Plague Cult Page 9
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “But we need to get in position to see and hear. We’ll go around behind the cabins.”
She followed where he led, still holding his hand. The night wind smelled of the woods and of the muddy riverbank.
At the last cabin, he paused. “I can’t sense magic in anyone in the compound. That could mean that the spell caster won’t be present tonight, or that they’ll arrive suddenly.”
They were crossing the open space from the cabin to the main building when the lights in the conference room went out.
Ruth thought her heart stopped. They were discovered!
But Shawn’s magic remained steady, as did he. He guided Ruth to the edge of the window and positioned her there.
Trusting him, she peered in.
The first man to enter the building struck a match and lit a candle. However, he wasn’t saying anything magical. He was frowning and petulant, middle-aged and carrying some unhealthy weight. It made his crouching over the candle an awkward movement. “Whitney asked me to lead tonight’s session, Doug. You can complain to her in the morning that it should have been you because you’re a professor.” So much scorn in that last word. “But when Zach insisted Whitney accompany him to the psychic fair today in Dallas, she knew she wouldn’t be back in time for this session, and she trusted me.”
The speaker rose slowly, shaking out his knees from being crouched. He passed a box of matches to the woman on his left. She was older than him, but bent easily to light the candle at her feet. The box of matches continued around the circle of seven.
“I thought Whitney would be here,” Jared complained, lighting his candle and Erica’s with the swift competence of a man accustomed to starting wood fires. Bideer townsfolk typically heated their homes with wood from the managed forests around them and off-cuts from the local woodworking galleries. “Erica said Whitney called this affirmation meeting.”
Affirmation meeting? Ruth’s eyebrows rose.
One of the women broke in impatiently, not rude but worried. “Can we just do this and go? I’d like to go to bed.”
The man who’d been quiet so far, leered. “Want some company?”
“And that’s why no woman wants you, Kyle.”
The first man clapped his hands to silence them. “As Whitney taught us, focus on all those who’ve hurt us. We forgive them, but…”
Ruth listened expectantly. A spell could be strengthened or sustained by repetition. The death magic was thick here, so the sacrifice had to have happened in the conference room. Yet she didn’t think any of those currently present knew of it—and Shawn had said they lacked magic.
“Beauty, to me,” the group began in ragged chorus. They used gestures, arms outstretched, pulling in from east, west, north and south.
“Laughter, music, dance and grace, to me.
“Wealth, mine.
“Friendship, mine.
“Renown, respect and power, mine.
“Never alone, never lonely.
“Life, deliver me love.”
That’s not so bad, Ruth thought. Maybe even a bit sad.
But then the voices rose in a shout. “You owe me. You owe me. You owe me!”
The death magic surged.
Chapter 7
“Let’s go.” Shawn practically carried Ruth back across the compound to the shadow of the last cabin.
She got her legs to work then, overcoming the shock of the curse renewed in front of her, and ran with him, back to the river, along it and to their truck. The relief of exiting the containment ward and shedding the taint of death magic was immense. The cool, clean scents of the river, of water and damp earth, floated on clean air and she sucked them into her lungs gratefully. Even the truck, secondhand and ordinary, was something to appreciate.
“They didn’t set the curse,” she said to Shawn as he started the truck and reversed it out of its concealed parking spot.
“No. But it sounds like Whitney Stirling did.”
That was the conclusion she’d come to as well. It was Whitney who’d established the “affirmation” ceremony. And it was Whitney who people in town seemed distant about. Her husband, Zach, the leader of the cult, was liked; “a good guy, city but not cissy”.
Ruth rubbed her hands one over the other, as if she washed them, while she thought. “The mission briefing didn’t supply much information on Whitney. Zach had been a real estate agent, got out of that during the sub-prime crash, worked for a while as a self-proclaimed marriage therapist, and then, started the Moonlit Hearts Club. Whitney met Zach when he was in real estate. She was a beauty technician. When they got married, she stopped working. Although she seems actively involved in the Moonlit Hearts Club.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” Shawn tapped the steering wheel. “From what they said at the meeting, Whitney and Zach will be back, tomorrow. I’d like to meet them.”
