Plague Cult (2 page)

Going home wouldn’t absolve her of the past.

She focused on practicalities. “What about renovations? Can you maintain the cover story?”

Shawn grinned at her. “My dad and sister are electricians. Dad makes extra money on the side renovating houses. Mom hates moving all the time, but it’s his hobby. I’ve helped him plenty.”

Ruth surrendered to the inevitable. “William, I should have known you’d have it all mapped out.”

“Yes, you should. I don’t send my people on missions they’re not suited to.” The stern look in his eyes meant he wouldn’t let her wriggle out of this even if her conscience would have let her try. Plagues were rare, but they could happen, and the presence of a cult at a nexus site did increase the infinitesimal odds. She’d be going home to make sure Bideer was safe.

“When do we leave?” she asked.

“Tonight.”

Shawn was interested in Ruth’s reaction to going home. If someone had told him there was even the sniff of a chance of a plague starting in his mamaw’s small town, he’d have a hundred questions. On the other hand, Ruth was a healer. She probably knew the answers to those questions. She was definitely a self-contained woman, so if she worried, she’d hide it.

Although she hadn’t been able to hide her resistance to going home. Her body had stiffened with it.

“Good luck.” William’s words were a dismissal.

Shawn stood and waited for Ruth to precede him from the room.

The top of her head only came to his shoulder. She was a small, slim woman. The loose top she wore covered her to mid-thigh, hiding her figure, but she moved gracefully and swiftly. Her shoulder-length hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wouldn’t mind seeing it loose. It had the fine red-gold color usually seen in children and outgrown by adulthood.
A Celtic woman
, the naming suited her. A woman of ancient magics. A healer.

“Do you have time for a coffee?” he asked.

She glanced at his face, then swiftly at her watch. “Twenty minutes to eleven. Yes. We could talk on the plane, but—”

“Portal,” he interrupted.

“Pardon?”

“I’d bet that the mission briefings being sent to us include travel via portal. San Antonio would be the closest portal to Bideer. I expect they’ll have a vehicle, maybe two, waiting for us and all the details of our cover stories. If it’s plague, I doubt we’ll waste time on air travel.”

“Possibly plague,” she corrected. “And the chance is infinitesimally low.” She sighed. “But you’re undoubtedly right. We’ll travel by portal.”

He slanted a look at her as they descended the stairs. “Are you one of the ones who gets portal sick?”

“Yes.” It was a hissed, resentful acknowledgement.

“Okay, then.” They walked out into the foyer of Collegium headquarters. They could have grabbed a coffee on the guardians’ floor or the healers’, but he liked to get a feel for the vibe of headquarters, and the best place to do that was in the foyer. The scattered tables and lounges encouraged people to chat. Mundanes who only knew the Collegium in its purported role as an international think tank, were also present, but a simple privacy spell would keep their conversation just between Ruth and him. “How do you like your coffee?”

She glanced up at him. Her face was an oval-shape, redeemed from bland prettiness by the intelligence in her green eyes and the determined set to her mouth. That tight mouth relaxed. “Plain, no milk or sugar. Thanks. I’ll snag a table.”

Good luck with that.
He’d already noted the absence of free tables, but there was a two-person sofa to the side, half-hidden by a potted tree fern. If Ruth moved fast, she could secure it.

He left her to it and queued for coffee, serving himself from the elaborate machine. He concentrated harder on the task than he had to, but it made a good excuse to avoid eye contact. He wasn’t comfortable with his higher profile in the Collegium, with the number of people murmuring good morning, nodding acknowledgement, knowing him. A few weeks as personal assistant and bodyguard to the president, and he no longer flew under the radar. He hated it.

It would be good to get out and return to fieldwork.

He burnt his tongue on the first sip of coffee. It was hot and strong, espresso with that smooth bitterness; worth burning his tongue for.

“Thanks.” Ruth accepted a mug from him. She sat under the curving fronds of the tree fern, very straight-backed.

He sat beside her, not bothering to keep his thigh from brushing hers on the small sofa. It was a small test.

One she passed as she made no attempt to pull back. She gave off a distant air, a woman very conscious of her personal space, but if he was meant to play the role of her friend, then in small things, she had to show her trust of him. If she pulled away from him, no one would believe them friends.

He rearranged his long legs so they didn’t trip up anyone walking past, and in doing so, removed himself from her personal space. If he needed to know that she could play the role of friend, she, in turn, needed to know that he’d respect her personal space, and her. For the length of the mission, they’d be a team.

“May I?” He enclosed them in a small privacy bubble. People would see them, but what they said to each other would be an indistinguishable murmur and lip-reading would be similarly blurred.

“It’s best to take precautions,” she agreed. “Plague is rare, but the word is enough to set off a panic. That or its modern version: pandemic.”

