. Not far. Everything’s gated. ”

  “—something of an escape artist—” Madame is saying, without an accent. Her real voice is craggy and dry. It sounds deliberately ugly. But I can’t shake the thought that she was once pretty and maybe even kind.

  Not that it matters, I tell myself.

  The next voice is good-natured, with a hint of a laugh. “Darling? There’s no reason to hide. Come on out. ”

  Vaughn. It sets my mind in such a flurry that I miss the next few words he says, and pick up at, “—Linden is concerned about you. Cecily is sick with worry. ” I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing for the delirium I felt a few minutes ago, when words meant nothing on their way through my hearing. But Linden and Cecily won’t go away. My melancholy husband; my withering younger sister wife, forever trying to shush the baby who is forever crying in her arms.

  It’s a trick. Even if I did make it back to the mansion, I wouldn’t be reunited with them. Vaughn would see to it that nobody ever heard from me again.

  I can’t move. I don’t think I’m breathing. I’ve never been this scared. Never. Not even in that van. Not even when I heard the gunshots.

  Vaughn is saying, “Darling, come out,” and, “Rhine, be realistic. You have nowhere else to go. We’re your family. ”

  Family. No. Unlike my sister wives, and unlike the girls in this place and thousands like them on the streets, I know what a family is.

  Jared says, “Is that them?”

  Footsteps in the grass crashing toward me in a run. I wince, but Jared’s dark, heavy form runs past me, leaps deftly over Maddie and Lilac in one bound, and goes on. But not before dropping something. I hear it hit the ground with a thud, and Lilac grabs it and stuffs it into her bag.

  He’s leading them away from us. I barely have time to process this before Lilac is crawling toward me and pushing Gabriel and me in another direction. I can just see her mouth forming the word “Go. ”

  So we go, as quickly and quietly as we can, Gabriel and me tripping over each other as we move in a way that is both stooping and running. The wind is so violent that it disturbs the high grass as much as we do.

  Lilac is following us, Maddie wrapped around her back.

  Vaughn and Madame and Jared are calling for me, only me, my name everywhere like rain. Vaughn is trying other tactics too, telling me that Cecily’s baby is sick, maybe even dying. And Linden hasn’t come out of his room and he’s wasting away.

  “It’s not true,” I whisper as I run. “It’s not true, it’s not true. ”

  Lilac says, “Shh. ”

  The power goes out again, with a loud groan. Madame starts cursing at Jared, who says, “The wind must have knocked out one of the generators. ”

  There is no carnival music, no lights, no giggling girls, and without those things the nightmare of this place doubles and changes shape.

  Then there’s a crashing, swishing sound as my body hits something. I reach out to touch it, and my fingers move across the wire loops. A fence. Gabriel is feeling it too, maybe trying to determine if it can be climbed.

  “It’s electrified,” Lilac whispers, gasping for her breath. “Normally you can hear it humming. But the power’s out now. ”

  “How long do we have?” Gabriel says.

  “Not long,” Lilac says. “Her Royal Stinking Highness will realize something’s up if Jared doesn’t fix it quickly. ”

  I’m already climbing, looking back to see if Gabriel needs any help. But he’s having no difficulty keeping up, and in fact he reaches the top of the fence before me.

  Lilac is following, slowed down by the task of keeping Maddie secured to her back.

  The fence isn’t very high. Gabriel helps pull me to the other side. And then we both help Lilac, who is struggling because Maddie’s broken arm is keeping her from holding on.

  “Wait; it’ll be faster this way,” Gabriel says, and he grabs Maddie, who whimpers and cries out. Lilac tries to shush her, but the whimpers turn to sobs in a way that I just know is going to turn into a scream. I follow Gabriel, jumping when I’m a few feet from the ground. Maddie is cradled in his arms, and I can smell the salt of her tears even if it’s too dark to see them.

  Lilac is just climbing over the fence when her daughter starts to scream.

  Chapter 9

  THE SCREAM is the siren that sets the carnival into a panic again. I hear shouts on the wind, saying, “That way!” and “There!”

  I clamp my hand over Maddie’s mouth. She’s biting me, squealing against my skin, but I don’t care. I’m so furious I don’t even feel her teeth boring into my hand, and don’t care how much I’m upsetting her.

  I grab her from Gabriel, and I’m still muffling her screams as we run as far as we can before the lights come back on. The fence buzzes with electricity. W
e crouch in the tall grass, which is endless. Gloriously, wonderfully endless. I can see Lilac, a small outline in the distance, shuddering from the shock of the fence. And just when I think I am about to watch her die, she throws herself away from it, hitting the ground on our side with a thud I can hear over the wind. Even Maddie goes silent, watching.

  Lilac moves, just barely, trying to pull herself up. Her last act of strength is to throw the bag that had been slung over her shoulder. It nips at Gabriel’s ankle, and he grabs it without pause.

  Lanterns are hurrying toward her like fireflies. Jared is shouting her name, but not with cruelty—with worry. She props herself up on one elbow and looks right at me. Right past the grass and across the distance, into my eyes.

  Then she turns to Jared, who is standing on the other side of the fence, asking if she’s broken anything.

  “They got away,” I hear her say.

  Madame arrives at the fence, stopping just in front of its deadly humming, and cackles. “Stupid girl,” she says.

  Vaughn is there next, looking tall and calm, an aged version of his elegant son. But, unlike with Madame, I do not think Vaughn was ever kind.

  For the moment they are all preoccupied with how to get Lilac back inside the fence. Lilac does not look back.

  Maddie has gone silent, but I keep her mouth covered just in case she starts bawling again. Who could blame her if she did? My other hand goes to her forehead, and I try to smooth back her hair, to comfort her in some small way, but all I can register is how feverish she is, and how cold this January air is. She’ll decline very quickly if we don’t get her somewhere warm.

  Gabriel seems to have the same idea, because he’s moved closer, sandwiching Maddie, who is shivering, between his body and mine.

  “Just hang on,” I whisper.

  It feels like everything is taking an eternity to unfold. Jared cutting off the power again and then scaling the fence to retrieve Lilac and return her to Madame, who is laughing like a croaking frog. They’re all talking, not loud enough to be heard.

  Eventually Lilac and Jared and Madame and Vaughn retreat into the carnival, and the lights and music return. From this far away it almost seems like an inviting place.

  Gabriel says, “She’s going to die—we all are—if we don’t find someplace warm. ”

  I can barely feel this cold. My mind is still not as sharp as I’d like it to be, this strange drug still coursing through my body. In a soft, chattering voice I tell Maddie that I am going to uncover her mouth and I need her to be brave and keep quiet. I promise her that she can scream all she wants later.

  She understands. That, or she’s too weak to protest. Either way she doesn’t make a sound as I let go of her. Gabriel eases her into his arms, and we begin our escape through the tall grass, not knowing where it will end.