The glider door lifted. He frowned as he saw T’Ash’s coat of arms painted on the thing, something people at MidClass Lodge would note. But he didn’t have much time to worry about that because when he slid into the vehicle, he passed out.
More than one of his neighbors helped him into the building and to his door. Vaguely he heard someone ask if it was true that he’d been on a top-secret mission for the FirstFamilies. Whispers about the experiment were getting out. He wondered how soon the news about the murder would surface.
To his surprise, Rusby was able to manipulate the spellshield and lock to open his door, then hissed with mental threats—which Garrett didn’t think anyone could hear—as Garrett was shoved on his couch.
His body sank into depressions he’d previously made in the permamoss cushion. Wonderful.
* * *
Garrett woke at twilight. His body was fine, but in his muzzy state, his mind reached for his HeartMate. Unlike the previous few nights, she wasn’t with him and a quick, sharp fear spurred him awake.
A couple of seconds passed in disorientation, then his stomach rumbled and firmly grounded him. Of course his HeartMate wasn’t near. She’d gone to her own home, wherever that was. Instinctively he tested their bond. It was wider than usual and he narrowed it.
He did sense she was disturbed. Without thought, he sent calm and affection down the bond, realized what he was doing, and shut it down. Not before he noticed that her anxiety had eased.
He was hungry. The apartment had a small kitchen with three no-times stuffed with food . . . another result of the most miserable days of his life, he realized. He always kept a lot of unspoiling food on hand.
By the time he’d taken a few paces toward the kitchen, his body was moving all right and he became aware of the scritch, scritch, scritch sound that had awakened him. Glancing at the wall timer, he saw it was NightBell. He sighed and rubbed his face. At least it wasn’t TransitionBell. He hated waking then. And at least he was home tonight.
Scritch, scritch, rripp.
His chin angled and he abandoned the thought of food for now. His kitten was up to something! Crossing to the bedroom, he saw a dark kitten shadow on the windowsill, claws out. The spellshield was thin there, as if Rusby had already worked on it. Garrett had left the window slightly open, enough for a small kitten to flatten himself through if he could get through the reinforced screen. That Rusby was working on shredding.
Garrett scooped up the cat and got a snarl and scratches on his hand for the effort. He ignored the pain. “Time for food. You look hungry. I am, too. I’ll program access for you to a no-time.” He’d have to limit the portions.
Rusby eyed him, gave a big smile, revealing his baby teeth. D’Ash says I can have little furrabeast steak bites.
Garrett wasn’t even sure where the sphere and the papyrus with instructions were. He put his Fam on the top of the small round kitchen table. “Stay there and I’ll get you some furrabeast and milk formula for you.”
Formula is for babies, I am not a baby! I am a FamCat!
“Yeah.” But Garrett’s neck was burning with the guilt Rusby wanted—he’d missed at least two feedings. He stepped to the no-time food storage unit and looked at the feastday meal section and opened it for Samhain—New Year’s. The scent of prime furrabeast drifted out and his mouth watered. He heard little mouth-smacking noises from his Fam.
They both wanted that feastday meat, and, hell, they both deserved it. The meal was blessed, of course, by the cooks who’d made it and transferred it to his apartment. Garrett cut off a portion of steak and put it on a small dish, set a knife on the meat, and said a spellword. There was a loud grinding noise, then the meat was in tiny bits. He shoved the plate at Rusby, sat down, and cut his first bite, popped it into his mouth, and nearly moaned at the taste.
“Our first meal together.” Garrett cut his next bite. “Enjoy.”
You are the BEST FamMan.
They ate quickly and in silence. As he saw the kitten’s belly stretch, Garrett decided he’d given the cat too much and Rusby wouldn’t have enough room to squeeze in formula milk. The kitten burped, then curled up on the table.
