Ignited (12 page)

And that was how Henry found himself in his office, surrounded by dusty boxes overflowing with medical files belonging to the long-dead citizens of Independence Falls. His grandfather, clearly, didn’t want him poking around in anything more recent. 

None of it made sense. There was no danger posed by people he had known his entire life. They couldn’t have changed
that
drastically while he’d been away at college. He could help, he knew he could. His grandfather didn’t have the resources necessary to do a lot of the lab work, while Henry still had contacts at the university lab in Denver. All Henry had to do was talk to them, tell them he’d found something, and he was sure some of his old professors would let him in to do some research. 

Although that did pose a question Henry hadn’t previously considered: How was his grandfather getting such specific results back from a lab that didn’t know to look for these things?

He didn’t have any time to consider that, however, as Mrs. McClure popped her head into his office.

“Patient for you,” she said, smiling. “Exam room one.”

He stood mechanically, hardly thinking about his own actions, and walked to the first room at the start of the hall. He didn’t even spare a look at he chart on the outside of the door as he opened to door. “Good morning,” he said, stopping in his tracks when he saw who it was.

Ruth Baker was sitting there, waiting for him.

“Ruth,” he said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice and failing miserably. The second he saw her, the cloud hanging over his morning disappeared. “I mean, Miss Baker.”

She looked up at him, and there was something almost defiant in her gaze. Her face was flushed red, and she was obviously embarrassed, but she would not look away or back down. It must have taken a lot for her to seek him out, considering how she had been the one to leave the night before.

She was braver than he’d ever expected. He liked it.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was stilted and a little raw, like she’d recently been crying. Henry felt his heart rate jump at the very thought.

He stepped forward without thinking, and she dropped her gaze, staring at her knees as she continued. “I am sure this must be awful and awkward for you, but I didn’t know who else to go to.”

“Seeing you could never be awful.”

He could have smacked himself for how painfully obvious he was being. She probably thought he was crazy—hell,
he
sort of thought he was crazy. There was no way this girl was already so deep under his skin.

There was the faintest trace of a smile at the corner of her mouth, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. “I kept telling myself that if I was good enough, it would go away, but ….” The tears entered her voice again. “I don’t think I can be that kind of good anymore. I can’t handle this. I’m afraid I’ll hurt someone.”

The words were all in English, and grammatically, he understood them, but they were practically gibberish. “You have to tell me more than that, Ruth. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Her eyes found his, dark brown and seemingly fathomless. “I can … do things.”

“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand what you—”

“Like the other people in town. June and Clayton and Frank and—I can do that.”

Henry’s stomach contracted into a knot. “You have powers?”

Ruth’s lower lip trembled, and she nodded. She looked so vulnerable, so upset. He couldn’t stand to see her this way. All his professionalism left him, and he found himself reaching out to cup her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her soft skin. He moved so suddenly that he didn’t even consider the repercussions until he was already standing before her, comforting her. It was like his body had taken over, refusing to let him over-think his actions.

“Can you show me?” He kept his voice low, soothing. When she looked up at him, he realized how close their faces were. Despite himself, his eyes darted down to her lips. That moment they had shared already felt too far away—he wanted to taste them again.

He shook his head. He was at the clinic—this was neither the time nor place.

Henry backed up a step, putting some space between them. Jesus, he couldn’t think straight around this girl! He’d never once acted so inappropriately around a patient, not in his clinicals or his residency or his time in Independence Falls. He needed to get a grip. Ruth was scared, trembling like a leaf on the paper-covered table. Now was not the time. If she was to be his patient, there would never
be a time.

He couldn’t think about that right now.

If Ruth was perplexed by his strange behavior, she hid it well. She looked around the room, eyes darting back and forth. “Do you have a glass of water?”

“Oh, um. Sure. Hold on.” He grabbed a glass from one of the cupboards and filled it in the corner sink, then held it out to her. “Here you are.”

