Post by StoryGirl83 on Nov 10, 2011 23:39:00 GMT -5
Chapter Eighteen – No News is Bad News
and an unnamed demon
9:42 AM
Cilly walked away from the various cupids she had talked. To say she was annoyed at the entire community of cupids was an understatement. At least some of them had been apologetic, which had made her see those few in a more favorable light. It hadn’t however helped her find a cure.
She was about fifty feet from the exit and ability to leave and return to the manor when a hand clasped on her shoulder. She turned around and found the cupid she and Chris had met when they had gone to the cupid resort a couple of weeks before. “Are you able to help me? Or do you have more cryptic comments?”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with the epidemic,” he told her, causing Cilly to scowl.
“Then why did you stop me?” she asked as she started back toward the exit.
He grabbed her arm gently and pulled her to a stop. “Hear me out.”
She sighed. “People are dying down there. Don’t you care?”
He nodded. “I care, but I’ve never seen anything like that before and I hope I never do, again.”
“Then, why stop me?”
The cupid handed her a box. “I don’t know enough to help you find then, but after you and your cousin left I tried to see what I could find. I found someone who was able to tell me that if you find them in time you will need this.”
“In time?” Cilly asked with a gulp. “What do you mean in time?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I got the impression she didn’t care one way or the other and she just wants to give you enough to mess with your head.”
Cilly gulped, again. “Do you trust her?”
The cupid shook his head. “No, but if there’s even the slightest chance that this will help, I want you to have it.”
Cilly finally accepted the small boy and gave him a wobbly smile. “Thanks. I’ve got to get going. Hopefully my family is having more luck. Then I am. This is killing me too many people.” She let out a shaky breath. “Yesterday a friend of mine died along with both of her parents, her sister, and two of her three brothers. How does a twelve-year-old boy deal with the loss of his entire family?”
“With people like you who care to see him through,” the cupid informed her. “If I learned anything useful, either about what is going on or about your parents, I will get word to you. Be careful.”
She nodded. “I will. Thank you.” This time when she tried to leave, he let her. As soon as she reached the entrance she disappeared with the little box in pink and white hearts.
9:43 AM
Seth froze in place and, moving again, pinned himself up against the wall to let someone pass by. For once it sounded like someone actually knew something about the disease and he wasn’t going to leave without finding and if they had useful info.
“They’re calling it witch’s fever,” one voice claimed, annoyance in his voice. “Mother is furious. The idea that witches are getting credit for this has her throwing humans around, literally.”
There was a chuckle as the other being, a raspy voice, scaled skinned demon with glowing red eyes replied. “She’s being careless?”
“Have you ever known my mother to be careless?” the first voice asked.
That brought a full bodied laugh from the demon. “No, William, I don’t believe I ever have. How is the rest of your family handling it?”
William shrugged. “I don’t think most of them care. Elisa probably doesn’t even know. She’s too busy enjoying the torment she pours out on the Warrens.”
“It’s amazing how single minded that sister of yours can be,” the demon commented.
“It’s amazing how single minded all my sister can be,” William retorted. “When mother finally found a family of witches with which to perform the ritual that would turn us into warlocks, it was because Elisa was already causing trouble for the family after Patrick Warren rejected her. And then of course there had to be some sort of ridiculous matriarchal power linage which kept her sons from having the magic passed on to them. Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
The demon opened his mouth to answer and then shut it, clearly thinking better of whatever he was about to say.
William didn’t even notice. “It worked out all right, because Mother learned that there had been a daughter and she sent Marie to fetch her body. It had been buried at Sea and only Marie could possibly manage to get it. She moves fast enough that she can reach the bottom of the ocean without running out of breath. Not to mention she could search miles of ocean floor in a relatively short time and find the girl’s body.”
The demon looked like he was almost afraid to ask. “And your other sister?”