“Me, too. After I’ve contacted the Collegium.”
He glanced at her.
“That spell they chanted,” she began slowly, thinking out loud. “The final line of ‘you owe me’ was tacked onto a standard fortune-calling spell. They were summoning good luck to themselves.”
“Trying to,” Shawn muttered. “Death magic won’t bring them good fortune.”
She nodded. “But that final line, a triple repetition of ‘you owe me’, is different. I need to consult a senior healer at the Collegium if it’s a recognized variant of the fortune spell, or if…”
“If Whitney taught the group that chant, who is the ‘you’ she thinks owes her?” he asked grimly, evidently on the same page as Ruth with his concerns.
“Revenge,” she said. “Vengeance. It’s required for a curse to make the leap to become a plague. If Whitney is trying to get back at someone, and she’s willing to sacrifice an animal to do so, what more might she do?”
“That body in the morgue, the one Dr. Li contacted the Collegium about, no one could find a connection between him and anyone in the cult. But a random stranger as victim, I don’t buy it.” Shawn slowed the truck to pull into the driveway of Rose House.
Ruth gasped and clutched his arm. Thoughts of curses and plague were forgotten. “We switched off the lights upstairs.” The turret windows, on every level, glowed. At her bedroom window, a woman’s figure stood outline a moment, then vanished.
“You’ve got a ghost,” Shawn said.
“Don’t sound so matter of fact.” She slapped his arm.
“Well, it—she—hasn’t proved unfriendly. And the lights look welcoming. Maybe she was worried about you. We did discuss death magic, cults and plague.”
“Huh.” Ruth stared at the house. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she whispered.
Shawn, meantime, had gotten out of the truck, walked around it, and now, opened her door. “Jump out.”
She thought about her options. If she went to her parents’ farm…they’d never let her return to her house. Not without an exorcism or something, and even then…
Stiffly, she got out of the truck.
Shawn slammed the door shut and put an arm around her. “We’ll get you a bourbon so you sleep. Then you can tell me the ghost stories about the house tomorrow, in daylight.”
“No one died in my house.” She heard her voice go shrill.
“Okay.” He guided her up the front porch steps. “You got your key?”
While she fumbled in her pocket, the door swung open.
Ruth yiked, spun to run, crashed into Shawn, and then tried to burrow into him.
He hugged her, and uttered perhaps the most ominous words of the night. “Good evening.”
“Good evening.” The answering voice was low, musical and feminine. “Won’t you come in?”
Ruth fainted.
“I didn’t mean to scare her.” An attractive woman of Ruth’s age, but dressed in the fashion of the 1920s with a Cleopatra haircut, a drop-waisted turquoise dress and Cuban heels, sat in an armchair by the fireplace in the front parlor.
“It’s been a stressful day,” he said, then noticed Ruth was conscious. “Are you okay? You were only out for a couple of minutes. Just long enough for us to introduce ourselves. Ruth Warner, Carla Sumner.”
Ruth sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. “You’re a ghost.”
“I am.” Carla smiled at her, a wide and joyous grin. “But not bad company, all the same.” Crystal earrings dangled from her ears and matched the long, double-looped necklace she wore. She seemed the essence of a Jazz Age flapper. Apparently, Ruth stared a bit too long. “I don’t always dress up.” Carla waved a deprecatory hand at her outfit. “But for our first official meeting, I made the effort.”
“Huh.”
“If you’re all right for a minute, I’ll just get the bourbon.” Shawn stood.
“I don’t have any.”
“I packed a flask. Be right back.”
Ruth watched him leave the room, her gaze staying on the empty doorway as she listened to him run upstairs. Very slowly and reluctantly, she looked back at the ghost.