She shook her head and pointed at him. “It’s not for me, it’s for you.” She furrowed her brow, looking a little sad, but then squared her shoulders and sat up straight. “I’ll show you, just—don’t be scared of me, okay?”

“I won’t be,” he said. She seemed skeptical, but he had never made an easier promise.

Ruth slowly pushed the sleeves of her dress to her elbows, and then held up her bare forearms. She stared at them, squinting in concentration.

Nothing happened.

She glared at her arms through the narrow slit of her eyelids.

She frowned. “I don’t understand. Normally, I can’t make myself stop!”

Henry nodded at her, face serene. It wouldn’t do to upset her more. “It’s not a big problem. Why don’t you just describe what happens to me, and—”

“But it happens all the time!” She insisted. “And, of course, the one time I really need someone else to see, I can’t manage to—”

Her hands burst into flames.

Henry felt the heat of them hit his face, and he recoiled, but he could not tear his eyes away. The fire had come from nowhere, had simply risen out of her skin as it was just below the surface, waiting. The orange flames danced to her wrists and then farther up her arms; he was so mesmerized that he didn’t see the look of pain cross her face, not until she gave a yelp and began to shake her hands vigorously, trying to put them out.

The fire only grew. Henry glanced down at the water in his hand. It wouldn’t take care of what she had produced, but he had an idea ….

He threw the water at her face.

The flames died out instantly.

“Sorry, sorry!” The words came tumbling out of Henry before he could stop them, and he reached into a drawer for a small white towel. He nearly began to wipe at her face himself before it occurred to him that it might be crossing a line. Instead, he handed it to her. She pressed her face to the white terrycloth.

“I’m sorry. I thought a shock might help.”

She looked up, face red with embarrassment, rather than fire. “It’s fine. That was good, actually. It was starting to hurt.”

“Let me see your arms,” Henry said, drawing her right arm toward him with delicate fingers. The towel was still clutched in her left, and it dropped to her lap. Turning the arm in all directions, Henry tried to find some indication of damage. The skin was a little pink, but otherwise no worse for the wear.

“Does it always hurt you?”

Ruth shook her head. “No. Only if I can’t get myself under control—but I never can. I panic, and then it’s even harder to calm down.” She caught his eyes. “Can you fix me?”

“You’re not broken,” he told her. When she snorted, he pressed on. “I mean it. But even if I could take the powers away from you, we don’t know how yet. We don’t even really understand where they’re coming from.” That was not the complete truth, and the lie of it sat on his conscience uncomfortably.

Suddenly, Henry froze. This was it. Ruth was his chance. He had wanted to continue studying the anomaly, but he couldn’t go through normal channels—his grandfather would surely guard his secrets more carefully now. There would be no more unauthorized access to files.

Dr. Pinkerton hadn’t studied Ruth, however. Ruth had not been at the makeshift hospital where thirty people had been kept during the horrible illness. The man didn’t know Ruth’s powers existed.

Ruth was the perfect test subject.

His insides roiled at the thought. She was so much more than that to him.

Despite his misgivings, he found himself saying, “If you want, I could maybe do some tests. We could try to find the thing that changed you, isolate it, study it, and then look for a cure.”

There was a total void of emotion on Ruth’s face. She seemed overwhelmed. When she looked at him, her eyes were too wide. “You think that would work?”

Truthfully, he wasn’t sure, but it was better than the alternative, which included letting Ruth live in fear and allowing his grandfather to kill himself for the sake of this mystery.

“It’s worth a try. If you can come down to the clinic tomorrow, I can draw some blood and—”

The hopeful look left Ruth’s face abruptly. “Oh, we’d meet here? Never mind then.”

“What?”

“I am taking a huge risk coming here today. My father doesn’t believe in medicine.”

Henry snorted before he could stop himself. “It’s medicine, not Santa Claus.”

She gave him a stern, unamused look. “If he finds out I’m here, he’ll be unhappy with me, and I—I feel conflicted enough, but the fire happens, sometimes, when I’m asleep, and this morning I woke up and ….” She shivered. “I burned my bed in the night. I could have
killed
someone. I can’t handle this on my own anymore. I need help.”