“How likely is it that we’ll face the beginnings of a plague? I’ve never been asked to accompany a healer on this type of mission before.”

“Curses with the potential to morph into plagues are rare. Even rarer is to find a curse with the capability and access to the power boost necessary to make that jump.”

“You don’t seem worried?” It was less an observation of her serene demeanor than an attempt to elicit a response from her.

Judging by the faint narrowing of her eyes as she looked at him, she recognized his question for what it was—a criticism—and she answered his real question. “A plague is highly unlikely. I love my family.” A clear statement, but her voice was constrained and she no longer held his gaze. Instead, she stared into her mug. “If I thought there was a real threat, I’d move my family out of the area. They’d resist. I’d insist.” She swallowed some coffee. “But it would be rare to experience more than one outbreak of plague in our lifetimes, and we already have Ebola.”

“And that came from?”

“Violence and war. Terrible suffering that twisted into a survivors’ group’s terrible vengeance.”

They were silent. The privacy bubble didn’t impede them seeing or hearing others’ discussions. The busy foyer hummed with conversation. People in expensive suits gestured emphatically, outlining their arguments. Collegium guardians, like himself, moved more discreetly, preferring not to draw attention.

“When we reach Bideer, there’ll be three things to look for,” Ruth said.

He drained his mug and set it aside.

She tapped her thumb. “One, we need to assess the Moonlit Hearts Club members and other people in town to judge if any have the power to jolt a curse from a single victim to plague status. That requires magic of guardian level ability.”

“Or yours?” he challenged.

She nodded. “Fractionally less for a healer, since plague falls within our abilities. To heal and to harm, two sides of the same coin.”

“Okay. Significant magic. I can search for likely people.”

“Second.” She tapped her index finger. “Is there a sense of malaise? Unhealthiness.”

“Evil,” he said bluntly.

“Yes. We need to find out if there are other victims.”

Nice thought.
Hopefully not, but it was possible.

“Third,” she continued. “I need a copy of the curse. What words shaped it, and what else forms it? Physical props, the people involved, any ritual.”

“That might be harder.” He frowned, semi-consciously noticing the table of businessmen across from him who shifted uncomfortably, murmured and left. If they could be intimidated by one man’s frown…

“Or it might be simple,” Ruth said. “Some people don’t mean their curse to do as much harm as it does. The person who cursed the man Dr. Li saw might be horrified at what a moment’s ill-wishing caused. They might be willing to share the details of the curse.”

“Hmm.”
Or could be convinced to do so.
“And if the curse crosses over into being a plague, or has the potential to do so?”

“If it’s only potentially a plague, I can reverse it.”

He kept his face expressionless at her confidence. The Chief Healer, William Mimea, had chosen Ruth for this mission. He’d have done so for better reasons than her owning a house and family in Bideer. She had to be a powerful healer.

“The protocol for neutralizing a curse is simple enough.” She smiled slightly, and her beauty was a punch to his gut. “If a bit more complex than a pinch of salt.”

He grinned, putting aside for the moment the possible complication of his being attracted to her. “Fair enough. I’ll leave the curse to you, as long as you’ll ask for help if you need it.”

“Definitely.” She twisted the mug between her fingers; slender fingers with blunt, well-kept nails. “And if a plague does emerge, we contact William and he sends in a strike team of healers, having consulted with the forecasters and alchemists, here. Our role will be to keep the town safe until back-up arrives.”

Shawn took her empty mug from her and put it beside his on the table abandoned by the businessmen. Then he sat back down. “What else do I need to know?”

Ruth sighed. The guardian was smart and controlled, which were great traits in a mission partner, until you wanted to avoid an issue. She knew he’d detected her reluctance to return to Bideer, and now he wanted an explanation of it.

“My family and I aren’t on the best terms.” She kept her response minimal. Strictly a needs-to-know basis. “My brothers and I are fine, but they’re not in town. Mitch is in the army, Kane at college. Coming home means facing a bit of talk. Nothing that will jeopardize our mission. You should ignore anything you hear about me.”

He looked thoughtful. His amazing hazel eyes seemed to darken from an alert yellowy-green to a shadowed khaki shade. “Will it cause trouble that I’ll be staying alone in the house with you? Single girl, single guy?”

“Oh? Oh no.” She almost laughed. “No. They won’t believe you’re involved with me.”

He didn’t relax and share her humor. If anything, his face set stern, almost as if he hid the hurt of an insult. “Why not?”

“No reflection on you.” Without thinking, she put a reassuring hand on his knee. “My family sees me as a repressed—well, for lack of a less old-fashioned word—spinster.”

“Are you?”

