American Quest (10 page)

Jamie’s stomach was pitching flips and somersaults. She removed a bundle of herbs from the teapot and filled the cups with the hot, stained liquid. “This might help.”

Bruce sipped.

She began.

“Somewhere Gloria is being imprisoned by a Macul known as Enervata.”

“A Macul?” Bruce’s voice sounded dubious.

Jamie hadn’t expected him to get it all at once. Of course he wouldn’t. “A Macul is a high-ranking Pravus, which is an order of dark beings. Each Macul and his Pravus army is looking to destroy a particular human virtue. For Enervata, it’s love. There’s only a handful of his kind in the world, but they’ve been around for more than a thousand years and each is looking for an opportunity to enslave humanity. Enervata has been waiting for an uncommon kind of love affair since the Dark Ages. One like . . .” she shrugged.

“Like me and Gloria?”

Jamie nodded. She breathed in the flowered fragrance of the tea, keeping her gaze fixed on the brew so as not to look upon the wildness and disbelief in Bruce’s eyes. “There have been a handful of occurrences over the centuries where passionate people found uncommon love. If Enervata had been able to divide the lovers and seduce the woman, turning her toward darkness, he would have achieved great power. The other Maculs do similar things, though they’re trying to destroy different virtues. In each case, Enervata or one of the others has tried to harness that power to enslave mankind.”

“Sounds like they’re not real good at it,” Bruce snorted. “Last time I checked we were pretty much okay.”

“Well, that’s partly because they’re always sabotaging one another.
Each Macul wants to be in power, so they’re essentially competing and have always found a way to wreck one another’s chances.”

Jamie chanced a glance at Bruce. He looked overwhelmed.

“You’re sure Enervata’s the one who’s got Gloria?” he said.

“He has to be, because he’s the one who wants to destroy love. He’s looking for the rare love, the bond-recherché as they call it, and the other Maculs will try to somehow spoil Enervata’s seduction attempts. If they do, he loses his chance at power.”

“So that’s a good thing. Humanity’s safe.”

“Except for the fact that the woman usually winds up dead. And the man for that matter. Or worse.”

Bruce’s eyes dropped and he shook his head.

Jamie squeezed his hand. “Enervata has taken Gloria because he believes he can seduce her and turn her to his side. And if Enervata can reverse a love as strong as yours between two people as passionate as you are, he gets it all.”

“And if he can’t turn her?”

“I can’t say for sure, Bruce. But likely, he’ll kill her.”

The color drained from Bruce’s skin. He seemed to be wrestling with disbelief, anger, and sick, sick worry. He spoke, and his voice came out ragged. “How do you know all of this?”

Jamie looked down at her teacup. “It started when I was in high school.”

Errant bits of peppermint leaf floated in her cup, and the scent of it strove to calm her nerves.

She looked up at Bruce. “
First day
of high school, actually, as if that wasn’t weird enough. It was after school, I was in my room, and my computer started talking to me. It was that stupid paperclip thing. You know that thing in Word? That Help tool that winks at you?”

He nodded. “Always drove me crazy.”

Jamie gave a rueful laugh. “Yeah, me too, especially when I was trying to get work done for class. But this time,” Jamie paused. Her gaze drifted to the window. “This time everything was different.”

The homework on her first day was overwhelming. This was going to be much tougher than middle school. Jamie got out her books and sat down at the computer, revving up Word.

But there was no way she could concentrate on the essay she needed to write with that paperclip winking and blinking at her. She turned it off. It came back.

She turned if off again. It came back again.

She rebooted her machine.

The images on the screen swooned and went black, and then the CPU buzzed and clucked and flashed the log-in page.

Jamie’s fingers were poised, ready to type in her username and password (Jamie / Tink). But there it stood, that animated paperclip, winking and blinking. And it grew bigger on the screen.

And then the cartoonish icon danced, swirled, and leaped out of the monitor.

Jamie gasped and tumbled backward, legs splayed, as the paperclip arched and ran across her keyboard, leaped over her desk, and joined her on the floor.

“Hello, Jamie!”

She backed away from it. But more from confusion than fear. The voice was so sweet, so soothing. Jamie’s body curled and she sat up, looking at the odd thing.
I’m hallucinating. Man, the first day of school was more stressful than I thought.

The clip bent itself over and stretched, growing bigger yet again. It exuded a golden light, bathing the room in warmth as it expanded and changed, wavering. Jamie watched dumbstruck as the clip went through its metamorphosis. Eventually it became a beautiful lady, elderly and smiling.

Then the woman was sitting in a golden chair, and flecks of gold shimmered within her emerald eyes. Her hair was white and wound into a knot just above her neck. Jamie felt a remarkable sense of peace coursing through her as the woman spoke with a voice kind and motherly, soothing and beautiful like her eyes.

She told Jamie she was “an Auxilium,” come to explain about Jamie’s purpose in life.

The Auxilium woman told her many things. She said that she was
glad that Jamie and Bruce had naturally developed a loving friendship. She told her that Jamie had been placed by Bruce’s side as his guardian.