“Well, I suppose Louise might have noticed this name thing,” William conceded. “It was her baby after all. While Marie was busy finding Caroline Warren’s body and Elisa was busy framing Patrick Warren for theft, Louise had time to think and she decided to expand on mother’s idea. She came up with the additions to mother’s spell that would affect the nonmagicals among us and she came up with the best way to keep someone from casting a counter spell.” William sighed. “Unfortunately we discovered much too late that there already was a family of witches in our village and while they didn’t have what it took to counter the spell they did manage to stop its progress for one hundred and thirty years and when the time was up they were ready. Hardly anyone died. The third time was just as disappointing and George got fed up. He decided to cast a spell that erased all written info on this.” William grinned. “It is working wonderfully. Nine days and thousands are dead. Millions are infected. Even if they manage to figure out the spell to stop its progress, they’ll wipe out about a tenth of the world’s population in the process. Either way we’ve won.”
Seth gulped. Surely he didn’t mean everyone who was sick was going to die no matter what. There had to be a way to save them. He couldn’t lose Peter or Uncle Leo.
“Oliver’s having fun with it,” William commented.
The demon looked at him questioningly. “Oh? The boy isn’t exposing magic is he?”
“Hardly, though he may be moving a bit fast for the media not to be a little curious. I suspect he’s got his sister working with him, but that’s not all that important. Jessica will do just about anything Oliver tells her to and I doubt he’s letting her kill anyone, since he enjoys smothering the lives out of them so much.” There was a sigh and then the sound of footsteps.
Seth moved away from the wall and headed down the hall, hoping he didn’t seem suspicious. When he rounded a corner he shimmered away.
9:47 AM
“How can we know nothing after all this time has passed?” Alanna bemoaned as she threw another failed attempt at writing a spell across the room. "Shouldn't we at least know the spell they used the last two times?”
"We know who started it," Jani reminded her. "That's something, right?"
Her sister just glared back at her.
"It's a start," Jani insisted. "We didn't even have that before."
"But how can that help us?" Alanna demanded to know. "We can't research them."
Jani wrinkled her nose and sighed. "That I don't know."
Alanna growled and threw her pencil across the room. "We don't have time for this! People are dying while we discuss this."
Neither sister heard the attic door open and neither of them saw their mom enter. They were too focused.
Jani walked over to where her sister's pencil fell and reached down. She picked it up and walked over to her sister. "So we keep looking. We keep trying. Right now your job is to write spells and hopefully find the one we need."
"What about you?" Alanna asked, focusing her attention on her sister. "I haven't seen you do much of anything. How are you contributing to this? How do you ever contribute to magical matters?"
Paige considered if she should interfere.
Jani sighed and sank down on the couch. "I'm still trying to figure that out. I can't spell without a spell checker and I certainly can't rhyme most of the time. That makes it kind of tough to write a spell. And I may be a better chef then Wyatt, but really, how hard is that? Everyone knows he can't cook."
"Everyone except Hank," Alanna managed a giggle. "Hank keeps insisting that Wyatt can cook."
"Speaking of our little brother," Jani added, "I don't think I could stay focused as much as he does. He spends hours pouring over the book of shadows Mom copied. And now we learn that he can't even cast spells, but he studies them and learns them." She sighed. "All I can do is freeze things in ice."
"You did find that info on the internet though," Alanna commented, remembering why Ladybug wasn't there. "That might help. And you are always finding those obscure links online." She shrugged. "It's the digital age. Maybe that's what we need you doing."
Paige smiled as she listened to her daughters talk. She was about to announce her presence when the air in the center of the room shimmered. Paige tensed, but reasoning that most demons weren't that stupid, she waited.
As Seth fully appeared in the center of the room Paige relaxed. There had to be some way to know ahead of time that it was Seth so they didn't let their guard down around actually dangerous demons, but she'd worry about that later. "How's your brother doing, Seth?"
The twins looked up startled, clearly not expecting to see anyone else there. Jani grinned at the sight of Seth. "It's nice to see you, Seth."
