My Demon Husband novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: His Own Heat

I got down on the tile beside him.

The big one's eyes were open. The red in them had gone dull.

I put my hand on his side next to Malphas's.

Nothing moved under it.

"Do something," I said. "Mal. You can do something."

"I can."

"Then do it."

"It will cost me."

"What did you tell me?" I said. "What will it cost him if you don't?"

He looked at me.

Then he bent over the hound and put both hands flat on its chest.

The lobby got colder.

I felt it go out of the air first, then out of the floor, then out of me.

Frost came up on the brass of the crushed mailboxes. My breath came out white.

The tenants on the stairs pulled their robes tight.

Malphas's hands began to glow, faint and orange.

The glow went down into the black fur.

For a long time, nothing.

Then the big one's ribs jerked.

He coughed, one huge wet cough, and dragged in a breath.

His tail thumped the tile once.

The whole stairwell made a noise at the same time. Half a cheer, half a sob.

The runt licked the big one's face from chin to ear.

The big one lifted his head, looked straight at me and sneezed on my knees.

I laughed, and I was crying, and I didn't care who saw.

Then Malphas fell over.

He didn't faint. He just tipped sideways, slow.

I caught him before his head hit the tile.

He was cold.

I'd thought I knew his cold. I didn't.

This was the cold of metal left out all night in January. It hurt to touch. There was frost in his eyelashes.

"Mal."

"I'm all right."

"You're a popsicle."

"I gave him what I had," he said. His teeth were chattering. "I didn't have much. Everything warm in me came from you."

The young father and both old men helped me get him into the elevator.

The elevator only works for him. It worked, barely, and groaned the whole way up.

The big one walked into 5C on his own, wobbling, and lay down in the hall outside my bedroom door.

The other two lay down on either side of him, pressed close.

I got Malphas onto my bed.

He'd come down in nothing but black sleep pants. His chest was blue-white in the lamplight. His lips had gone gray.

I piled every blanket in the apartment on him.

It didn't help. Blankets keep in warmth. He didn't have any to keep.

"It's not working," I said.

"Blankets were never going to," he said, through his teeth. "It's never been the blankets."

I knew what he meant.

On the roof, on the first night, every time.

His skin had never warmed from anything in the world except my hands.

I pulled off my T-shirt. It had blood on it from my nose anyway.

I got under the pile of blankets with him and lay down along his whole body, chest to chest.

It was like lying on ice.

I gasped. I didn't let go.

"Dorrie, you'll freeze."

"I'm from the foster system, Mal. I've slept in worse."

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