Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:03:43 GMT -5
Chapter Seven – What the Elders Don't Know
4:45AM (7:45AM in NY)
Josias Hinshaw watched as his youngest charge waved her hands at a broken park bench. Pansy Haskell giggled as she watched the bench repair itself.“You’d better be careful, Pan,” Josias warned her. “Using magic outside is risky.”
“I know,” Pansy assured him. “No one is around though. Everyone is so sick,” she added sadly.
New York was indeed a quiet place since the illness had swept through it. Just about everything was closed down. With only weeks left till school ended every school in New York was closed. The majority of the students and the majority of the teachers were hospitalized with at most two days to live unless something changed. At quarter ‘til five in the morning no self respecting girl of five-years-and-ten-months was even thinking about school.
Pansy wasn’t either. She was thinking about the fact that three-fourths of her kindergarten class was either sick or dead. Someone so young shouldn’t have to be worrying about things like death and illness.
Josias was not, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, an optimist, but seeing Pansy sad made him want to be one so he could see his way into cheering her up. When he’d “signed up” to be a whitelighter, babysitting a child witch had not been what he’d had in mind, but now that Elizabeth had her orbing ability back most of their combined charges were now just hers and Josias found himself babysitting Pansy a lot. Pansy’s mom, Portia, seemed to be the only charge left who needed him at all.
“Carrie’s funeral is later,” Pansy whispered, referring to a friend from school who had died on the fourth, two days before. “Can you take me?”
“Don’t you want your mom to take you?” he asked. Like any normal person, he didn’t like funerals. He’d been to far too many in his time.
“I don’t think she’ll be off in time,” Pansy informed him. “Mom’s not sick. Not sick means if your job’s not closed, you work.”
Isn’t that the truth? “Would you like to go somewhere else?” he suggested as he watched a woman on a phone drop the phone and break down in sobs.
“No,” Pansy decided, not seeing the woman. “I like it here. It’s quiet.”
He sighed. Too quiet.
“If you want to go somewhere else, just call Elizabeth,” she suggested. “She likes me.”
Oh, great, now she thinks this is about my opinion of her, he thought as he used his body as a barrier to keep her from seeing the sobbing woman. He didn’t think he wanted any questions about that.
“Where is she anyway?” Pansy asked, adding, “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Come to think of it, neither had he. Normally, he would have seen her at staff meetings if nothing else, but because of what was going on with Cassia, Kevin had canceled them for the time being. He’d always like Kevin’s staff meetings. They had much more life than some of the others he had been to.
“I wish I knew more spells,” Pansy mumbled in a soft frustrated voice.
“What?” Josias looked at her surprised. “More spells? What for? You’ve got years before you need to worry about spells.”
“I want to stop the dying,” Pansy pouted. “It’s bad magic, isn’t it?”
“Bad magic,” he repeated, thinking about those words. Without warning he heaved her up into his arms. “Okay, kiddo, we are going to drop you off at your grandma’s house for a little while.”
“But Gammy’s busy,” Pansy protested.
“She’s not at work,” Josias informed her as he walked over to a clump of trees. “That’s the main thing. I need to go talk to my boss and it’s forbidden to take living beings Up There.”
She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “Fine. But Gammy’s not going to be happy.”
“She adores you,” he argued. “She won’t care all that much. And I’ll be back as soon as I can talk to my boss.” You guys seem to forget that my job isn’t actually watching Pansy all day every day. He glanced around to double check that no one was watching him and then he orbed out.
They reappeared in an upscale New York City apartment. Josias put Pansy down. “Let’s go tell your grandma that you’re here.”
“I’ll tell her,” Pansy decided running down the hall. “Gammy! I’m here!”
Josias groaned and hurried after her. “Pansy, wait! You can’t just . . .”
“Phil’s not here,” Jason Hudson, Pansy’s grandfather informed them as he scooped his granddaughter up into his arms. “Is everything all right?”
“Other than the obvious?” Josias asked as he slowed to a stop.
“That should go without saying,” Jason commented. “Why were you watching Pansy?”
“Portia was busy,” Josias shrugged.
“I see,” Jason looked at him confused. “Well, I can watch her. Don’t worry about that.”
“You haven’t gotten any symptoms have you?”
Jason shook his head. “No, I don’t know why, but Phil doesn’t think I’m immune, just lucky.”
“Gampy, I’m scared,” Pansy announced as she snuggled up next to him.
“Pansy, honey, go get some water from the fridge,” Jason directed her. “I need to talk to your friend.”
Pansy ran down the hall leaving the two men alone.
Josias looked at Jason expectantly. “What do you need?”
“Scott’s stage five,” Jason informed him deadpan. “That’s why Phil’s not here. She went with Lissi to be at his bedside when he dies. It’s only been six months since they lost their mom. How are they supposed to deal with losing their dad, too?”
Josias didn’t have an answer for that. He stayed silent, sure that Jason had more to say.
“And we can’t reach Rayne, so Lissi and Phelicia have that on their minds, too,” Jason sighed. “This whole family’s falling apart. Do you know anything? Anything?”
“I’m going to go talk to my boss,” Josias told him. “I’m hoping he can talk to the others and between them they’ll know something that can put a stop to this.”
Pansy ran down the hall toward them with three bottled waters. “Got them, Gampy! I even got one for Josias.”
Josias waved her hand away as she held it up to him. “Sorry, Pan. I have to get going. The sooner I talk to my boss, the sooner I can find out what he knows.”
