Plague Cult Page 7

  “A curse is evil.” Joe spread butter on a second slice of soda bread. “We don’t have any magic to speak of, but my dad did. It was he who knew to put Ruth in contact with the Collegium. They could give her the help and guidance to control her healing magic. He always took talk of cursing seriously. Ill-wishing, he said, could slide a soul right down to hell.”

  Ruth glanced at Shawn, the hollerider.

  Shawn watched her dad.

  Joe bit into his bread, chewed and swallowed. “You’re asking us if we’ve felt that evil in town.”

  “Maybe not true evil,” Shawn said. “But malice, malevolence. A person or a place that you’ve taken to avoiding because it feels wrong.”

  “I haven’t had any feeling like that from Erica or the group she and Jared belong to,” Helen said. “I don’t like Whitney, but then, why would I? That woman makes the rest of us look dowdy. But I did hear Erica and Jared talking yesterday…”

  “Mom?”

  But Helen was looking at Shawn. “What is your magic? Are you a healer like our Ruth?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m trained in combat magic. Ruth is here to detect and heal any trouble connected with the curse, and because this is her home. I’m along as muscle.”

  Helen nodded. “Well, then, I’ll tell you. I don’t want Ruth going along, but you look capable enough.” Shawn grinned. “Erica and Jared were talking about a meeting at the river camp, tonight. Healing Hearts Ranch they call it. Eleven o’clock, which seemed late for a meeting to me.”

  But which was timely if the curse caster wanted to use the power of midnight. The nape of Ruth’s neck tingled. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Helen’s mouth tugged down at the corners, her lips thinning. She rubbed the fingers of her left hand over the knuckles of her right in a gesture of distress. “Is this what you do, Ruth? You chase curses?”

  “Rarely, Mom.” And thank goodness that was true. Ruth didn’t elaborate on how other diseases might emerge as magical anomalies, side effects of rogue or untrained mages’ activities, and how she’d go into the field to combat them. Her parents did know that she responded to natural disasters and other emergencies alongside mundane medical workers. Her healing magic significantly improved survival and recovery rates.

  Joe looked at Shawn. “Is Ruth’s work dangerous?”

  “Dad!”

  “Sometimes,” Shawn said.

  “Were you ever in the marines or was that a cover story for your presence in Bideer?” Joe asked.

  Shawn finished his soup. “I was embedded with a marine unit for a year overseas.”

  “And with that experience, you still call Ruth’s work dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn it all.” Joe pushed back from the table.

  Ruth stared at him, shocked. Her dad never swore, certainly never in front of Helen or her.

  “We did our best,” Joe said to her.

  She nodded, although she wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

  “When your magic showed, Dad recognized it.” Joe’s hands clenched and unclenched. “Healers’ magic. So gosh-darn powerful that you saved Mason’s life.”

  “And left him paralyzed,” she said bitterly.

  Thwack! Joe slapped the table.

  Ruth and Helen jumped. Shawn sat and watched.

  “That boy is my nephew.” Joe was angry for all that he never raised his voice. A vein pulsed at his left temple. “But Mason needs to grow up. And you, Ruth, and you, Helen, need to let him. This whole darn family babies him. As if being in a wheelchair is something we all have to make up to him.”

  “He’s paralyzed, Dad. He never got to join the army. He can’t join his friends in so many things. His life—”

  “His life! He’s alive.” Joe, who never shouted, shouted now. “Did he ever say thank you for saving him? I was there. They phoned me to tell me about Mason’s accident and to come get you, and I was there just as fast as the ambulance. I lifted you away from Mason. Your hands were covered in his blood, and you were so white, so…gone, it was like you’d been in the accident with him.”

  Joe stood and braced his hands on the table. “Your granddad recognized it. Powerful healers’ magic. You nearly died that night, Ruth. You had no training. Dad warned us.” Joe glanced at Helen. “If we didn’t get you training, you wouldn’t learn your limits. You had too much talent, too much magic, for us to understand. So we let you go.”

  He sat down again. “We let you go.” He stretched out his hand to Helen, who clasped it. “And we lost you.”

