Page 43 of Midnight Serenade
Grace
The next evening, I sat out on the deck, trying to soak up the last rays of sun and burrowing in my hoodie for warmth. I’d been freezing all day today. I was ignoring all the signs telling me to get back into bed because I didn’t want to. And because if I saw my mama or Micaela or Rafe, or even Sebastian, they would gently nudge me into bed, so I was avoiding everyone.
On the deck that was seldom used, in the section everyone on the ship seemed to have forgotten existed, I sniffed, which turned into a rattling cough. When I could breathe again, I tried to hide my swollen face behind sunglasses and a raised hood.
If no one could see me, or my glassy eyes and runny nose, I wouldn’t get dragged off to the infirmary for the billionth time, and my picture wouldn’t get plastered above cot number five, as it had been for cots one through four. The pictures looked like wanted posters gone wrong. My face in the first one looked stunned. My face in pictures two through four looked like I wanted to reach past the camera and punch the cameraman’s lights out.
Kazi was with me, keeping an eye out for bad guys, or bad girls, as the case had been lately, like the good boy that he was.
I sneezed into the hanky I’d borrowed from Sebastian earlier. It had his monogram on it, and I had to laugh. We were from completely different worlds, but I didn’t care anymore. I wanted to be with him. Heck, I was even willing to sail around on these tin cans with him. That, to my mind, spoke my devotion quite elegantly.
I sneezed again, loud enough to wake the dead. My eyes ran along with my nose, and Kazi whined in sympathy. I patted his back as I wheezed.
“Thanks, boy,” I croaked. He snuffled my side, making me giggle and push his face away. Then I started coughing and coughing, unable to catch my breath. When the attack was finally over, I slumped back into the lounge chair, completely exhausted.
Sebastian suddenly stood next to me, looking concerned, as though he’d heard my hacking cough all across the ship and had followed the sound to me. I wouldn’t put it past him. He was a vampire, after all. He peeled my hood back enough to see my crimson nose and my red, watery eyes, then kissed my forehead and picked me up and gently let me rest against him as he sat back down.
I sighed in relief. I’d been sure he was going to drag me to the infirmary.
He chuckled at my obvious relief. “You might be thinking prematurely that I’m not going to take you down to the infirmary. You’d be incorrect. I’m just letting you rest again before you have to face your wanted posters.”
I sighed in acceptance. It was miserably cold in my hoodie and sweatpants. It was eighty degrees outside, despite it being nighttime, and I was shivering like it was twenty. I at least had the flu, possibly worse. I’d been getting looks from others for the last hour or two. Looks that were clearly questioning my sanity because I was wearing sweats. I understood. I really did.I wanted to whine that I’d already been through enough on this trip. Did we really have to addshe froze to death in the tropical sunto my list?
I’d been doing my due diligence in keeping away from people. I didn’t want to infect them with whatever I had, but every once in a while someone came down to the section I was in, took one look at me and scuttled off. I had to laugh. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been deemed scary.
I started falling asleep in Sebastian’s arms, so I barely registered when he stood up and we started moving. I thought I heard the elevator, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open enough to check where we were. And then I heard Dr. Groffinger’s deep voice, “What has she gotten herself into now?”
“Careful, Dr. Groffinger,” Sebastian said, with no tone whatsoever. Which, to me, waswayscarier than if someone had shouted those same words. Sebastian gently put me down on one of the infirmary beds, which were covered in what felt like butcher paper, and were really uncomfortable... and lest I hadn’t whined enough already, freezing.
The nurse wrapped a blanket around me and checked my temperature.
“103.7, Doctor.”
I could not only hear the doctor’s sigh, but I could feel it as well. I could also feel his gentle hands encouraging me to lie all the way back on the bed. His hands were cool to the touch and made me shiver. He wasn’t a bad guy. I just wished I’d seen a lot less of him on this trip.
“Let’s see what big, nasty bug has flattened you, Miss Liora.” To Sebastian, he said, “We’ll need to keep her for a bit to determine what’s causing her illness. Depending on what she has, she might need to quarantine in her room for a few days.”
I groaned in dismay. I had ports of call to visit! Lazy rivers to conquer! I felt like crying. You know that point whereyou’ve silently listed the many terrible, no-good things that have happened to you in the last month of your life, and you decide that you feelreallysorry for yourself?
Yep, I had hit that point.
And I was feelingmassivelysorry for myself.
Sebastian leaned close to my ear, and I shivered as he spoke into it. “You can stay in my room.”
“Mama,”sneeze“is going to hit you with her bat.”
He chuckled as he stood. “She’ll have to catch me first.”
The next fewdays were not kind to me. They weren’t kind to Sebastian either, as he got to see me at some of my worst moments. It turned out that I’d somehow caught walking pneumonia and the flu at the same time. Lucky me. I hated, absolutelyhated, when I got whiny. And I was feeling super whiny at the moment.
Sebastian was kneeling next to me in his swanky suite filled with expensive-looking things, putting cold cloths on my forehead to help keep my fever down. I weakly pushed the cloth away. It wasfreezing.“You really are trying to kill me,” I wheezed.
“Stop talking. You’ll be unable to catch your breath again.”
He held my hand, kind of sweetly, if I must admit to it, and switched out the cloth warmed by my forehead with a cold one. I shivered and closed my eyes. Talking earlier had necessitated the need for an oxygen tank. The dumb little oxygen thingies were currently stuck up my nose, but I was feeling less light-headed, so that was a good thing.
“I don’t like being sick,” I said.