Carla smiled, more gently this time, almost sympathetically. “Bourbon first, then we’ll talk. You look like you need a drink. There’s still some moonshine in the secret cupboard—”
“There’s a secret cupboard?”
“Oh yes, in the turret. Just over here.” Carla got up and walked—it definitely wasn’t a ghostly glide—to a side wall behind a corner table. She tapped the wainscoting and it echoed hollowly.
It freaked Ruth a bit more to realize Carla had that much physical presence. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said.
“I know, which is why I didn’t introduce myself earlier.”
Shawn returned with the flask of bourbon, uncapped it and passed it to Ruth.
She swallowed a burning mouthful, suffering it like medicine. She coughed as she returned the flask to him.
He took a swig before recapping it.
“I was worried about you,” Carla said. “So I thought it was time you knew I was here.”
“Why?” Ruth wasn’t being rude. She was honestly baffled.
Shawn sat on the sofa beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.
Warm, real and solid, just what she needed. She leaned into him a bit.
When she flicked into mage sight, the ghost didn’t have an aura. It was deeply unsettling to see a person without their energy haloing them. Perhaps, after death, the energy that sustained an aura formed a person’s ghost?
Ruth released her mage sight. She sighed, and Shawn put his arm around her, drawing her closer.
Carla sat in an armchair opposite them. Its seat cushion didn’t dent, which was disconcerting. “Some of the stories people tell about ghosts are true. We haunt the place where we have unfinished business.”
“And what is yours?” In my house, Ruth finished, silently.
“Nothing that will harm you,” Carla responded. “It’s not that as a ghost I’m barred from heaven. I live—and I mean truly live—there, but I have a tie to Rose House that lets me return here. However, it doesn’t allow me to venture beyond it, or to affect events outside it. I didn’t know there was death magic nearby, not until you mentioned it.”
She laughed, relaxed and ruefully amused. “When I was alive, I refused to believe in magic. Now, I am dead, and you use magic, but would like to refuse to believe in my ghostly existence. The irony is perfect.”
“You introduced yourself to us, tonight, for a reason. Do you think you can help us?” Shawn asked.
“You’re a warrior,” Carla said. “My fiancé is like you. He died in the First World War. So many wars, so little learned.” She looked around the parlor. “My father built the house for Mother. Her name is Rose, hence the name, Rose House.”
It was strange to hear the present tense used for people long dead—by someone long dead. But Ruth’s fear was abating. It lessened as Carla talked. The ghost was simply so normal.
“Father made his fortune as a lumber baron. He built this house in 1894 and brought his new bride to it, his gift to her. Mother loved the house. She made her own pot pourri, and a large bowl of it under the stained glass window on the landing filled the house with the scent.”
Carla trailed her fingers over the carved wood of her chair’s arms. “I have two older brothers. We grew up happily here. So many good memories. I was the spoilt little sister. They teased me and looked out for me. They died with my fiancé in the war, and my parents died soon after of the Spanish flu and broken hearts. I was alone, but I had the house.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, touched by the old tragedy.
Carla shook her head, smiling slightly. “I could have travelled East. My mother’s family were in Boston. They invited me to live with them, but I preferred the freedom of Texas and my memories. I was involved in the town, and I had my art. I painted, upstairs in the turret. It makes a well-lit studio. I gardened and—never mind. They were small town pleasures, but real, all the same. I had a good life till I died in a rail accident when I was travelling to California. Of all ridiculous things. I wanted to see Hollywood.”
She walked across to the fireplace.
With a start, Ruth realized that the mirror above it failed to reflect Carla’s face. As a ghost, she had no reflection.
“That was 1934. There was no one to inherit on Father’s side of the family, so the estate went to Mother’s family. No one wanted the house and it stood empty till a cousin came home from the Second World War and couldn’t settle. He took Rose House as his base, did some minor repairs—added the kitchen you hate, Ruth—but mostly travelled. He was a gambler. In 1986 he went back East. Ill-health. It’s amazing how people resist family and home till they’re sick, then the tie grows strong. Rose House stood empty ever since. Till you bought it.”
