Wildwood Magic by Willa Reece

Author:Willa Reece [REECE, WILLA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2023-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

Adam

“There she is,” Adam said, shifting the car into drive.

Morgan’s Gap was quiet on a Monday morning, with only a few other cars coming and going on the street.

“Her arms are full. No wonder she was in there for such a long while,” Thomas said. His voice sounded as jittery as his movements. It set Adam’s teeth on edge.

“Trash. All of it is trash. Places like that should be burned to the ground. All they do is fill people with ideas,” he said. Spittle flew from his lips and he wiped them with the back of his hand.

“I liked children’s story hour when I was a kid. I don’t think there was any harm in it?” Thomas said.

Adam gripped the steering wheel tightly to keep from backhanding the ignoramus beside him.

“Reverend Gray hates libraries. He says the only books we need are the Bible and Ezekiel Gray’s Prayer Book,” he replied instead. He’d begun to doubt that he’d been paired with the best person to carry out Sect business. The man beside him—who was now chewing on his thumbnail like a rabbit caught in a steel trap—was pining after heathen nursery rhymes and film strips.

“She seems pretty harmless,” Thomas said in a voice now muffled by nervous nibbles.

The woman had placed her filthy haul in the passenger seat of her car as gently as she would have placed an innocent baby. Now she got behind the wheel.

“We are on Sect business. Reverend Gray wants us to keep an eye on people who aren’t living right. On loose and uppity women like this one. The community is getting out of hand and he’s working to save Morgan’s Gap. It isn’t up to us to pass judgment. We are his eyes, his ears and his fists if need be,” Adam said. To illustrate he slammed his palms against the steering wheel.

His companion jerked as if he had been hit, and again he wondered if the jumpy man—no more than a boy, really—wasn’t backsliding some.

“God’s will be done,” Adam intoned, as a promise and a test.

“God’s will be done,” Thomas repeated. With true fervor or with pretended piousness? Doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas. Doubting Thomas. The thought repeated in his brain along with the remembered sound of Thomas’s teeth on his fingernails: nip, nip, nip.

As they followed the woman’s small car at a safe distance, Adam decided he would have to speak to Reverend Gray in private about his doubt in his fellow acolyte’s worth. And about the troublesome women they’d encountered in Morgan’s Gap as they were witnessing. He would reassure the prophet of his own willingness to do whatever he was called to do.

He’d been called to serve God, to serve Reverend Gray and to devote everything in his life to the Sect. His land. His fists. His entire body and soul.

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