Fury: Book One of the Cure (Omnibus Edition) by Charlotte McConaghy Read Free Book Online Page B

badly bruised,” I tell her slowly, hands up to placate her. “Why?”
    She doesn’t answer. I realize she doesn’t
know
why.
    “All right. Well, do you have any food? You’ll need to eat after that fever. And drink lots of water.”
    “I can look after myself. Can you go home so I can have some privacy? I don’t even want to think about how many intimacy levels we skipped today.”
    I stand up and fold my arms. “Okay, fine. Where’s your phone?”
    “Why?”
    “Because, Miss Suspicious, I’m going to give you my number.”
    “Why would I want your number?”
    I roll my eyes.
    “I don’t have one,” she admits.
    “You don’t have a phone,” I repeat skeptically. “Fine. I’ll write it down for you.”
    “I don’t have a pen either.” Her lips twitch at my expression.
    “Are you just trying to avoid getting my number?”
    “Just tell it to me,” she laughs. “I’ll remember it.”
    “No you won’t.”
    “I will—I have a photographic memory.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It’s true.”
    I shake my head, but she starts speaking, and then I catch her say, “ …
a n utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive  … ”  
    As she continues, I stare at her, slowly realizing that this is the opening paragraph of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy , and I only know this because I was reading it twenty minutes ago. “You could have just memorized that first part,” I argue weakly.
    “Okay, give me a page number. Any will do.”
    “Uh … One hundred and fourteen.”
    “ In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were — ”
    “—Holy shit.”
    Josephine smirks. I’ve never seen anyone look as sexy as she does wearing that smirk.
    “The periodic table—go!”
    “Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen—”
    “Too easy—do it backwards.”
    “Lawrencium, Nobelium, Mendelevium, Fermium, Einsteinium—”
    “ Einsteinium ? That is not real.”
    “Number 99. It’s an Actinides, which is a metal—an inner transition metal to be precise.” We stare at each other and she starts laughing. “You will have to learn not to underestimate me.”
    “I’m officially intimidated,” I mutter as I head for the door. “Oh—210418993421.” I say it as fast as I can. “Got that?”
    “Easy.”
    “I expect you to call first thing tomorrow. And I know you won’t forget.”
    I’m out the door and down the steps before I hear her call my name. She’s still damp, her clothes clinging to her body as she runs after me in bare feet. “Wait.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah, I …” She stops, flushed. I’m not sure if her pink cheeks are from her fever or because she’s embarrassed. She drops her eyes to the ground and says, “Thank you. For … the shower, and … you know … the rest.”
    For the first time all day I feel a real smile consume me. She looks up at that precise moment and flashes me the glimpse of a grin, then turns and runs back up the stairs. It’s when I know I’m in trouble.
September 13th, 2065
Josephine
    “I was sick with embarrassment after that,” I tell Anthony. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d just … watched me while I was delirious. It was weird.”
    “You don’t trust Luke?” Anthony asks.
    “I do now . But that was, like, the second day we’d met or something. I didn’t trust anyone back then.”
    “That’s a completely normal response, given you’d had no one in your life you had previously been able to trust.”
    “Don’t shrink me.” I roll my eyes. “I realized pretty soon that what he did wasn’t creepy—it was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
    Anthony looks unconvinced, so I sit forward. “Really, it was. He didn’t know me. I was a strange kid who told him I’d killed people and then fainted. He stayed for hours to make sure I was all right, and that apartment wasn’t exactly the Ritz. He looked after me.” My voice