Blue House Magic: A Fireseed book, #3

By Catherine Stine

This little treasure box of stories from USA Today bestselling author Catherine Stine contains three offerings. The first is Blue House Magic, the sequel novella to her popular futuristic Fireseed series. The second is a story called A Strange Penitence. The third is the first chapter of Fireseed One, which kicked off the Fireseed series. This collection is a great introduction to Stine's work.

Blue House Magic: Can Ruby, a talented seer find a cure for the baffling plague drifting down from the enemy north before it's too late? 

A Strange Penitence: A young artist pays a supernatural price when a drawing trip turns deadly.

Fireseed One: Set on the future earth, the son of a famous marine biologist must travel to a lethal hot zone with his worst enemy, a girl who helped destroy the world's food source, to search for a mythical hybrid plant that may not even exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Stine
• Release date: Sep 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9780984828296

Catherine Stine

Catherine Stine is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fantasy, sci-fi thrillers, paranormal romance and YA fiction. Her novels have earned Indie Notable awards and New York Public Library Best Books for Teens. She lives in Manhattan and loves spending time with her beagle, writing about witches and other fabulous characters, gardening on her deck, and meeting readers at book fests. Find out more at catherinestine.com

Book preview

RUBY

Blane takes Ruby’s hand. Inviting her out of bed and over to the shower he tests the water before they enter. Inside, he draws her close for a hug under the warm spray. She dreamed up this wave blue house when they were still in Skull’s Wrath desert, struggling to fit in with a group of angry misfits—Blane one of them.

He crafted this shower by hand, after he and Ruby butted heads getting to know each other while at a school competition in Vegas-by-the-Sea, after they discovered they had more in common that they ever imagined—loneliness, mistreatment, frustrated dreams. Good things, too. A shared passion to craft a hopeful future, a burning need to gather a motley tribe.

After they fell in love and moved here together.

Blane lathers Ruby’s long red hair and she lathers his close-shorn brown locks. They slide their hands all over each other, enjoying the feel of supple flesh and taut muscle, curve to solid line, the sound of their breaths rising and falling in quickened harmony. In bed, they complete the blissful union. Once sworn enemies, they are now inseparable friends and lovers. How far they’ve come in these last three years.

You’re my favorite soul mate, Ruby tells Blane.

You’re my goddess and my sweetness, he replies, kissing her forehead.

This blue wave house is their sanctuary in a practically lawless land. Ruby blows him another kiss as he suits up and heads into the blistering heat that is the Hotzone. Mirage trails of molten gold glitter around Blane as she watches him walk to his flycar. He’s off to the docks, where he works loading cargo vessels, which carry Fireseed plants of many varieties, mostly bound to points south, but a very few to northern dominions. Since the Fireseed was discovered down here about fifteen years ago, the Hotzone is finally able to feed its starving people. They now have varieties that strengthen muscles, provide vitamins and even change people into half plant. They need plant properties to survive the heat and glean food from the sun.

After all, Fireseed is part human.

Businesses are opening and the sectors are trying to restore the laws and civil society they had before the droughts, before this land became like a pack of rampaging, feral wolves, ready to kill for a morsel.

But how does one put the genie back in the bottle? How does one inspire people to follow the rule of law when it’s become second nature to steal, blackmail, even murder? That’s why the prisons here are full and many who should be locked up roam freely.

The wharf where Blane works lies just under the glass monstrosity of the Vegas-by-the-Sea jail. Why they built it over the city’s main docks is a mystery. Its long slab of building juts out, inflicting the dreadful shadows of thieves and murderers pacing their cells on the docks below. Ruby can’t understand the whys and wherefores of the world. She’s better at healing injuries others have already inflicted.

Ruby heads into her salon. Cartons are stacked, ready to ship across the spreading metropolis to Caprice. She’s a healer, too, and owns a share of the business: Ruby’s Blue Magic. Ruby sells relief and freedom from fear in her signature elixirs and potions she’s devised since childhood. She sells hope.

Paralyzing salve made from lizards for pain-free surgery.

Healing balm from Wolf spiders and the veins of Fireseed plants.

Divination powder from Fireseed pollen mixed with pulverized sea leather.

 Three inhales and a picture forms bright as starlight on a cloudless night.

Ruby glances around the room. The wave blue house Blane built for them five years ago on the shores still thrills her. The rooms are modest but clean, and they even have a small pool out back. Sometimes in the dead of night, the air cools just enough to take a quick swim in a lightly protective suit. It’s a place of gently sloped angles and cubbies that reflect the oddly blue sky. Back in Skull’s Wrath the sky was more of a toxic pink, but scientists down here say the sky is slowly getting back to the way it was many years ago. A miracle in itself.

 The teal curtains, flapping free in the sea breeze remind her how lucky they are to have escaped Skull’s Wrath. The school there, set in harsh desert was almost as ghastly as the Fireseed cult she ran from before it.

Ruby’s musing done, she secures the last elixir bottle in the carton and seals it. A noise behind her startles. Its as if tumbleweeds from Skull’s Wrath desert were scratching at the