He didn’t move, but she was suddenly aware of the skin, muscle and bone under her hand. The intense masculine power so near her. “No.” She had to clear her throat. “I’m not repressed.”

“Just haven’t found the right guy?” And suddenly he was the laid-back, teasing guy who’d presented himself in William’s office.

His change, and the swiftness of it—his ability to mask his power—was something to consider, later. For now, Ruth embraced the reduced tension. “Yeah. So far, all the frogs I’ve kissed have been toads.”

He laughed, stood and stretched; muscled, gorgeous and ignoring the attention he attracted. A tall drink of water, they’d call him in Texas. “All right. I’ll read the briefing, get a few of my things together, and meet you here at four o’clock.”

She nodded at what had been less question than command. A mission couldn’t have two leaders, and she didn’t see Shawn Jackson following anyone. He seemed a man inclined to take his own path. “Four o’clock in the foyer.”

He sketched a casual salute and loped away.

She stayed seated beneath the potted tree fern and watched him, and the way others turned to watch his departure. Evidently, she’d been away from the Collegium too long. Shawn Jackson had some sort of standing, and she didn’t know what it was.

Time to find out.

Ruth’s New York apartment was a single room miracle of minimalism. She leased it from the Collegium at a subsidized rental, and had chosen to do so unfurnished. Into the empty space she’d brought a barstool on which to work and eat at the kitchen counter, a futon, a television to hang on the wall, an armchair, some kitchenware, her clothes and personal belongings and…that was it. The apartment was a place to sleep and to leave behind.

Before graduating college, she’d lived in a group apartment with other Collegium trainees, not all healers. One had been, but the other two had been a musicologist and an alchemist. Graduation had meant they’d scattered. She was the only one who’d stayed based in New York.

She’d chosen to live alone just to avoid the dramas. With room-mates sometimes you lucked out, and other times you came home late and exhausted to a sink full of dirty dishes.

Practice makes perfect, and as a first responder she was used to being called out at short notice on emergency missions. It didn’t take her long to pack a bag for going home to Bideer, even if this time she included more casual clothes than usual. She would be working, but the people around her couldn’t know it. Jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, hiking boots. She stuffed in underwear and zipped the bag shut.

She wore that type of clothing, now: old jeans, worn white at the seams and knees; a long-sleeved henley in a faded rose; and a smoke-gray fleece jacket she could zip up against the cold of a fall afternoon in New York. Her sneakers were just as practical, but prettier, colored cream and rose. She looped her hair into a loose knot, slung her bag over her shoulder and walked out.

Earlier in the afternoon, she’d gotten the gossip on Shawn.

“He is swee-eet,” Nesta had fanned herself. Obviously, she didn’t think Shawn saccharine, but rather, hot.

“He seems efficient, or William wouldn’t have agreed to his assignment to the mission.” Ruth had bitten into her toasted sourdough turkey sandwich.

Nesta kicked her under the table. “Girl, I know you have working eyes. Tell me that man ain’t fine?”

“All right. He’s sexy.” Ruth’s concession had been accompanied by a flash of memory at just how fine Shawn looked.

“Smart, too.” Nesta relented in her teasing. “Three of the guardians protected the president till he got his magical mojo back. Of them all, Shawn was the most efficient. Everyone knew it. They started timing their visits. They could sneak things past Haskell and Chad—get in to see President Bennett—but not with Shawn. So they avoided him. And the president mightn’t give much away, but you could tell he did the opposite. Of the three guardians assigned to him, I reckon Shawn became the closest to being the president’s friend.”

“Lewis Bennett doesn’t collect friends,” Ruth said thoughtfully. The Collegium’s new president had previously been commander of the guardians, so she knew his reputation. He was a man who stood alone.

“Exactly.” Nesta nodded vigorously while she finished her mouthful of quinoa and red bean salad. “Shawn even has Bennett’s respect and—people figure—some influence with him.”

“What about Shawn’s magic?”

Nesta had shrugged. “Guardian standard, I guess. General magic, trained for combat.”

Walking back towards the Collegium, likely to be early to meet Shawn, Ruth contemplated that meagre haul of information. She already knew something more about Shawn than Nesta’s plugged-into-the-gossip-vine interest. William had said Shawn could mask his magic. Which raised an interesting question: just how much power did Shawn hide?

At any rate, he was a fairly shrewd people-reader himself. He was waiting for Ruth at the bottom of the front steps to Collegium headquarters. “I thought you’d be early.” He had a battered pack at his feet and he’d also changed clothes. Gone was the quietly expensive Collegium guardians’ de facto uniform of quality hiking gear, and in its place, he wore a storm-blue sweater over jeans. But the boots remained the same, comfortably worn in.

As she got close, he lifted her bag off her shoulder.

She grabbed for it. “I can carry it.”

