The Immortal Emperor Returns to Work the Museum Night Shift novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Fifty-Two

On Sunday morning Sam sneezed, and then looked at his own hand.

We were in my kitchen at ten, and the tea was brewing.

He was sitting at the counter in one of my sweaters, which stopped halfway down his forearms, with a mug in his hands.

"Is this normal?" he asked.

"Bless you."

"My nose is running."

"That's a cold."

"I have heard of those."

He sneezed again, a loud helpless honk, and his eyes watered, and he put the mug down.

"I have not had one in sixteen hundred years."

"They're awful."

"I do not feel awful. I feel as though I have been struck on the head with a very small stone."

I came round the counter, and put my hand on his forehead, which was hot.

I took his wrist, as I had on the first night in the dark gallery, and I laid two fingers on the inside of it.

I counted against the clock on the stove.

Fifty-two.

"It was fifty last night," I said.

"It is climbing."

"How does it feel?"

"Loud," he said. "My heart is loud."

"I can hear it in my ears. It was never loud before. It was a bell struck once a minute."

He tried to smile and it didn't work.

I saw that he was frightened.

He had been frightened in front of me only once before, on the cot in the sub-basement, the day Leland brought the photograph.

This was a different fear.

"Sam."

"I did it freely. I would do it again. I do not regret the crown."

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