She looked so small, so scared, and Henry knew he couldn’t let her walk out of the room without helping her. His conscience wouldn’t allow it. But how? They couldn’t sneak into the clinic after hours. His grandfather slept directly above, and he was bound to hear them.

And his only other idea was probably not going to be well received.

“We could meet at my house, after dark.” 

She gaped at him, scandalized. 

“Not for anything strange! No funny business. It’s just that I live alone, so we wouldn’t get caught.”

Henry deliberately avoided looking at Ruth. If she was angry at the impropriety of what he’d just suggested, he couldn’t yet bear to face it. He needed a moment to fortify himself.

Instead, she said, “All right.”

His head snapped up. “Really?”

“It’s not ideal, but I’m … I’m very scared I’ll hurt someone, and if we’re discreet, no one will be the wiser.” She nodded, as if convincing herself more than him. “I can’t do this on my own anymore. You’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll cure me?”

It would have been easy to lie, to tell her what she wanted to hear, but Henry couldn’t do that to her. “I will do all I can for you.” He reached out to touch her knee. “I promise.”

She flinched away from his hand, letting out a little cry of pain.

“What’s wrong?” He removed his hand but automatically went for the hem of her skirt.

Ruth batted his hands away. “Stop, stop. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

In Henry’s mind, he could see Edward’s hands circling Ruth’s tiny wrist as he dragged her bodily from the general store. He frowned. His voice went low and urgent. “Did he hurt you again? Dammit, Ruth—”

“Leave it alone, Henry.” She sounded tired. “I’ve given enough thought to it. I don’t need you worrying about it too.”

“That was the wrong thing to say if you want me to leave it alone.”

He moved to touch her skirt, push it up her leg to see what bruise was waiting there, but Ruth shimmied out of the way, getting to her feet and hovering by the door.

“I’m going now,” she said, resolutely.

“Ruth, wait—”

She didn’t wait. She escaped out of the room and down the hall, and Henry watched her go. He didn’t understand why she always seemed to be running away from him.

And they hadn’t set a time for them to do the blood tests.

It had not been his morning.

CHAPTER TEN

Ruth

“In these trying times,” Edward intoned as he prowled back and forth across the altar. “People want answers. We want to know
why
things are happening. You’re going to hear some things—you’re probably already hearing them. That this is the work of the godless Soviets, some kind of science gone wrong.”

The crowd around Ruth began to murmur, and she shrank back into her cardigan. This was by far the largest congregation to whom her father had ever preached. She’d sacrificed her front seat again and was stuck in the back of the room, pushed against the wall. There were people pressing in on her from every exposed side. She’d run out of programs just before service was scheduled to start and had worried Edward would be angry with her, but he’d been too excited about all the extra bodies to care.

Even now, he seemed exuberant. Her father had never been a boring orator, but this week he seemed to speak with a special conviction. His hands shook as he sermonized—not from fear, but from the thrill of having so many people present to hear what he had to say.

Edward was not one to waste a captive audience.

“Science
is
wrong. But no, this isn’t
science
. This is Satan, in our very town.”

Despite the heat, Ruth shivered.

The appeal of Henry’s pleas was beginning to resonate with her, whether she wanted it to or not. Her father hated everyone in town who had developed abilities. And as much as it hurt her to admit it, she couldn’t believe he would treat her any differently, if she admitted to him what she could do.

She didn’t want to see her father as a villain. For weeks, Ruth had chastised herself for her abilities, had tried to pray them away. They had gone nowhere. If it had been just her, then she could have believed this was some kind of judgment from God. A price she, personally, had to pay for some transgression.

But it wasn’t just her. It was her and so many others. A dozen people had been involved in the fight on the Fourth of July. How many more were hiding like her? They couldn’t all be condemned for this. They couldn’t all have done something so wrong.