Garrett programmed the lowest no-time to open at the tap of a tiny paw and stocked it with the smallest portions he had. Then he set his wrist timer to remind him to wake the cat in two septhours, tidied the kitchen, found D’Ash’s stuff, and put the formula tubes in the no-time and the instructions on the table.
He took Rusby into the bedroom and deposited him on a pillow on the floor near the waterfall room—he needed a litter box—and went to the window. Long black shadows of the tall trees swayed in the courtyard. He preferred the courtyard view to the ocean, more fun to observe people.
As he tinkered with the screen, and Artemisia’s image rose again in his mind, something tugged at his brain that he couldn’t pin down. Finally he gave up trying to prod the damn bit out and returned to bed. It wasn’t as comfortable as the couch, and dreams and warped memories slithered in to chomp on him.
* * *
Artemisia reported the good news that there was hope for a cure of the Iasc sickness to her Family and BalmHeal Residence at dinner. After the meal she spoke of the murder and the pylor. Her parents were interested but not concerned. Her sister, Tiana, recommended a soak in the Healing pools and Artemisia withdrew from the pressure of Family with a little relief. Tiana followed, carrying a couple of huge towels.
“We don’t have anyone in the sanctuary?” Artemisia asked. The time away felt odd—like she’d been gone for years but had returned to find all was the same.
“No,” Tiana said.
“Just Family, then.” Artemisia smiled, took the thick towel, and hugged it to her, liking the feel of the plush fabric, the smoothness under her fingers—and the fragrance of herbs and not the dreadful remembered scent of pylor.
Tiana’s gaze lingered on her face. “You seem a little different.”
“The circumstances were tense.” Artemisia’s muscles twinged at the recollection. “I was afraid,” she admitted.
“Of what?”
“Losing Garrett.” There! She’d said it.
Seventeen
As Artemisia wished, her sister, Tiana, took the revelation at face value.
“Watching a patient die of Iasc would have been horrible,” Tiana said.
“Yes.” Artemisia squeezed the towel harder. It reminded her that her pillow was in her duffle. A pillow that would smell of TQ and decontamination and the ozone of tech forcefields and maybe even a trace of Garrett. She should never have taken her own pillow. Why had she done that?
Because she’d wanted something of comfort from home and hadn’t realized it would soak up new memories.
She’d already put the silver coins Garrett had given her in her jewelry box. At least they’d be out of sight.
Then the main Healing pool was before them, huge with curving bays. Sparkling blue, even in the late evening. A sigh sifted from her lips as relief trickled through her. Another true blessing at the end of the day.
She and Tiana shucked their clothes and slipped into the indentation of the pool that faced the gate to the northeast. Most desperate people found that gate into the sanctuary. If anyone came tonight, it would probably be from that direction.
The Family had cleared a path to the Healing pool and a few shelters they’d made near it.
Tiana moved to an underwater seat and Artemisia joined her. The hot liquid of the pool, infused with natural herbs and minerals, slid silkily across her skin in the most comforting reminder of home. Again her breath sighed from her. They wouldn’t lose this home, this sanctuary. They were the caretakers. The shields melded with illusion spells on the stone walls around the estate were the strongest in the city, and so the strongest on Celta itself. And an intelligent Residence was a formidable be
ing.
No one could get in to hurt them.
She said, “Not many people know we’re here. Only those the estate have sheltered.”
Tiana’s usually serious expression lightened. “Yes, our parents are safe. If worse comes to worst and Father’s pseudonym were revealed, he would only lose the publication aspect of his new life. He’d still continue to write legal theses and philosophy, but not see them in print. That would be fine with him. And some of those people we—and this estate and BalmHeal Residence—helped have great influence, are in the FirstFamilies.”
Artemisia said, “None of those people can come back, but they do know of the sanctuary and us.”
“Why do you think this strange murder would have anything to do with us?” Tiana asked.
