Plague Cult by Jenny Schwartz Page B

them so that they weren’t able to see healthy ways of dealing with their problems, but reached instead for death magic, which would destroy them.
    It always did.
    She and Shawn were here to ensure that it didn’t hurt others, or provide the power boost to jump a curse into a plague.
    Two women walked out of the cabin nearest to Ruth. The compound was lit enough for safety, but they carried torches anyway, and the younger of them flicked hers this way and that, the beam darting to destroy shadows, only to flinch away.
    Death magic destroyed people’s nerves.
    Ruth had to control her instinct to send out a protective, soothing energy.
    The two women were badly distressed. They huddled together as they nearly ran the last few steps into the main building.
    They’d have done better to run away.
    A truck drove into the compound. Ruth heard it first, then saw the headlights. Shawn ghosted back to her as Jared Hill and Erica got out of the truck and hurried to the main building. It was as if their arrival signaled the meeting’s opening. Two more men left their cabins and called greetings.
    Ten to eleven.
    Shawn clasped her hand.
    The warmth and positive energy of him glowed through her, and she tightened her fingers convulsively around his.
    “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