Dead After Dark (Companion #6.5)(73)

In the late afternoon he opened his eyes.

“How are you?”

He seemed to consider. Then his eyes opened wide. “Damn!” he whispered. “Darley.” He struggled up on one elbow and pulled at the covers. She pushed him back down.

“I’ll feed him. Only tell me what to give him.”

He sighed. “Two flakes of hay and two scoops of oats.”

She turned to the door.

“And water.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “I’ll be back shortly.”

By the second night, she had begun to worry. He had said a few days. Surely a few days included time on the mend, as well. So shouldn’t he be getting better? He seemed to be getting worse. She had to steady him to use the chamber pot at all. His lips were cracked and dry, his eyes glazed and overbright. He still flinched at her touch. And always he was hot.

She laid him back in the bed near morning.

“You’re good to me,” he murmured. There was a softness in his eyes behind the fever.

“Anyone would help you.”

He shook his head ever so slightly. “You’re a generous person.”

“No one has ever called me that.”

“Then they didn’t know you . . .” He closed his eyes.

That startled her. Perhaps no one did know her. She had been an anonymous extension of her father at Mirso Monastery. She had the benefit of his position. He was the Eldest, after all. No one dared give her offense. But no one thought of her as anything but his daughter, either. She had always depended on him. He knew everything, having lived so long. And he always told her what to do.

But here she was on her own. And she didn’t know what to do for Drew.

A doctor would know. She’d get a doctor up here today, no matter that Drew said he didn’t need one, if it were the last thing she did.



The village street was deserted, though it was still an hour to sunset. Freya had bundled up in her hooded cape, with gloves and half-boots to protect her from the sun. Still its stinging needles reached her, even through the lined wool. She lifted the hood and squinted around. Where was she going to find the doctor? Actually, where was everybody?

A sign creaked back and forth in the wind rising on the threat of sunset. GOOSE AND GANDER it said. A tavern. Drew thought he had caught this influenza there.

She pushed in through the doors, grateful for the refuge from the sun, and slipped back her hood. The tavern was deserted except for one old man in the corner. Well, that was more people than she had seen anywhere else.

He studied her over an empty glass.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “Can you tell me where I might find a doctor?”

He rose and went to pull another pint for himself. “I expect he’s up to The Maples.”

Freya was fascinated with very old humans. After all, her kind stopped aging at maturity. She had never seen an old person until she left Mirso last year. The wrinkles, the rheumy eyes, the joints she could actually hear creaking and cracking, all held a dreadful attraction. What would it be like to feel death approach as your body failed? This was the fate that waited for Drew.

“Which way is this Maples? I need the doctor quickly.”

“Yer foreign, ain’t ye?” he asked, without answering her question.

Freya went wary. These English were quite provincial. They did not take easily to anything strange. “I am from Transylvania.” He would never know where that was, or what it might mean.

“That would be where th’ Carpathian Mountains are, I’d ’azard. Would ye like a pint? It’s on th’ ’ouse at th’ moment, since Barton’s dead.”

She shook her head. Wait! Drew said he caught this influenza from Barton. She sucked in a breath. “Was this Barton old like you?”

The old man shook his head, sighing. “ ’Earty as a ’orse one day, stiff as a board th’ next. Fever took ’im.”

Freya felt her heart contract. Drew was wrong. He could die from this sickness. “Please, I must have a doctor.”

“Someone got th’ influenza? This is a bad bout, certain.” He sat back down. “ ’Alf the county’s down with it.”

How could he be so calm? “Yes, yes,” she said, sitting across from him, leaning forward. She must make him understand the urgency. “Mr. Drew Carlowe has this influenza.”

“I thought so. Yer th’ ghost, ain’t ye?”

She went still. Then she mustered a laugh. “Do not be nonsensical.” She touched his hand. The skin was paper-thin. “Quite corporeal, I assure you.”

His pale blue eyes were quizzical. “Then ye’ve been playing ghost. Naughty girl.”

She sighed. Maybe the truth would make him tell her how to get this doctor. She nodded. “I wanted to be alone and in England this is impossible for a woman. I frightened people away.”

“Th’ bites?”

Oh, dear. “Some were more stubborn than others. I pricked them with a knife point.”

He pressed his mouth together and nodded. “Th’ disappearing?”

“People see what they want to see. And I wore a white dress that seemed to float.”

“Red eyes?”

She shrugged and tried to look confused. “Did they say I had red eyes?”