“Are you sad it went out of the family?” Ruth asked.
“No. The house suits you, Ruth, and you love it. That’s important.” Carla gripped her elbows in a gesture of self-protection and determination. “I wanted to tell you that you’re safe at Rose House. The death magic can’t cross the wards you had that mage lay. But more than that, until my business is finished on earth, this is also my home, and evil will not enter it.”
Carla vanished.
Ruth blinked. “Is she…Carla, are you gone?”
No one answered. Nothing moved.
Shawn yawned and stretched. “I told you your house was haunted.”
Ruth got up and threw a cushion at him.
He caught it and grinned at her.
“I’m going to make a cup of tea,” she said. “That bourbon tasted awful.”
“Twelve year old single barrel bourbon, and you call it awful.”
“I’m not much of a drinker. I guess it warmed me up.” She filled the kettle in the laundry and switched it on to boil. The kitchen was a disaster zone. She wouldn’t be using it for weeks.
Shawn leaned against the doorframe.
She found a packet of chocolate chip cookies, offered them to him and took one herself.
“So, now that you know your house is haunted, and you’ve met the ghost, can you sleep here?” Despite his earlier teasing, his hazel eyes were dark with concern.
Ruth paused with one hand on the kettle, ready to pour it. Steam snaked up to the ceiling. “I hadn’t even considered leaving.” She poured the boiling water into two mugs, then jiggled the tea bags. “I guess I can share my home with a ghost.”
He accepted his mug from her, eying the peppermint tea bag warily. “Carla seemed serious about defending Rose House.” He dropped the tea bag into the trash.
Ruth added honey to her mug, but Shawn waved it off. “Actually, if I had to meet a ghost, Carla was probably as normal and companionable as I could ask for.” She pulled a face, rueful and wryly amused. “But I’d have been happy to never meet a ghost. Did you see that she had no aura?”
“Really?” He sipped the peppermint tea. “I don’
t tend to see auras. Magic, yeah. But auras are more a healers’ thing.”
They returned to the front parlor. “My head is so jumbled.” She rubbed her forehead.
“You fainted. That probably means you should rest.”
“It means my brain over-loaded. Honestly, a ghost!” She put her mug down on a coaster on the coffee table, and crossed to the bureau where she’d stowed her laptop. “I need to email a report to the Collegium. What we saw tonight was weird, and I’m not talking about Carla. Hopefully, someone there can tell us more about the variant on the fortune spell Whitney used.”
Shawn ate another cookie. He sat in an armchair, legs stretched out. Relaxed. The prowling, predatory anticipation that had characterized him before the hunt was gone. “Tomorrow will be interesting. I couldn’t detect any evil in town. If that was because Whitney was away, I should sense it, tomorrow.”
“Unless she manages to mask it,” Ruth said, opening her email and beginning a quick recap of the night’s events—although she’d leave out mentioning Carla, for now. First, she had to come to terms with ghosts being real. That definitely wasn’t taught at the Collegium. Perhaps magic and supernatural knowledge didn’t always overlap.
“Masking evil is possible, but it’s damn difficult to fool my hollerider instincts.” Shawn finished his tea. “If you’re sure you’ll be okay here, I’m going for a run.”
“Not back to the cult’s compound?” she asked, instantly alert.
“No, I’ll follow your fence line.” Follow her wards, double-checking them, was what he meant.
She smiled at his protective tendencies. “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
The house ought to have felt empty with his departure; or else, eerily haunted by Carla. Instead, Rose House’s usual atmosphere, a friendly tranquility, gathered gently around Ruth. That morning, she’d wound the grandfather clock, and its stately tick-tock provided a backdrop to the composition of her email.
She finished her brief report, sent it, and massaged the tight muscles of her neck. A hot shower and bed sounded like the perfect prescription.
Thirty minutes later, she was snuggled in bed when she heard Shawn’s return. The front door opened and shut.