He shook his head and ignored her. "Peter's no better or worse than anyone else at his stage in this awful curse, which means bad. And if that's not bad enough we have to worry about a duo of warlocks bent on killing everyone even faster."
"You know about that?" Paige asked surprised.
"Two warlocks?" Alanna asked, equally surprised. "Where'd you hear that? We didn't even know warlocks were involved."
"Their uncle was chatting with a demon in the underworld," Seth scowled. "How did you know about this and not do something about it?"
"Because we don't know anything," Alanna shot back. "All we know is that people in New England are being smothered to death and that whoever is responsible is moving quickly between hospitals, but we don't know when they might strike next or where."
Seth's scowl deepened. He took a step back and sighed. "We're running in circles aren't we?"
Alanna grimaced. “Seems a little like that doesn’t it, but we are making progress.” She sighed.
“Did you learn anything else?” Paige asked as she approached them.
Before he could answer pink hearts whirled around and Cilly appeared with her little box in her hands. Without a word, she closed the space between her and one of the shelves and put the box there. As much as she wanted desperately to find and help her parents, she knew now wasn’t the time to bring up what the cupid had given her. She turned around to find everyone looking at her.
“What’s with the box?” Alanna asked as she started toward Cilly.
Cilly shook her head. “That’s for later, after this is all over.” When no one seemed to take the hint, she signed. “It has to do with my parents.”
“If we could find Phoebe . . .” Paige started.
“But we can’t,” Cilly interrupted. “This won’t help find them. It’s something else. Later. Okay?”
Paige nodded. “Okay. Back to the Richmonds and this disease.”
“Curse,” Seth countered.
“Curse?” Paige looked at him surprised. “How do you figure?”
“There’s no such thing as a magical immunity,” Seth argued. “Not from illness there isn’t. This isn’t an illness. It’s a curse, because a curse is set to affect a specific person or group of persons. Some curses are spell and counter spell. Some are potions or blood oaths. Most likely there is a spell that caused this. I just don’t know how it is that this chooses it’s victims.”
“It’s in the water,” Alanna informed him. “Or at least WF thinks so.”
“WF?” Seth looked at her confused.
“WitchFever,” Jani explained. “He or she is a user on twitter that is claiming this is being spread by the water.”
“They are suggesting using bottled water or avoiding water all together until this is done,” Alanna added.
“Which is probably why Dad’s not sick,” Jani interrupted. “His boss has the whole department on a water bottle diet.”
Seth took this in and thought back. “Dad’s been living out of a vending machine since Peter got sick.”
Paige frowned as she processed that. When it hit her what he had said, her eyes widened. “Which is why the families of the sick aren’t getting sick.”
“It makes sense,” Seth agreed.
“About two weeks ago, Henry’s boss put the entire department on a water bottle diet,” Paige informed him. “It was pretty odd, but it was supposed to be a limited time thing, a couple of weeks, maybe a month. The memo about it even said to use bottled water for coffee. That’s why the medical staff’s getting sick. They’re like Wyatt. They’re not sleeping. They’re drinking coffee. Loads and loads of tap water coffee. This is sounding more and more like WF is right.”
“This whole thing is petty,” Seth announced to no one in particular.
Paige looked at him, surprised at the pronouncement. “What do you mean?”
“They didn’t spell it all out,” Seth admitted, “but I got the idea that jealousy or revenge was involved. The warlock, William, said something about his sister framing someone.” Seth froze. “Warren! Didn’t Aunt Phoebe tell me that Melinda Warren was the founder of your line?”
Cilly nodded. “I think you listened better than some of my cousins.”
Seth let a smile slip onto his lips for just a moment.
“Why do you ask though?” she asked.
The smile dropped. “William said something about his sister, Elisa, being framed someone named Patrick Warren. Do you think he could be related?”
“I came across his name in the Book of Shadows once,” a voice informed them from the doorway.