  “We don’t understand your magic, Ruth,” Helen said quietly. “We didn’t know how to help you with all that magic growing and stretching in you. You would heal people. I’d see it. Little things…how none of your friends had acne, how the old people would talk with you and their rheumatism would ease. I was so scared when you were young that you would wear yourself out healing the world.” Her attempt at a smile wobbled. “If I could have locked you up on the farm, safe from wanting to save everyone, I would have. And now, you’re out in the dangerous world, doing dangerous things.”

  “But not alone, Mom.” Ruth didn’t know what to say. Her whole view of her adolescence shifted and tumbled. “I have a partner or a team. Shawn’s with me for this mission.”

  “The Collegium gave you what we couldn’t,” Joe said heavily.

  “No! No.” Ruth responded to the regret and loss in her dad’s voice and face. “No. They trained me and I work with them. I use my magic, my healer’s gift for a purpose. But they never replaced family. You.” Her breathing shuddered, becoming jagged with suppressed tears. “I knew…I thought…you blamed me for Mason’s paralysis. That’s why you withdrew. There was this barrier between us.” She looked at her parents.

  They looked back, horrified and appalled.

  “Darling, no,” her mom said. “Oh dear heaven. There was guilt, so much guilt after Mason’s accident. If I hadn’t brought that bottle of whisky into the diner and left it there overnight because I’d forgotten the fruit to soak for the Christmas cake, he couldn’t have stolen it.”

  Joe’s shocked, dawningly angry gaze shifted from his daughter to his wife. “Both of you blamed yourselves for that idiot’s decisions?”

  Put like that…Ruth and Helen nodded, ashamed.

  Joe stood. “Come here.”

  The family hug was the best, most healing thing Ruth had experienced in years. She and her mom cried a bit and Joe’s eyes were suspiciously shiny.

  When they sat back down, they self-consciously registered that Shawn was present.

  “Good heavens,” Helen exclaimed. “What you must think of us!”

  “I think you’re a good family and that Ruth is home.”

  Ruth had to blink back more tears. She cleared her throat. “I am.”

  After a second bowl of the best minestrone soup he’d ever eaten, Shawn accompanied Joe out to the old barn. It was as crowded with junk as Ruth had said.

  “Your truck will fit a few things in. Enough to bolster your cover story,” Joe said. “But we might as well transport across things Ruth’ll need around the house. A decent ladder for a start.”

  “A sledgehammer, if you’ve got one. I will clear out the kitchen at Rose House before I leave. Ruth hates it.”

  “I don’t know why she bought that house. She was never fascinated by the ghost stories around it. Not like her brothers.”

  “What are the stories?” Shawn was interested, plus the topic was a neutral one. Joe was still dealing with the emotional turmoil of lunch-time. Ghost stories would fill the silence and be a distraction.

  Joe, however, refused to be distracted. “Ruth would heal the whole world if she could. That’s why she bought that house. It needed saving. Restoring.”

  “It’s a beautiful house.”

  Joe snorted. He wove a path through and over piles of junk. In a far corner of the barn there were two vintage tractors and a decades-old Ford, rusting quietly. “Take your pick.” Seven sledge
hammers leaned against a row of 1950s steel school lockers. “We thought the Collegium would teach her she can’t save the world.”

  “I think she knows that, Mr. Warner.”

  “Joe.”

  Shawn nodded acknowledgement of the correction and its underlying offer of friendship and respect. “But healers heal. It’s one of the magics closest to a mage’s soul. I see Ruth’s distance, her hard-won detachment. It’s there in all Collegium healers. In all medical personnel, magical or mundane. They can step back enough to do their work. But wanting to save everyone…no one can train that out of her.”

  “So, how do we help her?” Joe collected a crate of other tools, jimmies and crowbars, things for a demolition job.

  Shawn gave a wry grin. “I don’t have kids, but I’d guess it’s like you’d help any of your children. You love them. You’re there for them. Ruth loves Rose House, but she could have bought a rundown beauty like it anywhere. She bought it here to be near family.” They walked back towards the barn’s entrance. Shawn spotted a sturdy-looking ladder. “May I borrow that?”

