Fever Read Free

news,’ Eve’s mother said, then returned inside.
    ‘School had better close,’ Jess muttered. ‘Because I would not want to go walking in there wearing one of these.’ She reached over and flicked the mask Eve had taken out of the box.
    ‘You’ll wear it when you’re out though, right?’ Eve asked. ‘I don’t want you getting sick.’
    ‘Everywhere but on my date with Seth,’ Jess promised. ‘It would be impossible to kiss. And it doesn’t match the clutch I’m planning to carry.’ She set the box of masks down beside her. ‘Let’s just try to enjoy this amazing sun. There’s no demon crisis, at least, so there’s no reason we can’t just stay here by the pool for now. Without our masks.’
    Eve didn’t mention that she’d considered the possibility that the plague was a demon crisis. All those doctors had to be right.
    And if they turned out to be wrong, which Eve was sure they weren’t, Jess would be there for her. Jess didn’t have any supernatural demon-fighting powers, but that hadn’t stopped her from being right at Eve’s side the other two times demons had shown up in Deepdene. She’d been with Eve the day they learned that there was a portal between hell and earth right in their town. And she’d been there when Eve had managed to use her power to weave something like a psychic force field over the portal to keep all the nasties in hell where they belonged. If there was demon trouble, Jess always made it clear that it was her problem just as much as it was Eve’s. One of the dozens of reasons Eve loved her friend.
    ‘I’m going to check the school website. Maybe it’ll say something about it closing.’ Eve reached under the lounger where she’d stashed her pink Macbook Pro and pulled it out. A few clicks later and she was on the Deepdene High home page.
    ‘Anything?’ Jess asked.
    ‘Just the usual. Lunch menu. Sports schedule,’ Eve answered. ‘Jenna’s online. I’m going to IM her and see what she’s heard.’
    Jess grabbed her cell. ‘I’ll text Megan. Megan always knows everything.’
    Eve’s fingers danced over the keyboard as she wrote the IM to Jenna. School might close. Heard?!?
    A response from Jenna popped up almost immediately. Srsly???? So don’t want to do bio hmwrk .
    Gonna try 2 find confirmation. Get back 2 U , Eve answered.
    ‘Megan says she’s watching the news with her mom. We’re up to eighty-one sick people,’ Jess told her, with the phone still to her ear. ‘She says she hasn’t heard anything about school closing. But in other gossip news, a while ago Briony’s dad called her, looking for Briony. She didn’t come home last night.’
    ‘He must be freaking,’ Eve said.
    Jess held up one finger, listening to Megan, then she said goodbye and hung up. ‘Megan said Briony’s dad is really worried, but he thinks she probably took off to see the old boyfriend in Massachusetts. She’s been on the phone with him a lot lately.’
    ‘Yeah, she was talking about him the other day, and how her dad didn’t approve.’ Eve held her hands out, pretending they were weighing scales. ‘So we have cute old boyfriend on one side, and a town with a plague and a disapproving dad on the other. I’m thinking—’ She dropped the hand that represented Deepdene to the ground.
    ‘Briony has to think this town is cursed,’ Jess commented. ‘She got here right when the hell hounds were on the loose. So first those murders and now Flu X. Even without the cute guy, I can understand why she’d bolt.’
    ‘Hey, Luke’s online.’ Eve smiled as she saw his screen name pop up – Sinbad. He’d chosen it because he was a minister’s son and so he knew sin was bad. And also Sinbad, the ancient heroic sailor, was kick-ass. According to Luke, he’d battled, among other things, a Cyclops with teeth like a boar’s tusks, and a snake so big it could swallow an elephant.
    And Luke had battled demons side by side with Eve too. Like Jess, he had no powers. But, also