Fever. Lauren DeStefano

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СКАЧАТЬ what’s happening. This man, this Gatherer, is looking at my eyes, the way my brother and I would look through apples in the marketplace for the best pick. Something flashes in his eyes like delight. I struggle, though the realization of what’s happening still hasn’t quite reached me. Not until Madame names her price.

      And finally, finally, I understand the word Maddie was writing for me.

      Run.

      Her hands are still moving, screaming.

      Runrunrunrunrun.

      The Gatherer is arguing, saying he can get girls much cheaper on the street. He looks so angry that he could spit. And Madame is laughing, smoke bursting out of her mouth, saying, “Not like this one, you won’t.”

      Run.

      I can’t! Gabriel is still a prisoner here. Madame will kill him; I’m sure of it. Kill him when she realizes she can’t turn him into one of her bodyguards. He doesn’t have it in him to hold a girl against her will—to carry a gun, much less shoot one.

      And even if I were to run, how far could I get? Jared is standing right beside me, shining the lantern on me, ready to grab me at a moment’s notice. My breath hitches. My mind is in a fury.

      Runrunrun.

      Run where? Run how?

      The Gatherer is indignant, but he isn’t leaving. Madame knows that, one way or another, she will sell me. She’s smug about it. And I should have seen it coming, really. What use does she have for yet another girl? All the girls in this place are wilted, dried out, used up. There’s a whole tent just for the ones that are in all stages of the virus, and she offers them to her customers at a discount. The men leave them, wiping the blood of the dying girls’ kisses from their stubbly mouths. Everything has a price. How long has it been since she had a healthy girl, whole and fully conscious, with clean teeth and all?

      She told me I reminded her of her daughter.

      The daughter she loved too much. The daughter whose death left a permanent scar on her soul. She will never, never love again.

      I should not have loved my daughter as I did. Not in this world in which nothing lives for long.

      The Gatherer offers a lower price.

      You children are flies.

      Madame doubles hers.

      You are roses.

      “Robbery,” he spits out.

      You multiply and die.

      Madame triples it. “This one is a goldenrod,” she cries, like that should mean anything to him. “She is a gem. She will make you a fortune in return.”

      “Eyes are eyes,” the Gatherer says. “There’s other girls with eyes out there.”

      “Not. Like. These.” Madame is red with fury. She wraps her arms around me like she’s protecting me. “Her ring alone is worth what I’m asking! If you won’t buy her, someone else will.”

      For one dangerous moment I allow myself a glimmer of hope. Hope that he will not buy me and Madame will send me back to a tent, and I can grab Gabriel and steal away.

      But the Gatherer reaches for his hip, and in the next second I’m staring down the barrel of a handgun. And the lantern lights the rage in the Gatherer’s eyes, more maddened even than Madame’s, and he’s shouting that he has changed his mind, he wants me for free, or he’ll make sure no one else can buy me. And Jared has a gun too, pointed at the Gatherer, and the Gatherer points his gun at Jared.

      I hear a wind in the tall grass like the whole world is gasping. But it’s Maddie, launching out from the weeds. In a moment she’s shrieking in that horrible way of hers, and then clinging like a leech to the man and biting into his leg. The Gatherer is clearly surprised by this. He tries to shake her off, but she has coiled herself around his leg and is biting and clawing and screaming.

      The Gatherer is swearing and spitting, and I don’t think he means to fire his gun—I see the surprise on his face when it goes off—but how can he concentrate with all this commotion? He gets Jared in the arm. There’s a small explosion of blood.

      Then another shot, this time from Jared’s gun.

      For the second time in my life, I watch as a Gatherer crumples and falls down dead in front of me. Maddie whimpers and coils herself around Jared’s leg like a cat. He crouches down to console her, petting her hair with one hand and still aiming the gun at the Gatherer’s corpse with the other.

      “Bastard.” Madame spits on the gray coat. The Gatherer’s eyes are open and staring at her bare feet as she stamps out her cigarette. “One of the best customers. I give him all my best girls,” Madame says. One of ze best customers. “This is the thanks I get?” She spits again.

      Jared is whispering soft things to Maddie. Many of the women and bodyguards have a fondness for Maddie; they treat her as a sort of pet. But Jared is her favorite, and seeing a gun pointed at him clearly upset her.

      “And you.” Madame directs her anger to Jared. She paces toward him, dragging me tripping after her. “Look at the mess you’ve left me to clean up! How will I explain his death to his pack? He would not have shot her. It was a bluff.”

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