  “Yep. It’s wood, though. Check it hasn’t rotted. There’s an aluminum ladder in the new barn that I’d feel better about Ruth using. Safer and lighter for her to carry.”

  Shawn swung the wooden ladder under one arm. “We can fit both in the truck.”

  They secured everything in the back of the truck, tying ropes so the ladders didn’t fly off.

  Ruth walked out of the house with her mom. They carried their own supplies: plastic containers of food. With those stowed inside the truck, she hugged her parents.

  “Call me in the morning,” Helen said. “So that I know Shawn is home safe from investigating the cult.”

  Shawn noted that Helen called it a cult, not a club. A slip of the tongue or a true suspicion?

  “We’ll come into the diner for breakfast,” Ruth promised.

  “Mason will be there.” Helen stopped. She squared her shoulders. “That will be lovely. I can be sure you have a good breakfast.”

  Joe gave her shoulder an approving pat.

  Shawn beeped the truck’s horn in a country farewell as they drove away.

  Ruth waved. Then she turned to him. “You set us up.”

  “You and your family?” He nodded. “I sure did.”

  The silence drew out long enough that he slowed the truck and looked at her.

  She met his gaze. “Thank you.”

  Ruth leaned back in the seat as Shawn drove them home. How on earth had she and her parents gotten in such a muddle? She’d never doubted that they loved her, but she’d thought she’d disappointed them. That they, like Mason, blamed her for his paralysis. And all the time, they’d let her draw away from them, thinking that they couldn’t offer her the magical understanding and support that the Collegium provided.

  Was this what William, the Chief Healer, had intended when he sent her and Shawn on this mission? She doubted that he’d counted on Shawn getting involved in her and her family’s emotional confusion, but William must have hoped that propinquity would push her into resolving her issues with her family.

  And—she drew a resolute breath—facing the truth of her first major healing.

  Being unable to completely heal Mason had scarred her. She pushed herself too hard, expected too much of herself. It was something her Collegium teachers and team leaders often told her. But she hadn’t known any other way. She’d always been driven by her failure to heal Mason.

  William had told her so often that a healer had to accept his or her limits. To push beyond those, to destroy yourself, was to disrespect your gift.

  Unhealthy patterns. She rubbed the back of her neck. She’d been taught it at the Collegium, and she’d refused the knowledge for herself. She hadn’t even realized she was doing it.

  Trauma blasted a person open. When the dust of the explosion settled, it could set like concrete, locking a person into new ways of seeing and interacting with the world. After Mason’s accident, she’d locked into a pattern of self-blame—reinforced by Mason’s behavior, she finally acknowledged. Her parents had locked into a sense of failing her. False guilt had strained their relationship—but not broken it.

  That’s what Shawn had seen.

  She could see it, now, too. The love her family shared was strong enough to survive anything. They should have trusted it and each other. No one was complete in themselves. No one an island.

  The man beside her, the Collegium guardian and hollerider, lived that truth. He could have simply focused on the mission, but he hadn’t. He’d cared about her and her family.

  Healers were all taught, “physician, heal thyself”, but she hadn’t been able to. It had required someone to care and reach out.

  What if it were the same for Collegium guardians? “Guardian, guard thyself.” But sometimes even a combat mage needed someone to watch his back.

  I will, Ruth vowed. Shawn wouldn’t get hurt in her town.

  Chapter 6

  An afternoon demolishing the kitchen proved surprisingly satisfying. Shawn had bought safety glasses and paper masks at the hardware store, and after moving the old fridge out of the kitchen and into the dining room so that Ruth could store all the food Helen had given them, he started knocking out the cupboards and creating a storm of dirt and debris.

  Ruth closed the door on the noise and destruction, but in between hits on the cupboards, he could hear her singing. He grinned. Later he’d have to see if she added any dance steps to accompany the pop songs. Much later; he was too dirty to traipse through the house.

  Joe had been right to insist he take a wheelbarrow. The kitchen door was easily wide enough to accommodate it, and although the bigger pieces of cupboard could be carried out, the smaller bits were better barrowed. The heap of debris in the corner of the yard by the porch increased.

