Page 29 of Hunted By Fae

Bee never did that to me.

Bee never made me feel like an intruder.

Still, she’s a fibber.

I tell her that. “You lied.”

Bee doesn’t flinch. Her full mouth parts over murmured words, “What lie are we talking about?”

“How many are there?”

Silence comes for only a moment before, soft, she says, “A lot.”

I watch as she turns slightly and lifts her stare to the dazzling, blue sky.

“You said you would leave me to have my one morning,” I say. “That’s the lie I’m talking about it.”

“Oh.” Her grin turns on me. “That one.”

The smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What other lies have you come to tell me?”

Her fingers tighten around mine. “None. Let’s have the morning.”

My nod is faint and short-lived.

The ache springs in my chest—and I twist around just before the coughing fit strikes.

I smack my hand to my mouth, a habit as I rattle with the violence of the coughs. It’s not so much the ache that’s getting to me, or the ragged sandpaper scrape of my throat. It’s that the fit hits so hard and sudden that I can hardly manage a breath between the coughs.

Distantly, I’m aware of Bee patting me on the back. She does that as I ride out the fit.

I let my eyes shut as I catch my breath, and tug my hand from my mouth—

We both still.

Because my hand comes away with blood.

THE BLACKOUT

SIX

BEE

The black plague.

That’s what they are calling it. At least that’s what they are calling it here at this indoor basketball court and all-purpose rec centre turned quarantine.

With the darkness on her heels, I dragged Tesni in here, her arm hooked over my shoulder, her weight falling into my side, and Nurse Smith came out to usher us to a bed behind a plastic curtain, she called it ‘the black plague.’

Tesni scoffed on her own blood.

I thought she had passed out, leaning into me, Ruby on her other side, taking as much of her weight as she could with her own sickness brewing; Louise following behind, propping up Ramona’s weight all on her own.

Tesni’s lashes were shut over her eyes, and there was a feverish mist to her forehead, and a pallor that reached her lips.

The nurse called itthe black plague, and Tesni came to life just to rasp, “That’s taken.”