Five sets of eyes turned toward the door. Seeing her son standing there rubbing his eyes Paige frowned, Hank’s word’s not registering yet. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I’m awake now,” Hank protested. “What is this about Patrick Warren?”
“Who is he?” Seth wanted to know.
Hank squeezed his eyes shut trying to think. “My mother likes to tell me stories about my papa. She says that he was a brave man who fell to an evil warlock with powers far surpassing his own. He died fighting at his brother, David’s, side. According to Ma my papa and Uncle David blamed that same warlock for the death of their parents, Patrick and Rebecca Warren, but where never able to prove that,” Hank paused and looked around him. “It goes on for a few paragraphs, talking about her grandparents move to America with their two children, the death of her aunt on the boat there, the birth of Melinda’s father shortly after, and the death of her grandparents. I think there was something about her uncle being blinded in an accident around the same time.”
“How do you remember all that?” Jani asked amused.
Hank shrugged. “I read it late last night and since it was one of the older entries in there it caught my attention. It wasn’t much help through.”
“Do you have the Book of Shadows memorized?” Alanna demanded of her little brother.
Hank shook his head. “I just remembered that passage because I read it last night. I couldn’t quote the rest of it.” He snorted. “Actually I’m surprised I remembered as much as I did.”
“Thank you for the info, Hank,” Paige interrupted,” but you are going back to bed.”
Hank shook his head. “Please, Mom. I’ve rested enough. I want to help.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Alanna added her plea. “Hank can orb, so maybe he can find something about the spell.”
“But everything written seems to be gone,” Jani protested. “And Ladybug’s already looking into the blog I found.”
Paige was silent as she considered the situation. After almost a minute of silence, she nodded. “Hank, go find your dad. “He planned to talk to his boss, because of the water bottle diet he had the department on. Your dad thought he might know something. I’m worried he might be dangerous.”
Hank nodded. “Can Lanna or Jani come with me? I don’t exactly have offensive powers.”
“Take Lanna,” Paige directed him. “I need Jani here on the computer.”
Alanna hopped up and wrapped her arms around her brother. “Let’s go.”
As her oldest and youngest disappeared in blue and white orbs Paige turned to Jani. “I need you to locate the twitter account and get them to tell you what they know.”
Jani sat down in front of her computer and got to work.
Paige turned to look at Seth and Cilly. “Cilly, I want you to rest. If we can contact this WitchFever person I’m going to need you to figure out if we can trust him or her.”
Cilly nodded. “You’ll wake me?”
“When it’s time,” Paige agreed. “Seth, I’m going to fill you in on what we know and I want you to go let Piper and Prue know. If we find some plan of action it would be easier if they already knew what was going on.”
“I can do that,” Seth assured her.
Cilly smiled and headed downstairs.
“I need you to know that what Ladybug is looking for is the spell used last time,” Paige told him.
“Last time?” he looked at her questioning. “So there’s a cure. That’s good.” When Paige just sighed he frowned. “It is good, right?”
Paige sighed, again, and shook her head. “Only for those who haven’t been affected yet.”
Seth frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
“Mom!” Jani interrupted.
Paige and Seth looked at her startled. “Is something wrong?” Paige asked worried.
Jani shook her head. Then, she nodded. Then, she sort of rolled her head around. Finally, with a slight laugh, she shrugged. “WF wants to talk to you.”
“Specifically me?” Paige asked startled.
Jani’s lips wiggled. “Well, no, but specifically a Charmed One . . . I think.” She pointed to a spot on the screen.
Paige’s eyes widened. She closed the space between her and her daughter. She knelt down next to her and looked down at where her daughter’s finger touched the screen. “They said that?”
On the screen at her daughter’s finger it read, “@janipam Can you get a CO to take a call from my sister? She has some info that you need. Please follow me and then contact me. Urgent.”
A lead was a lead. Paige stared at the screen for a second longer and then up at her daughter’s questioning face. “Give them my cell number.”