Read Fever for Free Online Page B

again. The humanity vanishes from her eyes, leaving them reproachful and cold. “Murdered. Dead.”
    She stops walking and tucks my hair behind my ears, tilts my chin, inspects my face. “And I am to blame for the pain. I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long. You children are flies. You are roses. You multiply and die.”
    I open my mouth, but no words come. What she says is horrible and true.
    And then I wonder, does my brother think of me this way? We entered this world together, one after the other, beats in a pulse. But I will be first to leave it. That’s what I’ve been promised. When we were children, did he dare to imagine an empty space beside him where I then stood giggling, blowing soap bubbles through my fingers?
    When I die, will he be sorry that he loved me? Sorry that we were twins?
    Maybe he already is.
    The tip of Madame’s cigarette flares red as she breathes deep. Lilac says the smoke makes her delusional, but I wonder how much of what Madame says is truth. “You are to be loved in moments. Illusions. That’s what I provide to my customers,” she says. “Your boy is greedy.”
    Gabriel. When I left him, his dry lips were muttering silently. I noticed the stubble growing on his chin; he’d been re-dressed in his attendant’s shirt, which was ripped where the bodyguards had pulled at him. I was worried for the purple skin around his eyes, his raspy breaths.
    “He loves you too much,” Madame says. “He loves you even in sleep.”
    We walk through the strawberry patch, Madame prattling incessantly about the amazing Jared and his underground device that keeps the soil warm, simulating springtime so that her gardens can grow. “The most magical part,” she says, “is that it keeps the ground warm for the girls and for my customers.”
    As she goes on, I think of what she said about Gabriel, about him loving me too much, but mostly about how he is a wound. Vaughn thought the same thing of Jenna; she served him no purpose, bore him no grandchildren, showed his son no real love, and she died for it.
    It’s important to be useful in this world. The first generations seem to all agree about that.
    “He’s a strong worker,” I say, interrupting her tangent about summer mosquitoes. “He can lift heavy things, and cook, and do just about anything.”
    “But I cannot trust him,” Madame says. “What do I know about him? He was dropped at my feet as if from the sky.”
    “But you are trusting me,” I say. “You’re telling me all of these things.”
    She squeezes my shoulders, giggling like a bizarre and maniacal child. “I trust no one,” she says. “I am not trusting you. I am preparing you.”
    “Preparing me?” I say.
    As we walk, she rests her head on my shoulder, and her warm breath makes the hair on the back of my neck rise. The smoke from her cigarette is choking, and I suppress coughs.
    “I do the best I can for my girls, but they are weary. Used up. You are perfect. I have been thinking, and I will not hand you over to my customers so they can reduce your value.”
    Reduce my value. My stomach twists.
    “Rather,” Madame says, “I think I could make more money off you if you remain pristine. We shall have to find a place for you. Dancing, maybe.” I can feel her smile without seeing her face. “Letting them have a taste. Letting them be hypnotized.”
    I can’t follow the dark path her thoughts have taken, and I blurt out, “What about the boy I came with, then? If I’m doing all of this for your business”—the word gets caught on my tongue—“then I need to know that he’s okay. There needs to be a place for him.”
    “Very well,” Madame says, suddenly bored. “It’s a small enough request. If he proves to be a spy, I will have him killed. Be sure to tell him that.”
    By evening Madame sends me back to the green tent. I think it might have belonged to Jade and Celadon before the virus overtook them.