And then, though the lady’s voice remained warm and soothing, her words took on an ominous warning, striking fear into Jamie’s heart.

The Auxilium held Jamie’s hand and told her that she was going to have to be very brave. And then she described to Jamie the world of the Macul. And Enervata.

Rage bubbled up inside Bruce. “You never told me any of this! My God, you’ve been carrying this around since high school?”

Jamie’s cheeks colored. “The Auxilium warned me not to say a word to you. Or anyone else for that matter, until it began. It’s the only secret I’ve ever kept from you. If I told you, it might have prevented you from seeking true love in your life. That would have been wrong for you and terrible for the world.”

Jamie turned her face away and Bruce saw a watery shimmer at the corner of her eye.

His stomach threatened to empty involuntarily. If he’d taken a swig of tequila it probably would have. He reached out a shaky hand and grasped the cup of tea.

Jamie turned back to him and laid her hand on his forearm. “The thing is, Bruce, you and Gloria are destined to achieve great things together. If you can make it through this.”

She withdrew her hand and sipped her tea. Bruce sipped his, trying to find some way to put everything into context.

Bruce slowly filled his lungs. “So you’ve kept this big secret this whole time, huh? I don’t even know what to make of this.”

Jamie shrugged. “It’s been good for me in a way. The Auxilium woman told me to do whatever I could to encourage you to never settle for less—that was easy, because by then we’d practically been best friends since we were born. And she told me about Enervata, and how we can stop him.”

Bruce’s eyes lifted to hers. “So what do we do?”

Jamie slid off the couch and kneeled on the carpet, clearing a space
on the coffee table. She flipped a magazine over.

“Okay. We need to head out into other parts of the country. We can take my van.”

She reached into a bag of pretzels and laid four of them out, one by one, at various points on the magazine.

“Along the way, you have to seek out something called the Four Pillars of Humanity. When you find all four, if you can face him before Gloria is completely turned, you might be able to defeat Enervata.”

“What do you mean before Gloria is completely turned? She’s not going to fall for some thousand-year-old demon!”

Jamie shook her head. “You don’t understand, Bruce. They all fall. He’s going to brainwash her. He can’t directly use magic or lie to her, but he’s extremely powerful. He can do things like only show her small pieces of the truth, take things out of context to confuse her.”

This Enervata guy didn’t know Gloria if he thought that kind of thing would work on her. Still, what Jamie said earlier echoed in his brain. If Enervata thought he couldn’t succeed with Gloria, he’d probably kill her.

“Where are these pillars?”

Jamie shook her head. She waved at the pretzels with a shrug.

Bruce felt his frustration rising again. “Do we at least know
what
they are?”

“The old woman wouldn’t tell me what they are, what they represent, or where to look. She said there were reasons for this. All I know is that once we head out, we’ll receive signals along the way, and that the search itself is a necessary part of building the power we need.”

“How long do we have?”

Jamie’s face took on the cast it got when she felt flustered. “I wish I knew, Bruce. I . . . maybe I just didn’t ask the right questions. Just know I’ll be with you every step of the way. Start packing tonight. We’ll load up my van and leave in the morning. But first, we need to go to Candace’s place.”

“What? What time is it?”

Jamie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve been trying to reach her ever since I got your phone call. Candace was sent here to watch over Gloria in the same way I was sent to watch over you.”

Bruce’s eyebrows arched. “Candace? Really?”

“This is not a good time to be catty. And don’t underestimate Candace. She’s got a natural talent. She’s a Finder. We’ll need her on this trip. Come on.”

They rose to their feet and Bruce grabbed his keys and wallet, somewhat grateful for having a task that would keep him bodily occupied. They maneuvered out of the building, into the lightly misting streets, and began heading toward Candace’s apartment.

Jamie scowled at her phone. “Her cell must be turned off because it’s going straight to voice mail.”

“Just like Gloria’s.”

“Yeah, and it worries me a little.”

“Any reason to believe Candace might be in trouble?”

Jamie’s eyes were solemn. “It’s Candace’s job to watch over Gloria. If she somehow got in the way . . .”

They bent their shoulders and quickened their pace. But when they rounded the corner to Candace’s apartment, they encountered blue swirling emergency lights and clusters of neighbors. Bruce could hear the whispers even as they approached.

“. . . attacked in her own home . . . the lock wasn’t forced . . . Candace was such a sensible thing otherwise . . .”

They slowed and then stopped just as two paramedics wheeled a stretcher out of the apartment building. Jamie gasped and Bruce knew why without even looking.

Candace was dead.

Jamie buried her face in Bruce’s shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her and held her tight. She began to gasp and shudder. He gripped Jamie to him, as if in that single gesture he could wrap enough protection around her and then send that protection out into the vast
somewhere
until it got to Gloria.

GLORIA SAT AT THE VANITY, eyes gazing toward the window. She had only a vague concept of the hour, having watched the sun go down and come up again, reaching its apex to mark that a full day had passed. Now it was sinking back down on the horizon.

A dubious pastime, being a sun spectator.

Bruce had to be frantic by this point. He must be calling everybody. He might even be imagining the worst. But he could never guess what had happened.