Jason took the bottle of water Pansy offered him. “Pansy, I was just about to head out. Your Gammy . . . well, she’s visiting her dad and she . . .”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. He’s . . .” She wrapped her arms around his legs and sobbed.
Jason picked her up and held her in his arms. He looked over her head as he hugged her tight. “Good luck.”
Josias nodded and orbed out . . . and right back in. He frowned. He orbed out, again, with the same results. His frown grew and he saw a matching one growing on Jason’s face. He forced a quick grin and orbed out.
This time it worked, but that didn’t help much, since the destination had changed. He found himself across the country in Kevin’s apartment. It amused him that Kevin even had one, but Kevin was the only living elder and when he could, he actually had a life. He took his job as an elder fairly seriously . . . most of the time, but he also wasn’t serious just for the sake of being serious as he suspected some of the elders where. He earned respect from those under him and that just made people respect him all the more.
Josias tapped his hand against the wall. “Kevin.” He knew he should have his cell on him, but the things had never sat well with him, so he hadn’t even bothered to report it when he’d lost it. Now, he was beginning to wish he had. Hopefully they would have found it by now. Thankfully, there was a magical switchboard at Kevin’s place that could be used by any of the whitelighters Kevin had issued one to to reach any of the phones. When this was over, he was going to see if Kevin would use it to try and find the missing phone.
“What did I tell you about calling me today?” Kevin’s voice boomed through the intercom wired throughout the apartment. The fact that “today” for Kevin had been going on for almost two weeks didn’t need bringing up. It was rather irrelevant anyway.
“Only call if it’s an emergency,” Josias repeated the order each of them had received when Cassia had been brought Up There to go before the elders.
“And?” Kevin pressed.
“And there are an estimate seventy million people who are in varying degrees of dying on four continents with a death count somewhere near eleven thousand,” Josias informed him. “Over five thousand of those died in the last hour alone. I’d say that constitutes an emergency.”
There was silence on the other end as Kevin absorbed Josias’s words. “Eleven thousand people are dead? From what?”
“We don’t know,” Josias admitted. “They’re calling it the witch’s fever, because it originated about fifty miles from Salem, Massachusetts in a town called Duxbury.”
“What can we do, though?” Kevin asked in protest. “It’s a disease. “There’s nothing magical about that.”
“How about the fact that so far as anyone magical can tell, not one magical person has gotten sick?”
There was silence on Kevin’s end, again. “None?”
“Kari’s fine, Kevin,” Josias retorted.
“I wasn’t asking that,” Kevin was quick to protest.
“Then, let me get that over, your family is fine with the exception of your brother-in-law, who as far as I know does not have the witch’s fever,” Josias informed him. “As best I can tell, he has pneumonia and they can cure that.”
“I didn’t ask,” Kevin protested, again.
“I know,” Josias agreed, “but if I was you, I’d think it and I don’t need you focused on them. I need your focus on finding out if there is anything the other elders know about this.”
“Perhaps you should come up here and ask them yourself,” Kevin suggested.
“I tried,” Josias informed him, resigned. “It didn’t work. I can orb, but I can’t orb Up There.”
There was another bout of silence and Josias wished he could see Kevin. The guy made a magical phone system. Why couldn’t he have used phones with video conferencing?
“I can’t orb to you,” Kevin informed him, sounding a little spooked. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“It takes about five days to kill a person,” Josias informed him. “That’s about five hours for you, which means in five of your hours, the death count will be around seventy million. They go into comas about twelve hours before they die. I’ve just been informed that Scott Nielson, the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of pretty much all the charges I have left, is in those twelve hours. I lost a charge, two days ago.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look I don’t know. Everybody’s pretty much freaked out. It’s mostly contained in North America and northern South America, but yesterday is hit Europe and Africa. Nothing yet in Asia or Australia, but at the rate this is going, it’s only a matter of time. We don’t know how it’s spreading. There are people who are completely isolated that come down with it and people who work in hospitals, not many mind you, who are untouched.” He sighed and sank down on to Kevin’s couch.
“Okay, place of origin is Duxbury, Massachusetts,” Kevin repeated, trying to organize the information in his head. “No known magical victims. Five days before death. And you have no idea how it’s been spread.”
“That’s pretty much it,” Josias admitted. “Eight days and we know nothing.”
“Eight days, huh?” Kevin sighed. “Can your charges look into this at all?”
“Scott’s dying,” Josias shook his head, despite the fact that Kevin couldn’t see him. “There’s no way they are going to be able to focus. Lissi and Phil were a mess when Paula died in November. Phelicia and Portia don’t really know enough magic to be of much use. And forget asking Pansy. She’s five. She can fix a lot of things, but she can’t fix this.”
“All right,” Kevin sighed. “Half my whitelighters are up here, more than half actually.” He paused and then amended, “Actually, I think only you, JD, and Tessie are down there. I need you to do something for me while I look into this. Make sure you have your phone on you.”
“Um . . .” Josias began.
“It’s in the drawer in the end table next to the couch in my living room,” Kevin informed him. “Make sure you take the right one. There are six of them right now. JD, Cassia, and Mikelle seem to be the only ones who manage to keep track of them. We’ll discuss that later, when all this is over.”
Josias pulled open the drawer in the end table and blinked. Sure enough, there were six cell phones there.
“Get it after I hang up,” Kevin instructed him. “I have some things for you to do and the sooner I get off the sooner I can start looking into this. Now, sit down.”
Josias sat down. Some days he wondered why he listened to a kid who had never shaved. This was not going to be one of those days.