  Joe had also lent them a camping stove, and as evening drew in, Ruth set it up on the front porch. She heated beef stew Helen had made and frozen.

  Shawn ate two servings before they finished the meal with iced tea and slices of chocolate cake. They weren’t exactly camping. He and Ruth had carried the kitchen table and chairs out to the porch before he’d started demolishing the kitchen.

  “I like your house.” He stretched out his legs and contemplated the front garden. Much of it had been lawn, years and years ago. Now it was a low-growing tangle. It would need slashing, plowing and re-seeding, but then it would frame the view of the house from the road. Enhance it. “You could fix a porch swing here. There’s no view of the river, but the country looks great.” The hills were gently rolling. “Trees and fields.” And in the distance, the lights of town. They looked friendly, a reminder of people and company.

  “A swing seat would be great.” Ruth propped her elbows on the table, cradling her glass with both hands. She looked tired. She’d spent the afternoon washing windows, so her griminess levels matched his. A streak of dirt was smeared on one cheek.

  The porch light didn’t work, so she’d found and lit a hurricane lamp, and he’d hooked it on a nail on the porch rafters. Moths darted to it, softly bumping it and sending shadows dancing.

  His muscles felt warm and relaxed, a different kind of warm-up than hitting the gym. And underneath everything ran his hollerider nature, eager for tonight’s hunt. He finished his iced tea. Part of his relaxation definitely came from Ruth’s acceptance of him as a hollerider. Today had proved that she hadn’t merely said the words of acceptance, but meant them. He, one of the Wild Hunt, was welcome in her home and life. That felt good. Great. “I’ll grab a shower and head out. I’d like to scout the area around the Moonlit Hearts Club compound before they meet.”

  Ruth looked at him over her glass. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No.”

  Ruth had been prepared for Shawn’s resistance. She had, perhaps, overdone the window cleaning while she thought about her family, and then, about what Shawn faced tonight. Her shoulder and neck muscles ached. She straightened a
nyway. “This is our best chance to observe the cult setting a curse, if the curse is a group effort. We don’t know it is. But they’re meeting at eleven o’clock, nearly midnight, which is the traditional hour for curse magic. I need to be there to observe the curse if I’m to reverse it.”

  “I’ll describe it to you. Heck, I’ll film it on my phone.”

  Despite herself, she smiled. “You know that’s not the same.”

  “Ruth, I haven’t scouted the area. We haven’t met any of the cult—club—whatever—members, except Erica. We don’t know what we’re walking into.” He ran a hand through his hair, and grimaced as chips of kitchen cupboard fell out. “If I’d thought you’d want to do something this reckless, I’d have scouted the compound this afternoon.”

  “Except your hollerider nature is stronger at night,” she observed.

  “Which is partly why I waited.” He frowned at her. “Your mom didn’t want you going to the compound. She only told us about Erica’s meeting because she thought I’d go alone.”

  “I know. But I need to go with you.”

  His frown changed, one dark eyebrow lifting. “Intuition?”

  She rubbed her arms, aware that they’d goose pimpled. “I’d like to think it’s commonsense. We’re a two-person mission. It makes sense that we both utilize our skills. I’ll observe along with you. You’ll sneak us in. William said you can mask your magic, and I’ve seen that. Can you show me how to mask my presence so that I don’t set off any defensive wards?”

  “No, that takes practice.” He scrubbed at his face, smearing the dirt on it. “Earlier, you seemed okay with me going to the compound alone.”

  She sighed. “Okay, so maybe it is intuition. I don’t know. I just…I feel I need to be there, tonight, with you. Something is building.” Her breath caught as Shawn let a wisp of his magic escape. The hollerider search for evil, the terror-inducing cold of it, whipped past her.

  He moved to the porch railing, leaning on it to look towards town, then east to the Moonlit Hearts Club’s compound. “I can’t sense anything.” He turned, leaning his butt against the railing, and studied her. “But you’re the one with ties to the town. If there’s something threatening it, maybe your healer’s magic has detected it.”