Artemisia would have said she’d felt it in her bones, but now her bones soaked up heat and seemed almost pliable. She shook her head and her nape was caressed by water, lovely, so she tilted her chin up and saw the thick, bright spangles of stars flaming into view as the sky deepened into night black. “The smell of pylor brought the whole nasty situation back to me.” She waved a languid hand on the top of the pool, sending ripples to the center. “The fear and cold and hopelessness.”
“Yes, that time was bad for us. But perhaps you thought the worst because you had recently endured a dangerous situation.”
“The Iasc project? Perhaps.”
“That and seeing your patient fight for his life in another dreadful situation,” Tiana continued. “The Turquoise House kept BalmHeal Residence—and us—briefed.
“He must have gone into detail.”
“Yes. BalmHeal Residence missed you dreadfully.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You felt you had to do this project because you were asked?”
“Because FirstLevel Healer Ura Heather asked and thinks me expendable.” That shot out with more force and bitterness than Artemisia had expected.
Reaching over, Tiana tugged at a wet tail of Artemisia’s hair. “Let it out. It scares me that you think you must always be serene.”
“I like a serene life. And being calm around patients reassures them.” Artemisia couldn’t just sit there. She floated to her feet, then marched back and forth against the pressure of the water, splashing her discontent. “I hated that time in our lives when everyone was against us. When we begged our distant cuzes to take us in and were rejected. When we sold everything for tiny and cold and uncomfortable rooms. People treated us like pariahs, like criminals, and we did nothing to deserve that.” She aimed an index finger at Tiana. “Don’t tell me that Mother doesn’t still have scars. She would rather be working in a busy HealingHall.” Artemisia threw her arms wide, above the level of the pool. “Instead she is here, tending to the few utterly desperate who find the sanctuary despite themselves.”
Tiana nodded. “Is that why you want to work in a HealingHall, so you can tell Mother about it and the gossip?”
“Maybe I do it for her, but I do it for myself, too,” Artemisia replied. The short exercise had stimulated her blood and she wanted to swim.
“And FirstLevel Healer Ura Heather reminded you that you were at Primary HealingHall on sufferance.”
Artemisia pushed out her lower lip and huffed a breath to get a strand of wet hair away from her eyes. “She didn’t treat me well.”
Garrett Primross had been irritated with her, too, but she’d thought that had been personal. He didn’t like her for some reason—but he was aware of her as a person and an individual.
Ura Heather didn’t even seem to notice Artemisia—as if the woman had taken one look at her when they’d met two months back, determined Artemisia was a daughter of the disgraced Mugwort Family, and, therefore, was beneath Heather’s august notice.
After another huff of breath, Artemisia said, “Well, I can let my bitterness boil out here, but must watch my step at Primary HealingHall, before Heather and the others.”
“Your career is so important to you?” Tiana probed softly.
Artemisia grinned. “Not as important to me as yours is to you. But my people are more snobbish. You can use our true surname and still rise to the top of the pyramid. That won’t happen to me. I am only SecondLevel in Healing. You have the ambition in the Family.” She began to swim to the far end and back, and found her sister gone by the time she reached the seats.
Artemisia had regained her serenity. She’d always have the pool and the estate and grouchy BalmHeal Residence and her Family to help her keep that inner calm, which, in turn, she could share with her patients.
She’d cleared out the scent of pylor from her nostrils and banished through a vigorous summer night’s swim all past cold and scary winters.
She’d overreacted. The murder would have nothing to do with her or her Family.
* * *
Screaming filled his restless sleep, dragging him to the surface of wakefulness. Where he didn’t want to go, because something terrible was there.
He jerked up, covered in cold and clammy sweat, blinked against the bright white walls and the horrible smell. The quiet. Soon he’d walk the halls of the clinic and find everyone dead and decomposing. Soon he’d see Dinni. He retched but nothing came out of his mouth.
But it wasn’t light. Night painted black and gray shadows in the room. No smell of his own piss or shit or worse, rotting humans, slammed into his lungs. No, it was memory that hit like a hammer.
