Plague Cult Read Online Free

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