“Nope.”

She rolled her eyes. “Is this you getting in character?”

He shrugged his pack over his left shoulder, then shifted her bag to that hand, too, leaving his right hand free. “It’s in character. It’s also me. Do you want anything in headquarters?”

The Collegium building loomed behind him, glass and steel, modern and unremarkable. Only if Ruth slipped into mage sight would she see the shimmer of magic that warded it. “I’m good.”

“Then, let’s go.”

Her mission briefing had included the unwanted confirmation that they’d be travelling by portal. Uncomfortable with the fact that she wasn’t carrying her own bag, Ruth shoved her hands into the pockets of her fleece jacket. The portal was a few blocks away.

Porters owned their portals, controlled them utterly, and since portals seemed always to be located just below ground, the porters tended to own the building above their portals. In New York, that meant the porter, Paul O’Halloran, owned the short-stay apartment building above his portal. Look-away spells and other magic prevented mundanes from noticing the busy pedestrian traffic in and out of his building.

Ruth and Shawn entered by the front door. Shawn put his head in the front room. “Paul, you there?”

The porter wasn’t. Hopefully, he was already downstairs in the basement, by the portal.

At least Ruth had been spared having to enter Paul’s front room. He’d converted the parlor into a man den, complete with a huge television, a stained recliner and a bar fridge for his beer. Dirty plates and empty beer cans littered the floor.

She followed Shawn down the concrete steps to the basement.

Paul was there, sitting in a recliner even rattier than the one upstairs. A radio blared a horse race. “There you are.” Paul didn’t bother turning the radio down as he hauled himself out of the chair. He was a guy about forty, seriously overweight and it was affecting his breathing. His voice had a slight wheeze. “If it isn’t my favorite healer.”

“Hi, Paul,” Ruth said reluctantly.

Paul was sleazy, but not dangerously so. Porters had independent status with the Collegium, but the organization wouldn’t have tolerated an abusive one. Paul knew it, too. He kept his nuisance status dialed to the have-to-tolerate-him level.

“We’re travelling to San Antonio,” Shawn said.

“So I’ve been told.” Paul brandished his phone. He shouted into the portal. “You there, Sue?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got the two Collegium mages. Sending them through.” He smirked at Ruth and held out his hand.

Hiding her cringe, Ruth accepted it.

His palm was damp.

Travel through the in-between was a dizzying, disorienting experience that was shortened to a few seconds if porters handed a person from porter to porter. Bracing herself for the chaos of the in-between, and holding onto Paul’s hand, Ruth stepped into the shimmering metallic-gray portal in the center of the basement’s cement floor.

The crazy, weightless, spinning reality of the in-between claimed her. Nausea churned her stomach. She shut her eyes.

A cool hand replaced Paul’s clasp and hauled Ruth out.

“Portal sick?” The San Antonio porter studied Ruth’s pale face, her own face a healthy tanned color with a humorous if sympathetic expression.

“I just need to get my breath back.” Ruth shuffled backwards on the old, brick-paved floor, making room for Shawn to step out of the portal.

He entered the Texas cellar as casually as a man walking into his own kitchen. “Thanks, Sue.”

The middle-aged porter smiled at him. “You’d better take your friend upstairs and into the fresh air. She doesn’t look so well.”

Shawn gave Ruth an assessing look. A smile tugged at his mouth. “No, she sure doesn’t.”

Ruth couldn’t summon the energy to glare at him. Instead, she put a hand on her stomach and sent a pulse of magic to calm it.

“Keys.” Sue threw a set to Shawn. “One of the mages in town left a truck for you.”

“Thanks.” He caught the keys, pocketed them, and gripped Ruth’s elbow. “Let’s get you upstairs. The wind of the open road will help.”

“Huh.” Ruth let him haul her up the neat wooden staircase and into a sunny sitting room. They kept on going across the clean tiled floor with its scattering of Navajo rugs and out to a tidy suburban backyard warm with afternoon sunshine. Ruth tipped her face to the sun and inhaled deeply. She smelled lavender and rosemary, and heard the buzz of bees.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He released her elbow, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze before heading for the side gate. “I reckon that’s our truck.”

She was a fraction slower to move. His sympathy for her portal sickness had been edged with humor, but still real, and it had been a long time since anyone had cared for her. After all, she was the healer. She looked after others. Climbing the stairs just now, she’d leaned on his strength—and that was dangerous.

Shawn was a guardian. Like a healer, he had his own protective instincts.

She had to beware of them. She rubbed her shoulder which tingled where his hand had squeezed briefly. A lonely person had to be careful of mistaking kindness for something more, especially when the kindness came in a sexy package. On the other hand, on this mission, she had a partner, and partners worked together. Her confused resonse to him was something to think about.