Dinni was dead. Everyone in the clinic was dead. Years ago and he didn’t need to remember her like that. The last he’d seen of her had been only the shell of her body that she’d left. Her sunny and sparkling spirit had moved on to the wheel of stars and her next life.
No, no, no!
The damn nightmares were worse than suffering through the whole incident with Dinni and her baby and driving the quarantine bus to the clinic again. At the time . . . even reliving it . . . he’d had hope. He had fought his hardest to do his job, save his girl.
Now, in the aftermath, bitter memories shuddered through him. No hope. He’d fought and lost.
And with the night, the scars in his memory had ripped open and throbbed and bled anew.
Mind scrabbling to find something else to think about, disparate facts fell into place and he had a clear idea of Artemisia and how she’d lied to him.
Anger sizzled through him, his fingers fisted until his knuckles showed white.
Artemisia used the last name of Panax, a distant relation of the Healer Family, the Ginsengs. But her true surname was Mugwort. As in the Mugworts who had been implicated in the Black Magic Cult murders. Murders that had used pylor.
She must have recognized the scent, and she was a good enough Healer to know what had happened to the man—the blow to the head, the drugging, the blood loss that killed him. She hadn’t said a word about that to Garrett.
For three days and nights he’d trusted her. With his body. With his life. Trusted her to be there, close, when he struggled through memories and dreams. Grew to depend upon her, had respected her.
She hadn’t trusted him.
She’d lied to him. Hurt and rage roared through him, scouring him.
She’d lied to him!
Wha’? Wha’s wrong? Artemisia’s telepathic words slipped into his head, stunning him. He’d projected strongly enough to rouse her.
He shouldn’t answer, should reduce the bond between them, not let it expand with emotions, with anger. You lied to me.
About what?
That made him grit his teeth. More than one thing, obviously. First item, your name. Your true surname isn’t Panax, it’s Mugwort. As in the Mugworts who were tied to pylor and the Black Magic Cult murders.
Yes. Her words crackled with her own anger down their link. As in the Mugworts who had a lady whose religion was different, and because
of that, because she had incense that most households in Druida had, containing a small amount of pylor, we were scourged by the newssheets.
“Lady,” he sneered. You were also Nobles. He flipped through the information in his brain about NobleHouses. You were a GraceHouse. You would have been GraceMistrys Mugwort.
He kept his mental tone smooth as a sharp blade. And you, as a Mugwort and a Healer, knew the scent of pylor, probably understood what had happened to that murdered man as soon as I examined him.
YOU examined the body.
I asked if you knew the smell. You said no.
I . . . shook my head.
I asked your opinion, you said NOTHING.
Her silence went on a beat too long, twisting unbearable hurt within him. My mistake—he made sure his tone was mocking—thinking you were honorable enough to help without being asked.
Thinking I was too stupid to understand what I saw, more like, she shot back.
Had she tossed her head? Maybe.
And it took you long enough to think everything through. And when you did, you anger and rage like a man, blaming me. Waking me. I’m tired of that and of YOU and your own self-righteousness.
Self-righteous! Haven’t you wondered why I was able to contact you mentally?
She snorted this time. A bond often forms between a Healer and a patient in such shared circumstances. Don’t worry about it. It will fade. The sooner, the better.
He laughed and made sure she heard it through their bond. No, it won’t. Not a link between HeartMates, DEAREST.
Complete shock vibrated through their connection. Gasping, maybe. Heart thundering—he could feel how her pulse raced.
NO! IT CAN’T BE.
Yeah. It is. He sensed her thoughts fluttering.
You can’t tell me! It’s against all our laws to tell me that I am your HeartMate. It takes away my free will!
His turn to snort. Yeah, let’s call the guards. We can tell them all about Artemisia Mugwort who helped discover the body of a murdered man. A Healer who kept her mouth shut as to how he died. Do you know who he was? Are you hiding that, too?
Heart Secret Page 16